I followed her. Although I was sure I’d locked the front door, I wanted to be positive.
While I checked the door—it was locked—Bertie picked up the phone receiver. “The Chocolate Box,” she sang.
She waved at me to get back to work in the kitchen as she listened to the person on the other side of the line. I’d started to leave the front of the shop when Bertie sucked in such a quick breath that my feet froze in place. My breath caught in my throat as I watched her with concern.
“Yes. Yes,” she said, her voice more clipped than usual. “How? Why?”
“What? What’s going on?” I asked, which was silly. She was too focused on the phone call to hear anything I said. I could have yelled, “Fire!” and she wouldn’t have flinched.
Whoever had called was doing most of the talking. Bertie’s lips tightened more and more as she listened. “What?” I asked again. “Who is it?”
Again, she didn’t hear me.
After one of the longest minutes, she hung up the phone.
“Who was it?” I demanded.
“Bubba.” She frowned at the phone. “He’s … safe. He’s back in town.”
I fisted my hands on my hips. “Now tell me the truth, Bertie. Why in the world would he call you?”
Chapter 15
“He called the shop, not me,” Bertie said quickly as we both stood in the front of our closed shop. “I picked up. He could have just as easily been talking to you.”
“That’s true,” I admitted. “But you’ve been worrying about him like crazy all day. What’s your relationship with him?”
By this time Althea had emerged from the kitchen. Bertie looked to her daughter and then to me before saying, “I’d worry about any member of the community that went missing. You should know that.”
“Did Bubba tell you if he’d talked with Gibbons yet?” I asked.
“He said he had,” she said.
“And? Is he off the hook? Is he going to be able to help get the festival back on track? There’s no shortage of work that needs to be done.”
“He … he didn’t say.”
“Then what did he say? Why else would he be calling here if not to talk about the festival and tonight’s concert?” I demanded.
“Did he call to talk to you, Mama?” Althea asked.
“Now why would he do that?” she answered as she scurried back toward the kitchen. “We’ve spent enough time chatting. The chocolate won’t get made by itself.”
Althea moved to follow her mother. I grabbed her arm. “What isn’t she telling us?” I asked. “What is her relationship with Bubba?”
“I don’t know, Penn. I’ve never seen her act like this before. But ever since Mabel’s death, she hasn’t been herself. Perhaps this is her way of grieving?”
“Try to get her to talk to you.” I pulled the apron off over my head and dropped it on the counter.
“What are you going to do?” she asked.
“I’m going to go talk to Bubba,” I said as I grabbed my purse. “I have a concert scheduled and no band to play tonight. I’m hoping he can help with that.”
“Ask him about Mama, too.”
“You know I will.”
* * *
While I drove my blue Fiat toward Bubba’s creekside cottage, my thoughts drifted to chocolate. Even before I’d inherited the shop, my thoughts had often drifted to my first love—chocolate. This time, I was thinking about a flavor I’d never eaten before, a fiery bonbon.
I shook my head. Who would want to eat spicy bonbons?
Besides, I needed to focus on the music festival and what we were going to do about tonight instead of wondering how jalapeño peppers would blend with dark chocolate.
I parked next to Detective Gibbons’s Crown Vic in Bubba’s dirt driveway. Several other cars were parked under the trees in Bubba’s yard. If I didn’t know better, I would have thought he was hosting a party.
Like this morning, the front door hadn’t been pushed all the way closed. The simple act of knocking made it swing open.
“Come in, come in!” one of the members of The Embers called to me. He was the tall one with the fading red hair. What was his name? I seemed to recall he was named after an animal. Raccoon? Skunk?
He tried to hand me one of the half-dozen bottles of beer he was lugging into the living room. I thanked him but refused.
“Is Bubba here?” I asked.
He nodded toward the living room. “Follow me.”
The small living room felt cramped. Alvin was there. He cheered when he saw … Gator? … enter with the beers. Bixby was by the fireplace, talking with Congressman Ezell. Ezell’s nephew Tom was wandering around the room, studying everything as if in awe. Chief Byrd slouched in a sofa with his gaze fixed on me.
Bubba, his hair wet and plastered to his head and with a shiner the size of a saucer darkening his right eye, reclined in a brown leather lounger. Detective Gibbons crouched beside him. He tilted his head to one side as he listened to Bubba, who used expressive hand movements as he talked.
The detective didn’t have his notebook out, which was telling. Were the two men really just having a conversation? Did that mean Bubba was no longer the main suspect in Stan’s murder and that Gibbons would now pursue Candy for the crime? Or was the detective treating Bubba with kid gloves because of his mother’s political connections?
“Hey Penn,” Bixby said. He stepped in my path, blocking my access to Bubba. He put his hand on my arm. Again, I was surprised how his touch didn’t bother me. Even knowing how he flirted shamelessly with any woman he met and despite my prickly no-touch tendencies, I truly liked it when his bright spotlight turned toward me. Did that make me shallow? Probably. “Did you make any special chocolate treats for me today?”
My face flushed. “What do you think about jalapeños and chocolate?”
“Oooo,” he crooned. “Spicy. I would like that.”
I stared stupidly into his sparkling brown eyes.
“Thanks, Fox,” Bixby said to the red-haired man with the beers. That jolted me out of my daze.
“Fox!” I exclaimed. “For some reason I’d thought your name was Gator or something.”
Fox laughed as he continued making his way around the room handing out frosty brown bottles.
“I met one of your biggest fans today,” I said to Bixby. He’d twisted off the beer’s cap and was taking a long sip. “Her name is Candy.”
Bixby coughed horribly as he started to choke.
“I take it you know her,” I said and pounded him on his back.
“You okay over there?” Bubba called from his recliner.
Detective Gibbons rose to his feet. When he spotted me, he pressed his lips together tighter and tighter until they’d nearly disappeared.
“You … keep … away … from … her,” Bixby managed to sputter as he continued to cough. I pounded on his back again. “She’s—”
“Miss Penn, you broke your promise,” Gibbons growled as he ambled toward me.
“I called you right away,” I said, hoping I sounded sweetly innocent.
“You called after the fact. You shouldn’t have been nosing in on my investigation in the first place.” He grabbed my arm.
I froze at his touch. My hands curled into fists.
Keen detective that he was, he noticed my discomfort and released me.
“Come with me.” He paused before adding, “Please. Please, come with me to the deck, where we can talk in private.”
“I’m not here to start trouble or to step on your capable toes,” I told him in as friendly a tone as I could manage. “I need to talk to Bubba about what we’re going to do about tonight. With the concert. It’s supposed to start in a few hours and the band’s lead singer is dead.”
“And I need to talk to you about Candy Graves,” Gibbons said.
“Candy?” Bixby pushed his face into the conversation. My pounding on his back must have done the trick. He’d stopped choking. “What about her?”
“On
the deck,” the detective said to me. I don’t think he intended for Bixby to follow along, but that was exactly what the superstar did. Thankfully, Byrd seemed content to remain on the sofa and let his colleague from the county handle my scolding.
The afternoon sun was baking the riverside deck. I held up my hand to block the bright rays from shining directly in my eyes while I dug around in my purse for a pair of sunglasses.
Both Bixby and the detective had sense enough to slip on dark sunglasses before stepping out into the sun.
“What is this about Candy?” Bixby crossed his arms over his chest and took a fierce don’t-mess-with-me-or-my-friends pose.
“You have a restraining order against her,” Gibbons said to Bixby. “That you filed in LA.”
“That’s right,” was Bixby’s terse answer.
The detective nodded. “Your people contacted our department as well as the local police to warn us about her a few days before your arrival.”
“Penn said she talked with her today,” Bixby said. “That means she followed me to Camellia Beach.”
“Is she the reason you changed your flight plans?” I asked.
“She’s one of the reasons I did.” Bixby turned to the detective and explained how he’d arranged to be on an earlier flight and had driven himself into town to avoid crowds and publicity both in LA and here at the Charleston airport. “If I don’t keep a fluid schedule, I’ll get mobbed. My fans are beginning to learn that the only place they can expect me to show up on time is at my concerts. Everywhere else will be a surprise.”
What an awful way to live. I’d hate it. By the way Gibbons shuddered, I suspected he was thinking the same thing.
“Ms. Candy Graves seems to be adept at finding you.” Gibbons flipped a few pages in his notebook. “She’s broken into your house three times, into your backstage dressing room five times, your hotel room nine times, and into your parents’ house twice.”
Bixby sighed. “She’s persistent.”
“She told me—in the strictest of confidences, of course—that she’s your secret girlfriend. And that you let her know how to find her,” I said.
“She’s told everyone that,” Bixby complained.
Gibbons nodded. “It’s in the reports.”
“Do you think she might be tired of waiting in the shadows?” I asked. “Do you think she might have tried to do something drastic to punish you for not acknowledging your relationship with her?”
“She’s not my lover, secret or otherwise,” Bixby insisted a little too loudly. He glanced around as if worried journalists were hiding in the bushes.
“In her mind she is,” I pointed out. “I’m just wondering if she’s the one throwing rocks and if she’s the one who started the deadly bonfire last night.”
Gibbons groaned. He might have even grumbled something about my unrelenting persistence under his breath.
“But it was Stan Frasier who was killed last night, not me,” Bixby pointed out. His troubled gaze shifted to stare into the thick undergrowth and deep shadows that surrounded Bubba’s cottage.
“Stan was dressed in leather pants and a black T-shirt, just like you were. And there was no moon. So it was dark. She might have made a mistake,” I said.
“There was no mistake.” Gibbons walked over to the deck’s railing and frowned as he watched a movement in the same undergrowth that had caught Bixby’s attention.
We all held our breaths.
A fat raccoon waddled out into the open with a pair of playful kits following closely behind. The trio made their way to the river where a bed of oysters lay barely submerged near the shore.
Gibbons shook his head and then turned back to me. “While I can’t discuss the details, I can tell you this, Penn: Stan was the intended victim last night. So there’s no reason to put yourself in harm’s way by questioning—”
“It wasn’t Bubba,” I blurted.
“It wasn’t Candy,” Gibbons said, neither agreeing nor disagreeing with me about Bubba. He then wagged his stubby finger under my nose. “If you put your foot into my investigation again, I just might arrest you for obstruction of justice. Do you understand me?”
“I understand.” I clamped my jaws together.
While I understood what he was saying, I didn’t agree with it. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t shake the nagging feeling that Gibbons was wrong about Stan’s murder. Dead wrong. Despite the detective’s threats to toss me into jail, I wasn’t going to sit on my hands and do nothing while the killer went after Bixby. The police refused to link the broken window, threatening notes, and exploding grill to Stan’s murder. They were wrong. I felt it in my bones. The trouble happening on the island was connected. I simply needed to prove it. I had to prove it because, despite what anyone else believed, I was not going to let Bixby end up like Stan.
Chapter 16
The lone ceiling fan’s motor in Bubba’s living room whined with every revolution the blades made and did very little to move the sticky humidity that rolled in from the open windows. Gibbons returned to Bubba’s side to hand the president of the business association a card and to warn him not to leave town.
“I’ll be in touch with you tomorrow,” he said to Bubba before turning back to me. “I expect not to hear from you, Penn, unless it’s an invitation to sample more of your chocolates.”
Not even a minute had passed after the detective and Chief Byrd’s departure before Alvin whooped loudly.
Everyone laughed.
I refused yet another offer for a beer as I made my way to talk with Bubba about tonight’s concert.
“What in the world happened to you?” The question came flying out of my mouth in place of any of the important ones. More unimportant questions followed. “Where have you been? Why weren’t you answering your phone? And what the heck happened to your eye?”
Bubba touched his puffy eye and smiled sheepishly. “Someone conked me on my head.”
“Who?” I asked, still not able to get myself on topic.
“If I knew that, I wouldn’t be laying around like a lazy old hound dog, now, would I?”
Actually, I didn’t know what he would or wouldn’t be doing. “Everyone has been saying you killed Stan and then tried to run away.”
“You don’t have to tell me that. I’ve been questioned by every officer of the law who resides within a ten-mile radius. Old Hank, he vouched for me, though,” he said, referring to Chief Byrd. “He told all the others that I wouldn’t go running anywhere so I didn’t need to be brought into custody, seeing how there’s no evidence against me other than my foolish mouth saying things it oughtn’t be sayin’.”
“So where have you been all this time?” I asked again.
“Adrift. Literally. I woke up in the middle of the night laying flat on my back on the deck of a shrimp boat. That dang ship had been cast off the dock. The motor wouldn’t start up. And there I was—my head throbbing like a damn drum, no phone, and heading out with the tide into the open ocean.”
“My word,” I gasped. “What happened?”
“The boat eventually ran aground in front of a mansion out on Kiawah Island. Its abrupt stop jolted me off the boat deck. I went sailing through the air and belly-flopped into the middle of a seaside wedding. The flowers broke my fall.”
“Flowers?” I asked.
He nodded. “I’ve never seen so many dang flowers. The bride and groom and justice of the peace were standing within a ring of flower arrangements that had to have been at least four feet high. I remember thinking right before landing on all those white flowers, ‘Now, ain’t that the prettiest thing I’ve ever seen?’ That’s when I got this.” He pointed to his puffy eye.
“That wasn’t from whoever stranded you on a shrimp boat?”
“Naw, the bride punched me for ruining her perfect day. Couldn’t say I blame her. I did make a mess of all those nice flowers, now, didn’t I?”
“I guess,” I said, feeling kind of stunned. “So you were stranded on a
boat all night? That’s your alibi for the murder?”
“The police don’t seem to think so. Can’t actually prove when I ended up on the boat. Gibbons said I could have put myself on the boat after lighting the fire.”
“But—”
“Bubba, the sheet music ain’t in that box you told me to look in,” Alvin shouted from across the small living room.
“It should be there,” he shouted back. “That’s where I stored the original.”
“Original for what?” I asked.
Bubba had jumped up from the recliner. He started across the room toward Alvin. “For ‘Camellia Nights.’ Stan didn’t know it, but I kept a copy of the sheet music for our song in that plastic bin. The bin comes with me during hurricane evacuations. Every important piece of paper I own is in there. Alvin, stop being so vain and put on your glasses already. It’s in there.”
“Wait.” I jogged after Bubba. “I need to talk to you about tonight. Stan and Ocean Waves are scheduled to perform. What are we going to do? Do you know of any local bands who could take their place without upsetting too many of the ticket-holders?”
Bubba nudged Alvin out of the way and crouched next to the box. “Already got it covered,” he said without looking up.
“You do?” He’d been back in town for less than an hour and had already fixed the problem I hadn’t been able to fix after worrying about it all day? Not that I should have been surprised. He had contacts in the music community. I didn’t. “Who’s going to perform? I’ll start advertising the schedule change and making new posters right away.”
“Ocean Waves.”
“But Stan—”
“He was just the lead singer. His band is talented. Super talented. We talked with them as soon as I got here. They agreed that, as a tribute to Stan, they’d want to perform tonight. Bixby will fill the role as lead singer. And I’ll play my bass.”
I turned to look at Bixby. “Why would you do that?” Why was he so willing to give away his services and sing with these small-time bands? It didn’t make sense.
“I’m here to soak up the culture and to be inspired by the authentic beach music being playing in this area. What better way to do that than to play with the bands?”
Playing with Bonbon Fire Page 10