Buttoned Up (Button Box Mystery)
Page 24
I finished off that piece of shrimp and popped out of the folding chair where I’d been lounging. Of all four of us in the League of Literary Ladies—South Bass Island’s one and only library-sanctioned discussion group—Chandra was the least likely to actually read one of our assigned books. I didn’t hold that against her. What Chandra lacked in literary ambition she made up for in sheer exuberance, a wacky take on everything from her wardrobe to her love life, and a skewed look at the world that included crystals, incense, and tarot cards.
That’s why I was careful to keep the skepticism out of my voice when I asked, “So, what do you think of Charles Dickens?”
“Best of thymes, worst of thymes.” As if it would hide the fact that her answer was as evasive as the look she refused to give me, Chandra stuck out each hand again, and the pungent, woody scent of thyme fragranced the evening air. The smell of dawn in paradise. That’s how Rudyard Kipling had once described the aroma of thyme. I couldn’t say if he was right or not; I only knew that I’d lived on the island for six months since escaping an ugly stalking incident in New York, and things were going well. Just as I’d once dreamed of doing, I’d turned my life not just around, but completely on its head, and created a new career and a new, peaceful existence for myself. My bed-and-breakfast—Bea & Bees—was booked from now until the end of summer, and I’d settled into a life that was slower paced and far more satisfying than the mile-a-minute stress mess I’d lived in New York. For me, relocation was the right choice. For me, South Bass Island was paradise.
Even if once in a while, there were reminders that even paradise had its perils.
A blast of wind off the lake snaked its way up my back and in spite of the heat, I shivered. One murder does not a paradise destroy, I reminded myself. Just like I reminded myself that thanks to me and the other Ladies, that murder that had happened a couple of months before had been solved, the perp caught, and order restored to paradise.
It wasn’t going to happen again, I told myself. This was the heartland, not the big city, and I was grateful for that.
Just like I was grateful that Chandra had remembered to bring the thyme from her garden. I gave myself a swift mental kick to get my thoughts out of the past so I could concentrate on the present and the party atmosphere that enveloped the docks and spilled over into DeRivera Park across the road. Except for the slip next to Luella’s that was empty, our fellow islanders were everywhere, chatting, unwinding, and gyrating to the beat of the steel drum band playing near the entrance to the dock. People milled around us, comparing notes about the tourists and how good (or bad) their business had been so far that summer. They shared plates of the food, and recipes when they were asked, along with a camaraderie that could only be forged on a four-mile long spit of land three miles north of the Ohio mainland.
Party, I told myself, and took a deep breath. Paradise, I reminded myself, letting that breath out slowly. This wasn’t the time to think about murder, and it sure wasn’t the place. Just to prove it to myself, I grabbed the good-looking bunch of thyme from Chandra, stripped the elfin leaves from their stems, and sprinkled them on the salad I’d brought as my contribution to our potluck dinner.
“Did I hear someone say it was time to eat?” Luella Zak jumped off her thirty-foot Sportcraft boat and joined us on the dock. “Kate’s coming,” she added, glancing over her shoulder toward the fishing charter she captained. “She’s just opening the wine.”
“One red.” Like Chandra had with the herbs, Kate held out the bottle for us to see and joined us around the folding table we’d set with a cheery red, white, and blue cloth and red acrylic dishes and glasses. “One white. Both from Wilder Winery. I hear they make some darned good wine.”
Kate ought to know. She was a Wilder and owned the winery.
“Oh no, you know the rules!” If Kate wasn’t holding those bottles, I think she would have swatted Chandra’s hand when Chandra eyed up the salad and reached for a plate. “Toast first. Eat second.”
“Toast first.” I handed around glasses and Kate filled them. “What are we toasting?”
“The chance to relax a little before another busy week,” Luella said, and raised her glass. Luella was in her seventies, and as tough as any skipper I’d ever met. She was short, wiry, seasoned by the lake on the outside, and as gentle as a lamb on the inside. Of all of us, she was the one who loved books and reading the most, and she’d willingly joined the League, not been coerced into participating like the rest of us had. “I’m always grateful for fishermen, but I’m just as grateful to be on dry land once in a while and let my hair down.”
“You got that right, sister!” Chandra squealed with delight. She spun around, taking in all our fellow revelers and raised her voice. “Here’s to a great party!”
“And the opportunity to enjoy good wine.” Kate lifted her glass. “And good food.”
“And good friends,” I added. A few months ago, their reactions would have been predictable. Kate would have rolled those gorgeous green eyes of hers. Chandra would have looked as sour as if she’d bit into a lemon. Luella was as steady and predictable as the lake, but where she made her living was not; then, like now, she simply would have nodded. Fortunately, things had changed since the days when Kate, Chandra, and I were hauled into court for our neighborhood bickering and sentenced to a year of discussing books on Monday evenings. I, for one, was grateful.
“Here’s to the way things have turned out.” I glanced around the circle and smiled back at the friendly expressions that greeted me. “Things are different and I’m so glad.”
“To friendship,” Luella said, and we clinked our glasses, sipped our wine and filled our plates. Before I had a chance to dig in, though, Gordon Hunter stopped by to chat. Gordon lived on the mainland but had a summer cottage not far from Put-in-Bay, the island’s one and only village. He was a mover and a shaker who’d been hired by the chamber of commerce to fill in for an employee out on maternity leave, and if this party he’d organized was any indication, he was going to be good for business.
“Le fait de s’amuser?” No, Gordon wasn’t French. At least I didn’t think he was French. What he was was the driving force behind the Bastille Day celebration planned for the rest of the week. Bastille Day on South Bass Island? Of course, it’s not an official holiday, but islanders are always looking for a way to cook up some fun, and tourists are always looking for any excuse to join in. It was a stroke of genius on Gordon’s part, and the reason, of course, that the League of Literary Ladies had chosen A Tale of Two Cities, the Dickens classic about the French Revolution, as our latest read.
Gordon gave Chandra a friendly poke. “That’s ‘are you having fun?’ for those of you who haven’t been to Paris lately.”
I had been to Paris. Just about a year earlier in fact, but my French was as rusty as my wanderlust. I took his word for the translation and offered Gordon a glass of wine.
He wasn’t a sipper. He took long, quick drinks. Something told me that was the way Gordon attacked all of life. He was a little older than middle-aged, with salt-and-pepper hair, and as suave as a toothpaste salesman. While the rest of us were dressed casually and comfortably, Gordon was decked out in khakis, a white shirt, and a navy blazer with brass buttons. He didn’t look as much like a PR guy as he did an admiral.
Maybe he knew what I was thinking because when the guy who owned what was advertised as “the longest bar in the world” came by, Gordon gave him a crisp salute.
“It’s going to be a helluva week,” Gordon said. He reached for a shrimp and dragged it through cocktail sauce. “Everybody ready for the crowds?”
“I’ve got charters every day,” Luella said.
“And we’re doing winery tours and tastings every afternoon and evening,” Kate added. “I put the notice online a couple weeks ago and we’re packed for every single one of them.”
“My rooms are filled,” I put in.
“Thanks again for sending the band my way,” I told Gordon.
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With the wave of one hand, he acted like it was nothing. “Folks around here tell me you’re from the Big Apple, Bea. I figured if anyone could handle a rock band called Guillotine, it was you. They check in yet?”
“Tonight,” I told him, and reminded myself I’d have to be back at the B and B by then. “Apparently, rock musicians aren’t early risers.”
Gordon refilled his glass before he moved on to the next boat and the next group of partiers and watching him, Luella shook her head. “Can’t blame the poor guy for drinking. You heard what happened last night?”
I hadn’t, but that was no big surprise. My B and B was on the outskirts of what was officially considered downtown, and I was often the last to hear the latest gossip.
This time, though, apparently, Kate and Chandra hadn’t heard, either. As one, we pinned Luella with a look.
“Gordon let Richie Monroe help him out on his boat.”
Kate’s mouth dropped open. Chandra gasped. After six months on the island, I knew Richie well enough. He was fifty years old or so, the guy people called when they wanted small jobs done. Richie shoveled snow in the winter. He ran errands for tourists. He sold ice cream out of a cart on weekends. He carried bags at the grocery store.
I looked from one woman to the other. “I’ve had Richie do some things for me around the house. He pulled the weeds in the front flower beds. And he cut the grass the weekend my lawn service guys couldn’t make it because of a funeral. Richie’s reliable.”
“Reliable, maybe.” Something told me it was no big secret—what is on an island this size?—but Chandra leaned forward and lowered her voice. “But he’s not exactly careful.”
“Wasn’t careful last night.” Another head shake from Luella. “He slammed Gordon’s boat into the dock. The way I heard it, he did some damage.”
Automatically, my gaze traveled down the dock to where Gordon was chatting it up with Alvin Littlejohn, the magistrate who’d sentenced us to be a book discussion group, and his wife, Marianne, the town librarian. “Gordon doesn’t look especially upset.”
“He’s a trouper,” Luella said. “And he knows he’s got to put on a good show tonight. He put a lot of time and effort into planning this Bastille Day event. He can’t let it fizzle. But the way I heard it, he was madder than a wet hen last night. Can’t say I blame him. If it was my boat he’d damaged, I would have threatened to wring Richie’s neck, too.”
“Is that what he did?” It seemed so out of character for debonair Gordon that the comment caught me off guard. “You don’t think he’d really—”
“I’m surprised Richie’s still alive and breathing, anyway.” Chandra’s bleached blond hair was chin-length and blunt cut. When she swayed her head from left to right, it stroked her cheeks. “You’d think by now, Mike Lawrence would have gutted Richie like a walleye.”
I wasn’t so far out of the loop that I hadn’t heard this story. Though it had happened the autumn before I moved to the island, Richie’s monumental screwup had already reached the status of island legend. “You mean because of how Mike hired Richie to turn off the gas in that fancy new summer cottage over at the other end of the island,” I said.
“And how Richie wasn’t paying attention to what he was doing, as usual,” Kate added.
Just thinking about it made Luella wince. “And how Richie left the gas line open instead of shutting it.”
“And that big, fancy summer home . . .” Chandra put down her wineglass long enough to slap her hands together. “Kaboom!”
“Poor guy who owned that house,” Kate murmured.
“Poor Mike,” Luella commented, and when she looked down the dock, we all did, too, and saw that Mike Lawrence wasn’t partying with his neighbors, he was helping one of the dockmasters get a boat berthed. “What with the insurance claim and the owner of the home suing him and the government after him because he was paying Richie under the table and not paying Social Security taxes for him, Mike has lost just about everything he owned, including his contracting business. He’s picking up every odd job he can get his hands on, and he’s living in a trailer over near the state park. Imagine living in a trailer with a wife and three little kids.”
I could imagine it, and what I imagined was cramped and uncomfortable. I made a mental note to see if I could come up with some work for Mike around the B and B. It wouldn’t solve all his problems, but it might help.
“Well, look who’s here! One of the guests of honor!”
I didn’t know there were guests of honor for the week’s festivities, so Luella’s comment surprised me. That is, until I turned away from watching Mike work and saw who was headed our way on the dock.
Alice Defarge—or was it Margaret?—and talk about a legend! The Defarge twins had lived their whole lives on South Bass and they owned the island’s only knit shop. As far as I’d heard, neither of the ladies—seventy-five if they were a day—had officially been named a guest of honor, but the Defarge reference was lost on no one. At least no one who knew anything about the Dickens book. In A Tale of Two Cities, Madame Defarge is the iconic figure who sits knitting in the shadow of the guillotine.
Thankfully, our own Defarges were far less ghoulish. In fact, the sisters—who I’d met at various potlucks and island functions—were as sweet and as friendly as can be and this one—whichever one she was—sure enjoyed the reference to being the guest of honor. Her smile was as bright as her snowy white hair.
I adjusted my black-framed glasses on the bridge of my nose. “Alice or Margaret?” I asked Kate out of the corner of my mouth when the old lady neared.
“Alice.” As subtly as she could, Kate pointed, indicating Alice’s white cotton pants and her sky blue, short-sleeve shirt. “Margaret always wears something pink.”
I’m sure I’d heard that before but this time, I told myself not to forget it.
“Isn’t this great fun!” In the light of the setting sun, Alice twinkled like a prom queen. Just like her sister, she was a tiny woman with a neat, poofy hairdo and a spring in her step. “I only hope . . .” Her gaze moved past us to the lake. “There are some pretty dark clouds out there. I hope the weather isn’t going to spoil our celebrations this week.”
“There’s a chance of rain tonight,” Luella told her. “But nothing for the rest of the week. Will you and Margaret join us for dinner?”
Another blast of wind kicked up over the lake and brought with it the distant rumble of thunder. “Thank you , but . . .” In no time at all, Alice headed back the way she’d come. “I’d better help Margaret get our picnic settled over in the park. Just in case it starts to rain and we need to pack up in a hurry.”
“Nice lady,” I said when she was gone.
“A real sweetheart,” Chandra confirmed. “So’s her sister.”
“And you’d better be really careful every time either one of them is around,” Kate advised, then laughed when she saw the look of disbelief on my face. She grabbed onto my arm. “I’m just saying. Hasn’t anybody told you? The Defarge sisters—”
“Are the biggest gossips on this or any other island,” Luella said. “There are a lot of people around here who believe that’s why they opened their knit shop in the first place. You know, so they’d have a ringside seat right downtown and they could keep an eye on everyone and everything that happens around here.”
“They know your business before you know your business,” Chandra added. “And there’s nothing they like better than telling the world.”
By the time they were done with their warnings, my smile was tight. “Then it’s a good thing I don’t have any business worth discussing.”
“Right.” Kate split the word into two syllables. Right before she grabbed her dinner dish and took it with her when she went to the boat in the next slip to chat with its owners.
“Anything you say.” Chandra had already finished her plate of food, but when she walked down the dock to visit with some of our neighbors, she took the bottle of red wine with her.
For like a half a second.
That was when I realized I wasn’t alone, and the reason they’d all pulled up stakes and fled was suddenly all too evident.