“It would be our pleasure,” Bee said. “What will it be?”
“I’d love a lobster roll if it’s not too much trouble. I can give you money for it.”
“No, no,” I said. “It’s on us.” I gave Trouble a quick kiss on the head, promising that I’d bring him something as well then set him down on the tabletop. He promptly sprawled across the keyboard of Sam’s laptop, stretching out his kitty paws.
“You be careful out there.”
Sam’s words followed us out into the icy evening. We trooped toward the food truck, our breaths misting in front of our faces. It was simply too chilly to walk, though I would have loved the exercise, and the food truck had heating.
“I wonder if the servers at the Chowder Hut will be as forthcoming as the ones at the Lobster Shack were,” I said, as I steered us into one of the last parking spaces in front of the restaurant.
“Or as murderous.”
“Eek. Let’s hope not.” Our last run-in with a server hadn’t exactly gone to plan.
We clambered out of the truck and entered the Chowder Hut. My hopes were high. We hadn’t gone to any restaurants, lately, and I was definitely in the mood for seafood. How could one not be after spending all day at the beach?
A server appeared, two menu cards pinned to his side. “Good evening, ladies. Table for two?”
“Yeah,” Bee said. “We’d like to sit there.” She pointed to a booth at the back of the restaurant. The interior was decked out in sea greens and ashen white furniture, with a lobster trap sitting in one corner, and buoys hanging from the walls.
We followed the server to our table—high-backed leather booth chairs that would give us some privacy—and sat down.
The savory scents of grilled fish, the tang of lemon, and the richness of garlic-butter sauce drifted through the restaurant. My stomach protested, and I opened my menu and scanned the food on offer.
“Yummy,” I said, trailing my finger down the page. I paused. Bee hadn’t opened her menu. She hadn’t even glanced at it, and that was unlike her. She was even more of a foodie than I was. “What’s up?”
“Look there,” she whispered, nodding toward the table closest to us, in the raised center area of the restaurant.
Two people, a brunette wearing crimson lipstick and a man who had to be in his early thirties sat there, leaning back in their chairs, as far away from each other as possible. My eyes widened. It was Jessie, the maid of honor from the wedding, and Richard, William’s brother. Or was it William?
Gosh, the fact that they were twins made this all the more complicated. But no, he had a mole on the right, above his mouth. It was the brother.
Why were they at dinner together when they so clearly didn’t want to be?
“What do you think they’re doing?” I whispered.
“I don’t know, but there’s a reason I chose this table. Ten bucks says we overhear what they’re talking about.”
We fell silent, and I scooched closer to the edge of my seat, listening hard. Now, as a journalist, I’d never used underhanded tactics like this. I’d had integrity. But I was officially free of those chains, now. I could do whatever it took to gather information. Even if it was a bit icky to listen in on someone’s conversation.
“—don’t understand why you think that.”
“It’s not about what I think,” Richard said, quietly. “It’s about what I know.”
“Is that a threat?”
Richard rolled his eyes.
I lifted my menu and pretended to scan it, but kept them in my peripheral vision. Bee took a sip of her water, staring directly ahead instead of at the pair at their table.
“Of course it’s not a threat. What do you think I am, stupid?”
“I wasn’t going to say anything, but if you’re admitting it…”
“Very funny, Jessie. You’ve always had a big mouth,” Richard said. “And that’s exactly the reason I know what I know.”
“Can you keep your voice down?” she hissed. “Someone might hear you.”
“Do I look like I care?” Richard lifted his soda from the table and drank deeply. He let out a loud burp.
Rude.
The handsome twin laughed under his breath. “So, what do you think I should do with this information?”
Jessie glared at him, her lips twitching, peeling back and settling again. “Just, shut up.”
“I don’t think I will,” he said, loudly. “I think everyone should know that your friend, your evil, mean friend didn’t want to marry my brother at all. She was only in it for his money. Everyone’s feeling so sorry for Honey meanwhile it was my brother who was trapped into a relationship with her.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Jessie hissed.
“I heard her tell you. I heard it loud and clear, and I’m going to let everyone in this town know what trash she was.”
“Stop it. Stop talking about her like that.” Tears streamed down Jessie’s tan cheeks. “You don’t understand what we were talking about. You don’t—” She scraped her chair back and rose from the table.
“Don’t leave yet,” Richard said. “I’m only just getting started.”
But Jessie had had enough, it seemed. She ran from the restaurant, bashing our server out of her path. A stunned silence followed her departure, broken only by the gentle music in the background.
“Sorry about that, folks,” Richard called out, raising both hands. “The missus can’t handle a little confrontation.”
None of the other diners returned his smiles. Slowly, everyone got back to their meals or talk, but gazes kept darting over at Richard. It made it much easier for me to spy on him, as well. He seemed positively merry, now, as if he’d gotten exactly what he wanted.
“Can you believe that?” I whispered. “How rude.”
“I can believe that we need to talk to that Jessie about this,” Bee said. “There’s always two sides to a story.”
And a murder.
9
“That was a lovely night.” I directed the truck down the road, back toward the Oceanside. We weren’t too far from ‘home.’ Weirdly, the guesthouse really had started feeling like a place I could live in. Of course, it would be short-lived. If we didn’t start earning money on the food truck, we wouldn’t be able to afford it for much longer.
“Lovely is one way of wording it. The food was scrumptious, but the atmosphere…”
“What do you make of it?” We’d talked over the argument between Jessie and Richard several times already, but I couldn’t quit thinking about it. Not even the chowder appetizer had scraped it from my mind, nor the delicious fresh-caught fish and fries.
“That Jessie clearly has something to hide,” Bee said, grasping the three boxes on her lap so they wouldn’t wobble and spill their contents over the seat. One contained Sam’s lobster roll, and the other two carried our desserts—Chocolate Raspberry Mousse Cakes.
I pulled into our parking spot outside the guesthouse, the headlights of the truck flaring along the side of the house and illuminating the windows briefly. They were dark, the curtains drawn. Everyone had gone to bed early, doubtlessly because of the atmosphere after what had happened to Honey.
“We should offer our condolences to Jessie and William,” I said. “And Richard too. Though, it doesn’t seem like he’s affected by Honey’s death.”
“People deal with grief in strange ways,” Bee said. “I once knew a man who lost his wife in a boating accident and went on a two-month fishing trip to celebrate her passing.”
“That’s… I don’t know what that is.”
“Inappropriate comes to mind,” Bee replied. “I don’t think they had the best marriage.”
“What happened after he came back from his trip?”
“He brought back a new wife and child. Shameful, really. He was seventy-years-old.”
“Good heavens.” I tried not to judge, but that kind of behavior made it difficult.
“Oh, don’t worry,
he got his just dessert. She left him for a younger model the next year. And then he passed away. And then she went on a fishing trip in her new beau’s yacht. Which goes to prove the saying, ‘all’s well that ends well.’ Wait, no, that’s not the saying.”
“Every dog gets his day?” I suggested.
“That’s the one.”
I cut the food truck’s lights, and the engine ticked as it cooled. “Come on,” I said, “let’s forget about fishing trips and have some mousse cake instead. We can talk about the mystery.”
“Mousse cake and murder. You know, that sounds like a good title for a book.”
I chuckled and removed the keys from the ignition. A flicker of movement caught my eye, and I looked up. What had that been? The outside of the guesthouse was different, but I couldn’t quite place how.
“What is it?” Bee asked. “What are you looking at?”
“I don’t know. I thought I saw something move a few seconds—” I gasped. “There, look!”
A figure stood next to the side of the guesthouse. They were tall and appeared to be leaning against one of the windows, hands cupped around their face.
“That’s not one of the guests,” Bee said. “They’re wearing a mask.”
The murderer? Panic closed its cold hand around my heart. “W-what? What do we … the murderer?”
“Wait here, Ruby. I’ll handle this.” Bee clunked open her car door and shot out, her high-heeled boots inhibiting her in no way. “Hey! You! Stop right there!”
“Bee, don’t.”
But it was too late. The Peeping Tom—or Tina—had heard her. They darted back from the window and into the bushes.
I switched on the truck’s headlights and caught the tail end of a sneaker disappearing from view. Bee chased after it, diving into the scraggly bushes that flanked the guesthouse.
“Not again,” I muttered.
Bee had a terrible habit of rushing after intruders. And I had an equally bad one of panicking at inopportune moments. My mother had always teased me about it, and we’d dubbed it ‘Beaning.’ Because we’d get so caught up in the moment, we’d start acting like ‘Mr. Bean,’ rushing this way and that and catching ourselves mid-stride.
“Not today,” I said and slipped out of the truck. “Bee!”
I hurried down the side of the building, my jacket hardly sufficient at guarding against the fall chill, and stopped at the point where Bee and the intruder had disappeared. The bushes were parted, the branches on one broken where they’d crashed through.
“Bee?” My palms were sweaty despite the chill.
The beams from the truck’s headlights lengthened my shadow in the sand around the side of the guesthouse, and I took a breath, trying to calm myself. What if the peeper leaped from the shadows and attacked. What if they had more of my marzipan on hand?
The thought was so ridiculous, it brought a tiny smile to my lips, and that helped keep the ‘beaning’ at bay. “Bee!” I yelled.
“I’m here.” Her cry was close at hand. She emerged from the bushes at a point further down the trail, picking leaves off her coat. “Couldn’t catch up to them. I’m not as fit as I used to be.”
“You shouldn’t have been chasing after them in the first place.”
“And you’re contaminating a potential crime scene.”
“Huh?”
“You’re standing a foot away from where they were. Look.”
I spotted a pair of sneaker prints in the dirt underneath the guesthouse’s living room window. “Oh.”
“Oh indeed,” Bee said. “Shoot, I wish I’d gotten a good look at them, but the mask hid everything.”
“What type of mask was it?”
“Halloween mask. A vampire or something. And they had a hoodie on too,” Bee said, fisting her palm. “Gosh, if only I’d—”
I lifted a hand. “Look there.” The truck’s lights had caught a glint of something beneath the window, right in front of the shoeprints in the sand.
Bee crouched down and peered at it. “Well, I’ll be.”
“What is it?”
She shifted, the crinkling over her coat loud in the hush. “A ring.” Bee pulled her gloves from her pocket and slipped them on. She reached for the ring.
“Shouldn’t we call the police?”
Bee blew a raspberry. “And tell them what? That somebody dropped their ring outside the window? You know what Detective Jones will say about that. Or rather, how he’ll laugh in our faces for mentioning it.”
She had a point. “We should at least report that someone was creeping around the guesthouse.”
“Sure, we can do that, but I doubt it will serve the investigation. Jones will dismiss it, just like he dismissed us the last time.” Bee picked up the ring and held it up. “Oh wow. It’s an engagement ring.”
Our gazes met. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
“Only if you’re thinking that we need to eat our mousse cakes and have a serious discussion about this.”
I blinked. “No, that the ring might belong to Honey.”
“Hmmm. Maybe.” But Bee didn’t seem too sure. “Why would the creeper have had it?”
“What if the murderer removed the ring from her hand?”
Bee raised an eyebrow. “That’s interesting. And we can check that fact. I have those pictures of the crime scene of my phone.”
“Let’s talk about it upstairs.” She was right. The mousse cakes called my name, as well, and standing outside talking about the murder was hardly inconspicuous.
“Right. I hope it’s not her ring because if it is, we do need to report this to Jones, after all.” Bee rolled her eyes. “And you know how much I’ll be looking forward to that.”
10
And there it was. Or rather, there it wasn’t.
The picture on Bee’s phone gave me all types of chills, but I forced myself to focus on Honey’s left hand and the empty ring finger. “It has to be her engagement ring then,” I whispered.
The gravity of the statement struck me, and I plopped down in one of the floral armchairs and grabbed for my boxed mousse cake. I tucked in, using the plastic fork the server had kindly packed with it and relished the tang of raspberry and the richness of the chocolate.
It helped a little to calm my nerves. “It has to have been the murderer outside that window,” I said, between chews. “But why were they holding the ring? And if it was so important, why would they just leave it there after they dropped it?”
“Hmmm.” Bee pursed her lips and wriggled them from side-to-side. “We don’t know for sure that that’s true, Ruby. This ring might’ve been lying in the sand outside that window for a while. Honey might have thrown it out during one of her fights with William.”
“One thing I learned during my tenure as a journalist was that the most simple and rational solution was usually the correct one.”
“Why would the killer have removed the ring then come back with it in hand?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I really don’t. But we have to call Jones.”
“Not until after I’ve had my cake,” Bee replied. “I’ll need all the sugar I can get if I’m going to deal with him again.” She tucked into her cake, setting her phone aside. “Ah, that’s better.”
“Delicious, isn’t it? We should do something like this on the truck.”
“Not that it will help if there are no customers buying.”
“Now, Bee, you can’t let Jones get to you like this. He’s put you in a bad mood and we haven’t even called him yet.”
“Yes, well—” she cut off, frowning, and tilted her head to the side.
“What is it?”
Bee set down her box on the coffee table and rose. “Crying,” she whispered. “I hear crying. Don’t you?”
I listened hard.
The gentle sob and hiccup seemed to be coming from… the wall! I’d had more than enough fear for one night. If the guesthouse was haunted with the ghost of a weeping woman, I’d check out
and move on so fast, the detective’s head would spin.
Bee, once again, didn’t seem afraid. She approached the wall and pressed her ear to it, tucking her silver hair out of the way. “It’s coming from the room next door.”
“Who’s next door?”
“There’s only one way to find out,” Bee said and pushed off from the wall. “I have a hunch, though.”
“Jessie?” It would make sense that she’d be upset after what had happened to Honey and at the restaurant with Richard.
I followed Bee out into the hall, and we knocked on the ‘weeping woman’s’ room door.
It opened, and it was, indeed, Jessie who appeared, her brown locks tied up in a messy bun, and her makeup streaked. Long trails of mascara ran down her tan cheeks, and her lipstick had smudged at the corners of her mouth.
“Hello,” Bee said.
“We heard you crying. Are you all right?”
Jessie’s bottom lip trembled. “I’m fine,” she said.
“We wanted to offer our condolences for your loss.” I placed a hand on her shoulder.
Jessie broke down into a flurry of sobs and threw herself into my arms. I hugged her and patted her back, mouthing the word ‘coffee’ at Bee over the woman’s shoulder.
“Right,” Bee said. “Let’s get you something warm and fortifying.” She entered Jessie’s room, and I followed, guiding the distraught maid of honor along and sitting her down in an armchair.
Her room was slightly bigger than mine, with a king-sized bed and a balcony she could exit onto to look out on the ocean. Still, I wouldn’t have traded placed with her in a million years. How sad it had to be to lose a best friend the way she had.
“It was just so sudden,” Jessie said, dabbing under her eyes with a Kleenex that was so frayed and used, bits of white tissue crumbled from its ends into her lap.
I lifted the fresh pack off her coffee table and handed it to her, taking a seat myself. “It really is terrible,” I said. “I can’t imagine how you must be feeling.”
“She was such a ray of sunshine in my life.” Jessie sniveled and dabbed, sniveled and dabbed. “Whenever I needed help, Honey was there. She wasn’t the easiest person to get along with for other folks, but she was so nice to me. She was my friend. And now she’s gone. What am I supposed to do without her?”
Marzipan and Murder Page 4
