by Ellis Quinn
“That’s nice. Stacy. The blonde one? She’s very pretty.”
“She’s an officer of the law.”
“She can be pretty, too, you know. And be an officer of the law.”
He said, “Get it out of your system.”
“Get what out of— She’s a little young for you, isn’t she?”
He rolled his eyes and shook his head. “She’s my partner for the day, Bette. She’s twenty-five. Hey,” he said looking her way now, “you remember Tony McDonald?”
“Ugh,” she said and turned up her nose.
“Oh,” he said, “I thought you liked Tony. Stacy is Tony’s daughter.”
“She’s probably pretty handsy then. She ever pat your bottom and call you sweetheart?”
He chuckled, but she didn’t see what was funny.
“What are you laughing about?”
He pinched the bridge of his nose and leaned against the driver's door. “I missed you.”
She scowled at him, mouth tucking to one side. It wasn’t what she expected him to say.
She took another deep breath, looked at her old friend, a guy she’d missed for twenty years and spent that time forcing herself not to think about him. Looking real good in his black police uniform, laughing at her expense with his eyes closed and squeezing his nose. The two of them were grown up now but behaving like they did in high school. She said, “Okay, smarty-pants. Tell me why you’re arresting Cherry.”
“That’s better,” he said, putting his hands in his lap, and shifting in his seat so he faced her.
“Tell me.”
He said, “We’ve got security footage.”
She tried not to sound angry. “That shows her doing what?”
“We’ve got security footage of Cherry going around the back of her café.”
“There’s a camera out front of the brewery?”
“You got it. So are you listening?”
“I’m listening,” she said, and really was. She showed him an attentive face.
Marcus said, “We’ve got Cherry heading down her alley . . .”
“Uh-huh?”
“And she’s got the anchor, Bette.”
“She has the anchor? The Crockett Anchor?”
“We have her on camera around behind her café and she’s got the Crockett Anchor.”
“What time?”
“Midnight.”
“And you’re sure it’s the right day?”
“The video? Of course it’s the right day, Bette,” he said.
“Fine,” she said. “So what? She’s got the anchor. Charge her with criminal mischief. I’ll call Pris, and Pris’s lawyer will have her out before we get to the police station and you can even put her in.”
“Furthermore,” he continued, “about twenty minutes before we see Cherry with the anchor, another man arrives and heads down the alley.”
“Who’s the man?”
“Not sure. We only see the back of his head.”
“Well, that doesn’t make any sense. Then what? What else does Jonas’s camera show you?”
“Shows Cherry an hour later—coming out the front door of the café with another guy.”
“They left together? Wait—another guy. A different guy?”
“A different guy.”
“You’re sure?”
“A different guy, Bette. And this one we know.”
“Who?” she said, frowning.
“It was Stephen Dawson.”
She slumped into the passenger seat, trying to make sense of it all.
“What do you make of it?”
She thought more. “The two of them together?”
“Yup. Clear as day.”
It didn’t make sense. “If they were together, why wouldn’t they tell you that? It would be their alibi.”
“Their alibi is also their implication.”
“You think they plotted Jack’s murder together?”
“Work it out with me, Bette.”
“I can’t even fathom it right now, Marcus. Honest, I’m still reeling. Look at this.” She held out her hands, and they trembled.
“You think your California friend lied to you?”
She looked his way, locked onto his big blues. “I can guarantee you a hundred percent Cherry did not kill Jack Dawson.”
“There’s that fire.”
“Knock it off.”
“Ouch,” he said and smiled. “Just got burned.”
“Are you trying to get me mad?”
“I’m riling you, then I’m a kick you out of my cop car and watch you stomp around knocking all the bushes to see what comes running out.”
“I feel so used now,” she said, and softened a little.
“Be careful,” he said, and nudged his chin to the passenger door, indicating it was time to go. “Wait,” he said.
She turned back.
“What were you coming to the café for?”
“See my son. He’s been helping Cherry out here.”
“Tall redheaded kid? Maybe got some of his mom’s fire?”
“Uh-oh. What’d he do?”
“I don’t think he likes me much.”
“Coming to arrest Cherry.”
“Think he’s sweet on her?”
She chuckled. “I know he’s swee— Hey, don’t do that, Marcus.”
“Do what?”
“Poking around my son, thinking he might have something to do with this.” Now her anger was real, and she could feel the blazing heat on her cheeks.
“Bette, Bette,” Marcus said in a soft but gravelly voice. He extended a hand to her side of the cop car and held her wrist. “That’s not what I’m doing. If I ever thought that, I’d come to you first, and talk plainly, I swear. Look, there’s more, and I don’t know how it fits in, but I know how it looks.”
She looked at his hand where it held her, covering up the jam stain on her old suede jacket. “Something to do with Vance?”
He shook his head no. “Something to do with Cherry.” He looked up and out her side window.
She followed his gaze and saw now Jason Mitchum holding open the door of the café, his huge arm extended outward like a wing while Stacy walked past him and out next to the Bean’s patio. Vance was there, too, lurking in the café still, and scowling. Stacy was in the black Cove police uniform, wearing bright blue latex gloves. She held a clear freezer baggie, and inside the freezer baggie there was a large kitchen knife, the blade’s cheek darkened by what must be blood but had gone all frosty.
Marcus said, “We found that in one of her freezers.”
Her insides sunk and a hopeless feeling tried climbing up her well walls. “That’s the knife that killed Jack Dawson?”
“Looks like it. But we’ll know for sure once we get it tested.”
“That’s not good,” she murmured, still with eyes out watching Stacy put the knife in a zippered cooler bag with the police logo on it.
“Not good at all. Looks like you’ve got some work to do, you’re so sure Cherry’s innocent.”
“I swear she is,” she said, her voice like a distant whisper.
“Now you see why I had to do what I did with Cherry?”
She nodded. “I do.”
“I’ve gotta pick up Stephen Dawson too. They’re in on something together, and innocent as you think they may be, they’ve been lying to my face.” He patted her arm and then returned to his side of the cop car.
She hooked two fingers into the door lever, still thinking. “Go easy on her,” she said. “If she’s done anything wrong, it’s to help someone else. I know her heart, Marcus, and it’s a good one.”
“Remember I said be careful, Bette,” he said as she opened the cop car door and closed it behind her without slamming. Stacy walked past with the zippered bag slung over a shoulder and then knocked the back door of the cop car. Marcus opened it from inside and Stacy slid the evidence in and closed the door.
Bette turned, headed for the café and Jason Mitchum said to
her as he passed, “How you doing, Miss Bette?” tipping his cop hat a foot above her.
“Been better, Jason, hope you’re doing good.”
Steaming Bean patrons congregated around the front door and in the patio area under the rainbow umbrellas. All the work it took to get them back into the café, and now this. Why on earth hadn’t Cherry told them she’d been with Stephen that night? What on earth were she and Stephen up to?
“This doesn’t look good at all,” the hipster mustache guy said, looking forlorn and standing with hands in the pockets of his leather jacket by the gate that went around the patio seating. He looked behind Bette at Cherry sitting in the back of the police vehicle. Guy was watching his crush get taken away, and it made her think of another person hurting right now.
Vance saw her coming and held open the door for her. Another cop was in there and said something to Vance about not opening the door and Vance told the cop, “It’s okay, she works here too.”
Inside the empty Bean there were only cops and Terry and Vance. Both of them looking dumbfounded. But she had to be the strong one.
She put an arm around her son’s waist and hugged herself against him, told him with confidence. “Don’t you worry. We’re gonna get this figured out.”
THAT EVENING
Though Cherry’s arrest had squashed their appetites, they did the best to pick through the platters that Bette served in the kitchen sitting room. It was Bette, Vance, and Pris, all scooted close to the coffee table with the big brass revolutionary cannon pushed aside, two platters with deviled eggs, old cheddar cheese cubes, pickles and pearl onions, and they split between the three of them two sandwiches made with beef pancetta on toasted ciabatta.
Vance pushed back from the couch, lounged against its seat-back, and hefted Ripken to sit in his lap. He turned lazy eyes toward the flickering fire, and at Buster asleep at the fireplace’s mouth. The light from the fire drew a thin pencil line of yellowy light along her son’s handsome features, and her heart went out to him.
Pris sat back now as well and said, “It don’t matter what that Marcus says, I still don’t believe it.”
Vance mumbled toward the fire, “I don’t believe it either.”
“Marcus has the evidence,” Bette said, “but I have to say I’m flabbergasted.”
Vance said, “What on earth was she doing in there with Stephen?”
Bette chewed her cheek and watched her son. He had a thing for a certain pretty young Cherry Jambo, and his heart was getting broke. His crush in jail, evidence of her alone with some other guy part of what put her in there. She said to him, “I don’t think there was anything romantic going on with them.”
Vance shot her a look she hadn’t seen since when he was in high school and bubbling with hormones, saying to her, “What does that mean? That’s not what I’m saying, Mom.”
She nodded, Vance all hung up on a girl and lying to himself about it so he could lie to his mother better. Poor kid.
Pris said, “Hold on now,” and they both looked to her to see what new scheme she had. Pris was deep in thought, eyes wide but unfocused, and she leaned forward to snatch up the last pearl onion, leaned back in the plaid armchair, plucked off the onion from the toothpick with her teeth. They waited longer. Her features down-turned, and she said, “No, that wouldn’t work.”
Bette’s and Vance’s shoulders slumped, and they both dipped their chins to think better on the subject.
Almost fifteen minutes went past where they said nothing. It was a charming and peaceful moment if it wasn’t loaded with so much existential weight for a friend of theirs. The snoring dog, the crackling fire, the hundreds-year old sitting room, the glasses of fancy French wine Pris brought over from the Promise.
It was Vance who was the first to snap. He lifted Ripken and set him aside, clapped his hands on his thighs and shot forward on the leather sofa. He growled out of frustration, ran his hand through his thick waves of red hair, then thumped the heel of a fist on his knee. “I can’t take this. I can’t even think anymore. I got to get out for a walk. . . . Hey Buster,” he said, standing up now. Buster jolted awake and jumped to his feet, ready for action. His head cocked and tilted toward Vance, waiting to hear what the next adventure was.
Pris said, “Whyn’t you take that fool cat with you, too.”
“Yeah, that would go over real swell,” Vance said. Then to Ripken, who curled on the warm spot of the couch he’d abandoned: “What do you say, Rip? You want to go run around on the beach with me and the dog?”
Ripken curled up with his back to them all and closed his eyes.
Vance looked to his great aunt, gave her an I-told-you-so expression.
Bette chuckled, said, “Where you headed with my dog, kiddo?”
Vance and Buster headed into the kitchen, going toward the hall that would lead out to the side yard. “Just going down to the beach. I need some fresh air, clear my mind, and think this through. . . . Do I need a leash?”
“Buster’s good if you stay on the property.”
Footsteps—doggy and son—clacked down the pantry hall and then the side door opened and closed. Outside, Vance clapped his hands to encourage Buster to run along with him.
Pris still sat in contemplation, hands pressed together at her nose and chin in the attitude of prayer. Bette lifted their bottle of red and it was empty. “Another bottle? Or is it getting too late?”
“How about something stiffer?” Pris said.
“Suits me fine,” she said, “but I haven’t stocked up. Let’s take a look what Pearl’s got hiding in her cupboards.”
Bette moved to the something hi boy —a piece of furniture that had been in their family for at least a hundred years—and opened the double doors. Assorted bottles lined the interior: vodka and gin, rye and aperitifs, two colors of rum . . . she pulled out a bottle of bourbon.
Pris snapped her fingers, a loud sound in their peaceful space. Bette spun, thinking her aunt had figured it all out. But Pris pointed to the open bar and said, “That crystal decanter at the back there, that’s some good cognac I brought a while ago.”
Bette put back the bourbon and brought out the crystal decanter and two port glasses, set them on the table, then squeaked off the decanter’s crystal lid and poured them each a short glass. They imbibed and thought and Bette said, “Let’s start from the beginning again.”
Pris said, “We got somebody on camera sneaking around the Foundation building, camera’s got them swiping up the anchor and leaving with it.”
“A man,” Bette said. “According to Marcus. We haven’t seen the video.”
“So it’s not Cherry?” Pris said.
They both looked at each other. Neither of them believed it was. Bette said, “I doubt it. . . . Let’s pretend it isn’t.”
“Well, who was it then? A man . . . or perhaps a woman with what some cop might describe as a masculine figure.”
“Could it be Charlotte?”
“It’s not impossible,” Bette said. “She’s tall and skinny, not exactly got that va-va-voom figure.”
“Then what we got? Hard evidence shows Cherry with the anchor going down the alley beside the Bean.”
“Wait a second,” Bette said. “Or could it be a different woman? Does that make sense?”
“What if it’s the same woman?”
“Or, say a man with a slender figure.”
Pris said, “How do we know that was Cherry in the alley, Marcus said so?”
“He did. When I asked him who the guy was walking into the alley twenty minutes later, he said he didn’t know, that the guy’s back was to the camera. This is what I’m thinking: is it just supposition? If you couldn’t see the man’s face going down the alley, maybe he didn’t see Cherry’s face either.”
Pris said, “Just sees a woman walking down the alley, figures it’s the woman who owns it.”
“I could see it that way,” Bette said.
“But it’s Cherry leaving an hour later.”
<
br /> “I think that might be the only confirmation. When you see her coming out of the Bean, you can see it’s Stephen and her. See their faces. That doesn’t mean she was the one walking down the alley with the anchor. . . . Is that something?”
Pris said it could be. “But what if it is Cherry? What if she just pulled some prank she thought might be funny—to get back at Charlotte?”
“Marcus told me Cherry’s got secrets.”
“Haven’t we all?”
“We do,” she said. “He told me to . . . I don’t know . . .”
“What, watch out for her?” Pris rolled her eyes at the silly thought.
“Not like that. Just that she was hiding something.”
“What could Cherry be hiding that would have Mr. Marcus so worried?” Pris chuckled and folded her arms, smiling and looking off into the fire, riding a pretty good cognac wave right now.
“He asked me if I knew she was from California and when I said I did, he asked me did I know where.”
“What does that matter?”
“Said she was from Beverly Hills.”
Pris shrugged. Then her eyes narrowed, and she leaned forward again. She took a sip of her cognac and set it down. “How do we know Jack was dead out back a the café right at that moment we have confirmation Cherry and Stephen are leaving the Bean?”
“Right,” Bette said, “even if Cherry had the anchor at midnight, then left there at one in the morning, how do we know Jack was dead then?”
Pris said, “How can we prove that?”
“No idea. That’s up to forensics, I guess. It wouldn’t even make sense for Cherry to kill Jack Dawson. For what reason? But now Stephen . . .”
“Stephen swore he didn’t do it.”
“I know, but at least he would have a reason.”
“Vinnie’s crabbing business.”
“Right. Two brothers fighting for control of the family empire.”
“Charlotte’s Empire.”
“Back to this again,” Bette said.
“Back to what?”
“Could a mother kill her son? Can you imagine that? Over something so dumb.”
“Crazier things’ve happened, young Bette. It’s called filicide.”
“As mean as that woman is though . . .”
