Sprinkles and Skeletons

by Leena Clover

  There was a knock on the office door and an old lady tottered in, leaning on a man’s arm. Her snow white hair and craggy face hinted at an advanced age. She looked so frail Jenny thought the slightest puff of wind would blow her away. The widow’s peak on her forehead split it into two equal parts.

  Ricky Davis was tall and hefty with bluish gray eyes that bore into hers. He settled his mother into a chair and leaned against a wall himself.

  Jason made the introductions.

  “You look young,” Ann Davis noted. “When I heard someone was interested in that old pile of dust, I pictured someone older.”

  Jenny said nothing.

  “You wanted to talk to me?”

  “You seem to have quite a reputation in town,” Ricky cut to the chase. “How about using your skills to find what happened to Keith?”

  Jenny protested.

  “I’m not a professional investigator. I have a lot on my plate right now.”

  “Jason says you met him?” Ricky pressed. “Did he look like someone who was planning to take his life?”

  Jenny thought for a minute.

  “I talked to him a couple of times. Honestly, I can’t tell what his state of mind was. It’s not like I knew him. I had never met him before.”

  “Did he say why he was here?”

  “Not in so many words,” Jenny said. “Clearly, he wasn’t happy that Seaview had been sold.”

  She looked pointedly at Ricky.

  “It seems you didn’t exactly take his permission before selling me the house?”

  “Keith never cared for the house all these years,” Ricky said forcefully. “You think we haven’t wanted to come here? I suggested we clean up the place, spend the summer here. But Keith always wanted to stay away.”

  “I guess he doesn’t have good memories about the place.”

  “You don’t know the half of it,” Ricky said.

  “Poor Keith,” Ann finally spoke. “He had a troubled life.”

  “Did you know he was a junkie?”

  “I don’t like that word,” Ann said softly. “Keith lost his way.”

  “He was an ex-addict,” Ricky told them. “Keith had been sober for three years. That’s why I can’t believe he died of an overdose.”

  “The police are saying he injected himself.”

  “He was very serious about his sobriety,” Ann said. “We sent him to a recovery center a few years ago. He did very well in the program. He turned over a new leaf after that.”

  “Couldn’t he have had a relapse? Coming here might have rekindled the past.”

  “That’s what you can find out for us,” Ricky pleaded.

  “May I ask why you are doing this?” Jenny asked. “I thought you were estranged.”

  “He was a bit of a drifter,” Ricky admitted. “He moved from town to town whenever it pleased him. He didn’t always keep in touch with us. But he was the only family I had.”

  “The boys were very close growing up,” Ann said, dabbing her eyes with her tissue. “You know I lost one child in the storm? Keith was like my second son. Lily should have never come back here.”

  “We drifted apart after Keith moved here,” Ricky nodded. “I spent a lot of years trying to reconnect with him like old times.”

  “We lost the real Keith a long time ago,” Ann agreed.

  “I just want to find out what happened to my brother,” Ricky said emphatically. “Can you understand that?”

  “I’ll see what I can do,” Jenny said reluctantly. “But I can’t make any promises.”

  “We are staying at the Bayview Inn while we are in town,” Ricky told her. “You can reach us there if you want to.”

  Ann Davis was looking exhausted.

  “We have been traveling since last night,” Ricky said. “It has taken a toll on my mother.”

  “Betty Sue and Heather will take good care of you,” Jenny smiled. “We can meet again tomorrow.”

  Jason and Jenny both stood up as Ricky helped his mother to her feet.

  “Why don’t you come to Seaview for dinner?” Jenny said suddenly. “It’s like a new place altogether.”

  Ann’s face clouded over.

  “I’m not sure I want to set foot in that house again,” she said weakly. “Look what happened to Keith.”

  Jenny was speechless. She pasted a fake smile on her face while Jason ushered the Davises out.

  “Do people realize I actually live there?” Jenny cried. “Why do people keep on bad mouthing my home?”

  “Just ignore them.”

  Jason sat down and spotted the box Jenny had brought over. He took a big bite of the pumpkin bread and groaned in pleasure.

  “Does this come in chocolate?”

  “It’s pumpkin bread, you fool,” Jenny laughed. “I’ll put some chocolate chips in it for you next time.”

  “So?” Jason asked. “What do you think of them?”

  “I’m still not sure why they are here.”

  “I have no doubt you’ll find out soon enough.”

  “Have you volunteered for the read-a-thon yet?”

  “Kandy and I both have,” Jason said eagerly. “She’s invited some of her lawyer friends. They have deep pockets, Jenny, very deep pockets.”

  “So you told Kandy about the issues at the library?”

  “There’s something about her, Jenny,” Jason said, his eyes full of passion. “We talk about every topic on earth. I never thought I could get along so well with anyone.”

  “That’s good of her.”

  “She loves libraries,” Jason said, bobbing his head. “She grew up poor and the library was the only place she could hang out at and study. She worked at a library for many years until she became a lawyer.”

  Jenny wondered what else the virtuous Kandy could lay claim to.

  “She sounds perfect for you.”

  “I’m not sure if she sees me that way,” Jason confessed.

  “How many dates have you been on?”

  “More than a few,” Jason agreed.

  “You need to be bolder, Jason,” Jenny said lightly. “Take the plunge.”

  Jason had a laid back personality. He didn’t believe in pressuring anyone.

  “Is that where I went wrong, Jenny?” Jason asked suddenly. “I know I’m not as aggressive as Adam.”

  “I love you just the way you are,” Jenny said, and almost bit her lip. “You know what I mean.”

  Jason’s expression was inscrutable.

  “I’m happy for you, Jason. I’ll be looking out for Kandy during the read-a-thon.”

  “She won’t miss talking to you,” Jason said. “She’s sponsoring a prize. Dinner for two at a big city restaurant for the first person to finish reading all Jane Austen books.”

  “That’s a great idea! Maybe we can give out a few prizes for meals at the café. I am going to talk to Petunia about it.”

  Jenny pushed back her chair and stifled a yawn.

  “What’s going to be your first step?” Jason asked.

  “I need to get some more background on Keith. I am going to talk to Ann again tomorrow.”

  “Any more updates from Adam?”

  “Why don’t you ask him, Jason? You have a better chance of getting a civil response out of him.”

  “So we are ruling out suicide?”

  “We are. At least until I eliminate all other possible scenarios.”

  Chapter 16

  Molly was smiling to herself as she drank her coffee.

  “What are you thinking about, girl?” Star asked.

  “Chris took me out in a canoe last night,” Molly gushed. “It was so romantic.”

  “You actually convinced him to take time out from stacking shelves?” Heather sniffed. “Good for you.”

  Molly said nothing, wrapped up as she was in pleasant thoughts.

  “Ann Davis looks old,” Betty Sue remarked, setting her knitting down. “Have you seen those wrinkles on her face?”

  The other women tried
not to smile. Betty Sue could be vain about her looks. Jenny had to admit she was quite well preserved for someone in her eighties.

  “Did she remember you?” she asked.

  “Lily and I were joined at the hip. I was in and out of that house all the time. Of course she remembered me.”

  “Did she mention Lily?” Star asked softly.

  Betty Sue’s face fell.

  “Not yet. What’s there to talk about but old memories?”

  “Did Lily ever contact her in all these years?”

  “You think Ann would mention it if she had?” Betty Sue’s face looked hopeful.

  “What are they doing here now?” Star asked. “Mother and son?”

  “They were going to walk around in town. That shouldn’t take too long.”

  “Did Ann ever visit after Lily came back?” Jenny asked.

  “I don’t know. You’ll have to ask her that.”

  “So she’s been gone since 1962. That’s over fifty five years.”

  Betty Sue stared at the ocean moodily. Jenny guessed the Davis family was going to stir up a lot of painful memories for her friend.

  Heather had barely looked up from her phone all this time. She suddenly looked up with a shout.

  “I have a date!”

  “It’s time you stopped meeting these strangers,” Betty Sue said curtly. “It’s not safe.”

  “It’s not a stranger, Grandma. It’s Duster.”

  “That guy you met in the summer?” Jenny remembered. “What’s he doing here this time of the year.”

  Duster and his family had rented a house up the coast for the summer.

  “He has a new sales job,” Heather read off the screen. “He’s on a tour of the area and wants to catch up.”

  She looked at Molly.

  “His cousin’s been asking about you.”

  “You can tell him I’m seeing someone,” Molly grinned broadly.

  “We all know that, Molly,” Heather snapped. “No need to rub it in.”

  The lunch rush kept Jenny off her feet. A familiar couple walked up the steps around 1 PM. The café was almost empty.

  “Are you serving lunch?” Ricky Davis asked cheerfully. “We thought we would check here before driving out of town.”

  “Of course,” Jenny said with a smile. “Pick any table you want.”

  “How about out on the deck?”

  “Be my guest,” Jenny said, looking at Ann Davis. “It’s a bit windy though.”

  “I’ll keep my coat on. I can’t get enough of the ocean.”

  “Do you live near the coast?” she asked politely, trying to make conversation.

  “We live in the driest part of Texas,” Ann grumbled. “No beaches around us for sure. That’s the one thing I miss most about this place.”

  Jenny told them about the day’s specials.

  “I have mushroom and wild rice soup, autumn chicken salad or oyster po’boys. I can also rustle up a crab salad if you want.”

  Ricky and Ann told her what they wanted.

  “Did you grow up around these parts?” Jenny asked curiously.

  “My family came to this part of the world two hundred years ago,” Ann nodded. “We lived in a town up north on the Maryland border. I met my Roy at a country dance. It was love at first sight for us.”

  “So you still have family in these parts?”

  “There’s an old aunt,” Ann noted. “Most of the others have moved away for jobs.”

  Jenny went inside and started assembling their lunch. Petunia fried a basket full of oysters and handed them over to Jenny. Jenny took the soup out and set it before mother and son.

  Ricky Davis looked relaxed, stretched out in his chair with his arms around his head.

  “My mom never said how beautiful this place was,” he sighed.

  “Is this the first time you are visiting Pelican Cove?” Jenny asked.

  “I came to visit Aunt Lily, but not since the family moved out.”

  Jenny slathered her special tartar sauce on fresh rolls from the local bakery. She piled a generous helping of fried oysters onto each roll. Ann Davis reached for the canister of Old Bay seasoning before biting into her sandwich.

  “Care to join us?” Ricky asked.

  “I can sit with you,” Jenny agreed, pulling out a chair.

  “What’s going on with the library?” Ann asked. “Surely it’s not closing down?”

  “Not yet, I hope,” Jenny smiled. “We are doing everything we can to prevent that from happening.”

  “My husband’s grandfather was one of the founders of the Pelican Cove Library,” Ann told her. “He laid the foundation stone. It’s part of the family legacy, in a way.”

  “We are having a read-a-thon to raise funds,” Jenny supplied. “Why don’t you participate?”

  “You can count on our support,” Ann told her. She looked at her son. “Write a check for them, Ricky.”

  “Can I ask you something about Keith?” Jenny ventured. “It’s sort of delicate.”

  “The boy’s already gone,” Ann said bitterly. “No use tiptoeing around.”

  Jenny clasped her hands and struggled to find the right words.

  “We found an old chain in Keith’s room. It was a bit tarnished. I don’t think it was valuable.”

  “Did it have a locket?” Ricky asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Keith’s been wearing that chain since he was nineteen. He never took it off.”

  “About that locket …” Jenny hesitated. “There was a picture in it. Actually there were two photos. Betty Sue confirmed one of them was Keith. The other was a girl.”

  Ann’s neck jerked up as she stared at her son.

  “A young girl?” she asked softly.

  “Emily,” Ricky said under his breath.

  “So you can confirm that was Emily Turner?” Jenny asked sharply.

  “How do you know that?” Ricky asked incredulously.

  “It’s a long story,” Jenny sighed. “Let’s say I saw her photo somewhere else and it rang a bell.”

  “I wish Keith had never met that girl,” Ann cried.

  “Was she his girl friend?”

  Ricky shook his head as he chewed on his sandwich.

  “Keith was madly in love with her. And we thought she loved him too, until she left him.”

  “Left him?” Jenny questioned. “Why do you say that?”

  “She was younger than him, you know,” Ricky told her. “Still a junior in high school. She hitched rides to come to Pelican Cove to meet Keith.”

  “Wasn’t that dangerous?”

  “Keith told her that. He used to meet her as often as he could. They talked about eloping.”

  “What did her parents feel about that?”

  “She hadn’t told them about Keith. She had a boyfriend back home, a kid her age.”

  “What happened?”

  “Emily didn’t turn up one day,” Ricky explained. “It was the summer of 1991. I was here in town. My uncle had decided to close the house and move to a place near us. Keith didn’t want to leave without Emily.”

  “Emily is still missing,” Jenny said grimly. “She left for a party one night and never went back home.”

  “Keith thought she ran away with someone else.”

  “Why would he think that?” Jenny asked. “Didn’t he trust her at all?”

  “It had been a hard year for Keith,” Ann explained. “His sister died a few months ago. Lily ran away that spring. He was grieving over them. Meeting this girl changed him.”

  “It was almost as if he was ready to live again,” Ricky nodded. “Everything came crashing down when Emily left.”

  “Why do you keep saying that?” Jenny demanded. “How do you know she left voluntarily? She could have been attacked or had an accident.”

  “Keith always believed she ditched him,” Ricky said sadly. “Like his mother.”

  “Lily did a number on her family when she abandoned them,” Ann quavered. “Keith w
as never the same again.”

  “It was the beginning of his downfall,” Ricky agreed.

  “He was in college then, wasn’t he?”

  “He was a freshman,” Ricky nodded. “But he never went back.”

  “He was smart,” Ann shrugged. “But he never made use of his mind. He started doing drugs. He almost died a couple of times.”

  “What about his father?”

  “Lily’s husband boarded up the house and moved to Texas. Keith came with him. His father tried to reason with him for years. Keith never held a job or met anyone else. He used to disappear for months. Then he turned up when he wanted money.”

  Jenny could hear the regret in Ricky’s voice.

  “Do you believe Emily ran away?” Jenny asked Ricky.

  “I don’t know,” he shrugged. “I didn’t know her well. Sometimes I think that’s why Keith roamed around like a vagabond. He was hoping to run into her somewhere.”

  “What about this latest rehab Jason mentioned?”

  “Three years ago, Keith came to us,” Ann began. “He wanted to start over. He wanted to take a stab at living a normal life. He sounded committed. Of course we wanted the same thing for him. We put him in the finest recovery clinic in the state. He got through the program and got a job.”

  “He was doing fine,” Ricky muttered. “Then he fell off the radar again. We had no idea he had come to Pelican Cove.”

  Jenny’s heart was heavy. She offered to serve dessert. Ricky and Ann both declined.

  “We ate your muffins for breakfast,” Ann remarked. “They were delicious.”

  “Where are you headed now?”

  “I want to see the light house,” Ann said. “We used to climb up to the top, Roy and I. My Ricky was conceived there on our third anniversary.”

  “Mother!” Ricky Davis groaned.

  “Jimmy Parsons will show you around.”

  “Those Parsons are still around then?” Ann looked at her son. “One of those kids used to take you up there to show you the light.”

  “Did Keith have any enemies?” Jenny asked suddenly.

  “He was aloof. He barely talked to anyone. I don’t think he knew anyone well enough to make friends or enemies.”

  “What about those men he bought drugs from?” Ann asked suddenly.

  “That’s right,” Jenny said. “Drug dealers are an unsavory lot.”