The Manatee Did It

by Kay Dew Shostak

  “There’s a live band on Centre Street. Everyone brings lawn chairs and hangs out. Sometimes we dance, but mostly we listen to the music and visit. Everybody goes.”

  “I’ll check with Craig, but it’s been a long week so we may just stay in.” Craig being around does come in handy as an excuse when I need one.

  We rush to help Miss Birdie out of her chair as she’s pushing to sit up straight. When we’ve got her up and on her own two feet, she says to me, “Jewel girl, you listen to me. Don’t wait on a man to have fun! Now, Mimi, it was good to see you. I hate that you didn’t get the chance to be closer to your grandson, but it is what it is.”

  We are all heading out the door, having told Mrs. Potts to not get up. I’m pulling the screen door shut as she yells, “Hey, Mantelle lady! Can you get me another cupcake? That sure was good.”

  I tell the others I’ll be right back. As I walk through the living room, I ask, “Chocolate fudge or cherry limeade?”

  “Cherry limeade sounds good.”

  I bring it to her as she turns on the television. “Thank you, ma’am,” she says. “You come visit me any time. I’ll tell Leigh Anne you say hi. I’m sure she’ll be back around to see you real soon. You and that house.”

  “Okay, um, sure,” I say. This time I get both doors closed behind me. Everyone’s in the cars. Birdie is with her daughter, and I see Annie is also in their car in the back seat.

  “I can give you a ride, Annie.”

  “I know, but they’ve got to go practically by my front door. It’s out of the way for you. See you tonight, right?”

  I open my mouth, but catch Birdie’s sharp eye. “Okay. Maybe—no, not maybe. Yes. Whether Craig is interested or not, I’ll try to be there.”

  Their car pulls out while I get in mine. I pull down the visor to block out the sun, which is hitting the windshield full on. I catch my reflection in the mirror on the back of the visor, meet my own eyes, and grimace. “You liar.”

  Chapter 25

  “Did your husband tell you he and I had another long talk this afternoon?” Officer Greyson asks when he gets to me. I’d seen him standing at the corner of the building on Centre, where he watched the Florida Friday crowd. I thought he also saw me, but I hoped not as I swerved off the sidewalk and into the crowd to avoid him. He cut me off as I tried to emerge from the unorganized jumble of lawn chairs, coolers, wagons, dogs, and people.

  “Oh! Hello. Looks like a good crowd tonight,” I say with a smile and a bit of a bounce. I changed into shorts, a T-shirt, and tennis shoes before leaving the house. My tennis shoes make me bounce like I want to run, but I don’t really run. Some of the bounce may just be that I’m agitated. Very agitated.

  Officer Greyson is tall, and I tilt my head up to look at him as he scans the crowd again. “Lots of folks enjoy it.” He drops his head and stares at me. “Your husband joining you for the concert?”

  “Uh, no. I’m not here for all that. No chair,” I say with a lift of my hands. “Just out for a walk and thought I’d check it out. Better get going, let you get back to work.”

  But Officer Greyson is persistent. “I asked you if your husband told you about our conversation this afternoon. He said you were out with some friends. He didn’t seem to know what friends or where you were. So, are you keeping secrets from him, or is he too preoccupied with the mess he’s in to listen to you?”

  Okay, neither of those is a good option. “He just forgot, I guess. Or, I don’t know, maybe I didn’t tell him.” I try to turn down Centre Street, which is closed for the concert. All those lawn chairs have to sit somewhere. “Glad you got to talk to him.”

  He reaches out and brushes my arm. “Mrs. Mantelle, you need to understand things are getting ready to change.”

  I feel like a bucket of ice water has been dumped over me with his words. They’re getting ready to arrest Craig. I can just feel it.

  “Our lead investigator is cutting his vacation short and will be here tomorrow to take over this investigation. He’s, well…” Officer Greyson drops his eyes from me and studies his shoes. “Let me put it this way.” He’s stepped closer, and his eyes are boring into mine. “He’ll make an arrest by tomorrow night. I’m confident of that.”

  “But if you’re confident of that, why aren’t you making an arrest? Who’s he going to arrest?”

  “Probably your husband.”

  There, another bucket of ice water. This one’s settling in my stomach. “Why? Do you really think Craig murdered that man?”

  He scoffs and takes a step back. “Have I arrested him?” Then he leans toward me and whispers, “I’m trying to give you a heads-up that you and your husband need to get on the same page and realize this is not a joke. I don’t think your husband is taking this seriously.”

  The bounce in my step dribbles away, and my earlier anxiety melts into exhaustion. “I agree, Officer Greyson. Craig is a one-track thinker. He knows what he knows and doesn’t think it’s logical for anyone to come to a different conclusion.”

  “All well and good until he runs up against someone that is basically illogical.” He says this to me with waggling eyebrows, bugging eyes, and several throat clearings, leaving me to know that the inspector showing up tomorrow is the object of his warning.

  Greyson steps back to watch the crowd around us. As I look up at him I make a decision. “I’m going to trust you.”

  He winks with a small smile. “Good move.” He pauses, does another quick scan, then turns away from the crowd and dips his head toward me once more. “I’ll prove it to you right now. I agree about your husband. I don’t believe he thinks outside the box enough to commit murder. Just don’t think it would register in his brain. I see it when I talk to him. However, he’s not being completely forthright about some things, and I’m not sure what that’s all about. That’s what he needs to clear up and get off the table. He can’t give Detective Johnson anything to grab on to. I mean, we all know your husband’s lying, right?”

  I grimace but then nod.

  “We don’t think he’s a murderer. However, Johnson will sniff out his lying and have him locked up by sunset tomorrow. He’s a good cop, but not a good investigator. You did not hear that from me.” He steps away, and with a slow turn takes in everything around us. I do the same, and then the squawk of a microphone pulls our attention to the stage.

  The band starts with shout-outs to the crowd and initial introductions; then the music starts with a popular country song about the beach. The crowd of about a hundred roars its approval as it sings along. Behind the band, clouds on the horizon wait for the sun to drop into them. The wide river that cuts off the island from the mainland is still, except for where a boat is leaving the marina and causing a wake. I spot Annie and Lucy in a crowd of people near the front of the stage. How much fun it would be to join them, but…

  Officer Greyson watches over his town, thumbs hooked in his utility belt, and as I step out in front of him, I wave, then point down the side street. I’ve turned back the way I came. He follows my point, then nods, approving of my direction.

  I’m going home.

  When I left our house earlier, tennis shoes ready to walk off my anxiety, it was because Officer Greyson is right. Craig didn’t want to discuss the murder or the marina or anything else because he had work to do. My default has always been that when Craig has work to do, that’s what needs to be done. I didn’t push back when he missed family events or when I thought he was too sick to work or when the kids needed help with homework.

  I see now that he can ignore the world because I always kept the world at bay. Now it looks ridiculous. What did I think he was doing, curing cancer? Solving world hunger? How can two supposedly intelligent people let their lives get so out of balance?

  The live music fades as I get closer to our street. There are a few people out walking their dogs, and the air is quite a bit cooler than it has been the last few nights. It feels like spring to me, but everyone today was complaining about winter c
oming back. Guess I still have my northern blood. The musical background is nice for my walk. When I look before crossing the street to get to our house, I see Craig walking away from me up the opposite street. So, I turn left and follow him. Maybe he’s realizing how out of balance things are, too, and is out looking to join me at Florida Friday. I jog a bit to catch up as he’s almost a block ahead.

  We can go downtown, have a drink outside somewhere, and listen to the music, enjoy the sunset. That would be a much better setting for us to talk than in that dark house, which he said this morning is such a weight on him. Yes, my chest feels lighter just seeing him out like this. This is what we need, to get out of that house—together.

  And yet… we’re not together. Why am I indulging in all this fairytale hoping? At least I can find out where he’s going unlike the last few times he’s disappeared. So, at the next street, I wait as a car goes by. When the car pulls away, I see Craig turn onto a walkway behind a large bush. I cross the street and try to look past the flowering bushes to where he went. As I come to the opening he disappeared into, I see the sign for Bellington Manor Inn.

  I peek around the tall bush and watch as the front door is thrown open. The man standing there is of an average height, with average hair and average clothes, yet as he speaks my mouth falls open and hangs there. “C. J., old friend, good to see you again,” the man says, and I can hear others welcoming my husband, too. Then the door is closed and the porch is empty.

  Now what?

  Chapter 26

  “What are you doing out here sneaking around?” a voice says. Its point is punctuated by a jab in my back.

  Spinning around, I see the older woman who lives in the cottage on these grounds. “Charlotte! You scared me!”

  She’s wearing a long, beige sleeveless jacket over beige pants and a light-colored turtleneck and using a cane, one of those with four little legs at the bottom. The cane she used to poke me. With her shoulders squared, she’s leaning on the cane, and she squints at me as she says, “I scared you because you were sneaking around.” She pokes the cane at my legs. “Come on. Go on up the sidewalk. Into the house. No sneaking around here, go right up to the front door.”

  “Oh, but I can’t. That was my husband.”

  That stops the poking. “That was C. J.? This damn twilight is murder on my eyes. I can’t see a thing. Well, if it was your husband, that’s more reason than ever to go on in, right?” She’s not only squinting at me now; she’s cocked her head like she knows something.

  Maybe she’s the one sneaking around. I squint right back at her and ask, “But what’s Craig doing here? Was the man that opened the door your son?”

  She grunts and leans on her cane with both hands. “Yes, of course. Frank Bellington the Third. He and that wife of his have cocktails about this time every night with their guests and invited friends. It just so happens to be the time I try to walk around the block each evening.” Her lips turn up into a grin, or maybe a grimace. “I try to keep an eye on things.” She mumbles, “Strangers drinking in my house,” as she turns and starts walking away, back down the sidewalk toward the path Annie and I took to her cottage the other day.

  “Can I walk with you?” I ask. “I don’t think I should interrupt the party. I’ll just wait to talk to Craig at home.”

  She doesn’t slow down or answer, but she waves her arm for me to follow along. “You know Pierson’s mother and wife are there right? Having drinks with your husband right now.”

  “I did hear they were staying there. I guess Mrs. Mantelle is friends with your son and daughter-in-law?”

  As the sun dips below the horizon there’s a noticeable darkening around me. As we turn the corner, Charlotte Bellington looks up at me. “And business partners, now that Pierson is gone. My greedy son Frank invested heavily in Pierson’s plans.”

  “Leigh Anne, Pierson’s mother, is involved in the marina business?”

  Charlotte stops and looks through a little clearing at the big, lit-up manor house. “Leigh Anne? No, Saundra, Pierson’s wife—the other Mrs. Mantelle, except that name’s not good enough for her. Her father is Daniel York. The Daniel York.”

  We hear another welcome from Charlotte’s son as someone else has joined the party. She cocks her head at me. This time she’s definitely wearing a grin. “Want to have some fun?”

  My tennis shoes come in handy as we turn off the path to her cottage and walk up the side of the back gardens. She has on sturdy old lady shoes, as she calls them, so we are both pretty quiet. Away from the lighted windows in the big house, off to the side, is a small, unadorned door. It’s old and reminds me of a servant’ entrance. Deep in the shadows of the old trees, away from the designed layout of landscape lights, I doubt we could be seen even by someone in the backyard. However, I feel better that it’s empty, because now we are most definitely sneaking.

  Charlotte grasps the handle of the door and twists it hard to the left, then pulls the door to her. The door eases open as she slowly pulls it. She turns to me and whispers, “They keep this door locked, but I lived in this house over sixty years before they threw me out. I know how to get past these old locks.”

  Up a handful of uneven concrete stairs, we enter a dark hallway, then follow voices and dim light to an open doorway. Charlotte peeks out, reporting back: “Coast is clear.”

  We scamper across the doorway that leads to the kitchen. Charlotte left her cane out in the bushes, said she didn’t need it in the house. We are in another dark hallway, and I can see a laundry room through a half-closed door on the wall beside us. The wall to our right is solid and dark, but there is muted light up ahead, coming through narrow slots at about shoulder height. When we get to the slots, Charlotte turns around and holds her finger up in front of her mouth. At the lines of light she reaches up and releases a piece of wallpaper so that it falls down the wall a few inches.

  She slides out a piece of thin cardboard, and light fills the area directly in front of us. She waves at me to stand next to her, so I do. We both look out through the inch-high slot.

  It’s a den, or maybe an old-fashioned library. There are walls of books, and I realize we are behind a bookcase ourselves. We are looking out above a row of books and below the next shelf. There’s Craig and the man from the front door, Charlotte’s son, Frank. Leigh Anne Mantelle is there, sitting on a love seat, holding a drink, with her legs crossed far too alluringly for a married woman of her age. However, that may just be my jealousy speaking because she looks really good. Her dark hair is down, and she’s wearing a short, cream-colored dress that shows off her tan and her cleavage. Another woman comes into the room and sits beside her on the love seat. She’s attractive, too, but doesn’t look as athletic. She’s about the same age as Leigh Anne, so I’m thinking she may be the lady of the house, Charlotte’s daughter-in-law. We don’t have a full view of the room, so I’m maneuvering around to see who’s closest to the wall because those are the voices we can hear.

  With a tinkling of ice in a glass, a woman to my right says in a low voice, “Everyone is running scared. Those cowards don’t want to touch Sophia now, and the cowards here are denying everything.”

  Another woman responds. “Pierson sure didn’t do any of us any favors getting himself killed like that. Can I top off your drink?” I’d thought the woman sitting beside Leigh Anne was Charlotte’s daughter-in-law, but this woman sounds like the hostess, offering to refill a drink. I bend close to Charlotte’s ear and ask as I point in the direction of the last voice, “Is that your daughter-in-law?”

  Charlotte shakes her head and points to the woman sitting with Leigh Anne. I point again at the woman we can’t see and mouth, “Who?”

  She shrugs and shakes her head. As the first woman, the one who called someone cowards, walks into the center of the room, I’m shocked to see that I recognize her. It’s Sheryl-Lee, the woman on the city council that I had lunch with. She walks up to Craig and puts her hand on his shoulder. I almost laugh when he jumps. He’
s not comfortable with strangers touching him. He steps away from her, then walks straight toward us. I back up and gasp, which gets me a sharp look from Charlotte. She slides the piece of cardboard back in place, tacks the wallpaper back up, and motions for me to leave. We sneak out the way we came in, and I hold her arm until we get to where she left her cane. She then scuttles away from me.

  “Charlotte, I’m sorry. They didn’t hear me.”

  I follow her toward her cottage, but she turns on me.

  “No, they didn’t hear you, but they could’ve.” She stares at me for a moment, then shakes her head. “I’m processing why in the world I showed that to you. What was I thinking? I barely know you.”

  “Well, I appreciate it, I guess.” I can’t hold in a sigh. “What that woman said about Pierson’s death was just awful. And seeing Sheryl-Lee touch my husband makes my skin crawl. You have no guess who the woman talking to Sheryl-Lee was? It couldn’t have been Pierson’s wife. Not with what she said about his death. Right? And who would Sheryl-Lee be calling cowards that backed out? The town? Or maybe the Yorks you mentioned?”

  Charlotte shuffles on to her door. “I have no idea. I’m tired now. Do I need to tell you I don’t want anyone else to know about this?”

  “But I need to talk about it with Annie and Lucy. See what they think. Get them to help me figure out what’s going on. What if the murderer was in that room?”

  She opens her door, steps inside, then speaks to me past the half-closed door. “Tell them you were eavesdropping, maybe outside one of the windows, but keep my name out of it. You hear me? I don’t need anyone knowing all my tricks with my house.” She pulls her cane in, closes the door, and clicks it locked.

  The path to her door is lit with a row of solar lights along the ground. They continue to the side of the property, so I follow them out of the dark, jungly area as the bugs and frogs really start chirping. I check before I step out onto the sidewalk that it’s empty. I cross over the street there instead of walking back up to the corner. Trying to act like I’m just out for a walk, I swing my arms and hum to the Eagles song I can hear the band playing in the distance. At the corner I nonchalantly look at the entrance to Bellington Manor Inn, where Charlotte had scared me earlier.