Red Rum: A Rosie Casket Mystery

by R M Wild

  “What did Robert say?”

  “Not much. He seemed okay with it. He didn’t even seem surprised. I mean, he’s upset that Chrissy disappeared, but finding out about Hardgrave’s involvement didn’t really faze him. It was as if Robert knew already.”

  “Hmmm,” Eldritch said. He was either stroking his chin in thought, or wiping off chocolate.

  “Robert really trusts Peter. I don’t know why. But if he trusts him, then maybe I can too.”

  “Hmmm,” Eldritch said again.

  “What the heck does ‘hmmmm,’” mean?”

  “Nothing. I’m thinking, that’s all.”

  “Care to think out loud? I could use some advice here.”

  “About what?”

  “I think I might ask Peter Hardgrave to go into business with me. His Red Rum could be a huge money-maker, maybe the thing that lets me ease off the gas a bit and breathe again.”

  “Hmmmm,” Eldritch said.

  “He needs a liquor license. With Robert’s help, I can probably get one.”

  “Hmmmm.”

  I scrubbed his mug furiously. When I dried it, a crack in the glaze ripped the fibers from the towel. “Never mind. This is none of your business. I’m sorry I ever got you involved. It never had anything to do with you.”

  “A business relationship is like a marriage, Red. You and your partner need to be in complete sync. Plus, I ain’t too sure that you and a liquor license are a good fit.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “You told me, remember?”

  “Oh yeah.”

  I thought about Herrick. The last thing I needed was another petulant, drunk, and childish business husband.

  But then an image popped to mind.

  A wedding dress.

  My foster mother’s wedding dress had been hanging in Chrissy’s closet. What in blazes had Chrissy been doing with a wedding dress?

  And why had Peter Hardgrave parked outside her window?

  I picked the fibers out of the crack in the mug and wiped them on my pants. “You know what bothers me?”

  Eldritch made a show of counting endlessly on his fingers. “Do tell.”

  “Each time we tell our story, it changes a little.”

  “I’ve noticed,” Eldritch said.

  I went to put the mug back in the cabinet, but realized I couldn’t use it to serve my guests, not if I wanted a reputation for quality. A dam broke and a torrent of anger suddenly rushed through my veins and I spiked the mug into the trash and it exploded.

  “Breathe, Red. Breathe.”

  He was right. The latest trend in education was emotional intelligence, and here I was, a year out of teaching, nearing thirty, and totally incapable of controlling my own emotions.

  I closed my eyes and exhaled, slowly.

  “You need to take it easy,” Eldritch said. “I’m worried about you.”

  “What if my own memories have changed over the years? Just like our stories?”

  Eldritch said nothing.

  I yanked off my apron and balled it up and stormed out of the kitchen, but Eldritch stood from the table and caught me by the arm and pulled me back and hugged me.

  All the stress of the past few months welled up at once and I cried into his chest.

  He patted me on the back. “I think you need a day off, Red. Close down tomorrow. Take a breather.”

  My mouth was buried in his flannel shirt. “I can’t. There’s too much going on.”

  “I’ll look after the place for you.”

  I pulled away and wiped my eyes. I had left a big wet spot on his chest, one as big as the stain on his smock when I accused him of murder.

  “Thank you. I’m okay. I can handle it. I just needed a moment.”

  “Are you sure?”

  I nodded and sniffled. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

  He smiled and hugged me again. “Nor you.”

  Around midnight, after I finished pre-slicing the bread for tomorrow’s breakfast, I went upstairs and lay in bed and looked at my phone.

  Now that the lighthouse ran on electricity, it no longer flashed across the ceiling and cast creepy, demonic shadows on the walls. Instead, there was a fake pink glow outside my porthole window, as if I were sleeping in a sleazy motel in the French Quarter and a neon sign right outside my window advertised Girls! Girls! Girls!

  As I did each night before trying to sleep, I studied the photo I had received when I was sitting on the witness stand at Peter Hardgrave’s trial.

  In the photo, a young woman, about my age, was tied and bound to a chair, her head slumped over, her black hair covering her face. Immediately after the trial, I had shown the photo to Mettle. We had enlarged it and studied every single detail.

  The chair in which the woman was sitting was an antique. It had iron feet in the shape of hooves. It was sitting on a floor with wide gaps between the aged and warping planks. There was no light in the room and the woman’s face was completely obscured by her hair. She was barefoot and her left pant leg was riding up high enough to expose her ankle. On close inspection, we could see the bottom of what appeared to be a tattoo sneaking out from under the bottom hem of her pant leg.

  At the time of her disappearance, Chrissy didn’t have any tattoos, at least none that I was aware of.

  I didn’t know who had sent the photo. My first instinct was Katelyn Kennedy. For years, she had sent me taunting texts. But the phone number was different.

  Mettle had investigated the number as best he could, but without a warrant, we couldn’t get the records from the phone company. With no other leads, we had to try to ignore the photo. Given the tattoo, we could only conclude that the woman in the chair was not my sister.

  Still, I couldn’t help but think it looked so much like her. She had the same hair, the same thin body, the same black clothing.

  It felt like her.

  I touched the screen, almost stroking the woman’s hair.

  “Who are you?” I whispered.

  In my weariness, I could almost see her come alive, as if it were one of those moving photos. She lifted her head and whispered, “It’s me, Rosie. Come and find me. Please. Before it’s too late.”

  4

  After serving breakfast the next morning, I left the guests and carried their luggage down to the dock. The sky was gray, the harbor grayer, and wispy ribbons of fog floated above the choppy water.

  At the end of the dock, The Moaning Lisa was creaking and groaning as it bobbed against the pilings. I walked swiftly to keep warm, climbed aboard, and hoisted the suitcases over the gunwale. If my arms weren’t totally buff after a few more months of this, I was going to have to get my estrogen levels checked.

  Captain Herrick hadn’t even made it into the cabin. He was passed out on the deck, a tarp draped over him, his mouth wide open, his jaw unhinged, a long string of drool running down his cheeks and pooling in his ears.

  I kicked him in the thigh. “Wake up, you drool-hardy fool. We have to take the tourists back to town.”

  He didn’t move.

  Hoping the cold morning air would jolt him awake, I yanked the tarp off his body. He was clutching a half-empty bottle of Red Rum to his chest.

  “Herrick, seriously. Their cars are parked on the street in front of the harbor. The town starts giving out tickets at nine o’clock. I can’t afford to pay their fines because we didn’t get them back in time.”

  He didn’t move.

  I kicked him again, harder. Still nothing. Then, I stooped beside him and shook his shoulder. He stunk like dead flowers.

  “Wake up, you jackass!”

  Still nothing.

  I grabbed an empty bait bucket from the standing shelter, dunked it into the cold harbor, and dumped the water on his head.

  Captain Herrick gasped, bolted upright, and shook out his hair like a wet dog, the bottle escaping his grip and rolling toward the stern.

  “What? Where am I?”

  “You’re in the sam
e place you are every morning, you lousy sack of spit. Get your rear end up and pull anchor. The tourists are coming.”

  I looked toward the dock. Indeed, there were six white heads, all descending the embankment.

  Captain Herrick closed his eyes. “Gimme five more minutes, Mom.”

  I threw more nasty water on his face. “Get up. NOW.”

  He waved me off.

  “After we drop them off, we’re going to have a serious conversation about this partnership,” I said. I hopped over the gunwale and went to help the tourists climb aboard.

  “Is Captain Herrick okay?” the first old lady said.

  “He’s a little seasick this morning, but he’s doing just fine, ma’am. No worries, we’ll get you back to your Chevy Nova in no time. I hope you liked the breakfast.”

  “Oh yes,” she said. “But, Dear?”

  “Please, Mrs. Johnson, call me Rosie.”

  “I only wish you would serve some tea at breakfast. All that chocolate makes me feel bloaty.”

  I faked a smile. “Yes, Mrs. Johnson. Thank you for the suggestion. I will certainly keep that in mind.”

  Back on the pier in downtown Dark Haven, I wished my elderly guests safe travels, reminded them to post a positive review the next time they went to the library to use the internet, and then I climbed aboard again.

  The fog was thick with the stink of rotten fish. Captain Herrick was sitting on the coaming, nothing but a shadow in the gloom. As I got closer, he was picking his teeth with a fishbone and rubbing the back of his head. Had he been younger and not so hard-headed, his skull would have been flat from passing out on the deck so often.

  “I’ll give you one more night,” I said.

  “For what?”

  “This partnership. If I even smell any mouthwash on you, I’m dissolving this business relationship. You made me haul that luggage all by myself last night.”

  “And it shows. You’re gettin some sweet guns,” he said.

  “I don’t want guns,” I snapped. “Do we have an agreement or not?”

  “No, we don’t got no agreement. I do my things my way, and you do things your way. You ain’t my boss, you’re my partner. That was the deal.”

  “Now that the town passed an ordinance against cave tours, you’d be lying dead in a gutter if I hadn’t given you this job.”

  Captain Herrick flicked the fishbone at my chest. “And you’d be renting rooms to brown recluses. Who else you gonna work with?” he said. He turned around and motioned to all the dark, amorphous shapes in the fog. The roughnecks were hosing off their boats and loading the morning’s bait and lobster traps. “These workin class folks are too busy buggin to partner up with the likes of you, a conniving, controlling wench. Like you said, cave tours are now illegal, so all of them roughnecks are back to doin what they do best: buggin. The only reason you even got a partner is cuz I’m too hungover each mornin to head back out there and haul my pots.”

  I shoved my hands into my butt pockets to keep myself from pushing him overboard.

  “You want a sober lobsterman or a drunken tour guide? Your choice,” he said.

  “I’ve got plans,” I said, thinking of Peter Hardgrave. “I don’t need you.”

  “Yes you do.”

  I gritted my teeth. “This is my business. I’ll give you ONE more chance. This afternoon, I want you at my dock at five o’clock, sharp. Four guests have already booked us for the night.”

  “Aye, aye cap’n,” he said and saluted me with the middle finger.

  I turned on my heels, climbed off the boat, and tromped for the street. I couldn’t hang around and argue with him any longer or else I’d risk my sanity and get a parking ticket.

  Captain Herrick was irredeemably annoying. But he had a point. All the other lobster boat captains were too busy being actual captains to work with me. I couldn’t wait around for one of them to retire and work for practically nothing.

  To cover my bases, I would have to look into the Peter Hardgrave situation.

  When I got to my Honda, a used car I had picked up after giving my pickup to Eldritch after sales picked up, there was a nice slip of paper tucked under my driver’s side wiper.

  I picked it up.

  “You have got to be kidding me.”

  I checked my watch. It was three minutes past nine a.m.

  I glanced up and down the street, but there wasn’t a meter maid in sight, only old Charlie Margin, the hunchbacked paralegal who worked at my foster father’s firm. He was standing in the doorway to the law office.

  I ripped the ticket off the windshield and unfolded it. But it wasn’t a ticket. Instead, it was an old receipt, the numbers faded, the name of the vendor too light to read.

  On its back, in precisely printed letters, it read:

  Fair is foul and foul is fair:

  Hover through the fog and filthy air.

  When I looked up, Charlie Margin was gone.

  5

  After buying groceries and toiletries, I headed back to the inn. I spent the day doing laundry, cleaning up the rooms, making beds, scrubbing the bathroom.

  Come five o’clock, I sat at the kitchen table and watched the harbor. The fog hadn’t lifted and my backyard looked like someone had draped gauze over the window.

  The Moaning Lisa was nowhere to be seen.

  I felt like an old-time whaling spouse. If the roof had a widow’s walk, I’d pace it until Captain Herrick’s ship arrived. More than a broken heart, the consequences of his absence were actually pretty dire; if he didn’t arrive, I wouldn’t have any guests. And if I didn’t have any guests, the day’s groceries would spoil. But worse than that, I will have wasted my whole afternoon getting ready. Money can be replaced, but not time.

  I had entrusted Herrick with way too much responsibility. I had given him way too much influence over my business.

  It was time to make a change.

  I stared at the digits on my phone. “C’mon, you lousy good-for-nothing drunk.”

  Finally, near the end of my dock, a hard shape broke the gloom. I checked my phone. He was fifteen minutes late.

  I fixed my hair, tried to bury my anger, and put on a great big smile and went down to the dock to greet my guests.

  Captain Herrick had parted his hair and he looked suspiciously like a ventriloquist dummy. He hammed it up and pointed at me with two open palms.

  “Dear guests, I present your formidable host, Rosie Casket.”

  The tourists clapped. I faked a smile and bowed.

  “Sorry for the delay, Miss Casket. They wanted to take pictures of the lighthouse in the fog. It’s quite majestic this evening, don’t you agree?”

  I grunted. “We’ll talk later.”

  “No problem, boss.”

  But as always, later never came. By the time I helped everyone to their rooms for the night, Captain Herrick had passed out on the deck of his boat.

  I had no interest in shaking him awake and arguing with a drunken dummy. I’d have to put off firing him until another day.

  Come Wednesday morning, forty-eight hours after submitting my information to the state, I escorted my guests down to the dock, shot Captain Herrick a glare, and then returned to the inn and dressed in my nunniest turtleneck. I checked the oil in my brand-new used Honda and left a note on the door that said, Be Back Before Noon.

  Rather than ask Eldritch to look after the place—the old man still had the circadian rhythms of a vampire—I decided that closing the inn for a few hours was the best approach, even at the risk of missing the one or two leaf peepers who might stop on the side of the road to take selfies pretending to prick their fingers on the Victorian spires. I trusted Eldritch with my life, but not with the dishes or the laundry.

  My Honda rode more smoothly than that old Apache ever did. As I drove through downtown Dark Haven, dawn splitting between the shops on Main Street, I glanced at the Gold Bug Tavern, the bar where Peter Hardgrave lost his liquor license.

  The Tudor revival buil
ding had been shuttered for months now, a bulldozer waiting in the lot. According to my foster father, as soon as the town secured the permits for demolition, some twenty-year-old construction worker would drive a crane and a wrecking ball down Main Street and take a swing at the tavern’s century-old shutters. Losing the building was a shame, The Dark Haven Register reported. The hangout was an anchor on the street and a unique piece of Dark Haven’s history—not to mention the building where I grew up.

  I cracked my passenger window for a little fresh air and the note on my passenger seat whipped up against the glass and danced a jig on the wind.

  I glanced at the fluttering receipt.

  Fair is foul and foul is fair:

  Hover through the fog and filthy air.

  Obviously, the lines had been taken from the first act of Macbeth, the part where the three Weïrd Sisters—pronounced wayward—anticipate Macbeth’s arrival after the “hurly-burly’s” done. After the thane’s arrival, they predict he will become the king.

  Even though my specialty was American literature and I was about as far from a bard-freak as I was from a professional rugby player, I could see no significance in the words other than the obvious. The harbor had stunk of fish that morning and it was foggy.

  Big deal.

  I dismissed the note as a stupid joke, one probably conceived of and written by one of the lawyers in my foster father’s firm, one of the pranksters who was privy to the two previous literary clues that had upended my life. I should have been thankful that the leg-puller hadn’t left a fart joke on my windshield—although the bit about the filthy air might suffice.

  As to the presence of Charlie Margin, the hunchback paralegal I had seen standing in the doorway, I assumed that since he was the firm’s gopher and all-around whipping boy, the prankster had made him do the firm’s dirty work.

  Our mutual kidnapping and subsequent synchronized swim with death in the cave beneath Taylor’s Bluff may have made some of the lawyers believe we were family now and could trade barbs like old siblings, but leaving a note from the bard was not in good humor.