Crab Outta Luck

by Ellis Quinn

  Royce chuckled, leaned back, looked at her with lazy, hooded eyes. “Didn’t know you cared about crab so much.”

  She jabbed a finger at his scruffy, arrogant face. “It’s not about crabs. You’re only crabbing my family water cause my grandmother is dead. You wouldn’t do it if Pearl still lived at Fortune—you just want to take advantage, just like every man not worth a damn, looking for a way to get his, and not caring who gets in his way and how he might hurt them. I’m sick of men like you.”

  Royce raised his eyebrows, unaffected. “I know what’s got you mad, and it ain’t any crab floats you can’t even say’s mine for sure—it’s you coming back with your tail tween your legs to curl up in your grammy’s home and you ain’t got no man with you though you left the Cove with one. One thing a Whaley broad’ll do is run off a man. I don’t know what the heck any of y’alls doing wrong, but I ain’t ever seen a man on one a your arms with any kind of grin on his mug. Bunch a sad old boys who move on to better things or just up and die outta sheer unhappiness.”

  Red rage laced through her, sizzling her synapses with a high octane dose of lovely irrationality, and it had her snatching up Jerome’s almost-full plastic tumbler of lager, and drawing it back across her body to dash it as hard as she could into Royce’s face. The man was begging for it.

  But she held it at bay, snorting hate through flared nostrils and staring holes in him.

  Royce sneered. Then chuckled. “Go on, throw it in my face, I’m catchin’ fat late-September blues all up and down your Fortune front—you’re making me rich, so throw it all around us, there’s plenty more to go ‘round. And I’m buyin’.”

  She was being owned. Or letting the old man own her. She set down the lager next to Jerome’s elbow. Jerome hoisted it and drank, side-eying her and smiling. Everybody amused by the crazy Whaley woman come back from the city and thinking she’s still a Cover. Even the tourists were looking down from the upper level, leaning over their picnic tables to get a load of the local squabbles.

  Bette breathed deep, sniffed, ran her tongue over her teeth, lips tightly clenched. Calmer, she said, “Get your traps out of my water or you’ll regret it. You hear me?”

  Royce stared at her like she was dirt on his work boot, sucking his teeth and being the big man.

  Jerome grumbled, “Ay, he hears you. Go on now.”

  Bette’s eyes stayed on Royce. “What did I say?”

  Royce still glared balefully, still sucking his teeth, then spitting aside out to the water some imaginary speck of something he’d liberated. He wouldn’t respond, and there was nothing she could do to make him. She repeated it for him: “Get the traps out or you’ll regret it. Don’t ever come back near Fortune.”

  She wheeled then hiked back the way she came, Cracked Crab patron heads following her along, some bothered by her disturbance, some unperturbed, a few even showing a measure of support, giving her a single head nod. You sure told him.

  I sure did tell him.

  What a spectacle. How awful, how embarrassing . . .

  By the time she was back near the parking lot, her hands were shaking and she was on the verge of bursting into tears. Never in her life had she unleashed like that. And as low a person as Royce was, he didn’t deserve to be spoken to in that manner, even if there was a history of bad blood between the Murdochs and the Whaleys.

  * * *

  A gaggle of ruffled retired women in track suits and sweats had gathered around Grandma Pearl’s Bronco when Bette returned to the wharf’s parking lot. Almost a dozen women with concerned expressions circled the vehicle, and Bette could figure why. The lead woman of the group was prominent: well-dressed, sturdy, her lovely red hair gone a wonderful silver about a decade ago.

  “Aunt Pris!” Bette hollered from fifty feet back and watched then as a look of relief crossed all the women’s faces as they turned to regard her. Aunt Pris stood with hands on hips, smiling, shaking her head admonishingly. The ladies with Pris were her walking group members, all of them meeting about five days a week and getting their steps in, hiking up and down the hills and paths and cozy, quaint side streets of Chesapeake Cove.

  “I thought my mama’s ghost’d come to town,” Pris said as they got close, adding, “come here now,” and circling her arms around Bette for a hug.

  Her aunt’s hugging arms brought out the emotion she’d suppressed following the encounter with Royce Murdoch. A tear squeezed from an eye and she sniffled. “Sorry, Pris,” she said, “I shouldn’t a brought it.”

  “Hush,” Pris laughed, “it’s yours now, makes me happy to see it. Makes me happy to see you in it.” Pris set her back so they could look at each other, then cocked her head, seeing Bette’s reddened eyes and blushing cheeks. “What’s wrong, Bette—what you doing out here at the wharf?”

  “It’s nothing,” she said, wiping at her eye.

  “Something happen?”

  Bette played it down, trying to keep calm, explaining to her aunt and the gathered walking women how she’d found the traps by Fortune and came to town looking for the man she knew’d put them there.

  An imposing woman with large black-framed glasses and close cropped gray hair agreed, saying, “That man’s a scoundrel.”

  “I told him to get his traps out and never come round Fortune again.”

  “You did the right thing, hon,” Pris said.

  “I mighta lost my cool a little,” Bette told them, watching the women’s faces, her mouth screwed sheepishly to one side.

  “You got emotional, Bette, darling, nothing wrong with that.”

  “I hope I didn’t embarrass myself,” she said, putting a shaky palm over her forehead.

  The woman with the glasses said, “Here, he’s coming now.”

  Bette turned to see Royce coming up from the boardwalk by himself and her heart thudded thinking he was going to take the opportunity to lose his cool now, too, give Bette a piece of his mind and deliver some threatening ultimatum just as she’d done. The man was imposing, not sitting at a picnic table. Six-four or more, a working man with bulk and muscle and big gnarly hands.

  But just as her heart squirreled a ways up into her esophagus, Royce veered to the left and marched along a row of parked vehicles. All the women watched and Royce knew he was being watched.

  Royce offered a terrible single-finger gesture that got some of Prissy’s walking group muttering their offense and touching their necks. He climbed up into an ancient and enormous creaking pickup and slammed the door shut. Black smoke bellowed from the exhaust. He backed out, then roared off without looking their way.

  Bette muttered, “One day he’ll get his.”

  THE NEXT MORNING

  The woman with the big chunky glasses was Margaret, the one with the smaller metal-framed glasses was Katherine. Or maybe Catherine. All told this morning, Bette had seven new names to remember. There was Margaret, Katherine, Vivian, Laura, Joy, Joanna, and Mavis. Prissy she already knew very well.

  They were gathered here today at the grassy park on the grounds of St. George’s, between the skinny old red-brick church and what used to be a bookstore (but now looked to be an art gallery with bright impressionist landscapes sitting on easels in the windows). Nine women in comfortable sporty clothing shaking hands in the sunshine, gossiping, and stretching.

  Prissy’d read somewhere that ten thousand steps a day was the gold standard for health, and she and her active ladies' group added daily walks to their communal dedication to leading fulfilling lives. This group of motivated gals of retirement age exuded the kind of energy Bette needed in her life right now. So despite the fact she was the youngest member of the group by at least twenty years, she felt like this might provide a little something that might be missing. She’d thank Prissy later. Prissy’d twisted Bette’s arm hard to get her out of the house this morning, and Bette complained the whole way here (already set off in a bad mood because Royce’s floats still bobbed just off Fortune’s shore).

  Most of the women were
familiar to her, faces she remembered from growing up in Chesapeake Cove, some of the names easy to remember once she’d had her memory jogged. Joy Kim even taught at Chesapeake Cove PS, and Bette recalled her coming in as this new young teacher—the youngest one the school had—but Bette was in Grade 4, and Joy taught 1-3, so she was never in her class.

  Mavis Treacle had set up Bette’s first bank account at the Chesapeake Credit Union when Bette was fourteen. Bette said to her, “I didn’t see you with the group yesterday, Mrs. Treacle.”

  “Mavis, call me Mavis,” she said, feet out wide and stretching an arm over her head. “I’m still three days at the bank.”

  “Why don’t you retire?”

  Mavis stood upright and began scissoring her arms across her chest in some dynamic stretching. “One, I love it there, two, and do what, pray tell? Coop up with my husband? And, no offense, but we’re having trouble finding qualified personnel, there seems to be a shortage of dedication amongst your younger generation.”

  “I’m forty-two,” Bette said, laughing, “but thanks for calling me younger.”

  As they headed off the grass and onto the sidewalk Bette sidled up to Joy looking to reminisce. “I remember when you came to the Cove,” she said to her, “you were the youngest teacher we had.”

  “You remember that?”

  “You used to have these barrettes, they were pale blue, and I coveted them—”

  “Because you have red hair?”

  “Because I have red hair. And I thought they looked like cartoon faces.”

  “Binyeo,” Joy said.

  “That’s the cartoon faces?”

  “No. The barrette’s called a binyeo. I think the blue cartoon ones were whales.”

  “That’s probably why I wanted them. My last name’s Whaley.” She looked up and down the sunny street. “Which way do we go?”

  All the girls waited for Pris to tell them. Pris marched on the sidewalk, heading toward the town’s center. For thirty years, Pris Whaley’d been a high power PR exec in Bethesda; a smart and cynical woman brimming with rural small-town charm and making a big splash in the swampy city waters of D.C.

  Pris waved them to follow, saying, “We’re gonna go on round the Crockett statue, loop around the village, pass by The Steaming Bean, then maybe since it’s such a nice day we’ll head on up Haunted Hill.”

  No one objected, and they all followed suit, though there were some groans from the crowd at the mention of the Hill. But just a half-minute in to their walk and up ahead the garage door of the Cove ambulance depot opened and the town’s lone ambulance nosed out to the street side. Its roof lights lit up, and as it turned onto the street and accelerated past them, the siren began to whoop. They all watched it past.

  One of the group said, “Hope it’s no one we know,” and that brought a wave of uncomfortable laughter.

  Further ahead now, a police car swerved off the Crockett loop and headed their way. It lit up its cherries as well, and the siren wailed as it passed, the engine growling.

  Margaret said, “Wonder who that’s for?”

  Mavis said, “Could be Jack Dawson mighta fallen off the wagon.”

  “You-know-whose’s daughter’s always staying out all night—hope she’s not run into the wrong man this time,” Joy said.

  Someone in the back said, “Maybe Mabel Welker’s finally up and knocked that louse of a husband over the head with a frying pan.”

  From the Crockett roundabout another whooping siren came, and they all watched a second police car pass by, some covering their ears at the siren’s volume. They turned and watched the police cruiser weave through traffic on the narrow street.

  Prissy made a grumble of curiosity in her throat. “Well, ladies, maybe a change of direction isn’t a bad idea after all.” She nodded her chin toward the disappearing police car, began walking, and they all followed behind.

  * * *

  At Hazeldean Park they switched from the sidewalk, cutting across the grass and walking down to the beach trail. They were headed toward San Lorenzo Point, where Whaley’s Fortune was. For a few moments she worried it could be some tragedy that’d struck her home—but Prissy was safe and healthy here with the group, and there was no one else she cared for at Fortune besides Ripken, and whatever could be wrong with Vance’s cat, no one would be crazy enough to send an ambulance and two cop cars for that snarky little fluff ball.

  For a silent mile she fell into sullenness, contemplating how she had no one at home to care for and beginning to feel that weight of what her mom used to call Babette’s woe-is-me. Those emergency vehicles were on their way for someone else’s trouble, and she had a lot to be positive about. She kicked up her pace and caught up with chunky glasses Margaret who was a speedy walker despite not looking like one.

  “What do you think it is?” Bette asked, trying to hide her breathlessness.

  “I think,” Margaret said, nudging her chin up the beach path ahead, “we’ll know in a minute.”

  Sure enough, though the sirens had stopped, there was a murmur of commotion up ahead at the causeway. Perhaps a car had gone off the road, broke the guardrail and plunged into the water. She was desperate to find out, but her stomach still squirmed.

  As they emerged from the wooded shade of the beachside trail, they could see the causeway ahead. The road crossed a soft, marshy spot here, and a short raised causeway ran through it, beach on one side, shallow pond on the other. Two police officers were stringing bright yellow tape from the guardrail down the rocky bluff, looking to set up a perimeter onlookers wouldn’t cross. From the roadside, standing behind the unbroken guardrail, a flock of watchers scanned the hubbub down on the beach, some with hands covering mouths as if witnessing something horrible. And sure enough now, in a gap in the trees, Bette could see a dark log against the bright sand of the beach, just below the rocky crag running a dozen feet up to the guardrail. Only it wouldn’t be a log, would it? She was sure it was a washed up body.

  In a few tense minutes, Prissy, the walkers, and Bette had joined the back of the gathered crowd bunched against the guardrail, trying to get a look at what the cops and emergency personnel were doing at the gently lapping shore.

  Two of the ambulance crew surrounded the log. The log was blue and clad in soaking cotton; Bette saw legs, she saw boots. It was indeed a body. She squinted an eye and looked aside, instead regarding the faces of passengers in vehicles crawling the road behind them trying to get a grim peek.

  Prissy wasn’t so frail, wedging through the crowd of Covers who all knew her and gave her way.

  Joy soothed the back of Bette’s arm as Prissy leaned a little over the guard rail and hollered down to one of the police officers: “Hey, Detective! . . .” Then she turned back to the group, said, “Hope it’s nobody we know.”

  Bette tried to think of something poignant to say, but now the cop was coming up the rocky slope, still looking back over his shoulder at the emergency guys around the body. Though Prissy had called him a detective, he didn’t look like what you would expect. Though of course in a small town like Chesapeake Cove, there might not be much call for detecting. The man wore the standard all-black Chesapeake Cove uniform. He had a strong, lean build, his head bowed down now, eyes shaded by the brim of his four-dent Stratton hat.

  “Hey, Prissy,” he said, low and solemn.

  He approached Pris and Margaret who joined at Pris’s side. Bette put a hand on Prissy’s back, and the detective looked up.

  It was a rotten one-two punch she didn’t see coming.

  Her stomach literally bounced, and she made an embarrassing ooph sound and snorted through both nostrils. The detective was Marcus Seabolt. Just about Bette’s best friend when she was a teen growing up here in Chesapeake Cove. She hadn’t seen him in twenty years.

  Marcus’s eyes moved to hers and narrowed to black lines.

  Prissy had more important things going on, saying to Marcus, “Sure hope it’s not anybody we know—did they drown?”

>   Marcus broke eye contact with Bette, looked back down at the body on the shore. Looked back to Prissy and said, “Well, you know him. It’s Royce Murdoch.”

  Prissy was alarmed. “Old Man Royce?” She made a noise in her throat, shook her head, chewed her lower lip as she looked over her shoulder at Bette. “Wow,” she said.

  Don’t say it, Pris . . .

  “You did say some day he’d get what’s coming,” Pris said.

  Marcus raised his chin again, and their eyes met. “That you, Babette?”

  “It’s me,” she said, voice thin and soft, and sounding very far away.

  “You said that?”

  “Oh, it was nothing,” Pris said, “it was just yesterday, Royce and her . . .” Pris shot her a troubled look, realizing there was no way to explain this now.

  Marcus inhaled, eyes scanning the ground around his feet, then withdrew from a short flat chest pocket a small notepad and a pen. “I guess you better go on then and tell me.”

  Marcus curled his finger at her to approach. Not friendly, all authority, face serious. “C’mon and step up here, Bette. Make way for her, Prissy.”

  Bette stepped forward, feeling her hands begin to shake, getting elbow to elbow with Prissy.

  Marcus said, “How long you been back?”

  “Two days,” she said, her voice still very far away.

  “And what’s this about Royce?”

  “You didn’t hear about it?”

  “I didn’t hear,” he said. “What happened?”

  “It was just this stupid thing yesterday. I found his floats out back of Fortune.”

  “That’s where you’re at?” He wrote that down. “And then what?”

  “I went down to the Crab and told him not to do that anymore.”

  “And what’s this about him getting what he deserved?”