Overboard on the Ocean

by Ellen Jacobson

  As if sensing the tension, Mrs. Moto crawled into my lap and purred loudly. I chewed on my bottom lip as I stroked her. Scooter and I had been married for almost eleven years, and I could count the number of fights we’d had on one hand. I couldn’t figure out what had gotten into him. Usually, my husband was good-natured and easygoing. I had never seen this side of him before, and I didn’t like it.

  “Well?” Scooter asked.

  “I can’t go,” I said. “I told Anabel that I’d look at wedding venues with her this weekend.”

  “I’m sure she’ll understand if you postpone.”

  “I don’t want to postpone. She’s my best friend. I promised I’d help her.”

  “I thought I was your best friend,” Scooter said quietly as he got to his feet.

  “Where are you going?” I asked as he started to walk out of the cabin.

  “I need some time to think,” he said back over his shoulder.

  I lay on the bed, tears welling up in my eyes. Mrs. Moto snuggled against my face. “Fletcher Tolliver,” I muttered to her. “Something needs to be done about that man.”

  2

  Chocolate Never Asks Any Questions

  Feeling M.J. rocking back and forth in her berth, I peeked out the porthole. Sure enough, Scooter had leaped off the boat onto the dock. As he walked away, my heart sank. He hadn’t even bothered to tell me that he was leaving.

  Sinking back onto the bed, I ran several scenarios involving Fletcher Tolliver’s disappearance from our lives past Mrs. Moto. She was disinterested until I used her catnip mouse and a pillow to demonstrate how an avalanche could eliminate the man who was coming between my husband and me.

  While the calico snaked her paw under the pillow to retrieve her toy, I chastised myself for having such horrible thoughts. Surely, there had to be a way to get rid of Fletcher that didn’t involve foul play. Besides, an avalanche was impractical. It’s not like snow was something you could count on in southern Florida.

  “We need a change of scenery,” I said to Mrs. Moto. “What do you say we go to the library?”

  She dropped her mouse on my chest and then meowed enthusiastically. The library had become one of her favorite haunts as of late, primarily because of its new resident feline, Dr. McCoy.

  After I pulled into the library parking lot, I scooped Mrs. Moto into my arms. “You’re going to behave today, right? No more sitting on the checkout desk and begging the librarian for treats, okay?”

  Of course, the first thing Mrs. Moto did once we entered the library was to squirm out of my arms, leap onto the checkout desk, and headbutt Hudson, the librarian on duty.

  The librarian set aside the book he was scanning into the system. After scratching the cat’s head, he opened a drawer and pulled out a foil pouch. Mrs. Moto went crazy, pacing back and forth until he placed a fish-shaped treat in front of her. After she gobbled it up, Hudson pointed at the periodical section. “Dr. McCoy is over there, if you want to go say hi.”

  Hudson grinned at me while Mrs. Moto scurried off to find her feline friend. “Sorry, I don’t have any human treats for you, Mollie, unless you want to buy one of these.” He pointed at a box of chocolate bars sitting next to the computer monitor. “It’s a fundraiser for the Coconut Cove Historical Museum. If you buy one, you also get a sticker.”

  “One of your stickers?” I asked.

  After Hudson showed me the sticker he had designed with the museum’s logo, he held up a chocolate bar. “So, what do you say?”

  Despite having eaten a Hershey bar less than an hour ago, I nodded. The fight with Scooter had rattled me and I needed something to console me. Chocolate is a good listener. It never asks questions and never judges you. Chocolate just listens quietly, then whispers comforting things as you savor each morsel, making your problems easier to deal with. My problem with Scooter was a real doozy. I was going to need all the chocolate I could get.

  “How much for the whole box?” I asked.

  Hudson cocked his head to one side. “You want all of them?”

  “Yep.” I ripped one of the bars open and popped a piece in my mouth while he calculated how much I owed.

  After I paid him, Hudson gave me a wistful smile. “My wife would have been really impressed with the fact that I sold all this chocolate so quickly. She used to be on the Board of Trustees for the museum. She oversaw all the fundraising activities, but the annual chocolate drive was her favorite.”

  “She sounds like my kind of girl,” I said.

  “She was a great girl,” Hudson said in a strained voice. Then he cleared his throat and motioned to the man standing behind me. “I need to help this gentleman. Thanks again for your contribution, Mollie.”

  I slung my purse over my shoulder, grabbed my box of chocolate, and headed over to the periodical section. Mrs. Moto and Dr. McCoy were having a grooming session together in an armchair next to the large bay window. I settled into the chair next to them and grabbed a stack of bridal magazines, looking for ideas for Anabel’s bachelorette party. As her matron of honor, I was in charge of organizing the event. Since Anabel and her ex-husband were remarrying, she wanted something low-key and casual.

  My original plan had been a champagne brunch at a popular local eatery, the Tipsy Pirate. However, out of the blue, the owner had closed the restaurant indefinitely, citing personal reasons. The Coconut Cove grapevine had gone into overdrive with rumors about what exactly those personal reasons were too. I personally thought the theory that he had moved to Antarctica to become a camel trainer was the most plausible.

  Though, to be honest, figuring out why the Tipsy Pirate had closed was the least of my concerns. What I really needed to focus on was finding another place to hold Anabel’s bachelorette party. No mean feat at this time of the year when Coconut Cove was overrun with tourists and snowbirds. Plus, Anabel wanted my help to find a wedding venue.

  I ran my fingers through my hair, attempting to smooth down the frizzy sections, and sighed. Mrs. Moto looked over at me. She did that slow blinking thing that cats do to tell you they love you. I blinked back at her, then returned to perusing the magazines. The wedding dresses were stunning, the bouquets were gorgeous, and the cocktail recipes were enticing, but it all seemed so generic. Anabel was as far from generic as you could get. If you pictured an eccentric, bohemian artist in your mind, you’d probably come up with someone like Anabel. Her quirky imagination lent itself to the whimsical paintings she created. Paintings that featured fanciful creatures such as fairies, unicorns, and dragons, along with more common animals such as hamsters, yellow-bellied marmots, and kittens. She was quickly developing a national reputation for her work, with people clamoring to own one of her paintings.

  It still amazed me that she was remarrying her ex-husband. The only thing whimsical about him was his name—Tiny Dalton. There wasn’t anything tiny about him though. As the chief of police of Coconut Cove, his burly stature came in handy when facing off against bad guys or intimidating seagulls. Of course, no one but Anabel dared to call him Tiny to his face. To the rest of us, he was simply Chief Dalton.

  I chewed on my lip as I thought about Anabel’s bubbly personality. Maybe it was a good thing that the Tipsy Pirate had shut down. Obviously, not for the owner of the Tipsy Pirate, unless he really had always dreamed of becoming a camel trainer. A champagne brunch would have been too ordinary of a bachelorette party for Anabel. I needed to come up with something creative and unique, and needed to do it fast. The party was taking place in a little over a week’s time.

  “Darn it,” I muttered to myself as I accidentally tore one of the pages in the magazine. It happened to be a recipe for a chocolate wedding cake. Perhaps my subconscious at work? One of the things I had always regretted about my own wedding was that my mother had talked me into a boring vanilla cake. It was horrible, had took bland to a whole new level.

  My phone beeped. I glanced at the screen and saw that it was a text from Scooter. Did he know I had just been thinking about our
wedding? Was he texting to apologize?

  I shook my head. I wasn’t ready to deal with Scooter yet and shoved my phone into my purse. I went to the front desk to own up to what I had done. When I showed the torn magazine to Hudson, he waved his hand. “Don’t worry about it. That magazine is really old. It’s due to come out of circulation, anyway.”

  “Old? Well, that explains the article about recording your wedding with a VHS camcorder.”

  Hudson furrowed his brow. “VHS? Oh, yeah, those old-fashioned tapes. My Uncle Ned has a bunch of them with old movies on them. My Aunt Nancy is always complaining about how much room they take up.”

  “Nancy? Complaining? Imagine that,” I muttered sarcastically.

  “What was that?” Hudson asked, as he scanned the magazine.

  “Oh, I was just wondering if you knew that it was Ned who gave Mrs. Moto her name. It’s from one of those old movies he loves to watch.”

  Hudson snapped his fingers. “The Mr. Moto movies, right?”

  “Uh-huh. They’re about a Japanese secret agent who wears thick, black-rimmed glasses. Since Mrs. Moto is a Japanese bobtail cat who has black markings around her eyes that resemble glasses. Ned thought it was a perfect name for her.”

  “It’s a cute name.” He handed the magazine back to me. “There, I’ve removed it from the system. It’s all yours.”

  “I’m not sure I need a bridal magazine.”

  “No problem. Do you mind sticking it in the free box by the entrance for me? Someone else will grab it.”

  As I turned around, a petite blonde woman holding a large flat package wrapped in brown paper squealed. “Mollie McGhie, is that you?”

  After setting the package down next to a new release display table, she rushed toward me. I was in shock as she hugged me. Questions rushed through my head—like “What is she chewing on?” “How can someone so tiny have such freakishly powerful arms?” “I can’t breathe, is this hug ever going to stop?” “I can’t free myself, is this how Mrs. Moto feels when I’m holding her and she wants to jump out of my arms?” “What in the world is Fletcher Tolliver’s wife doing in Coconut Cove?”

  When she finally released me, I quickly filled my lungs with air. Breathing never felt so good. “Sylvia Tolliver,” I gasped.

  She beamed at me. “Surprise!”

  “It certainly is,” I said. “What are you doing here?”

  “When Fletcher first called Scooter a couple of weeks ago—”

  “A couple of weeks ago? I had thought the two of them spoke for the first time today?”

  Sylvia smacked on her gum for a moment. “No, they’ve been talking for a while. Scooter raved about what a charming town Coconut Cove is, and we thought we’d come check it out for ourselves. Honestly, I don’t think I can handle one more gloomy winter in Cleveland. I’ve been telling Fletcher for years that we should get a place in Florida. He’s always resisted the idea. But now he’s seriously considering a move down south, and it’s all thanks to Scooter.”

  My head was reeling. I don’t know what was worse—Scooter lying to me about when he first talked with Fletcher or the thought of the Tollivers moving to Coconut Cove. I shook my head. I’d deal with my husband later. First things first, I needed to convince Sylvia that living here was a bad idea. A really bad idea.

  “You know, it’s actually overcast in Coconut Cove ninety-eight percent of the time. If you’re looking for sunshine, you’ve come to the wrong place.”

  Sylvia looked out the window, perplexed. “But the sun is out now. This is Florida, the Sunshine State.”

  “Ah . . . Yes, most of Florida is sunny, but there’s some sort of weird weather vortex over Coconut Cove. Always cloudy. You lucked out and got here on the only sunny day we’ve had all year.”

  “Well, at least you don’t have snow. I hate driving on icy roads, and I’m worried Fletcher is going to have a heart attack one of these days shoveling the driveway.”

  Hmm . . . why didn’t I think of that earlier? A fatal heart attack wouldn’t be the worst thing to happen to Fletcher, I thought. Then I mentally slapped my hand. Fletcher might be a horrible person, but even he didn’t deserve to die.

  “We actually had a really horrible snowstorm last month,” I said. “There was hail the size of gerbils, and power was cut off for days. It was so cold that people were having to knit sweaters out of plastic shopping bags. The National Guard even had to airdrop an emergency supply of mittens.”

  “A snowstorm in November? Here in Coconut Cove? Really?” Sylvia turned to Hudson for confirmation.

  Hudson cleared his throat, then glanced at me. “Um . . . I don’t remember that.”

  “You were probably too busy reading. Books can be really distracting,” I said to him. Pulling Sylvia away, I lowered my voice. “That’s not the worst of it. Right after the snow melted, we had a swarm of locusts come through town. They ate the leaves off everything.”

  Sylvia pointed at the palm trees lining the walkway to the library. “They have leaves.”

  “Oh, those are fake,” I said. “The town council attached plastic leaves to the trees. They look pretty realistic from a distance, but when you get up close, you can tell that they’re not real.”

  Someone chuckled behind me. “I think Mollie is pulling your leg.”

  I spun around and saw Hudson rearranging books on the new release display table next to us. He grinned at me, then turned to Sylvia. “Coconut Cove is a great little seaside town. Lots of nice restaurants and shops, the fishing is great, and the annual boating festival is a blast. It’s a wonderful place to retire to.”

  “Sounds like it would be a great place for young families as well,” Sylvia said.

  “It is,” Hudson said quietly as he toyed with his wedding band.

  “But your children are grown,” I said to Sylvia. “The two of you should retire someplace quieter. The kids around here are so noisy. You wouldn’t get a moment of peace.”

  “Our oldest daughter just got married,” Sylvia said. “We’re hoping there will be grandchildren on the way soon. Coconut Cove would be a wonderful place for them to come visit us, especially if there are built-in playmates.”

  I was running out of ideas for how to discourage Sylvia from moving here, so out of desperation I turned to Hudson. “Surely, there’s something you don’t like about this town?”

  He pondered this for a moment, then shook his head. “No. I was born and raised here. It’s a wonderful place. But . . .”

  “But what?” I prompted.

  “I am thinking of moving.”

  I clapped my hands together. “Aha. See, Sylvia, even Hudson doesn’t want to live here.”

  “Oh, no, that’s not what I meant.” Hudson ran his fingers through his hair, making his unruly dark curls even more erratic. “I just need a change of scenery. Too many memories here. But I’d still recommend Coconut Cove as a great place to live.”

  Sylvia looped her arm through mine. “That’s settled, then. What do you say to showing me around town?”

  I looked at the bridal magazine I was holding. “Um, I wish I could, but I have to—”

  Before I could explain about Anabel’s bachelorette party, the door to the library swung open. I groaned when I saw my arch-nemesis, Fletcher Tolliver, standing in the entryway. He looked the same as when I had last seen him—short, overweight, and balding.

  “I’ve been looking everywhere for you,” he said icily to Sylvia. “I had told you to wait in the car.”

  Sylvia stage whispered to me. “He hasn’t had lunch yet. His blood sugar levels are low. It makes him cranky.”

  “You know I can hear you, right?” Fletcher said.

  She patted his arm, then pointed at me. “Look who I ran into it. What’s wrong with you? Don’t you recognize Mollie McGhie?”

  The expression on Fletcher’s face flickered from annoyance at his wife to surprise at seeing me. Then it changed to something that reminded me of how grizzly bears size you up before they eat
you. He gave me an oily smile, kissed my cheek, then looked me up and down. “Mollie, it’s wonderful to see you again.”

  I nodded, not trusting myself to respond politely.

  Fletcher slung his arm around Sylvia’s shoulders. “Did you know that Scooter has agreed to invest in the company?”

  “That’s wonderful, dear,” she said. “When did that happen?”

  “A few minutes ago. I just got off the phone with him.”

  “He said he was going to invest?” I said, my voice cracking. When Fletcher nodded, I blurted out, “The only way that’s going to happen is over my dead body . . . or yours.”

  * * *

  After my announcement, there was dead silence. It was eerily quiet, even for a library.

  Okay, I realize that “dead silence” probably isn’t the best choice of words, especially considering I had just mentioned dead bodies. However, if you had found as many dead bodies as I have since moving to Coconut Cove, you’d find yourself unconsciously uttering words like ‘dead,’ ‘murder,’ ‘corpse,’ and ‘homicide’ way more often than you’d like.

  I glanced at the others. Hudson and Sylvia looked uncomfortable. I was definitely uncomfortable. The only person who didn’t seem fazed was Fletcher. Instead, he seemed to regard me with a sort of grudging respect. Probably because there had been whispers that he had once threatened a business competitor with bodily harm.

  After a beat, Sylvia laughed nervously. “Oh, Mollie, you’re such a card! Isn’t she a card, dear?”

  Fletcher ran his hand down Sylvia’s back while he stared at me. “She sure is.”

  Hudson muttered something about checking on the cats.

  “Hang on, I’ll come with you,” I said to Hudson as he retreated to the periodical section. Turning back to the Tollivers, I explained, “My cat probably needs a snack or something.”

  Fletcher gave me a dismissive nod and Sylvia smiled weakly at me. Then they proceeded to bicker loudly about the fact that Sylvia hadn’t waited in the car for Fletcher.