by Harper Lin
“Sure. Do you have to work?”
“Only a couple hours at close.” The next day was Saturday which, weirdly, was one of our slowest days, at least during the summer. Since all the rentals rolled over on Saturdays, not many people had the opportunity to come in. The renters from the previous week were too busy packing up and heading out of town, and the next week’s renters hadn’t found us yet. As a result, we usually broke the day’s shifts down so Sammy and I only had to worry about opening and closing, and some of the more established part-timers shared duty during the day.
“So maybe we can grab some lunch then see if we can figure out who my dad was calling?”
“Sounds good!” I replied.
We stood there, looking at each other awkwardly, for a few seconds, as if we were both waiting to see if the other had something more to say.
“Well, I guess I’ll see you tomorrow,” I said finally.
“Yeah.” Matty stood there for a second then hugged me.
It was… strange. Hugging him wasn’t unusual, but the nature of that hug seemed out of the ordinary. It seemed as though he held me maybe a little bit tighter and a little bit longer than normal. It wasn’t bad, just… different. When he let me go, I opened the door and stepped inside. Matty gave me a little wave.
“Good night,” he said before he headed back across the lawn to his car parked at his dad’s.
“Good night.” I watched him walk away then closed the door. I stood there for a minute and wondered if maybe there was something more to that hug than simple friendship.
Chapter 12
I knew I was tired, but I didn’t feel like going to bed yet. I went into the kitchen and poured myself a glass of wine. The house was quiet. So very, very quiet. I wandered through the first floor, flipping lights on as I went. The lights made the stillness feel a little less ominous.
I opened the door to my grandparents’ bedroom. I had never thought of my mother as a particularly sentimental person, but I supposed she had been since she’d never moved into their bedroom after they both passed away. She hadn’t really cleaned it out. Their clothes were still hanging neatly in the closet, their knickknacks still arranged on the dresser.
I picked up a bottle of my grandmother’s perfume and sprayed it in the air. Even after all these years, it still smelled just like her. My grandfather’s cologne was the same way. I sat on the edge of their bed, closed my eyes, and breathed them in. On the one hand, it felt as if they had just died a minute ago, but on the other, I felt every one of the eleven years since their passing. They’d died within months of each other, my grandmother from a quick-moving pancreatic cancer and my grandfather from heart failure in his sleep. Losing them in such quick succession had been hard on my mother and me, but my grandfather hadn’t been the same since my grandmother’s passing, and we knew he was ready to be with her again.
I opened my eyes and looked around the room. Maybe I should move down there. Clean out their things, give it a fresh coat of paint. There was no sense in leaving it as a museum or treating the whole house as if it were frozen in time, a tomb for ghosts to lurk about in. I supposed that meant I’d need to go through my mother’s things as well. Maybe I should go through the whole house. Spruce it up some, “young” it up, make it a place that a thirty-something single woman would live in. That sounded like a plan. Although the house still seemed dreadfully quiet. Maybe I needed a pet. A dog or a cat. Despite all of my grandfather’s wonderful traits, he had adamantly refused to allow a pet in the house, no matter how much I’d begged and pleaded. But there was no reason I had to keep it “people only” anymore. If I wanted a pet, I could get a pet. It wasn’t as though I had a job that kept me away for long hours each day—I could arrange my schedule at the café however I needed to so that I could come home to take care of Fido or Fluffy. That settled it. I was getting a pet. I would go to the shelter to find the perfect critter to love just as soon as I could.
I went upstairs and got ready for bed. I lay down and thought about what I would turn this room into when I moved downstairs into the master bedroom. Maybe an office. Or an exercise studio. I had my mother’s old room to do something with, so I could make one room into an office and the other into an exercise studio. Or a guest room. I could make one of the rooms into a guest room. Sooner or later one of my friends from New York would want to come up and spend some time at the beach. I thought for a while about how I could redecorate and possibly renovate the house. I wasn’t falling asleep. I let my mind wander, and it wasn’t long before it drifted to my investigation of Mr. Cardosi’s death.
I thought about that phone number. Which of us would call it—Matty or me? We shouldn’t try to call from Mr. Cardosi’s cell phone, should we? What if the person recognized his number? If it was the murderer, wouldn’t that tip him off that we were on his trail? So we should call from a different number. One of our cell phones? What if that could be traced? What if the murderer just did an online search for the number and it turned up Matty’s or my information?
I sat straight up in bed. If the murderer—or whoever the number belonged to, I was getting ahead of myself assuming it was the murderer’s number—could find out online who called him, why couldn’t I search for him? I got up and grabbed my laptop from my dresser. I was antsy for it to hurry up and turn on and for the browser to load. Slowness that normally didn’t bother me was driving me nuts.
Finally, I got the browser loaded and the search engine pulled up. I typed in the number I had copied off the call log on Mr. Cardosi’s phone. The number was for Mary Ellen’s Souvenirs and Gifts, the local souvenir shop. It was just down the street from my café. When we were kids, Mary Ellen Chapman, the owner of the shop, was just about the only adult in town who we were allowed to call by her first name. She’d said it was silly for us to call her Mrs. Chapman when her first name was right on the front of the store. Of course, at our parents’ insistence, we had to call her “Miss Mary Ellen,” not just “Mary Ellen,” but still, that made her instantly cool in our eyes. She was younger than our parents too—probably not as much as it seemed at the time because parents are decidedly ancient in their children’s eyes—but her youth made her even cooler to us.
As far as I could remember, she had been married once when she was young. Her husband had passed away, leaving her a chunk of money that was more than enough for her to move to Cape Bay, buy a house, and set up her souvenir shop. She didn’t just sell kitschy Cape Bay memorabilia—she also sold a lot of handmade jewelry, clothing, and art from local artisans, including herself. She was a knitter and made sweaters that I swore were every bit as nice as the ones I could buy in a department store. Her shop was a surprisingly good place to go to get gifts for people.
I wondered whether Mary Ellen was the woman Mr. Cardosi had been seeing. I’d seen her around town since I’d been back, and while she was getting older, she still seemed youthful and spunky. She didn’t really seem like the type who would be interested in Mr. Cardosi and all his grumpy argumentativeness, but what did I know? If he’d been spending time with Mrs. Collins to polish some of his rough edges, maybe he was a bigger softie than I’d thought. Mary Ellen was probably old enough that she could be considered “mature,” as Mrs. Collins had referred to her, and she certainly seemed like she knew how to text. It was a possibility.
I put my laptop away and crawled back into bed. Instead of calling the number tomorrow, I’d suggest to Matty that we just go over to the souvenir shop and talk to Mary Ellen in person. I’d be able to get a better read on her if I could see her while we talked to her. I couldn’t rule out the possibility that she was the murderer, as unlikely as it seemed. I drifted off to sleep as I planned out what I would say to her when we saw her.
I woke up late the next day—no surprise given that it had been after two when I’d finally fallen asleep. My text message alert finally roused me. I rolled over and looked at my phone. The message was from Matty.
What do you want for lunch?
<
br /> Was it lunchtime already? I looked at the time. It was definitely pushing noon. I hadn’t slept that late in ages.
I don’t know, I texted back. I need to get up and get a shower before we do anything.
I had barely gotten out of bed when Matty’s reply came in. He must have been waiting for my reply.
You’re not up yet?? Lazy! You better hurry. My fingers are getting itchy to call this number!
I realized I hadn’t told Matty what I’d discovered about the phone number last night.
Don’t call it! I texted back. I have something to tell you about it.
Ok, but you better hurry…
Matty seemed as though he was in a playful mood. I hurried into the shower and heard another text come in. I thought about jumping out to see what it said, but I didn’t really feel like cleaning up the water that would pour all over the bathroom floor in the process. Instead, I grabbed it as soon as I was done.
I’m going to head over. I’ll be at my dad’s whenever you’re ready.
Matty’s house was so close by, I needed to hurry if I didn’t want him to be waiting forever. I reached into my closet, instinctively grabbing a black shirt. But I stopped myself. Black seemed so New York, and I wasn’t in New York anymore. Black once in a while wasn’t a bad thing, but I didn’t need to wear it every day. I went across the hall to my mother’s room. I was lucky that she had stayed stylish and my size. I pulled out a pretty cornflower top I had always admired. I slid it over my head and looked at myself in the mirror. It suited me as it had my mother. It brought out the flecks of blue we both had in our eyes.
I finished getting ready and headed over to Mr. Cardosi’s house. I rang the bell and looked around while I waited for Matty to open the door. The house was in decent shape—new paint, well maintained. The flower beds needed some attention, but I supposed that was up to Matty, or his real estate agent if he decided to sell the place. The door opened.
“Hey!” Matty said exuberantly. “You look nice! You’re wearing a color!”
I glanced at my shirt. I wasn’t sure if I was more surprised that he’d noticed that my shirt was blue or that I usually wore black. “Thanks. You look nice too,” I said, somewhat automatically.
“This?” He gestured at his T-shirt and shorts. “Your standards must have dropped since you left the city.”
I laughed. Maybe his outfit wasn’t the most stylish, but his hair looked good and I kind of liked his scruffy, unshaven weekend look.
“You ready to go?” Matty asked before I could say anything else.
“Sure, where are we going?”
“I have a craving for lobster rolls,” he replied. “Sound good?”
My mouth started watering as soon as he said it. “Yes!” From the way Matty laughed at me, I probably sounded a little too enthusiastic.
“Well, let’s go,” he said, leading the way down the sidewalk.
There was only one place to go for lobster rolls in Cape Bay. Well, there was more than one place to go, but the locals knew only one place was worth going to. Sandy’s Seafood Shack was pretty much the best place on the beach for any New England seafood—lobster rolls, fresh lobster, clam chowder in the winter. Some other places got by on the strength of the tourist trade and plenty kept lobster rolls on their menus just because they knew people would order it, but Sandy’s was pretty much the be all, end all for those of us who lived there year-round.
Sandy’s was way at the end of the beach, about a fifteen-minute walk from my house. One of my favorite things about Cape Bay, at least the part where I lived, was that I could pretty much walk anywhere. I had a driver’s license and a car, but between growing up in Cape Bay, going to school in Boston, and living in New York for so long, walking everywhere was second nature to me. It felt weird to drive anywhere that took less than thirty minutes to walk to. On our walk, we chit-chatted about the neighborhood, how things had changed in town since we were kids, and our old friends from growing up. We were at Sandy’s in practically no time.
Lots of people assumed that one of the married couple who opened Sandy’s was actually named Sandy. Both of them were called that on a regular basis. Now that their kids ran the place, they also got called Sandy all the time by well-meaning tourists. Whenever somebody asked, “Are you Sandy?” whoever was being asked would just smile and say, “Sure am!” The name was actually a nickname for the owners’ dog though. Her name had been Josie, but she liked to roll on the beach and get all sandy. Josie/Sandy had long since passed away and been replaced by other dogs, all of whom they continued to name Sandy. I think they were on Sandy Five by then.
As we settled into our lobster rolls, Matty asked me what I had wanted to tell him about the phone number we’d found.
I finished chewing and put my lobster roll down. “It’s Mary Ellen’s number.”
Matty about choked. “What?”
“Mary Ellen Chapman,” I clarified. “It’s the souvenir shop’s number.”
“You think my dad was dating Mary Ellen?” Matty seemed more surprised than I’d expected.
“Well, I don’t know if he was dating her, but that’s whose number he was calling. I figured we could just go over there and talk to her instead of calling.”
“Mary Ellen Chapman,” Matty repeated, seemingly not hearing what I’d said. He shook his head slowly, and I thought I saw a bit of a smile on his face.
“Why do you seem so… I don’t know, surprised? I mean, she’s younger than your dad, but not that much. She was already running the souvenir shop when we were kids.”
“No, I know,” Matty said. “It’s just—” He stopped talking and stared into space a little.
“It’s just what?” I took a sip of my soda. Soda felt right with lobster rolls.
“It’s just—” he repeated. “Well, I had a little bit of a crush on Mary Ellen growing up.”
Chapter 13
It was my turn to choke. I narrowly managed to avoid spitting soda all over Matty. “You what?” Somehow it seemed completely ludicrous to me that Matty had had a crush on Mary Ellen.
He shrugged, blushing a little. “You know, she was young and pretty and—what’s so funny?”
I was giggling uncontrollably without really being sure why.
“Seriously, what’s so funny?” Matty asked again, starting to giggle himself.
“I don’t—I don’t know!” I gasped through my giggles. “There’s just something—something so funny about you having a crush on her and then your dad dating her twenty years later!” I was laughing so hard I was shaking the table.
“I don’t know if you laughing so hard about it should make me feel bad or not.” Matty laughed.
“It shouldn’t make you feel any particular way. It’s just—it struck me as funny.” I was getting my giggles under control, taking big deep breaths to calm myself down.
I gradually managed to stop laughing, and we finished our lunch. We agreed to head over to the souvenir shop right afterward. I left the table to go wash my hands, and when I came back, Matty was standing by the table.
“Ready to go?” I asked.
“Ready to go,” he replied.
We walked toward the front of the restaurant, where the cash register was.
“Did you grab the check from the table?” I asked him.
“Yup, and paid,” he said, walking toward the door instead of the register.
“What!”
Matty grinned as he pushed the door open. “You got up. I paid. Too late again.”
I glanced at the girl at the register, and she nodded and said, “Yup, he already paid.”
I scowled at Matty as I walked through the door. “You were supposed to let me pay this time.”
“That was something you decided,” Matty said. “I never agreed to it.”
“But it’s not fair for you to always pay!”
“Fair only counts in horseshoes and—no, that’s wrong,” Matty said, interrupting himself. “The point is, I don’t care. I i
nvited you out to lunch. I paid. Simple as that.”
“But I invited you last night and you paid!”
“Yeah, you’re right,” he said.
“So shouldn’t I pay today?”
“Apparently not.”
I glared at the back of his head as he walked down the sidewalk. Eventually he turned around and looked at me.
“You coming?” he asked.
“Are you going to let me pay next time?”
“Is that the only way you’ll come with me?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Then yes, you can pay next time.” He muttered something else as I walked toward him.
“What was that?” I asked.
“What was what?” He had an innocent look that gave away how guilty he was.
“What did you say after you said I could pay next time?”
He threw his arm around my shoulders and leaned his head toward me. “I definitely didn’t say that there was no way you were paying.”
He had a big grin. I knew I wouldn’t win that battle, at least not that day, so I just shook my head.
It was about a ten-minute walk to Mary Ellen’s store. It was a relatively warm day but not too humid, so the walk wasn’t bad.
“So how are we going to do this?” I asked when we got to the block with Mary Ellen’s store.
“You’re the investigator,” Matty said.
“I’m not an investigator,” I scoffed.
“You’re the one who’s been doing the investigating?” Matty corrected, a question in his voice, seemingly unsure how I wanted to categorize my inquiries. “Seems like you’ve done well so far with Cell Phone Guy and Mrs. Collins, so I don’t see why you shouldn’t take the lead here too.”
It made me nervous, but his confidence in me felt good. I thought about how to approach Mary Ellen as we got closer. With Chris the Cell Phone Guy and Mrs. Collins, I’d kept my cards pretty close to my chest, but I felt as though it might be better to be a little more open with Mary Ellen. We got to the store, and Matty opened the door for me, jingling the bell above the door. Mary Ellen appeared from the back as we stepped inside.