by Eryn Scott
He inclined his head, knowing about my mother’s job as a research librarian and the high standards to which she held. “Okay, Rosie, I trust you. I’m sorry. That was awful of me.” He ran his hands over his face. “I can tell you what I found out about Tabitha.”
Before he could, there was a knock at the back door.
Frowning, I jogged over to find Carl standing like he always did on my back porch: arms crossed, a wool newsboy cap clutched in his hand, back to the door as if trying to pretend he hadn’t just knocked—as if he simply watched the sea.
I unlocked the door and swung it open. “Carl, I—”
But I didn’t get to finish. The older man whirled around, face hard and eyes red. “You were there?” He—well, he didn’t quite ask it. It was more of an allegation, really.
I gulped, nodding. While I wouldn’t call my relationship with my grumpy neighbor perfect, we’d gotten to a much better place, and I couldn’t imagine him going back to hating me like he had when I’d first arrived.
Concern etched wrinkles in Asher's features.
“You can help me, then,” Carl barked out, storming inside. “You have to help me prove she killed him.”
3
Eyeing Asher for a moment, I turned back to Carl who was pacing now. I left the back door open, appreciating the breeze it brought to the afternoon heat that had accumulated in the house during my time in town.
“She?” I asked. “You mean, Jolene?”
I reflected on how interested the chief had been in talking to her, how someone had made that comment about Murray drinking her tea and dying.
Carl’s face screwed up in confusion. “No. Why would—No. Jolene loved Murray. There’s no way.” He cut the air with his hand. His flat palm curled into a fist. “No, the person who killed him has to be Tabitha.” As her name left his lips, the man’s eyes narrowed into slits so small I wondered if he could even see.
Tabitha.
Memories flashed into my mind: the way she’d called the chief by his first name, how he’d used that nickname, and the way the chief looked, like seeing the ring on her finger was worse than seeing Murray lying dead on the tea shop’s deck.
“Come in. Sit down.” I motioned to our puzzle table.
Carl sat with a huff, inadvertently choosing the chair Asher was occupying. The ghost sighed and floated to a different one.
Carl shivered, and even though he’d just sat down, he stood a second later, running his hand through his sparse gray hair. “She did it. I’m sure.”
Hands up like two stop signs—or at least yellow lights—I said, “Let me make you some tea while you talk.”
I let my fingers run along the jars of tea blends as I rounded the bar, searching for the Fishermen’s blend he loved. I needed to calm the guy down.
“Dangnabit, it’s hotter than a sauna in here, Rosemary,” he growled. “I don’t want my stomach to be boiling too.”
Patting the air with my hands, I changed directions, heading toward the kitchen instead. “Some iced tea, then. You can be my guinea pig.”
“I’ve had your iced tea before,” Carl called after me as I grabbed a pitcher out of the fridge.
It was true; he’d been here last week when I’d added the cooler option to the menu in hopes it would boost business. While a few more people had wandered in the next day, it hadn’t had the impact I’d hoped. Cradling the pitcher, I grabbed one more thing from the freezer.
“Ah, but not with the addition of my newest marketing ploy,” I said as I reentered the room. Asher coughed and made a slashing motion across his neck. I cleared my throat. “Er—marketing breakthrough, that is.” Smile in place, I held the pitcher of iced tea in one hand and held up a tray of ice cubes in the other.
Setting down the pitcher and ice cube tray, I got out two cups and poured a glass for each of us. Then I used metal tongs to add three of the special ice cubes into each glass.
“What kind of ice cubes are those?” He glared at the glass as if I might’ve put dirty ice in his drink.
“Iced tea ice cubes,” I said with a grin. “I was trying to figure out a fun way to make my iced tea stand out now that there’s another tea bar in town, and then Ash—” I caught myself. “Er … ashmahkazam! The idea was born to use the iced tea as the ice cubes too.”
I glanced over at Asher, face burning. Luckily, with the heat trapped in the shop, a room full of windows facing the afternoon sun, it was so hot in here that I already looked flushed.
Asher chuckled. “Ashmahkazam,” he repeated then broke into a belly laugh.
I shot him a warning frown, not wanting his laughter to become contagious and freak Carl out when I started cracking up at nothing.
Unfortunately, Carl already looked confused. “Ashmahkazam?” He scratched his ear. “Is that it?”
I waved a hand at him. “Whatever. You know what I mean.” With a last garnish of a fresh lemon slice, I clinked my glass against Carl’s and we sipped.
“Ahhhh … yeah," Carl said, ahhhh like we were in a Coca Cola commercial or something, minus the fizz.
A smile peeled over my face. He wasn’t wrong. It was really good. And I needed it to be. I needed Carl to go tell everyone in town. I was counting on word of mouth to unveil this new product. No matter which way I looked at it, putting up flyers in town about a new product the week my competitor reopened her shop seemed desperate, or petty, or both.
“Okay.” I sat down. “Tell me why you think Murray’s wife killed him instead of his ex-girlfriend.”
Carl raised his eyebrows, impressed.
“You aren’t the only one who knows stuff.” I crossed my arms over my chest.
Snorting, Carl said, “I only found out they’d gotten married this morning.”
“Yeah,” I said, “everyone downtown seemed surprised to hear they were married too. How long had they been dating?” I asked. I was still new, but I didn’t remember seeing Tabitha before.
Taking a deep breath, like he was getting ready to read me an entire book in one sitting, Carl started. “Murray and Jolene have been dating for the last year until two months ago when he broke up with her out of the blue.”
That had been right in the middle of Jolene’s recovery from breaking her leg. What an awful time it must’ve been for her. Her saltiness while serving me this afternoon didn’t seem so bad now. The woman had been through a bad few months.
Carl scowled, continuing. “Murray couldn’t hide the reason he dumped Jo for long. It was only a matter of time before the locals caught him hanging with Tabitha. That Selkie siren had wormed her way back into his life.”
“Back?” I asked, leaning forward.
Asher paced on the other side of the room as he listened to the story.
“The two were an item when they were younger, back during their twenties. But like the slippery seal she is, she slid into the water one day and never returned. Until now. Two decades later.”
Carl took another long sip of his tea, without the ahh this time, but his face appeared equally serene. That was until he remembered the story he was telling. He cleared his throat.
“She shows back up in his life, and he’s a different man. He stops showing up for cards—his favorite night of the week. And he didn’t make one classic-movie Wednesday all month. He loves classic-movie Wednesday.” Carl frowned. “She tricks him into proposing to her. He told me this morning that they’d gotten hitched yesterday because ‘She didn’t want to waste another moment without being his wife’ or some baloney.” Carl rolled his eyes, using finger quotes around her reasoning.
Asher snorted, nodding like he’d experienced something similar. I contorted my face into a scowl as I caught him in the act. When he noticed my focus was on him, he wiped the expression from his face.
What was that all about? I wondered.
But Carl continued his story, stealing back my attention.
“The woman doesn’t love him.” His face crumpled. “Didn’t.” His voice cracked around th
e past tense of the word. He took another sip of his tea. “He’s just a meal ticket to her. And now that he’s out of the way, she can take everything he owns. She killed him, for sure.”
I considered the events of the afternoon: how she’d ordered a drink she didn’t want and handed it off to him. That hadn’t seemed suspicious at the time, but now it felt like a large red flag waving in my face.
“You might have a point.” I bit the inside of my cheek for a moment while I thought. “The problem is that the chief sure didn’t seem to think she was in the wrong. I mean, he brought her over for questioning, same as me, but I got the distinct impression we weren’t the same. He didn’t view her as a suspect but more of a victim.”
Carl snorted. “That’s because Chief Clemenson and Tabitha used to date back in the day. She’s still got her hooks in him, same as she did with Murray.”
Suddenly the “Tabby” and “Raymond” informalities made sense. So did the eyes they’d made at each other and how the chief had freaked out about her wedding ring. I didn’t need to be the chief of police to see that the chief of police still had feelings for the woman.
“Which brings me to the biggest reason I’m here.” Carl stood, like he was about to give a presentation at a meeting. “If that man has half the soft spot for that woman as he used to, he’ll never convict her of the crime I know she committed.” Carl slammed his hand down on the table, making our drinks shudder and the iced tea ice cubes clink against the sweaty sides of our glasses.
I fanned myself. “Which means?” I asked, getting up to reopen the windows I’d shut for my trip to town, the heat becoming too much for me.
The moment the windows were open, salty sea air pushed its way into the room, bringing instant relief like a superhero showing up to fight a villain.
Carl waited until I was seated again before continuing.
Finally, he sputtered, “It means we’ve got to prove it ourselves.” He pushed back his shoulders.
Thoughts tumbled through my mind as I considered this. Carl had a point about the chief—heck, I’d seen his favoritism for Tabitha myself. And if the woman was a gold-digging killer, she deserved to be caught.
Also, Carl’s sadness about his friend’s death made me all too aware of the awkward air between me and mine. The weirdness was palpable between me and Asher because of the secret I’d been keeping from him. Solving a murder together might just be the thing to get us back to normal.
“Okay,” I said. “Where can we find this Tabitha?”
“At Murray’s house, of course. She’s probably already redecorated.” Carl stood, flipping his hat in his hands and fit it onto his balding head. He turned it ever so slightly to one side, like we were going somewhere.
I couldn’t tell if he expected to solve a murder or get into an old-timey street fight. Asher eyed Carl warily like he might watch a rogue wave approaching him on the shore.
Holding up my hands in that slow-down motion again, I stood. “Hold on, I just wanted to know where she was staying. She’s most likely still being questioned by the chief, so she wouldn’t be home, anyway.”
Carl’s lips curled into a sneer. “That’s fine. It’s better if she’s not there.”
I backed away. “Whoa. What are you planning to do? Break and enter?”
“You know a better way to find things people are hiding?” Carl tilted his head to one side.
This was all becoming very real, very fast. My eyes flashed to Asher. He wore a concerned expression that matched how I felt.
“Tell him you’ll get information about her from people in town first,” Asher offered.
“Uh,” I said, projecting a nonchalance I didn’t feel. “I was just—I thought I could ask around town a little. Dig up some information first.”
Carl huffed impatiently. “You saw how the chief acted around her. And Murray. Those two weren’t the only ones under Tabitha’s spell. They won’t tell you anything that would make her sound bad.”
I couldn’t argue with him. The thing was, the townspeople he was thinking of and the ones I was were very different, specifically in the “alive” category. I knew Asher had found out information about Tabitha, and I wanted to check to see if it matched up with what Carl was telling me.
I took a step forward. “Carl, I know you’re upset. You have every right to be. But we need to take this a step at a time. Jumping straight into breaking and entering is like leaping onto the ninth step of a staircase from the ground.” I grimaced, wondering if jumping that high was even possible.
“So you’re admitting that breaking and entering is one of the steps?” Asher asked, cocking an eyebrow at me.
I ignored him, focusing on Carl.
“You asked for my help,” I said, trying for that smooth tone I’d heard Tabitha use. “You need to trust us.” My ears flashed hot as confusion marred Carl’s face. I’d said us instead of me.
Schooling myself not to look over at Asher, I gestured between Carl and me. “Trust in us, I mean. Trust in the respect our relationship is built on, and that when I say I’ll investigate, I will.”
Tears pooled in Carl’s already watery eyes. He reached forward and clasped my hands in his rough, retired fisherman ones.
Then he nodded. “Okay. We’ll ask around, gather evidence.”
I smiled, returning the hand squeeze. “We’ll find out who did this to Murray.”
Carl left, and I waited until he disappeared behind his hedges to collapse into a chair. I turned to Asher. “I’m regressing in my ability to act like you’re not here in front of people.”
Asher wrinkled his nose. “Many women have said I’m hard to ignore.”
The laugh that followed was a hollow gesture on my part.
There it was again, a mention of women. He’d never talked about women before in the months since I’d met him. His family? Childhood friends? His passion for literature? Yes, at length. But no women had ever made it into our conversations. Why now? And why did it bother me so much? I scratched at the side of my neck in discomfort.
Desperate to change the subject, I asked, “What do you think? Is this some of the same stuff you learned from the other ghos—spirits?” I said, catching myself to use the word Asher preferred.
“Yes, but as suspicious as Tabitha seems at a glance, I saw her carry those drinks over.” Asher raked his teeth across his bottom lip. “She didn’t put anything into them.”
I frowned, having noticed the same thing. “Which means the poison had to have been put there by the person who made the drink or during the time they were sitting unclaimed at the counter.”
Jolene’s anger was almost palpable in my memory as she’d taken Tabitha’s order, listened to her go on about her sweetheart. As much as I hated to believe it, Jolene had motive and opportunity.
The realization sent a chill prickling over my skin that, in this heat, I would’ve thought I would welcome. Instead, it filled me with dread.
4
Gulls called out as they circled above the beach. They were focused on finding food, dropping shells from impressive heights in hopes they’d split and expose the snack inside. But in that moment as I sat there speculating about Jolene and Tabitha—and which of them could’ve killed Murray—the high-pitched seagull screeches sounded like mocking laughter.
I ran my hand over my face, regretting that motion when I found it slick with sweat. I shouldn’t have closed up the windows during my trip to town. This place had become an oven.
“Okay.” I tried to focus. “Let’s think about everything we know.”
Now that Carl was gone and out of Asher’s seat, he settled across from me at the table.
“The local spirits told me a lot of the same information Carl shared with us.” Asher’s forehead wrinkled. “Except for one big difference …” He paused.
I leaned forward.
“They never mentioned Tabitha and Murray being an item back in the day. They knew all about Chief Clemenson and Tabby being high school sweeth
earts, told me they took a break when he left for the academy and she went to college, but everyone assumed the two of them would get back together when they both returned.”
Asher’s voice smoothened out like it did when we were reading aloud to each other at night. And just like with the books, I pictured the scene in my mind all too clearly.
“The only problem,” he continued, “was that when Tabitha came back, she didn’t come alone. She was married.”
A large wave crashed against the shore, startling me. I’d been so sucked into Asher’s story, the outside world had dropped away.
“Poor Chief,” I muttered.
Nodding in agreement, Asher said, “The others said Tabitha’s new husband, Stephen, was quiet and odd. The guy hadn’t ever been on a boat, and no one really wanted a ‘land lubber,’ as Tim put it, on their crabbing vessels. Murray, however, inherited his own ship from his uncle and took a chance on the guy. They became thick as thieves, the two of them. It was Stephen and Murray, well, and Tabby too. They had a successful business for a while there too, but Murray had some ongoing feud going with another local. I can’t remember his name.” Asher squinted one eye.
I must’ve been breathing with my mouth open as I listened, because I suddenly felt parched. Taking a long drink from my iced tea, I crossed my feet at my ankles and waited for Asher to continue.
“Anyway,” he said, “apparently, this guy and Murray would do terrible things to sabotage each other’s boats or crab pots.” He scratched his head.
Having been a spirit hanging around Pebble Cove for over a century, Asher should’ve experienced most of this. But while some ghosts focused on taking care of their unfinished business or haunting the living, Asher had been something of a ghostly hermit. He didn’t pay attention to people; he didn’t hang with the other spirits; he kept to himself. He chose not to engage with the living or the dead.