by R M Wild
After that, he had never heard from her again.
“If my dream was right, Peter Hardgrave was the one who had picked me up after the hearing. No wonder he knew where to drop me off,” I said. “His truck had flashed its headlights in the ditch. He had been the last to see Chrissy alive. And yet he hadn’t said anything. He had let me believe I was responsible. He could have ended this all that night.”
Captain Herrick turned around. “Are you talking again?”
“No,” I mumbled.
Captain Herrick made a hard turn toward the banks, let the wheel slide through his callused palms, and we drifted toward the dock. Every time we pulled up to the new structure, I thought of the day I walked into the Sunrise County Savings and Loan and begged for the 30k I needed for wood and labor.
With a sharp-toothed scowl, the banker had scrutinized my credit card debt and the fumes in my savings account and left me scrambling to employ every single one of the persuasive techniques I had once taught my students. Even after much pleading, he had turned me down.
Luckily, all I needed to rebuild the hundred-foot dock was help from one of Matt Mettle’s cousins.
He was a good contractor and the dock was a beauty—but more importantly, it made my business look good. It ran from my backyard, over the rocks, and jutted into the harbor like a middle finger at the Savings and Loan. Since most of my business came from the harbor, it was a better investment than a new front door.
Captain Herrick jumped onto the dock and lashed the boat to the cleats. Every time he landed on the dock like that, the impact sent a seismic ripple up to the bank and I winced.
“Will you be more gentle?” I whispered. “This dock cost me a lot of favors.”
Herrick raised an eyebrow. “What kind of favors?”
“That’s my business.”
Herrick planted a hand on the hull to keep his balance. “I been hoppin off boats for twenty years and I ain’t never broke no one’s dock, so if you think I’m gonna pussyfoot up and down this shore at your beck and call, you better look for some other sheep to sheer.”
“Relax. I’m just making an observation.”
“Observation my crack,” he mumbled.
I climbed over the gunwale and lowered myself onto the dock, careful not to land with all my weight at once—especially not after all the chocolate shavings I had been sneaking.
I dragged a step stool I had bought from one of the antique stores up to the hull and took each tourist by the fingertips as if they were dainty gentlemen and madams stepping off their midnight carriage.
“Watch your step,” I said.
“Thank you, my dear.”
“My pleasure. You’re very welcome.”
A large wave came and bumped the boat against the dock. One of the old women lost her balance and I caught her.
“Heavens to Betsy,” she said. “You saved me.”
“That’s what we do, ma’am.”
After the last tourist was off the boat, I turned to Captain Herrick. “I’m going to go ahead and start the fire. Help them over the rocks at the end of the dock. They haven’t signed the liability agreement yet.”
“Yes, Mother Hubbard,” he said.
I grumbled and marched toward the house. Stupid Herrick. I paused for a moment at one of the boards. A nail had popped its head out of the end. I tried to push it back down with my toe, but it was so loose, every step made it wiggle back up. The nail beside it, too. It was like whack-a-mole.
I sighed. I’d have to come back with a hammer and wood glue. The dock was weathering faster than I thought it would, some of the planks already starting to curl.
I guess I got what I paid for—the price of which was nothing more than the promise of going on an official date with Matt Mettle.
Ahead of me, the tourists had reached the end of the dock.
“Captain Herrick is coming to help,” I said.
I jogged ahead and climbed over the rocks, my thighs yelling from the effort. I was tired, overworked, and cranky. It was going to be another late night, one where my head was as heavy as a hardcover copy of Gone with the Wind and I would have to fight to keep my eyes open.
While the tourists sat around the fire—three on the couch, one on the antique armchair, and two others in folding chairs—I toiled in the kitchen over the cutting board. In an after-Easter sale, I had grabbed a whole family of chocolate rabbits from the Walmart up the highway. Now, I chopped off their chocolate tails and their chocolate ears, chunks of chocolate flying up at me like the bunnies had stepped into the jaws of a bear trap, pelting me with pieces of delicious pelt.
Once the bunnies were hacked, I dropped the chunks into seven mugs and shoved them into the microwave. While I preferred to serve my guests rooibos tea—both for the health benefits and the cost savings—I had reluctantly settled on homemade hot chocolate as a concession to the masses.
The whole time, the framed picture of Bella Donley hanging over the kitchen table taunted my peripheral vision. Her face and boobs consumed most of the cover, but behind her, you could see a sliver of the sharp gables and hooded windows that characterized my inn.
I had spent ten bucks on a metal frame for that particular magazine cover. It was from the issue of Marie Claire that had featured an eight-page story about my inn. Called “A Late American Beauty,” the story detailed Bella’s last makeup party. Even though it was mostly about Bella’s death, I was happy for the publicity.
Because Matt Mettle and I had gotten access to Dimitri’s camera before he was arrested, I was able to negotiate a deal with the publishers for exclusive access to the photos of Bella. Although they had wanted to pay me ten thousand dollars, I had insisted that they include pictures of my inn instead. I couldn’t buy that kind of advertisement for ten thousand bucks.
So far, it was working.
When the microwave beeped, I took out the mugs, filled each from a pot of boiling grass-fed milk from a slaughter house up the highway, and then stirred the potion until the liquid was a deep brown. After adding a splash of vanilla extract and a marshmallow, I placed the mugs on an antique platter and took them to my guests.
The fire crackled and the guests giggled and swooned as Stanley Eldritch regaled them with tales of harbor heroism. Tonight, he was telling the story about the night when Chrissy disappeared.
“Up in my tower that night, I was busy reading Pride and Prejudice,” Eldritch was saying. “I set my book down in reverence to Ms. Bennet as she suffered through a marriage proposal from that weaselly Mr. Collins, when out of the corner of my eye, I caught sight of two headlights parked in the ditch along Beacon Street. I figured a tourist had parked on the road and needed my help, so I went down the spiral staircase to investigate.”
This part of the story was actually a fib; Eldritch hadn’t gone downstairs to investigate, he had gone down to go pee. It was only after he was already back on the ground that he had seen the headlights.
Over multiple retellings, each part of the story got more and more twisted, ultimately making Eldritch sound more heroic. Making him look larger than life didn’t bother me though; it not only sold rooms, but made Eldritch my savior. After years of thankless service to the town, he deserved the recognition.
Still, I couldn’t help but wonder if there was a danger in twisting the story too much. Like a cheap pair of underwear, when you stretch the details too far, they don’t go back to their original shape. Depending on your anatomy, you end up hanging out in weird places.
Worse, I feared we might start to forget the original shape. The underwear had stretched large enough to protect the 5o Foot Woman from all those little people getting access to a free upskirt show. Right now, the only thing that preserved some semblance of the truth was our shared experience.
As he spoke, Eldritch paced in front of the fire, his shoulders, quite broad for a man of his age, rimmed with orange. Captain Herrick was sitting on a folding chair by the window, his face blue from his iPad. I hoped he hadn’t tr
ied to snap any covert downblouse shots of any of our guests like he had done with Bella.
“Where’s my mug?” Captain Herrick said when I emerged from the kitchen.
“Get your own,” I said.
“Bah,” Captain Herrick said and drank straight from his hip flask.
I handed Eldritch the last mug. “It was actually a truck.”
“What?”
“You said you came down from the tower to investigate the headlights. I’m telling you it was a truck that had parked in the ditch. A turquoise pickup truck.”
Eldritch stared at me and then took a sip of hot chocolate and smiled for the guests. “We don’t know that, Red. It was a vehicle. That’s all we know.”
“It was Peter Hardgrave’s truck. A fleetside Apache. The same truck I gave you.”
Eldritch looked at me blankly, a mustache of chocolate on his lip. “Where’s this comin from, Red?”
“I’ll tell you later,” I whispered. “Finish your story.”
I sat on the stairs and swiped through my phone while Eldritch continued.
“Anyway, when I got to the ground, I saw this little girl running at me frantically. She bumped into me and fell to the ground. I tried to help her up, but she pointed at the red stain on my smock and screamed and ran away, shouting ‘Old-Man Eldritch killed my sister!’”
The audience gasped.
I smiled. This part always woke them up.
“I didn’t even get to finish my shift before my lawn lit up in red and blue,” Eldritch said. “I got hauled straight down to the police station. Anyhow, that’s the way that me and Red met,” Eldritch said. He pointed to me on the stairs and I waved. “And we’ve been friends ever since. Ladies and gents, I give you your host, and owner of Red and Breakfast, Rosie Casket.”
The tourists clapped. As an opener, it always played well. In no time, Eldritch had transitioned from a lonely keeper, to a top-notch storyteller. Thanks to all that reading up in his tower, he was a natural. The tourists absolutely adored him.
“Before we talk about the night that Rosie ended up in a cage inside Taylor’s cave, let me tell you a little bit about my first rescue,” Eldritch said.
Not wanting to steal his spotlight, I climbed to the top of the stairs and called Matt Mettle. He was still my best, and only, friend at the Maine State Police.
He picked up on the third ring. “What do you want, Casket?”
“What are you doing?”
“I’m at work. A stakeout,” he said.
I checked the time. It was almost 9:00 p.m. “How long are you going to be out?”
“It depends on when the food runs out.”
“You packed food for the car?”
“No, it’s steak-out, you ding a ling. A barbecue. We’re celebrating Malone’s retirement.”
“Who’s Malone?”
“The first female statey in Maine.”
“Never heard of her.”
“That’s because you’re a masculinist,” Mettle said.
“A what?”
“You spend too much time focusing on men’s rights.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I don’t know. I’ve had a few too many beers. You want to hang out later?”
“I can’t,” I said. “We’ve got a full house tonight. I was actually calling about tomorrow.”
“You’ve finally made time for our date?”
I sighed. After Mettle had recovered from Bella’s death, he had finally, officially asked me out. I had said, yes, but instantly had to take a rain check when the issue of Marie Claire hit the stands the next day. I parlayed that into getting his cousin to work on my dock, and, well, he was getting impatient.
“We will soon,” I said. “I promise.”
“Yeah, yeah. Tell me a new one.”
“I was actually thinking about going to the prison some day this week.”
He was quiet for a moment. “That’s a bad idea. They’ll make pom-poms out of your red hair.”
“As a visitor, dummy.”
“Who you gonna visit?”
“Phyllis.”
“Why?”
“I want to know more about Peter Hardgrave.”
He was quiet. I could hear cheering in the background.
“Matt, you there?”
“Why would you want to know more about that scumbag?”
“I’m thinking I might go into business with him.”
“Are you insane, Casket? You can’t trust Hardgrave. The man’s an escaped felon.”
“Then why don’t you arrest him and take him back to Leavenworth?”
“Why don’t you go next door and clean your neighbor’s toilets. It’s not my job.”
“Then he must not be that bad.”
“If a warrant comes across my desk, you better believe I’ll scoop him up before I can finish this…”
He went quiet.
“Matt? You there?”
“Yes. I was making a point. Stay away from him, Casket. I’m warning you.”
“I just want to ask Phyllis a few questions. It’s no big deal.”
There was a long ragged sigh as Mettle blew across the phone. “I got a better idea, Casket. If you’ve got enough time to go visit that pile of rotten underwear, why don’t you meet me for lunch?”
“Because I can’t afford lunch unless I expand my business. Without his liquor license, Peter Hardgrave is sitting on a gold mine.”
“Promise me you won’t go.”
“I promise me you won’t go.”
“See,” he said. “That wasn’t too easy.”
“You mean hard?”
“Yes.”
Thanks to Mettle’s Ferrari-fast metabolism, when he drank, his vocabulary dropped at least two grade levels, all the way down to negative.
“I need to go,” I said. “Eldritch is about to jump off the cliff.”
“Cheers,” he said.
“Are you British now?”
“I wasn’t talking to you,” Mettle said. “Congratulations, officer Malone!”
He was ignoring me, so I hung up without saying goodbye. Before I could talk myself out of it, I navigated to the state’s prison-system website and thumbed my information into the visitation form. When it asked for the date, I chose Wednesday, the soonest available.
Then I went back downstairs. Captain Herrick was slumped over in his chair, snoring.
I kicked his ankles. “Wake up you slimy rat, I need help with the luggage.”
He groaned and waved me away.
I huffed and went outside, walked down to the dock, and schlepped the luggage upstairs to the rooms myself, the whole time muttering, “lousy no-good stinking Herrick.”
By the time I made it back downstairs, Eldritch was telling the part of the story where Phyllis Martin locked me inside one of the shark cages she had smuggled into the cave.
“When I finally swam through the crevice, Rosie had sucked water through her nose and blacked out,” Eldritch said.
The guests were on the edge of their seats.
By now, Eldritch had told the story enough times that the events of that night no longer felt real to me. Of course, he didn’t tell them the truth about the alternate cave entrance on the other side of the lighthouse. In his heroic telling, he scaled the cliff with me clinging to his back—a superhuman feat I never thought the tourists would believe.
But they did. They always did. And the funny thing was, Eldritch was right: the tourists always questioned when we yelled M.O.M. in a desperate plea for help, when my foster father and I found common ground, and even when William Bearing finally joined the chorus.
But they never questioned the fake parts.
3
Around ten p.m., after knocking on each of my guest’s doors and saying goodnight, I went downstairs to wash the dishes. I stood at the sink, my hands pruned and cracking from months of relentless scrubbing. The chocolate had formed a hardened goop in the bottom of the mugs and was as stubb
orn as the brown barnacles my guests left in the toilets.
From the window, I could see Herrick stumbling back to The Moaning Lisa where he slept in the cabin each night.
Eldritch sat behind me at the kitchen table and slurped the last of his hot chocolate. He had barely finished when I took the mug out of his hands and tossed it into the sink.
“Let me wash that,” he said.
“I got it,” I mumbled.
“Siddown, Red. Put your feet up. You look wiped out.”
“I’m fine.”
“You can’t keep goin like this. You’re gonna burn out.”
“The wick is already gone. There’s nothing left to burn.”
“You’re talkin crazy talk.”
“Tell me one successful woman who wasn’t half crazy.”
Eldritch glanced at the magazine cover hanging behind him. “I got none.”
“See.”
“What was that business with the truck?”
Eldritch’s chocolate had hardened more than the rest and I had to scrub so hard my triceps burned. “I felt so stupid. I had actually met Peter Hardgrave before. He had been hanging around the hearing.”
“Which hearing?”
“The one when I testified against you. My foster mother never came to pick me up that night, so Peter Hardgrave gave me a ride home. I had completely forgotten.”
Eldritch closed his eyes as if he were replaying that night. I had never asked him what he had done after the hearing.
“What’s worse, Hardgrave knew where I lived. He dropped me off without asking for directions. I thought it strange at the time, but I had gotten distracted by family problems. I must have buried the whole episode.”
Eldritch clicked his tongue back and forth.
“That night, Hardgrave flashed his lights to signal to Chrissy. Then he took her to the cave—the alternate entrance. He led her through the passages and left her alone at the bottom of the bluff. A friend of his was supposed to pick her up and take her someplace safe, but she disappeared.”
“And you’re sure of this?”
I shrugged. “As sure I can be. Hardgrave admitted it to my foster father.”
