Margaritas, Marzipan, and Murder

by Harper Lin

  “You want to talk to Dawn about something?” She knew full well Dawn and I really only socialized because of her.

  “Yeeaah.” I drew the word out. I hadn’t told Sammy about my investigation into Abraham Casey’s death, although I knew she probably wouldn’t be surprised based on my recent track record.

  Sammy studied me like a parent looking for signs of a lie in her child’s face. “Are you investigating again?”

  “It just didn’t make sense to me that it was a suicide. I started looking into it, and the man was seen with a girl who may work at the Sand Bar. I thought Dawn might know her.”

  “You’ve figured all that out in a day and a half? While still working here, and I’m going to guess sleeping once in a while?”

  I nodded.

  “Have you ever thought about giving up coffee and joining the police force?”

  “Do you really think Mike would let them hire me?”

  “Good point.” We moved boxes for a few more minutes before Sammy thought of something. “Oh, if you want to get Chase to cut your hair, you should probably go ahead and call over there. He books up really fast. It may be a while before he can get you in. He’s really good, though. It’s worth the wait.”

  I grimaced like a pouty child who didn’t want to wait, but in the interest of getting my hair done as soon as possible, I called the salon.

  “Good news!” I said to Sammy when I got off the phone a few minutes later. “He had a cancellation for Tuesday morning and got me in!”

  “Must be your lucky day!”

  It certainly seemed like a good day so far. I’d gotten a great lead from Ed Martin on Abraham Casey, and I’d gotten an appointment in less than forty-eight hours with my old neighbor who was now apparently the top hair stylist in the bustling metropolis of Cape Bay. I only hoped my luck held out, and I would be able to find out from Dawn the identity of the woman Abraham Casey had taken to his hotel room.

  I didn’t have much time to dwell on my luck the rest of the afternoon. The café got busier than I’d seen it on a Sunday afternoon. Predictably, Chase Williams breezed in and out during the busiest time. I began to wonder if he somehow did it on purpose. Maybe he wanted coffee but didn’t want to talk to me. If that were the case, he could just come when I wasn’t there. Of course, for all I knew, he did.

  The rush lasted an exceptionally long time, and both Sammy and Becky ended up staying long past the time they were supposed to leave. Everything finally calmed down near closing time, and I managed to shoo them out.

  “Take tomorrow off!” I joked as they left. Antonia’s, like every other locally owned business in Cape Bay, would be closed for Labor Day. We closed for most holidays—Easter, Memorial Day, Fourth of July, Labor Day, Columbus Day, Thanksgiving, and Christmas at a minimum. We had never decided to open those days when so many other businesses across the country had. It was a point of pride for us that we cared more about our workers and our community than the added revenue we would earn from opening on holidays.

  Matt came in just as Sammy and Becky left. He put his hand on my waist and kissed me lightly. “How’d your day go?”

  “Busy! I don’t know where all those people came from. It was like every single person in town for the weekend suddenly felt compelled to get some coffee. Did you get over to my house to take care of Latte?” Partway through the afternoon when I realized I wouldn’t be able to get away long enough to run home, I’d texted Matt and asked him to feed Latte and let him out.

  “You know I did. We had a good time. Took a walk and everything.”

  “You’re a good boyfriend.” I stood on my tiptoes to kiss him on the cheek. He wasn’t much taller than me, but it was enough that I had to make an effort.

  “You know it. What about your trip to the Seaside?”

  It took a second to realize he was referring to the motel, not the oceanfront. One of the downfalls of living in a beach town was half the businesses had a beach theme in their name—Seaside Inn, Sand Bar, Sandy’s Seafood Shack, Beach Waves. It was as if we just couldn’t stop ourselves.

  “Better than I expected,” I said after I figured out what he meant.

  “Yeah? He was staying there?”

  “More than that.” I filled him in on everything I had found out in my meeting with Ed Martin.

  “So I take it we’re going out drinking tonight?” he asked after I told him I wanted to ask Dawn about the blonde Ed saw at the motel.

  “You can drink. I have interviews to do.”

  “You’re so professional,” he teased.

  I didn’t have much left to do before closing the café. We had gone from incredibly busy to completely empty—a usual occurrence for the café. Sammy had refused to leave until everything was completely in order—as much as it could be, considering we were still open. Becky wouldn’t be outdone and stayed right along with her. When closing time officially rolled around, Matt helped me shut the machines down and stow the food away. I grabbed the box of marzipan from the table in the back. I had found myself craving the sweet treats the night before and thought it would be prudent to bring them home with me to snack on during my much-anticipated day off.

  “You want to run home to change?” Matt asked as we left the café.

  “What? You don’t like my stylin’ work clothes?” I gestured to my outfit and struck what I considered a vaguely modelesque pose.

  “They’re fine. I just thought you might want to get changed before we went out.”

  “It’s not really ‘going out,’ is it? I mean, I’m just going over there to ask Dawn who that girl is.”

  “Up to you.” Matt shrugged.

  We walked along a little farther before I abruptly turned down a side street.

  “Where are you going?” Matt hurried after me.

  “I decided you were right. We’re going out. I can put on something that doesn’t have coffee stains on it. Besides,” I said, holding out the box of marzipan. “If I carry this into the bar, I might have to share it. Can’t have that.”

  “Bar-goers are known for how much they enjoy a nice piece of marzipan with their tequila shots,” he deadpanned.

  I greeted Latte as I hurried into the house then left him to play with Matt while I ran upstairs to change. I didn’t have time to take a shower as I would have liked before a date, but I changed into a cute pair of jeans and a nice top before touching up my makeup.

  I let my hair down but didn’t like the way it looked and tied it right back up again. I declared my reflection in the mirror more than satisfactory and headed downstairs to Matt and our date at the Sand Bar.

  Chapter 13

  “Wow.”

  “What?”

  “You look nice.” Matt smiled.

  “Thanks!” I was glad I had put extra time into my makeup and kind of wished I’d left my hair down. I knew it wouldn’t have lasted, though, and I would have put it back up almost as soon as we walked out the front door. “You look…the same as you did when I went upstairs.” We both laughed. “Handsome, though. I don’t think I told you that earlier.”

  “Thank you.”

  I bent down to scratch Latte’s head. “You be a good boy while I’m gone, okay? Did Matty give you a treat? Do you have a chewy?” I looked to Matt for answers since Latte wasn’t exactly the most forthcoming with information.

  He shook his head. “I didn’t give him anything.”

  “Well, somebody needs a treat then, doesn’t he?” Even as the words came out of my mouth, I couldn’t believe I was baby-talking Latte in front of Matt. But it was probably a good sign for our relationship that I felt so comfortable with him.

  I got Latte a treat and a rawhide from the kitchen. We went through his commands—sit, speak, lie down, roll over—and I rewarded him with his treat. Just before Matt and I walked out the door, I gave Latte the rawhide. “Now, you be a good boy while Mommy’s gone! I love you!”

  “You spoil that dog,” Matt muttered as we walked toward the street.
r />   “Oh, and you don’t?”

  “You’re around him more than I am. My spoiling is like a favorite uncle. Yours is like, I don’t know, an overly indulgent mother. Sorry, not a very good analogy.”

  “I don’t think that was an analogy at all.”

  “I’m an engineer, not an English teacher.”

  We walked along Cape Bay’s dimly lit streets, bantering back and forth about whatever mundane thoughts sprang into our minds. I felt remarkably safer with Matt than I had just two nights before when I had walked this path on my own. And then, I’d thought the man in the alley had killed himself. Now, I was reasonably sure he’d been murdered. By most measures, I should be much more nervous walking around now that I knew there was a murderer on the loose, but I also knew Matt would do whatever he had to do to keep me safe, and that made all the difference in the world.

  We got to the Sand Bar in about ten minutes. While most of Cape Bay was deserted—there were barely any cars out driving around, and every business that wasn’t a restaurant was closed—the Sand Bar was packed. The parking lot was full, and cars lined the street for at least a block in each direction.

  “Is it always like this?” I asked.

  Matt shrugged. He wasn’t the barfly type.

  We walked into the bar past the crowd spilling out the front door. It smelled like stale beer and hot, sweaty people. A band was set up on the stage, playing so loudly I couldn’t even tell what the song was. I could feel the beat in my chest and thought if I tried hard enough, I might be able to pick out the song just based on that.

  I hated when bands turned their amplifiers way up when they played in a relatively small place, like in restaurants, where you had to scream at the server just to give your order. Amps needed to be turned down lower in those situations. I sometimes wondered if bands kept them loud because they’d ruined their hearing over the years and honestly thought they were playing at a reasonable volume.

  Once in a while, we had musicians play at Antonia’s, and our long-time policy was that those musicians would play acoustic. It had started back in my grandparents’ time when their friends would come in, sing, and strum the same guitar they played for their children at home. Electric guitars weren’t as popular then as they’d become over the years, so it may have been that, also. Pianists were the one exception to the rule. We obviously didn’t have a piano in the café, so piano players had to bring a keyboard, which they were allowed to plug in. It’s hard to hear the melody from an unplugged keyboard.

  “Why are they so loud!” I screamed in Matt’s ear, the volume of my voice so high that it was impossible to make it actually sound like a question.

  “So you can’t tell how bad they are!” he yelled back.

  That seemed like a distinct possibility, and I wasn’t exactly going to give them a ringing endorsement based on the ringing I’d have in my ears long after their performance ended.

  “You want to get a table!” Matt hollered.

  I nodded, grateful that yes and no could be communicated without actual speech. He took my hand and led me through the maze of tables to a high-top table on the far wall.

  “How’s this!” he shouted.

  I nodded again.

  “I’ll go get our drinks!”

  I shook my head.

  He crinkled his forehead and leaned his ear in to my mouth.

  “I need to talk to Dawn!”

  He shook his head, still not understanding.

  “She’s the bartender!”

  He turned his head so that his mouth was next to my ear.

  “Is she here?”

  I stood on my tiptoes, balancing myself with a hand on Matt’s shoulder, and craned my neck toward the bar. I could see Dawn darting between the shapes of people sitting on barstools. I pulled Matt down toward me. “Yes!”

  “Are you going to be able to hear her over all this!”

  He had a point.

  I opened my mouth to bellow that I didn’t know, when the band’s noise came to a crescendo so loud I couldn’t possibly yell over it. The guitar player wailed on his instrument. The drummer seemed to have his sticks on every single drum at once. And then it all stopped.

  “We’re going to take a break, but don’t go anywhere ’cause we’ll be right back!” the lead singer shouted into the microphone. I wondered if he understood how microphones worked.

  “Depends on whether or not her hearing has been permanently damaged by all the noise yet,” I said in what I hoped was a normal tone of voice. I could only hear the reverberations of my voice through my skull, so I couldn’t actually be sure if I was whispering or screaming.

  “Get me a beer?”

  “Sure thing.” I hurried away before he could realize that if I was ordering the drinks, I was the one paying for them. Who paid when we went out was a long-standing battle between us—each of us vying to treat the other. We once talked about each paying our own way, but the first time we went out with that intention, we both tried to slip the waitress our credit card within the span of roughly two minutes. We went right back to openly competing.

  I wedged in between two tough-looking guys who had stationed themselves at the bar and tried to catch Dawn’s eye. She was working the side of the bar I was on, and a rather nice-looking guy was working the other side. He wore a tight white T-shirt and tight black jeans. Dawn wore a deep scoop-neck tank top and a tiny pair of shorts.

  I wondered if she got so hot working behind the bar that she had to wear skimpy clothes to keep cool. Then I saw the way the guys at the other end of the bar waved her over even though the other bartender was closer, and I realized her outfit was probably more to improve her tips than her comfort. When the other bartender came down to take my order, I realized the system worked both ways.

  “What can I get you?” He put an elbow down on the bar, which I suspected he did mostly to give himself the opportunity to flex his bicep.

  “Her.” I pointed at Dawn.

  He looked surprised. “Oh, all right.”

  “She’s a friend,” I said hurriedly.

  He shrugged his muscular shoulders. “Dawn!”

  She turned around, and he pointed his thumb over his shoulder at me. I smiled at her and waved. She rolled her eyes when she spotted me but moved toward me. Muscles made his way back to the other end, where there was a shortage of girls but plenty of thirsty guys.

  “What do you want?” Dawn made a face as though she thought I wasn’t cool enough to be at a bar.

  I almost gave her a line about how she owed me a drink to make up for my ruined girls’ night out but decided it wouldn’t help my case. I needed her to want to talk to me. “I need to ask you about something.”

  She looked up and down the bar at the mass of people that had gathered. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one who thought the band’s break was the best time to get the bartender to hear you. “Can it wait? I kinda got a full crowd right now.”

  “Sure.” I hoped she wasn’t going to make me wait until after the bar closed.

  “When the band comes back on.”

  She must have seen the concern in my face as I wondered how on earth we’d hear each other. “We’ll go in the back.”

  I agreed.

  “That it? You gonna order a drink, or are you just taking up my tip-earning time?”

  “A beer. And can you make a margarita?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Regular, on the rocks only. Frozen takes too long.”

  “That’s fine.”

  She stared at me, waiting for I didn’t know what.

  “What?” I asked finally.

  “What kind of beer?”

  “Oh, um, I don’t know. It’s for Matt. Whatever you think he’d like.”

  She rolled her eyes again. I thought about saying what my grandmother would have—if she didn’t stop rolling her eyes, they’d get stuck like that—but I thought wiser of it. She walked away. I waited, cash in hand, for her to come back, then handed her my money and told her to ke
ep the change.

  “Thanks.” She looked less than impressed. I wondered if I should have tipped her more or if she would have reacted the same no matter what I gave her. I decided it didn’t matter and went back to find Matt.

  “Find out what you wanted to know?” he asked as I set his beer down in front of him.

  “She told me to come back when the band starts back up.”

  “She really doesn’t want to talk to you, does she?”

  “I don’t think so, but she said we’d go in the back.”

  Matt tasted his beer. “This is good. What is it?”

  “I don’t know.” I shrugged. “I told Dawn to just give me something she thought you’d like.”

  “No wonder she doesn’t want to talk to you.”

  I sipped my margarita, slightly afraid she might have poisoned it, but it turned out to be really good. Maybe Sammy wasn’t the only reason she tolerated me after all.

  After only a few minutes of relative quiet, the band reappeared on stage.

  “Are you ready for some music!” the lead singer screamed into the microphone. He really didn’t know how they worked. “Let’s go!” The band struck their first note, and I resisted the urge to cover my ears.

  Matt pointed past me toward the bar, and I turned to see Dawn beckoning me to follow her. I waved to Matt because it wasn’t worth destroying my voice to tell him what he already knew then picked up my margarita. It was too good to leave behind on the table to get watered down as the ice melted.

  Dawn pulled keys out of her tiny shorts and used them to unlock a door that was labeled “Employees Only.”

  “We had to start locking it because the drunks kept coming in and crashing on the couch.” She closed the door behind us. The noise from the bar was suddenly deadened. “Sound proofing,” she said when she saw my surprised look. “So what’s up?” She flopped down on the couch.

  “This is really good.” I indicated the margarita. “And Matt liked his beer, too.”

  “That’s what you wanted to talk to me about? You just knew you’d want to thank me for a drink you hadn’t even ordered yet?”

  “I was being nice.”