by Agatha Ball
"Yes, ma'am," said Trevor, trying to put on his most winning, hearts and minds, politician's smile.
Marnie turned to the posse. "He called me 'ma'am', isn't he sweet? Bless his heart."
"So, dear, what brings you to Seaside?" asked Holly.
Holly is tricky. You look into her magnified eyes, blinking behind the thick lenses of her wire-rimmed glasses, and she'll make you think she's nothing but a doddering pushover. You gotta watch yourself around the doddering pushovers in Seaside, though. They'll make you think they're asking questions because they have your best interests at heart. And Trevor stepped right into her trap.
"Oh," said Trevor, caught off guard by her winsome manner and gentle voice. "Well, Jake was my mother's brother—"
That's as many words as he was able to get out.
"You're Jake's NEPHEW??" snapped Wanda. "Well, don't that beat all. We've got a regular family reunion of mass murderers in town."
"Wanda!" I said, scandalized. "Trevor is a good man."
"Oh! A good man!" said Wanda. "Have you told Nate how this good man you've let into your shop is related to the fellow that killed his uncle?"
"I barely knew Jake," Trevor protested.
"Suuuuure you didn't," said Wanda, throwing a knowing glance to her co-conspirators.
But before she could say anything more, she was cut off. The bell over the door tinkled and a silence fell on the shop. All eyes turned to see who it was, and then almost simultaneously rolled as they saw it was Officer Stan. Before the door closed behind him, I saw Johnny's father peering around the doorjamb.
Officer Stan ran his finger along the table full of trinkets and rapped his knuckles on the stacks of books.
"May I help you with something, Stan?" asked Granny.
He gave her a pointed look. "Did you sell a bag of cinnamon rolls to Georgia this morning?"
She looked at me and I tried to communicate through my blinking and head jerks to tell the guy the truth because he already knew.
"No," she admitted. "I brought her a box of cinnamon rolls as a gift."
"So, you are admitting you knew it was a box and not a bag!" he replied like he was a detective in a PBS mystery about to announce the killer. "And it was a gift, eh?" he asked, dragging out the last syllable accusingly. "And why would a woman like you be giving a woman like that a gift?"
"We had a little difference of opinion and I was making a peace offering," said Granny. "No harm in that. Just trying to be neighborly."
"WE HEARD THE TWO OF YOU HAD AN ARGUMENT!" Officer Stan shouted at her, pointing his finger.
Inwardly, I wondered if he and Fred had been practicing the 'accusation finger point' move in the mirror together, or perhaps held a special day of training, because it seemed to be the only move they knew.
It had absolutely no effect on Granny. "Yes," she affirmed, looking at her friends like she couldn't believe the guy. In unison, they all drank from their cups and tried to pretend like they were very interested in our bookshelves. "That's exactly what I just told you. We had a disagreement and I was trying to mend fences."
"Oh," said Officer Stan, suddenly taken aback. "Well, a woman is dead now and we have a suspicion that she's been poisoned. Don't you go leaving town until the coroner gets back to us with the results of his lab tests!"
"All right," said Granny. "I won't."
"Oh," said Officer Stan, suddenly very defeated that Granny was so amenable. "Are you sure you weren't planning on leaving town?"
"Stan, now why would I leave town? The only reason I leave town at all anymore is when I need to run to the mainland because we're out of supplies. No, I was not planning on going anywhere at any time, thank you very much."
"Oh. Right. Well. Don't leave, all the same." He pulled out a small square of paper from his pocket and unfolded it. "We found this in her shirt pocket. I sure didn't like having to reach in there to get it, but I did what the job entailed."
At this point, we were all looking at one another wondering why Officer Stan felt compelled to share with us this little fact. An awkward silence hung in the room.
"I just don't want you to think I go around enjoying having to touch a dead corpse like Georgia," he explained. "I had to check the pockets."
"We would hope you would thoroughly investigate a crime scene, Stan," Granny reassured him.
"Well," he said, blushing and slightly embarrassed. "That's exactly what I was doing. Investigating the crime scene. Not doing anything untoward to a corpse, because that would be something I would most definitely not be interested in doing. Just want to make that clear."
"Right," said Granny, trying to move the conversation along. "What did you find in her pocket?" she prodded, trying to get him to continue on.
"I found THIS!" he announced, holding up the paper. "An IOU signed by you and made out to Georgia for over $10,000. Now. Tell me. Why did you owe Georgia $10,000? Was THIS what you were fighting about? Was THIS what you didn't want me to discover?"
"Ah," said Granny, coming over and taking the note out of his hand and putting it in her apron. "She had written a book and had stopped by yesterday to see if we wanted to carry it in our shop. She couldn't afford to pay for the print run, so I told her I'd finance it and take every copy she had."
"That's a lot of copies of books," mused Stan, breaking his brain as he tried to do the math.
"It was, but we're a community, Stan. We look out for one another."
Granny's posse nodded and hummed with agreement. I, however, was feeling completely lost at sea. There was so much to this story that Granny was not sharing, and I didn't know what to think about that. What was my Granny hiding?
"And when were you going to pay her this money?" asked Stan.
"I was coming over to do it this afternoon. I met with her this morning and we agreed to the terms. Things have been swamped here at the shop and I didn't have a chance to get back to her, but she had my IOU and knew I was good for it."
"No chance she placed the order and then you killed her so that you wouldn't have to pay the money?"
"STAN!" said Granny, scandalized. "How dare you!"
He shrank, cowed by her accusation of his accusation. "I'm an officer of the law and no stone should be left unturned."
"Well, you can just put that stone back right where you found it. You've known me for years."
"I knew Jake for years, too," he pointed out.
"That's different," said Granny primly. "He was a murderer. I, however, am not."
"Right. Well." He shifted on his feet as he tried to get his power back. "Just remember..." He pointed two fingers at his eyes and then swiveled his hand so they were pointed at Granny. "We have our eye on you."
She rolled her eyes as he tried to back out of the door, but he hit his butt on a table, knocking over our display, and then the doorknob, and it sort of ruined his whole intimidation tactics. When he left, the entire posse gathered around Granny, clucking and worrying over her.
"Oh, CINDY! It is JUST AWFUL!" said Marnie. "Him coming in here and accusing you of killing Georgia! What would ever make him think such a thing?"
"It's like he doesn't even remember you have lived here your whole life. Your WHOLE life! You are a pillar of this community!" said Holly, blinking behind her thick glasses.
"A PILLAR!" repeated Wanda, hitching her hip and shaking her head like Stan was something she found on the bottom of her shoe. "Who does he think he is?"
Granny waved all their concerns away. "Oh, Georgia and I have never got along and I'm the easiest target. And between us girls, not that I would ever wish that anyone die in a booth selling tickets for a ferry, but I'm not particularly devastated to hear that Georgia won't be around to ruin people's first impressions of Seaside."
"She was a wart on the behind of this island," said Marnie, tossing her thick, gray braid over her shoulder for emphasis. "I'm not one to speak ill of the dead, but there are just some people you're not really that sad to see go."
A
ll four ladies nodded their heads in agreement.
"I mean, she was the welcoming party to our entire town and the last one anyone ever saw when they were leaving," reminded Holly in her sweet voice as she shook her head and sipped her tea.
"It's a wonder anyone ever came back at all!" Marnie added, to which they all murmured in agreement once again.
"This calls for wine!" said Wanda. "Not celebratory wine," she added. "I mean, you are, after all, being accused by that nincompoop of murdering the poor woman." All the women in Granny's posse hid their titters. "But when a person dies... well... one should raise a glass, don't you think?" Once again, all the women were on board with her excuse to open up a bottle. "Leave the shop with Paige! I've got a box of some good rosé in my back room!"
The posse broke out into an excited hum and started making their way to the door.
Granny grabbed her bag from the back and called out to Trevor. "You get that tavern of Jake's up and running quick, you hear? You've got old ladies tapping into their private stash. It's a shameful state of affairs when we have to drink boxed wine out of plastic cups."
"There is the wine bar down the street..." I helpfully suggested, but Granny was having none of that.
She waved me away. "And risk saying something that some tourist thinks should end up shared on Yelp? We need a place where we can let our hair down and that fancy-pants wine bar is no place for a lady. Or at least, ladies like us." Her gal pals laughed in agreement. She bracingly commanded, "Trevor? Get on it!"
And with that, Granny and her posse swept out the door, chatting and scandalized by everything that had just happened.
Trevor stared at them long after they had left and then turned to me. "Sooo... They think I might be a murderer, but they're okay with that as long as I get them a bottle of wine...?"
I shrugged. "Welcome to Seaside."
Chapter Nine
The afternoon was relatively quiet. Most of the morning passengers had moved their way onto the hiking and biking trails of the island, or settled in on the sandy beaches. A few folks came in who had forgotten to bring a book to read on the beach, or needed a cup of coffee to get them through the afternoon.
As I pulled some books out of the backroom to restock the shelves, though, my mind couldn't help but wander to that IOU Stan brought in. What was Granny doing buying $10,000 worth of books from Georgia? I kicked myself that I hadn't read the book before I gave it to her. It was nowhere in sight, and it would be completely wrong to go up to her apartment and snoop around to see if it just happened to be lying about.
I walked back out as the bell tinkled and had to bite back the reactionary curse words about to come out of my mouth when I saw who it was.
"This place is just darling," said Madison, waving her long fingernails in the general direction of our bookshelves and trinkets. "Just adorable." She turned to me with a plastic smile on her face. "Did you help to design it?"
"No," I said. "It was my granny."
"It is just so... quaint," she emphasized, her eyeballs spacing out a little as she figured out the descriptor she was looking for.
"We're in one of the historic buildings," I explained. "Part of the original settlement. We tried to preserve everything just as it was one hundred years ago."
"It's like a teeny tiny little old-timey village," she cooed unconvincingly. She then leaned towards me. "But just between us girls, don't you sort of yearn for clean modern lines and lots of light? More of an open floor plan? I bet it gets awfully dingy in here in the winter. And the termites you must have? Do you even have air conditioning?"
"We live on an island," I reminded her. "We tend to get some nice ocean breezes."
"Well, you are a braver woman than I." She wrinkled her nose and then plopped her purse on the counter. "I would be out of here in two seconds. Or using it as an excuse to be featured on HGTV, because, seriously, let them upper this fixer." She pulled out her wallet and squinted at the chalkboard where we had all of our drinks listed. "I'll take a triple-shot skinny latte with some of that yellow sweetener. Every little bit helps, doesn't it? Those pounds just creep on, don't they? I can see you know the struggle. I bet you have the worst time being surrounded by all this food. You nibble all day, don't you?"
I didn't even know how to respond. The woman was bonkers. I mean, sure, I wasn't a size 00 like Scam-a-lot Barbie standing before me, but I had no interest in being so undernourished a trip up a flight of steps would cause me to pass out. So, instead, I just smiled and put the whole fat cream into her latte and doubled the sugar packets. "They say a baker should always taste her wares."
"OH!" said Madison, her eyes widening. "Did you bake ALL this? You are a woman of many talents! I can see why Nate likes you. What's that old saying? The way to a man's heart is through his stomach? Good to see you figured out how to work that angle."
Again, I was left speechless. Did she really just intimate my lifelong goal to be a professional baker was actually just to try and get a date with some guy I met a few weeks ago? I bit my tongue as I steamed the milk, hoping the sound of the machine would encourage her to stop talking. It didn't work.
"So, you and Nate are awfully close, aren't you?"
"Yes," I replied, not elaborating.
"Such a shame. He is CUTE. I bet you have to worry about all the girls just throwing themselves at him, don’t you?"
"He and I don't really worry about those sorts of things."
"REALLY," she said, her eyes getting huge again. "You are more trusting that I would be. I mean, he is REALLY cute. And stinking rich. You landed yourself a catch."
"We like to think both of us lucked out," I stated.
She leaned against the counter and folded her arms, her eyes glancing around the shop. "Isn't it funny how things just work out to bring the right people together at the right moment? Like, here he was, ready to walk away from that great development deal his uncle put together, and Nate was all worried this morning about that second will you said Georgia mentioned."
"She wasn't serious about that," I said, making sure to line up the hole of the lid with the seam on the cup so that every time Madison took a drink, it would dribble down her shirt.
"Well, she's dead now, isn't she, so it is just a moot point!" said Madison, taking the cup from me. "Unless..." she added. "Unless there was a second will leaving everything to Georgia and she went and left all of her belongings to someone else. That would sure be embarrassing for Nate, wouldn't it? Him saying he wasn't interested in the deal, just to find out that maybe he doesn't have a say in it after all, because it was never his to begin with."
"Um... there was a will on file with a lawyer..." I pointed out.
"But who knows what Byron had in that house of his! The man was a hoarder. I wouldn't put it past him to have popped a little slip of paper somewhere that no one has found. We really should have a professional organizer go up there... you know... just to make sure. It would be terrible if something got misplaced in the scramble to clean it out and it turns out, Georgia was kept from her rightful inheritance." Madison smiled. "Well, I should be going. I want to get some sun before the afternoon ferry comes. Ciao!" she said, getting in the last word as she walked out the door.
As the bell rang and the door shut behind her, Captain stretched in his chair and tiptoed towards me. He gave a plaintive little brrrow.
"Now why do you suppose she is so keen on there being a second will?" I mused. "It is a whole lot of money at risk if Nate doesn't sign the deal. Do you think there's enough money to make someone do something desperate to make sure it goes through, Captain? We're talking hundreds of thousands of dollars. Maybe even millions when it is all said and done. Do you think that's enough to make someone commit murder?"
He just booped his head on my shin. I took that as a sign that he agreed with me.
Chapter Ten
Granny wasn't home by closing time, which wasn't like her. I mean, maybe it was and I just didn't know it, but it wasn't normal accor
ding to the unofficial schedule she and I usually worked.
I decided I should probably make sure she wasn't passed out in a ditch somewhere or toilet papering someone's house with those hooligans she called her best friends. I counted out the till and got the place ready for the morning. 4 AM was going to suck.
I pulled down the shades, fed Captain, and then opened the door to Granny's apartment so Captain could settle in upstairs if he felt so inclined. I dashed off a quick text to Nate asking him if he wanted to take me out for a date, and then left out of the front door and locked it behind me.
We had just passed the longest day of the year by a couple weeks, but Seaside was at a north enough latitude that the sun still hung in the sky.
I walked down the street, pausing to smile at the people I recognized as customers and knew I would be seeing tomorrow.
There was a little folding table in front of the ticket booth. I waved to Johnny, who was standing beside it, and he waved at me to come over, so I did. A cash box and a bunch of tickets were on the table in front of a woman I had originally mistaken for a 13-year old, but who was actually a bit older than Johnny. She was not even five feet tall and sported the same thick, red glasses that Georgia wore. I wondered if they were a part of the uniform.
"Paige!" Johnny said. "Killer news!"
The girl beside him recoiled and I rubbed my forehead with my hand. "Johnny, you know that Georgia maybe got murdered just a few feet away from where we're now standing. Maybe a different turn of phrase..."
"OH!" he replied, his eyes getting huge and his tone completely apologetic. "Man. I TOTALLY forgot. Oh man... Yeah."
"Why are you set up at a table in front?"
"OH! The lights went out on Georgia."
"What?"
"The electricity. It's shot. Fred and Stan were collecting evidence and said she blew out the fuse before she died. Have to get new fuses from the mainland." He turned to the girl, his demeanor suddenly perking up. "But meet my new friend! This is Linda!"