Telltale (Shelby Hope Book Two) (Shelby Hope Novels 2)

by Stephanie Parrish

  "I don’t know. They charged off early this morning to get breakfast for all of us. I guess they’ll be back soon."

  I drank some more coffee. "I’m going to go for a quick walk. Do either of you want to come with me?"

  Nathan shook his head, but Jane nodded. "Yeah, let’s go. We can bring our coffee with us and keep an eye out for the breakfast delivery." She grinned at me.

  We strolled along the seawall, talking a little about what had happened at the Welcome Center. Before I got up, Nathan had told her all about it and showed her Grace’s article. She squeezed my arm a few times in sympathy after asking how I was doing, and I told her what it had been like, sitting there, helpless and scared.

  While we talked, the sun started to burn the mist away, lighting up small prisms here and there. "It’s going to be hot again today. Hot and sunny and humid," Jane said, changing the subject, for which I was grateful. "I guess you’re used to that, though. Nathan said you all are from Florida."

  "Yeah, the humidity there does get pretty oppressive." We walked slowly, chatting. A couple seagulls screeched as they quarreled over a few scraps of food along the dock. A tiny breeze ruffled my hair, bringing the scent of the water to me.

  Jane, in the middle of telling me about her plans to go visit her parents, interrupted herself to say, "Oh, hey, I see Matt and Alex. Let’s go see what’s for breakfast. But first…I want to hear the story about you and Matt."

  "What story?"

  "Well, what’s going on between you two? It’s obvious there’s something there, but I can’t figure it out. Tell me."

  "Uh." I floundered. "We’re best friends. And business partners."

  Jane looked at me. "Uh huh. Best friends and business partners. And that’s it?"

  "Yep." I ignored the expression on her face and picked up my pace so she couldn’t ask me any more questions.

  ✽✽✽

  AFTER BREAKFAST, JANE helped clean up, then headed back to her boat. Alex asked if I wanted to go with him to do some grocery shopping. We made a list of food that everyone wanted, which I folded up and put into my purse.

  As we got ready to leave, Matt said, "If you see a marine parts place on the way to the grocery store, would you pick up a couple of spare impellers?"

  "Yeah, I can do that." I briefly considered getting my list out again and writing it down. Alex was ready to go, though, and I didn’t want to keep him waiting, so I just made a mental note to self. We headed off to the store. Alex was saying, "So I looked at the charts, and I think—" when I stopped abruptly.

  Grace Martin was standing on the sidewalk, watching us approach. Today, she was wearing a high-necked tight long-sleeved blouse with a black pantsuit and dark purple pumps. Same thick make-up, same shrieking hair style. She looked miserably hot and uncomfortable, although she gave me a feeble smile as we got closer.

  "Shelby?" she said. "I’m Grace. Grace Martin. We met the other day."

  "Somehow, I managed to remember that," I said.

  She flushed. "Well, I saw you and your friend heading this way, and I thought you might have a minute to update me on how things are going for you. My readers are very interested."

  "I’m sure they are, but I don’t have anything to say. And I’d appreciate it if you would stop writing about me."

  "But—"

  "But nothing. Do you understand the meaning of low profile? That’s what I’m trying to maintain here. Which means I don’t want my name mentioned in your blog any more. I’m asking you to respect that."

  "But—"

  "Come on, Grace. Can’t you find something else to write about?"

  "This is the most interesting thing going on right now. I’d really like to do a feature on the four of you. You know, where you’ve been, where you’re heading. People want to know. It’s a great human interest story."

  "I don’t care." I was about to say more, but Alex took my arm and started herding me away.

  "Ms. Martin, thanks for your understanding," he said to Grace as we brushed past her on the sidewalk.

  "Shelby, wait—" she said, reaching for my other arm. "Did you know that Eric Bluesky was Johnny Rumbar’s brother?"

  "He—his what?" I said, stupidly, stopping and staring at her. Her hand felt warm and clammy on my arm. Her grip tightened painfully when she saw that she had my attention.

  "Yes. Well, his half-brother, really."

  Real sorry, and all that. Bro.

  When Rumbar had said that, I’d thought it was just the generic man-term that he was using. I stood, gaping at her, my mouth hanging open.

  "Half-brother?" I repeated.

  "You didn’t know, did you?"

  I shook my head.

  "Yeah. Same dad, different moms. Eric used his mother’s last name, instead of his dad’s. It seems that they—Rumbar and Bluesky—had some kind of illegal business together. Something to do with the gun trade. Eric Bluesky was skimming. Cheating his own brother. And Rumbar found out."

  Hey, bro, I’ll pay it back! I will. You know me.

  I do know you. That’s why this has to happen.

  "How did you find out?"

  She looked smug. "I have my sources. Anyway, what do you think now? Are you sure you don’t want to make a comment for my blog?"

  "She’s sure," Alex said, prying Grace’s fingers from my arm. "Ms. Martin, we’re asking you politely. Please leave us out of this. Shelby, our boat, all of us. You may have your sources, but so does this Rumbar guy. Are you understanding that? Are you understanding that a guy who killed his own brother—"

  "Half-brother."

  "—won’t hesitate to hurt a complete stranger? And maybe even anyone he thinks might know too much?"

  "Shelby can’t help what she knows. And besides, she’s already told the police. And he's in jail. What’s the harm?"

  "I was talking about you too, Grace. If you keep writing about all this, do you really think you’re safe? There was someone—" I jabbed him in the ribs, not wanting him to tell her about the second person, if there was any chance she didn't already know.

  "There was someone what?" Grace demanded.

  "There was someone at the scene that you can talk to. Talk to Detective Fairholm instead of us. Leave us alone. Keep us safe, and keep yourself safe."

  Alex tugged my hand, propelling me forward on the sidewalk, leaving Grace looking after us, with an expression of unhappy surprise on her face.

  ✽✽✽

  "JUST TAKE A deep breath, Shelby," Alex said a few minutes later, as he tried to cushion the vegetables I was flinging into the shopping buggy. "Here, let me do that." He gently wrested a ripe tomato away from me that was on the verge of being splatted into the cart.

  "I know she’s irritating and intrusive, but—"

  "Don’t get me started," I said. "She’s—"

  "—really young," Alex interjected. "She’s ambitious, but doesn’t have enough maturity to recognize that she needs to temper her ambition with common sense. She’s not being deliberately malicious, Shel, she’s just anxious to write a good story."

  I sighed as I pushed my hair back from my face. "You’re right. I’m more upset than I should be with her. I think I’m just not prepared to keep thinking about what happened the other night. I’d like to forget it. And she reminded me."

  "I know. But we’ll be leaving here soon, then she won’t be a problem for you anymore. Just try to cut her some slack in the meantime." I nodded, and Alex patted my shoulder. "It’ll be okay, Shelby. Ready to finish shopping?" I nodded again, and Alex pulled the list from my hand and started checking to see what else we needed. Slowly, I calmed down. But I was still thinking about the shooting. His own brother?

  ✽✽✽

  BY THE TIME we got back to the boat, all the slips but one were taken. After lunch, a new boat headed into the slip next to us, which was the only free one. I was sitting on a bench on the dock when I saw Jane heading back toward True Love. I hadn’t seen her since breakfast, and I waved her over. She sat
down next to me, and we watched Matt and Alex help the new guy with his lines. Nathan, flopped on the grass under a tree, lifted a hand in greeting but didn’t get up.

  "Did your friend find you earlier?" Jane asked, pushing her hair away from her face and fanning herself.

  "What friend?"

  "Some man came by earlier, asking about you. Tall, blond, good-looking guy. He said he knew you."

  My throat constricted. "I don’t know anyone here."

  "Maybe I got it wrong then."

  "Did he say what his name was?"

  "Nope, huh uh."

  "When was he here?"

  She tilted her head back, thinking, giving me a sideways glance at the urgency in my tone. "I’m not sure. I was getting ready to leave myself, so I wasn’t really paying attention. Not long after you left with Alex. I told him he could try knocking on your hull, because I thought Matt and Nathan were aboard, but he said he’d just try to come by later."

  I felt a spike of fear that someone had been around, asking about me, someone that I didn’t know. Damn that Grace, I thought. I looked up and down the dock, but didn't see anyone.

  We heard a few goodbyes, and then the new guy disappeared into his boat. Jane said that she was planning to meet some friends who lived in Elizabeth City for dinner, so she headed to True Love to take a nap before she got ready. Alex and Matt went back to work on the mainsail. While they had it down, they’d decided to check all the seams and stitch up any other loose places. I heard Alex say that a couple of the telltales were gone.

  Nathan asked what a telltale was, but then his phone buzzed. His jaw tightened, and he sighed and answered it with a brusque, "Yes?" as he stood up and stalked off down the walk. Alex, absorbed with the sail, explained, "They’re those little red and green strips of fabric that run along the edge of the sail, so we know if it’s trimmed right." Alex looked up, seeming surprised that Nathan was gone. I gave him a sympathetic look. He shrugged and went back to his stitching.

  With Jane gone, I had the full bench to myself, so I stretched out in the sun, reflecting that a telltale was also a disparaging term for someone who revealed another person's secrets. Like I'd revealed Rumbar's. While law-abiding citizens might not call someone reporting a crime by that term, certainly Rumbar would think that I should have just minded my own business. And maybe his accomplice would feel the same. I dozed off, slipping into a restless dream where a man with a scar and a man without a face chased me through a dark hot night…

  I was startled awake by our new neighbor. He’d walked up to me without a sound and was standing too close to my bench when he spoke.

  "Hey! Oh, hey, sorry, didn’t realize you was asleep!"

  My eyes flew open, and I scrambled to sit up. "Jeez! You scared me!"

  "Hey, sorry about that, honest! I thought you was just restin."

  Then why did you bother me, if I looked like I was resting? I thought, feeling crabby and still unsettled by my dream.

  He was a small thin guy with mild brown eyes and scraggly dark blond hair that hung to his narrow shoulders. His pants hung too low on his hips. He wasn’t going for the droopy drawer fashion statement on purpose; it was just that he had no derriere to speak of, so his jeans had nothing to stop their downward slide.

  "Hey! I just wanted to come over and innerduce myself. Name’s Duke, Duke Spearson."

  "I’m Shelby."

  "Nice to meetcha. You on this boat here? Thief of Time?"

  "Yeah, with my friends."

  "Oh yeah, all four of ya, huh? Hey! Hot out today, huh?"

  He had an odd habit of punctuating the end of his sentences with bursts of nervous laughter, tilting his head back and opening his mouth wide. Unfortunately, this meant that at the end of everything he said, I was treated to an unobstructed view of the roof of his mouth and all his upper teeth. And the noise he made, sort of a machine-gun burst, was like the clicking sounds that dolphins make, only not cute.

  Despite his irritating behaviors, I felt a stab of pity for him. After his remark about the heat, he stood staring at me, grinning, without speaking, still standing too close to my bench. Though he was smiling, his anxious, expectant eyes reminded me of a puppy that’s been spanked once too often, but still holds out hope that someone, somewhere will pat its head or give it a bowl of water.

  I stood up to put some space between us. He continued to grin at me. Finally, he spoke.

  "Hey, I’m real sorry, like I said, about wakin you up." He took a step closer. Click click click click.

  "Don’t worry about it. So, that’s your boat?" I pointed, hoping he’d turn that way and stop seeping into my personal zone, without my having to make him move.

  "Yep, whatcha think?" He swiveled toward the boat and, thankfully, away from me.

  "Nice-looking boat. What’s her name?"

  "Sea Star." A sheepish grin, along with another round of clicks.

  "And where do you hail from?"

  "Oh, uh…well…uh, kinda all over, really." More nervous clicking. Why was he so anxious? Surely this wasn’t the blond guy Jane saw. Or was it? Was this the guy who’d been looking for me? If it was, I was sure we'd never met before.

  "My friend thought she saw you walking along the dock here earlier." I shaded my eyes to keep the sun out, so I could watch him.

  He rocked backward and forward for a moment, looking surprised. "Hey, really? Me? Wasn’t me. I just got here. Just now. You saw me come in, right?" His expression seemed genuine, and as I looked at him, I thought back to Jane’s comment about the guy she saw being tall and good-looking. No one would call this guy tall, and he wasn’t good-looking. Jeez, Shelby, tone down the paranoia.

  "So, is Duke a family name?"

  He gave me an uncertain grin. "No, no. My mom really liked John Wayne movies," he said, scuffing the toe of his shoe against the ground and dropping his eyes. He looked embarrassed.

  I felt the pity again, but didn’t know what to say. I felt a hand on my shoulder and turned to see Matt. Relieved, I moved closer to him.

  "Oh, hey! Sorry, man! I wasn’t trying to poach on your girl, there, or nothin!" Duke bleated. I could see real fear in his eyes.

  I opened my mouth to say I wasn’t Matt’s girlfriend, but then shut it without speaking. I guessed it never hurt to have random strangers think that a big, tough-looking guy like Matt was fervently safeguarding my virtue.

  Matt shook his head, smiling to put Duke at ease. "Relax, I can see you were just talking to her."

  Duke visibly relaxed. "Hey, yeah, I was just talkin to her. She’s nice, ya know. A real nice lady. Pologize if I offended you in any way, ma’am," he said, bobbing a little bow in my direction.

  "You didn’t," I said, biting my lip to hide a smile at his formality.

  "Okay, okay, good, that’s real good," he said, his thin body drooping in relief. "Well, I better get back to the boat and get things put away," his voice getting fainter as he scuttled toward his boat, like an anxious crab. "Nice to meetcha. I’ll see you later," he called over his shoulder, then climbed aboard and started puttering on deck.

  "Poor guy," I said, moving over and sitting back down on the bench. I patted the seat next to me, and Matt sat down.

  "Why do you say that?"

  "Well, he strikes me as the kid in high school who always got pushed around, made fun of, and beat up. I thought he was going to faint when he saw you."

  "It looked like he woke you up. I just came over to make sure he wasn’t bothering you."

  I told him Jane’s story about the guy she’d seen this morning. "Do you think this was the same guy?" Matt asked.

  "I don’t think so. Doesn’t seem like the guy Jane described. And, he said it wasn’t him."

  "Who—"

  "Hey, guys," Alex called from the finger pier. "I think the Rose Buddies just showed up."

  I twisted around. Sure enough, a small group of people were heading toward us, smiling and waving. We waved back. Like ants drawn by sugar, sailors poured out of th
eir boats and streamed toward the wine and cheese that the Rose Buddies carried. Briefly, I considered getting up and joining everyone just to be sociable, but felt too lazy, so I stayed where I was.

  Matt stood up, stretched, and asked if I wanted something. I shook my head, and he wandered over to say hello to the captain of one of the other sailboats. He’d been eying the guy’s boat earlier and hoping for a chat. I watched the other boaters with interest, trying to match everyone up with their boats, and talking with everyone who stopped by my bench. I didn’t see any good-looking blond guys, and it looked like everyone from the docked boats was at the party. It made me uneasy that a stranger had been asking for me. Was it the second person from the car, or just some curiosity seeker? I gave up thinking about it after a few moments and tuned into the various conversations going on.

  "…yeah, and then the rudder got hung up on a rock and cracked. I thought the damn boat was gonna rip in two …"

  "Does anyone know where we could get a decent used sail? Ours …"

  "…so then he said, he goes, ‘Well, she ain’t got your name on her,’ and I could just see that sumbitch wasn’t fixin’ to give us back our dink, the one that we found abandoned and claimed ourselves, salvage law, ya know, so I said, I go…"

  "…headed down the Intracoastal Waterway, the Ditch. Pretty exciting for us. It’s our first time. Of course, we’ve been headed down since February, spent more time in the Chesapeake than we meant to because we had to have the engine overhauled…twice. First guy who did it…"

  A momentary hush fell as everyone finished their first glasses of wine, took deep breaths, and poured seconds. Then the hum started again.

  "…regatta last year, and the boom jibed, and over she went. She didn’t get hurt, but we lost the race …"

  "… dismasted. The wife thinks it was my fault, but I swear, the cruising guide and the charts said there was plenty of clearance. And it was at least a full hour before high tide. The wife said there was a marker just outside the bridge with the clearance marked, but I didn’t see any marker." The Wife rolled her eyes at this remark and took an extra big swallow of wine. She’d been covertly watching Alex for the past few minutes, and now she oh-so-casually started heading in his direction, where he stood in the center of a few other women. The Wife gained speed as she moved toward Alex, like she was caught in a tractor beam. I remembered my own first reaction to his outrageous good looks and laughed to myself. It was nearly impossible not to find him attractive. A raised voice captured my attention, and I looked back toward the main group to hear one of the guys saying, "That fish was at least seventy pounds, maybe closer to eighty, and my buddy tried to say..."