“What do you mean?” I demanded as I locked the back door even though the lock didn’t work.
“I mean he came here to cause trouble for Harley,” she said.
“No, he didn’t. I already told you that he came here to—”
“That’s what I meant,” Derek said, “when I said he was troubled. It was like he had too much on his mind, like he needed to do something. Settle a score or something.”
“He was here because I asked him to come here,” I said through gritted teeth.
I wish Skinny hadn’t muddied the waters with all this trouble with Jody and Harley. And why had he encouraged Derek to talk about a sister who hadn’t been around for more than a quarter of a century instead of focusing on finding out why Mabel had sent me that phony prize letter? What had he been thinking? Was he asking about Carolina because of something he’d found in the DNA test?
I hesitated to think the next logical thought. But it came to my mind anyhow.
Could Carolina be my mother?
“Let’s get going,” Bertie said. She was just about dancing with excitement as she talked about getting me moved into the apartment above the shop. Her enthusiasm mirrored Mabel’s.
I reminded Bertie that I needed to replace the back door lock before doing anything else. Derek headed on his own way while Bertie took me to a small hardware store tucked away on the back side of the island where I could purchase the supplies. By the time I’d installed new locks on both the front and back doors, the sun had broken through the heavy clouds and had melted all but a few traces of the scant white stuff that had closed the entire region.
“The airport should be opening back up,” Bertie said after I’d replaced the lock and secured the door using the new key. I wiggled the door the same way Cal had done earlier. As I’d hoped, this time the metal door didn’t budge.
“You could go back to Madison,” Bertie added. “You might be safer there.”
I handed her one of the new keys and pocketed the other one. “I’m staying. But just for the festival.”
“Child, are you sure?”
“Mama, don’t chase her away,” Althea said.
“Don’t sass me, baby. Penn’s life is more important than a festival,” Bertie chided. “That’s why I didn’t let you tell her about it earlier. You know Mabel wouldn’t have given her the shop if she’d known the trouble it’s caused for her. If Penn needs to leave to protect herself, she should leave.”
“I should be okay,” I said. Was that true? I hoped so. “I’ve told everyone I’ve met that I’m only opening the shop temporarily. So anyone upset over my inheriting it should be appeased.”
Again, I hoped that was the case.
Bertie grunted, but at the same time, the older woman looked satisfied. She looked almost as if she felt proud of me, which made my ego get all fluffed up.
Not one to hide her pleasure, Althea hooked her arm with mine and hugged it tightly to her side. I tensed enough that she noticed.
“Sorry.” She released my arm.
“No problem,” I said, but I didn’t let her link arms with me again. As the three of us headed toward the beachfront motel, a wet wind whipped at us, reminding me once again that this wasn’t the tropical scaled-down Miami touted in the town’s tourist brochure. And yet the breeze didn’t feel nearly as bitingly cold as the winds that blew off Lake Mendota during a Wisconsin winter.
Back at the motel, I gathered my bags from where Deloris had stored them behind the front desk. Deloris, after finishing the checkout process, angrily thrust a pile of pink message slips at me. All of them were from Cal. Apparently his calls kept pulling her away from the bridge game taking place in the lobby.
“That boy wants to take you out tonight to celebrate your successful hot chocolate sale,” one of the elderly ladies playing bridge at the nearby game table chimed in to say.
“Quite a looker that one,” another said.
“Too bad he moved away from town,” said a third.
“What?” the first lady said.
“He moved,” the third lady shouted. “Out of town.”
The first lady clicked her tongue. “Why’d he do a fool thing like that? Thought he was going to take over Billy’s practice.”
“That’s his other son, Harleston. He took over the practice.”
“That surfer boy?” She clicked her tongue again. “Can’t trust him none. He’s a bad seed, that one. Moved away.”
“Harleston came back,” the third lady shouted.
“Bah!” The first lady tossed down a card and then crossed her arms over her chest. “Came back to surf.”
“Come on,” Althea said, tugging at my arm. “Let’s get you moved in. You can call Cal later.”
Stella happily tugged at her leash, barking and growling as she pranced down Main Street. Althea wheeled my suitcase while I carried the bag stuffed with all of Stella’s accessories. Bertie hummed a happy tune as she followed along a few steps behind us.
“How well do you know Harley?” I asked Althea, remembering how he had warned me more than once to leave town. He kept saying he wasn’t trying to scare me, but that’s what he’d been doing. Was that his aim? Was he trying to scare me away?
“I went to school with his brother, Cal,” Althea said. “Harley is a few years older.”
“She dated him behind my back in high school,” Bertie said.
“Who? Cal?” I asked.
“No, Harley,” Bertie answered.
Althea stopped abruptly in the middle of the sidewalk. “You knew about that?”
“I’m your mama; of course I knew who you were running around with back then. It was my job to know.”
“We were—we were just having fun. It wasn’t serious,” Althea stammered. “If you knew, why didn’t you call me out on it? You never let me put one foot out of line. Never.”
“Is that so?” Bertie stepped around her stunned daughter and continued toward Mabel’s shop. “Besides, his father never let either of those boys run wild. And the boy had always struck me as a good, hardworking kid. Harmless, even.”
“How about now?” I asked as I hurried to catch up with Bertie. “He left Camellia Beach for a long time, and now he’s back. He’s under pressure from his ex-wife. She cheated on him and now wants to redevelop his hometown. And he’s struggling to fill his father’s shoes. Is he still harmless?”
“He’s still the same Harley,” Althea was quick to say as she came up from behind. Was she still in love with him?
“No man is harmless,” Bertie warned. “No woman either.”
* * *
As soon as we arrived at Mabel’s apartment and I unsnapped Stella’s leash, the little beastie took off sniffing every corner. Her fluffy tail resembled a wildly waving flag.
She made a beeline to a coat closet right off the kitchen. The door was open. I jogged over and pushed the door closed before she could do more than stick her nose inside. There was no telling what kind of trouble Stella could find within a closet’s dark expanse.
“No!” Both Althea and Bertie called out in alarm.
“What?” I asked. “What did Stella do?”
“Not Stella,” Althea said. “You. You closed the door.”
“The closet door?” I stared at the heavy wooden door that obviously was original to the building.
Bertie shook her head and then produced a toolbox from one of the lower kitchen cabinets. She dropped the toolbox by the closet door with a clank. “The latch sticks. The only way to open the door again is to take it off its hinges.”
“Oh, sorry.” I added the broken door to the ever-growing list I was making in my head of things that needed to be fixed.
“Nothing to apologize about, dear,” Bertie said. “We’re so used to never closing that door that I tend to forget to warn others about it. I’ll get it open again later tonight. Let’s get you moved in.”
Althea rolled my suitcase directly into Mabel’s room. A simple pale-blue-and-green quilt cov
ered the antique metal bed. A bit of white paint had flecked off here and there from the bed frame. A finely crafted dresser and bedside table, made from a rich teak wood, looked exotic and out of place in the humble room.
“The villagers made these pieces for her grandfather,” Bertie said when she saw me running my hand over the dresser’s smooth waxed top. “Beautiful, aren’t they?”
“Yes,” I said. “I love the carvings on the front. Those tiny flowers. They’re exquisite.”
“According to Mabel, those are cacao flowers.”
“Chocolate blooms,” I said with wonder as I ran my hand over the raised wood. “Perfect.”
“Mabel would be glad that you like them. They’re yours. She wanted them to stay here, with the shop.”
My knee-jerk reaction was to say no. I didn’t want them. Mabel’s family deserved to inherit their mother’s treasures. Not me. Not a stranger.
But was I a stranger? Or was I a long-lost relative?
Despite my repeated efforts, I hadn’t been able to get any information from Hodgkin DNA about the scrap of paper found in Skinny’s pocket. I’d even asked Grandmother Cristobel’s attorney to make a call to the company, and they still wouldn’t budge or even admit to being in contact with Skinny.
I looked at a framed picture of Mabel’s children that hung in a prominent location on the wall near the dresser. In the picture, her children were all grown up but looked to be still in their early twenties. It had to have been taken after Carolina had run away since she wasn’t in the photograph. I searched their faces, looking for similarities with mine.
They resembled Mabel. But they didn’t look at all like me.
I could take a DNA test. But for what reason? No matter what, I planned to sign ownership of the shop over to Mabel’s children. In all likelihood, they would sell the land to Jody, who’d already paid someone a large down payment for the property.
I wondered what exactly Jody planned to do with it. Would she renovate the historic building? Or tear it down? That was another thing I needed to ask when I met with her at the Low Tide tonight.
“There’s a sideboard in the living room that matches the dresser and nightstand,” Bertie said, breaking my silence. She opened the closet door, showing me its empty interior. “I’ve packed up all Mabel’s clothes so you can move right in.”
“We want you to feel comfortable here,” Althea said. “Like it’s your home.”
“Your temporary home,” Bertie added quickly before I had a chance to say it myself.
“It is just for the week, but thank you. It’ll be nice not to have to live out of my suitcase.”
Althea and Bertie left me alone to unpack. I’d just started putting my clothes in drawers and hanging up dresses when a rat, naked and wrinkly and huge, scurried out from under the bed. It started advancing on me.
“There’s—there’s a rat in here. A rat!” I cried. I backed myself into the en suite bathroom. The hairless rat, which had to weigh at least ten pounds, followed, trapping me between the shower stall and sink. And then it rubbed against me.
I shrieked.
It shrieked. And darted back under the bed.
Chapter 15
“You’ve got a huge rat infestation problem. I mean huge huge. That thing is a monster. Call rodent control. Now,” I demanded when Althea and Bertie came running to see why I was shrieking. “What—what’s so funny?”
“Th-that’s just Troubadour. M-m-m-able’s cat,” Althea barely managed to sputter as she hugged her sides, laughing so hard it clearly pained her.
A moment later, Stella charged into the room, barking her little head off. She stuck her nose under the bed. The naked rat—I mean, cat—growled, low and deep. My fearless little dog whimpered and retreated back into the living room. She stood guard at the doorway, barking and jumping up and down, but she didn’t dare cross the threshold back into the bedroom where the cat was hiding.
“That—that’s a cat?” I asked, still pressed against the wall, still wedged between the sink and the shower stall. I was also still thinking we should be calling rodent control. “Are you sure it’s a cat?”
“Hairless,” Althea said, gulping back more laughter.
“On purpose?” I opened the slightly rusty medicine cabinet above the sink, only absently noting the line of prescription pill bottles crammed on the top shelf. I angled the mirror so I could keep an eye on the bed and the creature I knew lay beneath it.
“Mabel had allergies,” Althea explained.
“So she shaved her cat?” I pulled a dark-colored glass bottle down from the medicine cabinet’s shelf. It was a prescription for nitroglycerin, a pill given to relieve chest pains associated with heart disease. “She shaved her cat bald?”
“Dear Lord, no. He was born that way. He’s a sphinx. It’s a hairless breed,” Bertie said. She’d squatted down next to the bed and held out a hand. The ugly cat came out and rubbed against her outstretched fingers.
I shivered at the thought of a whole litter of kittens looking like this huge, wrinkly cat.
“He’s sweet as can be,” Bertie said. “Sweeter than sweet potato pie, aren’t you?”
“I just bet he is.” Just don’t let him come near me again, I didn’t say aloud. “Who inherited him?”
“He’s a living being. You don’t inherit—” Althea protested.
“You can have him,” I said quickly.
“I promised Mabel I’d keep him,” Bertie said as the cat bumped her hand with its hairless head until she started to pet its wrinkly back. “He’s young. Not even two years old.”
At least I wasn’t going to be stuck living with it. One big-eared monster in my life was more than enough.
“You’re more than welcome to take him home with you tonight.” I returned the prescription bottle to the shelf and closed the cabinet door.
“I am home.” Bertie smiled at the cat, which had started to purr. Loudly. “At least for the week, I mean.”
I froze. “You live here?”
“For the past ten years. I’ve been caring for Mabel. She looked after me too. We were partners.”
“You were partners, but you didn’t hold official ownership in the chocolate shop? That’s not fair.”
She lowered her voice. “We weren’t partners in the business, although I helped her. We loved each other. We were partners in life. Don’t go looking at me like that, like you’re shocked or something, Althea. I know you’re not. Shocked, that is. And get your mind out of the gutter. We loved our husbands until the day they died. But we loved each other too. We were best friends and partners. We shared this apartment and took care of each other. When you get older, you need someone to go to the doctors with you, who enjoys reminiscing about the old days, and who loves you.”
“Mama, I’m here for you,” Althea protested.
“It ain’t the same. You’ll understand when you get older.”
“But Mabel didn’t leave you the shop. Why?” I asked. “She should have. She should have given you at least part ownership in the building, in the business. Heck, Mabel should have left all of it to you, not me.” Was I going to sign the deed over to the wrong family? “I’ll give you the property. And the shop.”
“I already told you, child. I don’t want it. I have property of my own. And besides, I’m looking to retire.”
“You have property? In town?”
“She owns my shop,” Althea said. “I rent the space. So does Harley, and the small grocery store next to my store, and the CPA whose office is above it.”
“The rents provide a modest income.” The hairless cat climbed into Bertie’s arms. Bertie rose from her crouched position on the floor, cradling the cat like it was a baby. “I don’t want to be bothered with more.”
“Even so, Bertie, it’s not fair,” I pressed. “You deserve some part of the shop. Even if all you do is sell it.”
“Mabel didn’t want it sold,” the older woman snapped. She hugged the cat tightly to her breast. “I
t’s been a long day and I’m beat. I’ll see you in the morning.”
She padded out of the room while shame heated my face. I had to remember that while I had gotten myself all worked up over the mess of inheriting something I never wanted or asked for, Bertie had lost her best friend and life partner. She’d been holding up well all day, but clearly grief had taken a sharp toll. I should have been more sensitive to her feelings.
But at the same time, when all was said and done, I was going to end up breaking her heart. I wasn’t going to fulfill her dear friend’s wishes. I wasn’t going to keep the shop.
“Please tell your mother I’m sorry,” I whispered to Althea just before grabbing my purse and hurrying out of the apartment before she could react. I didn’t tell Althea where I was headed, since she’d insist on coming with me. Upset as I was at the thought of hurting Bertie, I didn’t want her daughter’s company. I needed some time alone. I needed to think.
* * *
“You’re going the wrong way,” Harley said as he fell into step beside me as I marched down Main Street.
“How do you know where I’m going?” I stopped and held my fists at the ready to attack. “And why are you still stalking me? I thought I made it clear that I—”
“I’m not stalking you,” he said, but he backed up anyhow. “I was heading home when I saw you running down the Chocolate Box’s back stairs like a pack of hell hounds were chasing you. You looked distressed, and I thought you might need help.” He flashed his million-watt smile that was nearly as effective as his younger brother’s. “Honest.”
There was that charm Jody had warned me about. My fists tightened. “That doesn’t answer my first question. How do you know where I’m heading?”
“I know because you told me right after smashing my pretty face.” Now that he’d mentioned it, his nose still looked red and puffy. “You told me you were going to the Low Tide to meet with my lovely ex.”
“Yes, and you told me not to go.”
“Why would you listen to me? You don’t even trust me.”
“That’s true.”
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