by A. L. Jambor
"And then took it with them when they left Cape Alden," Phil said.
They were quiet as they pondered who had visited the cottage that night, and then Mari's eyes widened.
"We could be totally wrong, you know," she said. "It could have been someone who wanted the baby, like one of those desperate women who steal toddlers because they can't have their own."
"It could have been someone who just lost a baby, or miscarried and no one knew about it, so they kill her and take the baby home like it's theirs."
"Shit," she said. "That gives us way too many suspects."
They began to walk and when they got to town, Phil headed toward the hardware store and his room.
"I'm tired. I think I'll turn in."
"Oh, no you don't. You're coming with me."
"It's nine o'clock. I have to work tomorrow."
"We have to talk to Isabelle's son. It won't take long."
She grabbed his hand and pulled him toward Morton's Inn.
"Do we have to go there now?"
"I'm hot, Phil. I'm on fire. I have to talk to him while my thoughts are still fresh."
Phil let her pull him to the inn. She was speeding on sugar and caffeine, and it was useless to try and dissuade her. As they entered Morton's, Phil promised himself that come hell or high water, he would leave at ten on the dot.
Cal
The man behind the bar was a tall, barrel-chested man with salt and pepper hair and dark eyes, Celia's eyes, and Mari didn't have to ask him his name. She already knew it was Isabelle's son, Harrison.
Phil ordered a beer and Mari ordered a whiskey and soda. She watched Harrison fix their drinks and looked into his eyes when he served them. He thought she was flirting and smiled. She misread his cues and smiled back. His slicked back hair revealed a receding hairline, and despite the family resemblance, he didn't look sad or depressed. He looked smug.
"What's your name?" she asked.
"Harrison," he said. "And you?"
"Marigold Burnside."
"That's one hell of a name."
"Yeah, my mother liked marigolds." She swirled the ice cubes in her drink. "Do you mind if I ask you some questions?"
He put his hands on the bar and leaned toward her.
"Honey, you can ask me anything you want."
"Are you Celia Morton's grandson?"
His eyes darkened as he stood back and folded his arms.
"What if I am?"
"Phil and I," she put her hand on Phil's arm, "are investigating Charlotte Johnson's murder." His mouth tightened. "We don't think Celia did it." He remained silent. "We want to prove it."
"How?"
Mari stirred her drink. "We'd like to know if your mother ever talked about her."
He raised an eyebrow. "Not that I recall."
"So she didn't tell you anything about your grandmother?"
"She said her ma didn't do it, what people said she did. That was it, and she only told me that because kids can be mean, and they would say things."
Someone signaled him for a drink and Harrison walked away. Mari took a few swigs of her drink as she processed her disappointment. She'd hoped Harrison would be more forthcoming, or at least know something about Celia that she hadn't already heard before. She laid her head on Phil's shoulder.
"I wish he knew more."
"She died before he was born. How would he know more?"
She lifted her head up and looked into the mirror on the wall behind the bar. There were dark circles under her eyes and her hair had frizzed from the humidity. She sighed.
"I look like shit."
"No, you don't. You just look tired."
She glared at him. "You never tell a woman she looks tired, Phil."
"You tell him, sweetie." Mari looked toward the end of the bar. A toothless old man was grinning at her. "You always tell a woman she's beautiful."
Mari smiled. He was looped but not drunk.
"Hey," she said. "How ya doin' tonight?"
"I'm fine and dandy." He sipped his beer. "I heard you asking Harry about his mama." Mari perked up. "I knew her. Knew Celia, too."
Mari got up, grabbed her drink, and went to sit near the old man.
"What's your name?" she asked.
"Cal Baker."
Mari remembered Constance mentioning him and leaned forward, and Cal was eager to share his story with Mari. He had been born in Cape Alden and had lived there all his life. Every night, he came to Morton's and had a beer or two. When he was young, he'd worked for Carl Morton sweeping up and washing dishes. He was just thirteen in 1941, and he made fifty cents an hour.
"Good money for a kid," he said.
"What was Celia like?" Mari asked.
"She was crazy. Everyone who ever came in here knew that. She ran around half out of her mind one day, and the next she'd sit in that room upstairs all day and look out the window."
Cal would see her when he came to work. He always wondered which Celia he'd see that day.
He had a big crush on Isabelle and he'd wait for Isabelle to come home from school and go upstairs. He didn't have many chances to talk to her, but he tried to because he thought she was the most beautiful girl he'd ever seen.
"And what do you know about Charlotte?"
"She wasn't a looker," he said. "But she wasn't a bad sort."
"I've heard she was a bit of a tramp."
Cal sipped his beer and then shook his head.
"That's baloney. She didn't screw every guy in town like they said. She was just lonely. She'd talk to ya, like if you saw her on the street, she'd say 'hi,' and ask you 'how ya doin'?' I guess the women in town thought she was on the make or somethin'."
Mari liked Cal. "Do you remember Jack Womack?"
He grinned again. "Jack was cool. He would sail in here and the ladies would swoon. Just like Clark Gable. I wanted to be like Jack, you know, have the girls fallin' all over me."
"He dated Isabelle for a while, didn't he?"
Cal waved his hand. "They didn't go out, not the way everybody thinks. They would talk over the bar when she worked." He shook his head. "She was way too young for Jack." Cal leaned closer to Mari. "The people in this town are full of shit."
Now Mari leaned closer to him. "Why?"
"Because they talk about everybody else, and it's usually bullshit."
"So she and Jack never really dated."
"Naw," he said shaking his head. "Jack was a good guy. He liked the ladies, sure, but he usually went to Atlantic City if he wanted more than a peck on the cheek, if you get my drift."
Mari nodded, and sipped her drink.
"Did Jack sleep with Charlotte?"
Cal frowned. "That's what everyone said, but you know somethin'? That was all bullshit, too. Jack and her husband were friends. Jack would visit 'em at that cottage. I'd hear him talk to Artie, Charlotte's husband, and he'd always tell him to go home to his wife." Cal stared at Harrison, who was making drinks at the other end of the bar. "Jack liked her. He felt sorry for her. That stuff about him being the one who got her pregnant, that was just crap Joe Jackson spread around. He said his wife saw Jack with Charlotte one night, but that was impossible, and Joe knew it."
"Why?"
"Because Jack went to England the day after Hitler invaded Poland. He was English. He had to go home and fight the Germans."
"Hitler invaded Poland in 1939," Phil said.
Mari looked at Phil across the bar. "So he wasn't here in 1941," she said.
"He was long gone by then," Cal said.
She looked at her drink. "And she would have gotten pregnant in 1940."
"He left that September," Cal said. "1939. He promised to shoot down a plane for me."
Mari's thoughts raced through her head in a jumbled mess. Jack couldn't have been the baby's father, so who was? She knew Josh was seeing her....It would add plausibility to their theory about Joan. Mari put her hand on Cal's arm.
"Who do you think got her pregnant, Cal?"
He shrugged. "I heard stuff." He pursed his lips. "When she started showin', you know, her belly, Joe started sayin' Jack had been here, but his wife was the only one who saw him." He took another sip of beer. "It made it seem like Jack was the father, but I never believed it. If he'd come here on leave, he would have been in here, ya know? He loved this place. Besides, he was fightin' for England. That's all the way across the ocean." Cal screwed up his mouth and narrowed his eyes. "If you'd asked me at the time, I would have said that Joe took advantage of Charlotte."
"Joe, with the five kids," Phil said.
"His worthless ass was in here every night. Joe Jackson had bragged about bein' with Charlotte, but I didn't believe him. The guy wore cheap suits. He never had a dime and would bum drinks off strangers. He cheated at cards. He was a first-class bum and the only dame that would look at him sideways was Bertha Callahan, and even then, he had to give her a buck."
"So why wasn't Joe a suspect in Charlotte's murder?" Mari asked.
Cal leaned closer to Mari. "Seth Brennan had shit for brains, but it wasn't only him. Lots of folks around here thought Celia was dangerous."
"Why?" Mari asked. "Had she ever hurt anyone?"
He shook his head and waved his hand.
"Naw, they just assumed because she was, you know, nuts, that meant she might hurt somebody."
"So when Charlotte's body was found..."
"It wasn't hard to believe that Celia had done it."
"I read the police report. There was no mention of forensic evidence like blood on Celia's clothes."
Cal leaned close again. "They were good friends, lodge brothers, Morton and Brennan. When Brennan came to get her, she was at the window. I was here that night. Isabelle was frantic. She kept telling her pop to stop him. Morton backhanded her."
"He hit Isabelle?"
She glanced at Harrison, who was on his cell phone.
Cal leaned in. "Smacked her right across the kisser, and he was a big guy. She was small, like her mama, and she was knocked off her feet."
Mari's anger flared and her cheeks burned.
"But you didn't believe it, did you, Cal?"
Cal shrugged. "Celia was a tiny gal, and Charlotte was, well, she was what they used to call an 'Amazon.'"
"Did you say anything to anyone?"
He sighed. "I was a kid. Who'd listen to me?"
Mari felt a depression coming on. The weight of it began at the top of her head and was working its way down to her shoulders. She finished her drink and ordered another.
Phil looked at his watch. It was nine forty-five.
"Did you ever meet Joan Jackson?" Mari asked Cal.
His eyes grew wide and he smiled. "Phew, now that was one nasty woman. She would come in here and pull Joe right outta his chair. She'd take him by the ear and drag him home, beating him on the back of the head the whole time." He laughed out loud. "She was a bitch on wheels."
"I wonder what made her that way," Mari said.
Cal laughed. "Oh, he deserved it, all right, but Joe was tall, you know, and lanky, so seeing her browbeat him was a sight."
"Do you remember his kids?"
Cal looked at his glass. "I went to school with Charlie. He was a couple of years younger than me. Now there was one moody son of a bitch. His sisters were too young for me. His brother, though, now there was one popular guy. He was another one like Jack, you know, with all the girls, only he was more like Errol Flynn than Clark Gable. He had light hair, and sometimes he would come in here to fetch his dad. He was smart, too." Cal thought for a moment. "I think Charlie was jealous of him."
"How so?"
"Girls would ask him about his brother, and he'd get mad. He was always bein' sent to the principal's office. I know that because I was there, too."
Cal winked. Mari looked at Phil, and then back at Cal.
Mari looked at Phil, and then back at Cal.
"Do you think it was possible that Josh might have been seeing Charlotte, too?"
Cal sneered. "Well, he might have. They lived so close together and all, and he was young but looked older. He could have passed for twenty, and I never knew no boy to pass up a chance at free tail."
"Maybe he liked Charlotte," Mari said.
Cal shook his head. "He could have anyone, even Isabelle, so why settle for her? Only one reason." He lifted his drink. "Free tail."
Mari frowned. "And what would his mother do if she found out?"
"I hate to think about it. She'd have killed..." He stopped talking and his eyes widened.
"She would have killed Charlotte, right?" Mari said.
"Yeah, I think she could of."
Phil came over and nudged her. "I guess it's time to go home. Thanks, Cal." She wrote her number on a napkin. "Please call me if you think of anything else."
Cal nodded and put the napkin in his shirt pocket.
Mari and Phil walked down Main Street toward Cassie's house. The moon was high over the ocean and moonlight cast gray shadows on the sidewalk. Mari waited for Celia to show up, but she didn't.
Phil walked her all the way to the bottom of her stairs where they stood for a moment and looked at the stars. Mari sat on a step and urged Phil to sit next to her, but he stood.
"I have to go home," he said.
"Do you think Joan killed her?"
Phil put his hand on the railing. "It makes as much sense as anything else we've come up with."
"It would make sense," she said. "She must have hated Charlotte."
"And the family did leave in the middle of the night."
"Shit. I forgot to ask him about that."
"You know where to find him."
"Yeah, I think he owns that stool."
Phil put his hands in his pockets and sighed, and Mari knew he wanted to go home.
"I guess I better go up," she said. "See you tomorrow."
"Goodnight," he said, but he lingered to watch her climb the stairs.
Mayor Charlie Jackson
Guilt is like a plague of the spirit. It festers, causing the unrepentant to drink or take drugs, or whatever it takes to smother the beast, as they try to kill it once and for all. It's a hardy little germ, though, never really dying, but lingering silently until one is old, when years filled with nothing stretch before you. That's when guilt emerges, painting pictures from the past that cannot be changed, and evoking feelings you'd thought you'd banished forever.
Charlie Jackson sat in his wheelchair on the porch and stared at the blackened pile of wood left on the beach. A group of teens had built a bonfire the night before and it was still smoldering. He'd called the police, who came and shooed the kids away, but they'd left the wood there as if to mock Charlie. He was powerless now and he hated it.
The owners of the house on the corner were renting it to a bunch of rowdy Millennials who had little respect for the value of the property. The houseguests made vulgar gestures as they passed his house on the way to the beach and it infuriated him that he couldn't take out his shotgun and kill each and every one. He'd be doing a public service. It wasn't like in the old days when his wrath would cause his staff to quake in their boots. Then, people didn't like making him mad.
He went into the house and rolled to the living room. He looked at Olivia's portrait over the fireplace and remembered her cool, blonde indifference. Olivia loved her children; everyone else had to take a number.
Why had he loved her so? She never tried to please him. She knew how to play the perfect politician's wife, how to dress, how to "act" the part of his wife, but was she ever truly his?
They had been passionate during their early years, but now he wondered if that was an act, too. He never felt connected to her, a part of her, and that was all he ever wanted.
"Damn you," he said to her painted countenance. "Damn you."
He went back to the porch and looked toward the lighthouse. He saw the beacon, though it was at least two miles away, and the memories of cold winter mornings and wind blowing through the cracks in the w
alls made him shiver. His sisters slept together and kept each other warm, but he wasn't allowed to join them. Thinking of his sisters brought memories of Josh, and the injustice of being the golden boy's brother.
"He won a scholarship," his mother said. The pride in her voice cut through Charlie like a knife. "He'll be a doctor, or a lawyer. Josh is gonna be somebody someday."
Charlie had wanted to go to college, too, but there was never any discussion regarding his future. There was little money to go around, and he understood that if Josh hadn't won the scholarship, he wouldn't be going to college either, but that didn't assuage his anger.
"Become an apprentice," his father said. "There's lots of money in plumbing. You could do worse, Charlie."
He could do worse. How? How could he do any worse than standing knee-deep in someone else's shit if a pipe burst?
Then one evening everything changed. They moved back to Wisconsin, and then the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. His father, who welcomed the opportunity to serve his country and leave his sullen wife, signed up on December 8, 1941. Joe survived most of the war, but died storming the beaches at Normandy. He was buried in France, and Joan had cursed his bones for leaving her to raise their children alone.
The war had brought prosperity and the farm in Wisconsin had done well, but then the war ended, and the money dried up.
Acre by acre, his grandfather sold off his land until there was nothing left but the house and three acres surrounding it. His mother worked in town as a waitress. Birdie got married, and the younger girls went to school. When his mother died in a car accident, he didn't weep, nor did he care.
Charlie could have left then, but his Grandma said he wasn't ready, that he needed more time, that if he was going to change the world, he had to be in tiptop shape.
"You are special, Charlie," she said.
The girls loved the farm and blossomed under their grandmother's care, but Charlie festered. He was moody, and his solemnity caused his grandmother to fret over him. She believed that hard work was good for the soul, so every morning, she would get him up at dawn to milk the cows, and then he would sit at the kitchen table and work on assignments she'd gotten from a teacher at the local grammar school. Slowly, like a butterfly emerging from a cocoon, Charlie began to smile again. He even went to high school, where, much to everyone's surprise, he excelled in sports.