The Manatee Did It

by Kay Dew Shostak

  I pause, stepping behind a large, moss-covered tree. There are people standing out on the sidewalk. I see Frank Bellington and Craig and the pale dress Leigh Anne was wearing. Is any shade of white appropriate when your son was just killed? Anyway, Craig steps away from the entrance, and hell’s bells, look who’s walking with him—Sheryl-Lee. I wait to let them turn the corner and get ahead of me. Then I follow on this side of the road, the side our house is on. Craig is walking fast, and when he gets to the gate, he darts ahead of her a bit. They talk for a minute, and then he sharply turns and strides up the long drive. I wait in the shadows while he walks into our house and she walks toward the marina and the music. Then, just as I get ready to step out, I see someone across the street trip on one of the roots that invade the sidewalks in this area. The shadows are deep there, and I can’t see much except that the person gets up and darts around the far corner.

  Someone was watching Craig and Sheryl-Lee.

  Or were they watching me?

  Chapter 27

  Dashing up to our gate, sliding through it, then running full tilt up the sidewalk, up the steps, across the porch, and finally into our house, I feel like I did when we were kids and would scare ourselves out in the backyard with ghost stories. That mad rush to get inside to light and safety.

  Craig steps out of the kitchen. “Jewel? What are you doing? Where have you been? We were invited out for cocktails, and I couldn’t find you. Why didn’t you take your phone?”

  “No pockets. I was just going out for a quick walk,” I spit out while catching my breath against the front door. “Cocktails? Where?” This is a possibly pleasant surprise. I thought I’d have to drag all of this out of him.

  “Bellington Manor Inn, that huge place just up the street. Can you believe I know the owner?” He walks over to the sofa, but before he sits down, he turns to me. “Oh, I’m having some wine. Can I get you a glass?” He pauses and stares at me. “Are you okay?”

  “Sure. I mean, sure, I’m okay.” I walk toward the kitchen, turning on lamps as I go and trying to breathe normally. “You sit down, I’ll get myself a glass.” Opening the fridge I say loudly, “What’s it like? The manor? What are the owners like?”

  “Big. The house, not the owners. And that woman that came by the other day, Pierson’s mother? She’s staying there, so she was there along with Pierson’s wife.”

  So that probably was his wife that was so awful about his death. I shiver, then decide to sit on the other end of the sofa. As I sit Craig reaches out his glass to clink with mine. “To Friday,” he says with a smile.

  After a sip, I nudge him on. “So who else was there?”

  He shakes his head a bit, then rolls his eyes. “This councilwoman, King is her name, I think. She comes on pretty strong. Frank warned me about her.”

  “Warned you how?”

  “You’re going to laugh at this, but apparently she’s known for sleeping around with influential men. For some reason Frank thinks I’m influential.” He chuckles as he looks at the wine in his glass.

  “So, did she come on to you?”

  He laughs and raises his eyebrows. “She did kind of. Followed me right to our gate. What is it with women like that?”

  Poor Craig. He’s never picked up on women flirting with him. He’s never seen himself as attractive, and looking at him now I realize he’s probably at this age the most attractive he’s ever been. I really hadn’t noticed that. With a laugh, hiding a bit of sadness, I say, “I don’t know. I actually had lunch with her the other day. She’s best friends with one of Annie’s daughters.”

  I sit my glass down and turn toward him, tucking my leg up on the couch. “Listen, we need to talk. I ran into Officer Greyson downtown. He said he’d been here to talk to you?”

  “Yeah, this afternoon, but I had a conference call so I rushed him along. I hate that they haven’t solved this murder yet, but that’s not my job. It’s their job. And since apparently I won’t be getting the marina position, I need to keep the job I have now.”

  “If you get arrested for murder, you won’t be able to do either job, right?”

  He scoffs, pulling his chin in. “How could I be arrested for murder? Don’t exaggerate, Jewel. That’s not like you.” He stiffens and leans away from me.

  “Greyson says the department’s lead investigator is coming home early from vacation specifically to work this case. He says he likes to make arrests, and since you’re the one obviously not being truthful, you’ll be his first suspect.”

  I brace for Craig’s affront at my accusation. Instead he sighs and hangs his head, his chin resting on his chest. Then he tips his head up and he wrinkles his nose at me. “I’m not a very good liar, am I?”

  “No.” I reach out a hand and lay it on his arm. “Talk to me. Let’s figure this out. I promise I won’t be mad.”

  He bites his lip and then shakes his head a few times, as though he’s psyching himself up for our talk. “Okay, first the inheritance. Wait, I’m getting some more wine. Can I get you some?” he asks as he stands up.

  “I’ll join you. I’m actually starving. Did you eat something earlier?” I follow him into the kitchen.

  “Just finished up that pasta you brought home last weekend from the Italian place. I could eat something.” He pulls open the fridge and grabs the bottle of white wine. “Not much to eat in here.”

  “I wasn’t counting on you being home all week.”

  I refill our glasses while he rummages in the drawers of the fridge. He pulls out some cheese. “Do we have bread? How’s a grilled cheese sound?”

  “Yes, we have some of that five-grain bread. Never made grilled cheeses with it, but it sounds delicious.” I hand him his glass and reach around him to get the butter from the door before he closes the refrigerator.

  We work together at the simple task of putting together grilled cheese sandwiches. As we do he fills me in on the inheritance and how the five-year agreement works. “I just had to agree to not sell the house for five years, but there was nothing in the contract about not trading it, so that’s where the Pierson deal came in. I had the real estate lawyer look it all over, and while he said we might be able to get out of the inheritance rules, he didn’t think any of it was too out of line.”

  I watch the butter begin to sizzle to avoid looking at my husband. “But why didn’t you tell me?”

  I can almost hear him shrug before he says, “I didn’t think you’d agree to it. No, that’s not exactly right.” He pauses long enough that I look away from the butter and at him. “Honestly, I don’t think I thought you’d care. You seemed in such a hurry to move forward, do something, anything, and this was right there in front of us.” He shakes his head as he looks at me. “We really didn’t talk much at all about it, did we?”

  “No, we didn’t. Hand me the bread.” I lay down two slices in the browning butter, add slices of cheese, then add the last two pieces of bread.

  He picks up his glass of wine, hands me mine, then leans against the counter. “Anyway. Pierson contacted me almost immediately via email once I signed the inheritance papers. Maybe he didn’t know about it until it was filed or something, I don’t know. At first he told me how we’d have to get together and catch up. And you know that’s just not me, so I shut that down pretty quick. But he had all these questions about our plans, my career, the house, so I answered those but tried to make it clear I wasn’t interested in getting to know each other. He was so much younger than us, so I just didn’t see the purpose. Then when we got here and I saw this place—not just this house, but the town—it all came back. This whole small-town thing where your name is everything. Well, you might’ve noticed, I couldn’t get out of here fast enough. Another confession. The company didn’t call begging me to take this job in South Florida. I called them begging. Cut my rate and everything.”

  I flip the sandwiches and press down hard on each of them with the spatula. Maybe a little too hard. I knew it. I knew he wanted to go back to work all
along and just refused to acknowledge it. Taking a deep breath, I tell my husband his big secret wasn’t such a big secret. “I guess I knew all along you weren’t ready to retire. You love your job. It’s who you are.”

  “Sorry, Jewel, but…” He shrugs, then gets two plates out of the cabinet. “Anyway, when Pierson told me his real reason for reaching out, well, I thought maybe if we could unload this house, live down at the marina for a year or two, it’d really be a whole new start for us.”

  “So why couldn’t you tell me about that?”

  “Pierson told me you couldn’t know. No one could know. By that time I was in South Florida and was really just letting him and the York people handle it.” As I hand him his plate, he meets my eyes. “Plus, you know how I am when I’m on a job.”

  “Yes. I know.” I sit across from him at the table. “So, the York people? Who are they?”

  “That’s the company Pierson works for. His wife’s family. Matter of fact she’s the CEO. Big company, mostly in real estate, I believe. Big players down south.” As he talks I remember how Charlotte sounded when she mentioned Pierson’s wife’s father, Daniel York.

  As we eat, I immediately feel better, and my mind seems to wake up. “Your laptop? Was that what someone broke in for?”

  He grins. “It was. How did you know that?”

  “Cherry saw the cords and realized something was missing. So who took it?”

  “Don’t know. I just know Ray Barnette, that councilman that owns all the trash stuff? He called and said he had it. Honestly, I hadn’t missed it until he called. Didn’t want to call the police up and admit I hadn’t missed it. I figured they had enough to deal with with the murder.”

  As his voice trails off like he’s explained it all, I prod him. “So? What else did he say when he told you he had it?”

  He pops the last bite of grilled cheese in his mouth and while he chews he frowns like what Ray had to say is not worth remembering. “Just that the person that took it was really sorry and that it was a mistake. Since I was out of the running for the marina job, I didn’t care who knew what the plans were. The rest of the stuff on the laptop was personal stuff, correspondence and such. Barnette said it was a mistake. I was just glad to get it back. I hated the idea of filling out an insurance claim for it.”

  The thing about Craig not being able to lie is that he’s also not able to decipher when someone else is lying. He just doesn’t think people have ulterior motives. He accepts everything at face value like lines on his engineering sketches. They are what they are.

  “You have to tell the police this,” I say. “It may have something to do with the murder.”

  “My personal laptop? I don’t see how.” He stands up. “But if you think it’ll help, sure. I’ll tell this detective tomorrow. All I know is I have to be back on the jobsite Monday morning, so they need to get things figured out.” He picks up both our plates, crosses the kitchen with them, and slides them into the dishwasher.

  I turn around in my chair to see him. “So since we’ve been here, have you met Pierson’s wife? What’s her name, Sandra? No, Saundra.”

  “Nope, didn’t meet her until tonight, but I was supposed to meet with her a couple times before. Twice Pierson set up appointments for me with her that were cancelled after I got there. The other night, I drove all the way down to Jacksonville to meet her, but she never showed. Later Pierson called to say she’d had something come up, like I hadn’t just driven an hour out of my way.”

  “So that’s where you were. Why didn’t you tell me?”

  He shrugs. “I told you, he said no one could know. Not even you.”

  That’s Craig. Ever the rule-follower. “So, when was the other time you were supposed to meet her?”

  “The day I was at the marina. She was supposed to meet me on the boat, but when I got almost to the boat, Pierson met me on the dock and said she wasn’t even in town. He acted like he was in a hurry to get rid of me, and he was really mad when I told him I had to talk to his wife. He said that he was handling everything and that his wife wasn’t involved in our deal.” He’s wiping down the counters as he continues. “That made me mad because he’s always acted like it was a big project for York and that really impressed me. He had said they wanted to give me a huge raise and all, but then the CEO, Saundra York, doesn’t even know about the deal?”

  My eyes are bugging out of my head. “Did you tell the police all this?”

  “Of course not!” He turns to me with his hands on his hips like he’s explaining all of this to a child. “Remember, I told them I wasn’t at the marina. Besides, Pierson and I just talked for a few minutes and we weren’t on the boat. It wasn’t a meeting like everyone, including you, keeps asking about. By the time I left the dock, I was frustrated, felt like a dupe. So I left there that day determined it was all over. I decided to ignore that it ever happened. Plus, you seemed happy enough here, and I had the job in South Florida that could easily last close to five years. I decided I could manage to live here a weekend or so a month.” He smiles and takes a deep breath. “Living in a holding pattern isn’t ideal, but we’ve made it work okay, right?”

  I stand up, trying to breathe regularly. “Craig. Forget the marriage. We’ll deal with that later, but this, all this you just told me is what the police need to know. This is why you’re under suspicion—the police know there’s more to this story. Did you ever think Saundra could’ve been setting you up for her husband’s murder? She sent you onto the boat when he’s with his little girlfriend? Was there ever really even a deal like the one he was selling you? If she’s the CEO and her father is the owner, they had to know what he was doing.” I walk away from my husband in disbelief that he can be this obtuse. This arrogant.

  He follows me. “His girlfriend? I thought that was his daughter! She was younger than our girls.”

  “Exactly. These are not nice, normal people!”

  My phone buzzes from the coffee table in the living room. I pick it up to read the text and say, “Annie wants to talk.”

  I text her back, “In a minute.” The text gives me a moment to breathe and calm down. Out of the corner of my eye I watch as Craig sits on the chair beside the staircase.

  He waits until I turn fully around. “I see what you’re saying. I just couldn’t imagine any of this had anything to do with Pierson being killed. I didn’t really think I was lying because I don’t have anything to lie to the police about. And I should’ve obviously told you about the marina plan, but I just didn’t see the need to get you upset if it never turned out. But I should’ve trusted you. Sorry about that. About it all.”

  “Okay. But you have told me everything now, right?”

  “Right.” He stands up, and with his hands on his hips, he looks around. “Looks like we’re stuck with this old place for a while.”

  “Pierson really wanted the house?” I raise my eyebrows as I look around. “Seems kind of odd since he’s apparently never lived on Sophia Island. He grew up and lives down in some fancy place called Ponte Vedra.”

  “Maybe he only wanted to live here if he got the family mansion. I got the feeling it was more for his wife. He said she’d always loved it. Wanted to fix it up to its original glory.” He looks up the stairs. “While you call Annie, I’m going up to take a shower and then read some stuff for work, but now that you’ve got me thinking, I’m wondering if I should call Officer Greyson and tell him I’d like to meet with him first thing in the morning to lay it all out for him.”

  My shoulders relax for the first time in days, and the wrinkles in my forehead release. “Yes. I think that’s a wonderful idea. I can sit in with you if you’d like. He can come here.”

  He studies me for a moment. “Do you think you can be happy here? Hold things together for a few years?”

  I smile at him but shake my head a bit. “Let’s just get this murder thing off our plate. Then we can think about being happy, okay?”

  “Okay.” As he jogs up the stairs he says, �
�I’m glad all this will be over tomorrow. Then you won’t have to mess around with Annie and all those ladies always barging in here.” He turns and gives me a nod. “Just the way you like things, nice and quiet.”

  Chapter 28

  Text messages back and forth finally convince me to join Annie and Lucy where they are having a drink only two blocks from our house. It seems like it’s at least midnight with all that’s happened, but Annie pointed out it is only nine o’clock. After a quick change upstairs and an even quicker chat with Craig, I head out the door.

  On the front porch with the big door shut behind me, I can admit that I’d gone upstairs not planning on changing, not planning on going out. Craig was coming out of the shower. We’d both had a glass or two of wine. We’d actually talked for the first time in a long time. Besides, it is Friday night.

  But—well, there was nothing there. So much nothing it was almost embarrassing. I don’t understand, and the only comfort I can find is that he can’t seem to understand either. It was downright awkward. Tears spring to my eyes, and I wipe them away, then jog down the wide porch steps. I’d thrown on a long, navy-blue jersey dress with long sleeves and a scoop neckline while Craig had retreated back into the bathroom behind another closed door.

  My flat sandals slap the sidewalk, and as I pass through the gate, I remember how frightened I was when I came home only an hour ago.

  That makes me pause, but the moon is out in a sultry, midnight-blue sky. Distant laughter is accented by the frogs and bugs, and something is blooming that smells like cotton candy. There’s a warmth in the humid air that reminds me of all those sayings and songs about Southern nights. No reason to be scared, right?