Island Blues

by Wendy Howell Mills

  Lima liked to see Sabrina radiant with excitement. It was a far cry from the way she had been looking the last couple of months. He couldn’t help but worry just a tad, though. Sabrina always meant well, she did, but sometimes things just snowballed out of her control when she got enthusiastic.

  “It sounds like you done good, Sabrina.” Lima just hoped things worked out as well as Sabrina expected, though eighty years of hard living told him that things seldom did. And his young friend didn’t need any more disappointments just now.

  The front porch of Tubb’s General Store was deserted as dusk began stalking through the streets of the island. From where they sat they could smell dinner cooking in various houses and restaurants down on the harbor front. Not ready to go home to his dark, empty house, Lima wondered how he could talk Sabrina into having dinner without her offering to cook for him. She did so love to cook.

  Bicycle Bob, who had been dozing on the bottom step, sat up and looked around in fuzzy puzzlement. Bicycle looked like a twelve-year-old who had done a forty-year Rip Van Winkle on his way to a pick-up baseball game, and taken to drinking upon waking to drown his confusion. He adjusted his baseball cap, which had fallen back on his peppered brown hair, and wiped in absent disinterest at his dirty tee-shirt and shorts. He took a drink from his paper-bagged bottle, and got to his feet without looking at Sabrina and Lima.

  “Bicycle, you look like a befuddled billy goat,” Lima called, but Bicycle didn’t respond as he mounted Trigger, his bright yellow beach bike, and pedaled off toward the harbor where a blanket of crimson and orange had been thrown across the water.

  “Did you hear someone put in a bunch of old change at the change genie over on the mainland dock? Bunch of quarters from the nineteen twenties, Davey said. Clogged up the machine good and the man who changes it was hopping mad.”

  “Nineteen-twenties change? That’s odd.”

  “Weeell, the nineteen twenties, that was the time to live on Comico Island, let me tell you.” Lima sat back in his chair. “I don’t remember much about it, of course, but I’ve heard the stories. There was so much liquor being run off our coast that some mornings the shores were littered with bottles from rumrunners who had hit an oyster bar in the dark at high speed. Every man, grandmother, and kid who had a boat went angling for burlap bags of liquor every chance they got.

  “Kenneth Fredericks and his high-falutin’ Shell Lodge were bringing in some of the biggest names of the day. The twenties were like the sixties in a way, you understand, people going through a rebellious phase and having a good time doing it. Of course, a lot of people died too, from drinking bad liquor, or at the very least they went blind.

  “Here on the island, the islanders were loving it. They were so poor that their only entertainment was when the preacher came to town every month or so and saved their souls and cut their hair. So, they were happy to make some money off of Fredericks and his crony David Harrington, who had built a house on the island just to use for smuggling. And the police did well as long as they knew how to look the other way. Sheriff Fitz Mitchell had that down pat—Fredericks and Harrington helped get him elected Sheriff of Teach County, which was right difficult for somebody living on Comico Island, and he had to show his appreciation somehow.”

  Lima continued his reminiscing, until Sabrina said, “Lima, I’ll cook you dinner to celebrate my day’s success.” She got to her feet and looked at him in invitation. Lima thought fast.

  “You’ve worked hard today so why don’t we go to Walk-the-Plank Pub for dinner? Of course, I wouldn’t dream of insulting you by offering to pay,” he added hastily, “but we can go French.”

  “Dutch?”

  “Whatever.”

  ***

  Lava colors glimmered and glowed across the surface of the water as the sun sank in a fizzle of clouds. Across the darkening sky, uneven lines of birds headed toward their night roosts, a few stragglers struggling to catch up.

  The ruthless pull of instinct to find a place to roost for the night was making the seagull uneasy. Anxious squawks betrayed his indecision, but he was unable to pull his attention away from the man on the beach below. He was hungry, and humans on the beach sometimes meant food. The man might throw bread high up into the air, and the seagull would swoop down and snatch i, right before it hit the water.

  Feeling a gust of wind, he adjusted his wings, and then had to flap hard as his loose, useless leg upset his balance. No matter how hard he tried, the broken leg would not tuck up under his body like the other one. It was no longer easy to catch the small fish and skittering crabs that were his mainstay, and he was hungry.

  With a plaintive, mewling cry, he circled closer to the beach, his beady eyes fixed on the man lying on the sand. The man lay very still, and the seagull swooped down even closer, seeing something glittering beside him. A fish? The man did not move as the seagull hovered, contemplating. Did he smell blood? The seagull was unsure, as his sense of smell was erratic.

  Something rocketed toward him and the seagull flapped his wings to get out of the way, almost crashing into a tree in his awkward haste. He looked up and saw the osprey coming back toward him, screaming in a piercing voice that this was his, his, his, and the seagull pulled away from the beach without looking back. There was no arguing with an osprey.

  The sun was down, and oily dark was spilling across the water. Leaving the dead man behind him on the beach, the hungry seagull flew off into the night.

  Chapter Seven

  The dishes had been carousing again. No matter how many Sabrina washed, when she returned home there was always a pile of them in the sink, passed out and dirty from their midday bash. The natural product of such behavior, of course, was that they propagated. The beaming plates presenting her with baby saucers, the proud glasses producing bouncing coffee cups. Was it a bad sign that her dishware had a more active social life than she did?

  “I have a very active social life, Calvin.” Sabrina stacked the last steaming plate in the dish rack and looked to see if any dishes were hiding behind the plant, just waiting for a chance to jump in the sink and throw a kegger. “I have lots of friends,” she continued, and Calvin, who was sitting on the windowsill watching the soap bubbles, did not answer. “Well, I do, and just because Sally says I need to go out on a date, well, she also said bell bottoms would never come back in style, so why in the world should I listen to her?”

  Calvin, her bright yellow parakeet, darted forward and stabbed an errant bubble, chattering in bloodthirsty glee as it burst with a wet pop.

  “I shouldn’t, that’s why. I’m perfectly happy.” Which was true. After her successful first day as Comico Island’s Ombudsman, everything seemed rosier and brighter this morning. She woke early in a frenzy to clean her apartment, skipping her normal morning peruse through her massive medical book, and after two sustained hours of catharsis, she could walk from the tiny bedroom to the living room/kitchen without tripping over anything.

  Her apartment was small, the furniture and appliances old and worn, the kitchen a mere afterthought against the back wall. But the view out the large window made the cramped, dingy space worthwhile. Hurricane Harbor was revealed in all its morning glory as the sun flashed off the tall masts of the sailboats and sparked the wind-restless waves. Buildings lined the edge of the harbor, some ramshackle and suicidal in their tilt toward the water, the newer buildings on high stilts painted in a rainbow of colors. A large brick hotel stood out like a rotten tooth on the smile of the waterfront.

  Beyond the public beach was Houseboat Alley, a motley collection of aging houseboats rocking gently on their tethers at the old ferry dock. A rusted metal fence past the houseboats blocked off the rest of the dilapidated docks from public use, though several fisherman had made their way over or around the fence to use the crumbling quay as a fishing pier.

  Sabrina had talked to her real estate agent in Cincinnati, but the prospects of selling her mother’s house—well, it was her house now, of course—were blea
k at the moment. That meant she would be staying in the apartment for the indefinite future, and as she looked around the diminutive, gleaming space, and at the generous view beyond, the prospect did not seem as daunting as it did at first.

  “Are you ready to go, Calvin? It’s time to go to work.” It was almost eight-thirty, and Sabrina had big plans for the day. Now that she had sorted out the Hummer dilemma, it was time to get to work on the rest of the island’s problems. She hoped to have them solved by dinner.

  Last night she had gone through all the complaint letters in the bag the town council gave her. Many of them were emails and notes from phone calls, though the most mystifying were a few written in a sprawling hand saying things like “dumb jerk thinks someone should fix his hot tub” and “wants privacy and I told idiot he was crazier than a Mitchell’s day fisherman.” Who wrote these puzzling missives?

  She had organized the letters into two piles, the larger one from vacationers who were long gone. Those she would have to track down by letter and phone and at least apologize for their difficulties and see if there was anything she could do. The smaller pile contained complaints received in the last couple of days, including several from Gilbert Kane from Hummers International. These were the most urgent, and now that she had cleared up the Hummers’ problem, she would move on to the next most pressing issue, which was the two break-ins.

  Donning a raspberry shawl, she lifted Calvin to her shoulder and went out onto the narrow outdoor walkway that ran the length of the building. Doors to three other apartments lined the walkway, and at the far end were stairs leading down to the restaurant below. The air was cool and crisp, the wind brisk as it sloshed up white caps on the harbor and filled the air with the music of ringing sailboat rigging.

  As Sabrina emerged into the restaurant on the ground floor, the smell of bacon and eggs made her stomach growl, despite the fact that she had made Grand Marnier sweet potato French toast this morning. Which reminded her, she needed to remember to put the batteries back in the smoke alarm.

  “Sabrina, would you like some breakfast?” May, blowzy and spare, looked up from taking an order. Never afraid of hard work, the owner of the Blue Cam didn’t hesitate to fill in when her waitresses called in sick.

  “No thanks, May, I already ate.”

  Sabrina looked around at the happy customers, the funky, nautical murals on the walls, and the colorful tables and chairs. Working as hostess at the Blue Cam was her first job when she arrived on the island. May had been on the verge of selling the restaurant, and Sabrina shuddered a little as she remembered the boring menu and the plastic checkered tablecloths on the tables.

  “Well, you know you can eat on the house any time,” May called as Sabrina headed for the front door. “And any time you want your job back, just let me know. If it wasn’t for you, this place would be out of business. I’ll never be able to thank you enough.”

  ***

  “Sabrina, hello!” Maggie Fromlin put down the knife that she was using to slice oranges and limes and came toward Sabrina. The small, round-shouldered woman looked a lot happier than she had a few days ago when Sabrina encountered her on the beach, still reeling from the break-in that had disrupted her vacation. Maggie ignored the proffered hand and clasped Sabrina in a warm hug, recoiling when she encountered Calvin’s warm body under Sabrina’s hair.

  “Oh, it’s a little bird!”

  “His name is Calvin, and he’s a budgerigar, more commonly known as a parakeet. He’s rare because he’s all yellow, except for the bit of white on his forehead and underside.”

  Calvin chirped a greeting.

  “I came by to see how you were settling in.” Sabrina looked around at the handsome, large room and the up-to-date appliances. Gale Teasley had done a good job of turning her home into a rental cottage. The house wasn’t new, but it had character, and judging from the gazebo and the hot tub she could see on the back deck, Gale had added the amenities that the tourists would expect in a rental house.

  “It’s perfect! Everyone loves it. At first my mother-in-law was making snide comments about not being on the beach, but I told her she was welcome to go back to the Seas the Day Cottage and wait for the burglar to come back. You should have seen the expression on her face! And then the kids found the kayaks, and she hasn’t been able to say anything bad about the place since.” Maggie grinned.

  “That’s wonderful.” Sabrina hesitated, loathe to bring up an unpleasant subject, but duty called. “I’m working as Comico Island’s Ombudsman and—”

  “Oh…how nice for you!”

  Sabrina wondered if she would ever be able to say her title without seeing that momentary look of blank puzzlement on her listener’s face. “Thank you. Anyway, it looks like your burglary was not an isolated incident and I wanted to ask a few questions to try to get to the bottom of the whole thing before the burglar strikes again and upsets someone else.”

  “We already talked to the police, but…what did you want to know?”

  “I understand nothing was stolen. Is that correct?”

  “Well, none of our stuff was stolen. He may have taken something that belonged in the house, but we didn’t notice anything obvious missing, like the TVs or DVD players. The police called the owner of the house, Sue Harrington, and she’s going to come down and look the house over, just to be certain.”

  “You said you saw the burglar?”

  Maggie shivered and went back around to her cutting board. She resumed cutting fruit as she talked. “It was awful. I really don’t remember much.”

  “I know it’s scary to think about. Why don’t we pretend there was a secret surveillance camera in the room? Just tell me what it would have seen.” It was a memory-enhancing technique Sabrina had run across in one of her medical journals.

  “Well…” Maggie looked doubtful, but she closed her eyes and began talking. “Doug and I are lying in bed. I must have heard something while I was sleeping, because I woke all of a sudden, like you do when you wake up from a nightmare and you’re scared to move. But this time it was real. He went into the closet and I could hear him moving around in there, real quiet. I was afraid to even breathe, much less wake up Doug. Then he came out of the closet and started patting the walls—”

  “Patting the walls?”

  “Yes. Kind of like the way a police officer pats down a suspect on TV. Then, I must have moved or something, because he looked over his shoulder and I don’t know whether he could see that my eyes were open or what, but all of a sudden he was running out the door. I screamed, and everyone woke up, but by the time I could get Doug to understand what was going on, the burglar was long gone.”

  “Would you recognize this person again if you saw him?” Sabrina wondered if there was a way to do a lineup of all the men on the island. Perhaps she could throw together a men’s beauty pageant with Maggie as one of the judges?

  “Sure, I’d know him anywhere. He was big—at least, I think he was, but it may have been his shadow that seemed big, I’m not sure. He wore a black baseball cap and black clothes, so he kind of blended into the darkness. Let’s see…I guess I really didn’t get a look at his face, his hat was pulled down pretty low, but I’m sure I would recognize him again if I saw him.”

  Sabrina smiled. Of course she could. “Anything else? Anything else that will help us find him?”

  “Well, there was the piece of paper…I didn’t see that it was important, but the police took it away.”

  “Piece of paper? Did the burglar drop it?”

  “I guess he might have, but who knows?”

  “Was there writing on the paper?”

  Maggie frowned. “Yes, but I can’t remember what it said. I mean, it didn’t make any sense.”

  “Pretend that surveillance camera is aimed right over your shoulder at the piece of paper. Can the camera see what it says?”

  Maggie grimaced, but once again closed her eyes. “The writing is kind of round and curly, and there are three…no four words. O
ne on each line. The first and last one I can see pretty clearly. ‘Mit’ and ‘Fred.’”

  “Mit and Fred?”

  “Yes. The other two words, the ones in the middle…they rhyme, I remember that, and they made me think of someone laughing. Hardy-har-har, you know? Oh wait! That’s the first word. ‘Har.’ And the second one was ‘Gar.’”

  “So, in order, we have ‘Mit,’ ‘Har,’ ‘Gar,’ and ‘Fred.’ Is that right?”

  Maggie nodded. “I told you it didn’t make sense.”

  And she was absolutely right. It didn’t make sense. But Sabrina smiled gamely. “You never know what will help. Was there anything else?”

  “No…oh, wait. Yes, there was something else.”

  Chapter Eight

  Bicycle Bob was sitting on the first step and humming as Sabrina approached Tubb’s General Store.

  “Hello, Bicycle, how are you?” She paused and looked down at him, but he kept his eyes on the ground as he hummed. His paint-stained fingers clasped a bottle of beer with fierce need. “Have you been painting today? I would love to see some more of your work. Everyone comments on the murals you did at the Blue Cam.”

  It didn’t matter that Bicycle never responded. One of these days she thought maybe he would. She put her hand on his sun-warmed shoulder, feeling the sharp bones through his shirt. She knew that his family and neighbors looked out for him, but they couldn’t fix what a steady diet of alcohol did to the human body.

  Sabrina mounted the steps and sat down in one of the rocking chairs under the chalkboard that read: “Funeral for Uncle Will on Friday.”

  Where was Lima? It was rare that she came by here during the day and didn’t find him.

  A young girl, tall and red-headed, came out of the store to shake out a rug. Her direct gaze met Sabrina’s and she nodded in greeting.

  “Hi, Marilee,” Sabrina said, and Calvin added his own chirrupped greeting. “How do you like working here at the general store?”