“Do you know where I can find Harriett today?”
Lidia didn’t. She suggested I look for her over at the Dog-Eared Café. “Now that Cassidy is gone, she can lunch there again.”
“Because of Cassidy she couldn’t have lunch there?” I asked. “Why was that?”
“I don’t know the details. But I heard it had something to do with a fallout she had with Cassidy. I think it was over something Harriett’s husband had done … or not done. Anyhow, as I said, I don’t know the details. All I know is that Cassidy liked to take his lunch at the Dog-Eared, so Harriett stayed clear of the place. I tended to keep away from anyplace Cassidy frequented as well.”
“You knew Cassidy?” That surprised me. Lidia had moved into town after I had. And I thought I’d been doing a good job getting to know all of the residents.
She made a face as if she’d bitten into a piece of rotten fruit. “I wish I’d never met the man. Cassidy was supposed to find me an affordable rental. He’d promised he could do it too. He’d showed me a small cottage at the far end of the island, down near Bubba’s place. It fit my budget. I was all ready to sign the papers and everything. But at the last minute, he called and told me he’d rented the cottage to someone else.”
“That doesn’t sound right. Do you think he found someone who was willing to pay a higher rent?”
“That was what I thought at first. But I drove by the cottage just last week and saw it sitting empty. Kind of steamed me up. Why lie to me like that? I needed a place to live. I can afford better than the Pink Pelican. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve enjoyed the community here, but I want to set up a small animal rescue organization on the island. In order to do that, I need a home with land. I need a rental that allows pets, like that cottage did. It was perfect.”
Her brows crinkled as she looked down and frowned at Stella. My little dog had started to growl at a large green beetle carrying a potato chip on its back. “You really need to get your dog trained. Her behavior shows she’s not happy.”
“I’ve been working with her. She’s still getting used to her new surroundings,” I said.
“Honey, you need a professional to help you. Look, before I retired, I trained dogs,” Lidia’s booming voice got Stella barking again. “One thing I learned in all the years I’ve worked with owners is that dogs are happier if they understand what’s expected of them.”
“Aren’t we all?” I said.
“Tell your dog what you expect of her,” Lidia commanded. “If you don’t want her to bark, tell her that.”
I obeyed. Stella didn’t.
Lidia stood up and stared down at my barking little dog. Stella growled.
“I know you,” Lidia said. “I’ve met plenty of dogs like you over the years.”
“Do you think you can train her?” I asked. It seemed as if Stella’s unfriendly behavior was ingrained in her DNA.
“She won’t ever be as tame as Lassie. But, yes, I can train her.” With a click of her tongue inside her cheek, she got Stella’s attention.
“Sit,” Lidia’s loud barking voice had softened, but it sounded as commanding as ever.
Stella barked even louder.
“No, sit.” Lidia said with even more authority. She then did something with her hand. Amazingly, Stella stopped barking and parked her fluffy tail on the ground.
“You trained her to respond to a command that quickly? Unbelievable.”
“Not unbelievable. Your dog has had some training, which is good. It’ll give us someplace to work from.”
She then took the leash from me and worked with Stella, having my pup walk alongside her and sit at various intervals.
By the time we called it quits, Stella was still barking at anything that startled her. But her barks were less emphatic and stopped whenever Lidia gave her “The Look.” It was a look that said “I mean business.”
“She’s trainable,” Lidia concluded when she handed the leash back to me. She then looked me up and down before adding, “I wonder, however, if you are.”
I laughed.
Lidia didn’t.
After saying my goodbyes, I was taking my leave when the lounging surfer looked up from his phone as I walked past his chair. “If you’re looking into Cassidy’s murder, there is someone you should talk to.” He glanced down at his phone before adding, “But perhaps you shouldn’t.”
“If you know of someone who can help shed light on what happened, you have to tell me.” Stella yipped twice as if agreeing with me.
“Fletcher Grimbal. Me and my bros were all hanging out at the Low Tide about a week ago when Cassidy Jones comes strolling in as if he owned the world. He was flashing his unnaturally bleached smile and swishing his long hair around like he was an aging movie star. He didn’t even notice that most of the bar had moved away from him.”
The Low Tide was a gritty bar and grill on the marsh that turned downright rowdy after dark. The place also served some of the best seafood in the Lowcountry.
“We’d all gone back to our drinking when we heard a shout. That Cassidy creep had apparently flipped his long hair into Fletch’s drink. Fletch went ballistic, shouting with the stutter he’s had for as long as I can remember growing ever more pronounced. He wanted Cassidy to buy him a new drink. Cassidy refused. People started gathering around, expecting a nasty fight.” The surfer chuckled to himself. “Instead of throwing a punch, Cassidy slapped Fletcher. And darned if Fletch didn’t then slap Cassidy back. This went on for a while until the entire bar was laughing. Two grown men in a slap fight. It was ridiculous. Fletcher tried to get away, but Cassidy kept following him, slapping him in the face.
“And everyone kept laughing,” I guessed.
“It was funny.” He chuckled some more. “And Fletch was slapping back. They looked like a couple of sea lions with their arms flailing around like that.”
“And Fletcher didn’t like the laughing?” Lidia asked.
“Oh no, ma’am, he didn’t. His face had turned redder than a cherry. And his stutter grew so bad no one could understand him. That’s when Cassidy started laughing, too.”
“What did Fletcher do?” I couldn’t imagine that it ended well.
“He ran out of there like a whipped dog,” the surfer said. “You would have thought that would have been the end of it. But I heard a few days later that Cassidy had pressed assault charges against Fletcher. Landed the guy in jail for the day, which wasn’t the worst thing. The worst thing was that Fletcher lost his job as manager at the Grilled to Perfection restaurant for missing work. And now he has no job and is having to pay legal fees to keep his butt out of lock up.” He shook his head. “If anyone wanted Cassidy dead, Fletch did.”
Chapter Eleven
Although what I’d learned at the Pink Pelican Inn was all good information, I still needed to talk with Harriett. Hopefully, she could help me find Muumuu Woman. I was growing more and more convinced the woman who’d fled the crime scene held the key to finding what I needed to prove Jody innocent of Cassidy’s murder. As Lidia had predicted, Harriett Daschle was sitting at a small metal table located on the patio of the dog-friendly Dog-Eared Café. Harley and the president of the business association, Bubba Crowley, were sitting on either side of her. None of them looked happy, which was surprising. The Dog-Eared Café served the most delicious breakfasts and lunches. How anyone could frown after a masterpiece of a meal had been placed in front of them was beyond me.
Remembering at the last minute to practice the training tips Lidia had given me, I walked confidently over to their table while constantly rewarding Stella with bacon treats before she could start barking. Amazingly, the technique seemed to be working. Stella trotted beside me with her tongue hanging out the side of her dainty mouth as she drooled over the anticipation of her next taste of bacon.
“Sit,” I said with the commanding voice Lidia had insisted I use. Stella looked at me, yipped, and then started to lick up crumbs from under Harley’s chair.
Alarmed, Harle
y lifted his feet from the ground.
“Good afternoon,” I said. “Another scorcher today, isn’t it?”
Both Bubba and Harriett seemed pleased I was adopting the island way of chatting about the weather before business. Bubba launched into a lecture on the long history of August heat waves in Camellia Beach. Harley, on the other hand, gave a worried look at Stella and then at me.
“Got off the phone with Gibbons not ten minutes ago.” Harley rudely cut off Bubba’s lecture. “He asked me to talk with you, Penn, and remind you how dangerous murder investigations can be. He made it sound as if he thought I had any sway over your actions.”
“I made a promise to your son,” I reminded him. Stella looked up at me and barked. I tossed her a treat. “I’m going to do my best to keep that promise.”
He didn’t argue with me like I’d expected. Instead he turned to frown at the glorious plate of baked flounder sitting untouched in front of him. “Gibbons made it sound as if you’ve already gotten yourself in over your head,” he said. “He doesn’t want to see you get hurt. I don’t want to see that either.”
“I’m fine. I’m talking with upstanding citizens like Harriett, here. You don’t think Harriett is going to do me harm, do you?”
“Of course not,” he said rather quickly. His shoulders relaxed a bit. But his voice still sounded gruff. “I appreciate what you’re trying to do. Helping Gavin and me. But at the same time I don’t want to give Gavin false hope. The evidence—”
“I’m simply asking a couple of friends a few questions,” I put my hand on his shoulder.
“Yes, but Cassidy seemed to attract unsavory people like flies to a dish of honey. The man was a ball of slime.”
“I’m fine. I promise. Friends … like all of us.” I smiled at Harriett and Bubba. “We’re all friends.” My heart started to pound. Harley and I were friends. That’s right. We were still just friends. If only I could convince my heart of that. Whenever I got near him, that silly organ would start to perform all sorts of calisthenics like jumping and sprinting around as if the devil were chasing it. I cleared my throat, pretending I’d been struck by a sudden case of allergies.
“Harriett,” I said and cleared my throat again, “do you have a minute to talk about last night?”
“I can’t stay.” Harley dropped some meat from his plate for Stella before putting his feet back on the ground. He pushed back his chair. “I’ve got a meeting in ten minutes.” He looked at me and heaved a deep sigh. “Be careful, Penn. Please, be careful.”
With that, he paid for his untouched food and left.
“Do you need to go after him?” Bubba asked.
“No,” I said a little too quickly, which made my silly heart sigh like a lovelorn heroine in a gothic novel. “What would I say to him if I did?”
“You’d tell him how you feel,” Bubba said.
“Just like how you’ve opened up with Bertie?” I didn’t give him a chance to answer. “Oh, right. I’ve forgotten. You won’t even talk to Bertie. And it’s not the same between Harley and me. I haven’t been pining for him for nearly half a century. I haven’t been pining for even ten minutes. We’re just friends.”
Bubba and Harriett exchanged knowing glances.
Small towns, I grumbled to myself with a bit of a sneer on my lips. The locals around here are too concerned about other people’s personal business. But I supposed I couldn’t be too upset about it. I planned to make that annoying island trait work for me in finding Cassidy’s killer.
“Please,” Harriett said, “join us.”
I thanked her and then slid into the chair Harley had vacated. “I heard you never dined here because Cassidy often ate here. What happened between the two of you?”
For a brief moment it looked as if she was silently repeating my thoughts on how secrets had a way of becoming public knowledge in small towns. She quickly regained her composure and smiled serenely first at Bubba and then at me. “There’s no possible way I could be a suspect, dear. I was running alongside you down the beach and then behind you when Cassidy was being shot.”
That was true. I probably didn’t need to know the painful details about what Cassidy had done to make her feel uncomfortable around him. “He wasn’t the kind of person who blackmailed others, was he?” I asked.
“My heavens, no,” she exclaimed as she started nervously twisting and untwisting her cloth napkin. She quickly realized what she was doing and settled her hands in her lap. “Certainly, you have some other lines on inquiry you can follow.”
“I do. I do.” I was sorry I’d embarrassed her. I was sorry she’d had troubles with Cassidy that had caused her to change where she took lunch. I was sorry that she’d had troubles with my mother that had caused her to lose her position in Charleston society. And even though the troubles she’d faced probably didn’t have anything to do with why Cassidy was murdered, I still couldn’t help but wonder about them. But I knew I needed to stay focused. Instead of asking her about any of that, I said, “I’ve been trying to find the lady who was standing next to Cassidy’s body.”
“The one who wouldn’t stop screaming?” Bubba asked.
“You heard about her?” I knew I shouldn’t have been surprised, but I was.
“Lidia was talking about her this morning,” Bubba said.
I turned to Harriett. “You were comforting the poor distressed woman. Do you know who she is?”
Harriett looked down at her lunch, a large bowl heaped full with spinach greens, walnuts, dried cranberries, apple slices, and plump fresh shrimp. “I didn’t get a good look at her.” She viciously stabbed a pile of baby spinach with her fork. “Why don’t you ask that detective friend of yours to share her name with you?”
“He doesn’t know it. She left before any of the authorities had a chance to talk with her. Sounds kind of suspicious, don’t you think?”
“Sure does to me,” Bubba grabbed a sweet potato French fry from his plate and dragged it through a ketchup puddle. “Sounds mighty suspicious, especially considering how the man was shot in the heart and all. That’s got to be the work of a woman.”
Both Harriett’s head and mine snapped to attention.
“You can’t be serious.” Harriett tapped the tip of her finger on the table. “He was shot in the heart, so it had to be a woman who shot him? That’s what you want to sit here and tell us?”
Bubba threw his meaty hands in the air as if surrendering. But what he said next didn’t sound as if he was backing down at all. “It’s what happened, isn’t it? He fooled around with the wrong woman, and she killed him.”
“Bubba Crowley, I’ll have you know that a woman scorned would want her man to suffer and to suffer badly,” Harriett said, echoing what Bertie had said. She sat back and sipped her sweet tea. “Such a woman wouldn’t let her man get away with something as quick a death as a gunshot to the heart. If we hadn’t seen Jody there with the gun in her hand, I’d be betting all of my money that a man had his finger on the trigger.”
“What would a man want to kill Cassidy for?” Bubba cried. He dredged another sweet potato fry through his ketchup. “He was a kind of folk hero for us hopeless bachelors.”
“A non-bachelor then,” Harriett said. “Everyone knew Cassidy preferred his lover du jour to already be entangled in a serious relationship. Took the pressure off him.”
“Do you think a jealous husband shot Cassidy?” I asked. “Did the woman in the muumuu say something to you last night about seeing someone else with a gun?”
Harriett sipped some more of her sweet tea. “No, honey. We all saw Jody with the gun. I’m just saying the way he died makes me think a man could have shot him.” She took another slow sip of her tea. “But then again, maybe Jody simply missed the vital organ she’d been aiming for and accidentally hit his heart.”
“Oh.” And ewwww! “I’d still like to talk with that woman, just to find out what she saw. Are you sure you can’t tell me who she is?”
Harriett shook he
r head so hard her Teflon sprayed curls actually bounced. “Afraid I can’t.”
“I still don’t understand why she didn’t stick around and talk with the authorities,” Bubba said. But even as he’d said it, a look of understanding dawned on his face. “She’s married.” In his excitement, he waved the ketchup soaked sweet potato fry he was holding. Ketchup leaped off the fry and landed on my shoulder. “It might be dangerous to go looking for her, Penn.” He then waved the fry in Harriett’s direction, flinging even more ketchup. “That’s why you’re not telling us about her, Harriett, isn’t it?”
“Either put that fry in your mouth or set it down, Bubba.” Harriett dipped her napkin in the glass of water the restaurant had provided and dabbed at the red ketchup stain on her chest. I grabbed the napkin Harley had left and wiped my bare shoulder clean.
“Sorry.” Bubba stuffed the sweet potato fry into his mouth. “But that’s why you’re not telling us about her, isn’t it?” he asked as he chewed.
Harriett shrugged. “Maybe the woman figured there were enough eyewitness accounts of the shooting that the police wouldn’t need to hear what she saw. Maybe she didn’t have the energy to face the police after seeing Jody murder Cassidy.”
“Or maybe she’s the owner of that second gun Jody was holding,” I said. “That second gun wasn’t registered to Jody. And Jody insists she’s innocent.”
Harriett snorted. It was an unladylike sound, and surprising coming the refined first lady of Camellia Beach. “We all saw Jody holding two guns. Jody lost her mind and shot Cassidy. It’s just that simple. The woman you’re looking for won’t be able to tell you anything different.”
I leaned closer to her. “Bubba’s right, isn’t he? You know who that woman is.”
Harriett shrugged.
“And you’re really not going to tell me her name?” I couldn’t believe it. “You’re really not going to help me do this for Gavin?”
“No, I’m not.”
Bubba’s jaw dropped open.
So did mine.
In Cold Chocolate Page 9