Killer Crab Cakes

by Livia J. Washburn

  The sudden wail of a siren outside did the trick. The five guests and the Anselmo women all went to the parlor’s front windows to look out, leaving Phyllis on the sofa with Carolyn and Eve. Phyllis drew in a deep breath and then took another sip of the coffee.

  “The police are here,” Sheldon Forrest announced. “And here comes an ambulance, too.”

  Phyllis stood up. “I need to go back out there,” she said. “I was there when it happened, so I’m sure the police will want to talk to me.”

  Her son, Mike, was a sheriff’s deputy up in Weatherford, so she probably knew more about police procedure than most retired history teachers. Throw in the experience she’d had with murder cases and she knew more than she had ever wanted to about how the authorities investigate suspicious deaths. Thankfully, in this case there didn’t seem to be anything suspicious about Ed McKenna’s death, only sad and a little tragic.

  Carolyn was on her feet, too. “You just sit right back down and let them come to you if they want to talk to you,” she told Phyllis. “All this excitement isn’t good for a person.”

  “Nonsense. Like I said, I’m fine.” Phyllis set her coffee cup on a coaster that rested on a nice antique end table. She started toward the door.

  “I’ll come with you,” Kate offered.

  “Let’s all go,” Leo suggested. His voice held a slightly festive tone, almost as if he welcomed the excitement of Mr. McKenna’s death. Phyllis told herself not to think too badly of him for that. After all, it wasn’t like they had been close friends. Mr. McKenna hadn’t socialized with the other guests at all.

  With Phyllis in the lead, everyone trooped out onto the porch. She glanced up and down the road and saw that several cars had stopped to see what was going on, their drivers’ attention caught by the flashing lights of the ambulance and police car. People had come out of the other houses along the road, too, drawn by the sound of the sirens.

  Phyllis saw Sam standing beside the bench talking to a tall, white-haired man in khaki uniform trousers and shirt. A few yards away the EMTs who had arrived with the ambulance were kneeling next to Mr. McKenna’s body, checking it out to make sure he was dead. That was standard procedure, Phyllis knew, but in this case they weren’t going to discover anything that she didn’t already know just by looking at the gray, lifeless face.

  Another officer stood beside the patrol car’s open passenger door, talking into a corded microphone she had taken from inside the vehicle. She was an attractive woman in her thirties with reddish blond hair pulled back into a ponytail. As Phyllis approached, she reached into the car to replace the microphone on its holder, then said, “Mrs. Newsom?”

  Phyllis nodded. “That’s right.”

  “I’m Abby Clifton, assistant chief of police. I hear that you were with Mr. Fletcher when he discovered Mr. McKenna’s body.”

  “I was there, but we didn’t discover it so much as … Well, I don’t know what you’d call it.”

  Abby Clifton nodded and said, “Let’s go over here and talk about it.”

  Carolyn and Eve started to follow as Abby led Phyllis toward the pier, away from the crowd. Abby looked back at them and said, “I need to talk to Mrs. Newsom alone, please, ladies.”

  Her tone was polite but at the same time firm enough to indicate that she wouldn’t put up with any argument. Carolyn frowned but didn’t say anything. In the past Carolyn had had troubles of her own with law enforcement, Phyllis recalled, so she was always a little suspicious of police officers.

  Even without being told to stay back, none of the crowd got too close to the body and the EMTs working on it. They just stood by and looked on with the mixture of horror and curiosity that the sight of a dead body always evoked in people who weren’t close to the person who had died. Phyllis knew it was a natural reaction. She had been guilty of it herself.

  She and Abby Clifton stepped out a few feet onto the pier. Abby said, “Just tell me what happened.”

  Phyllis knew why they were doing it this way. They wanted to get her story and Sam’s story separately, to make sure that they matched up. It was ridiculous, of course, to think they would have any reason to lie about what happened, but Phyllis knew that if Mike were here, he would tell her not to worry about it, that the officers were just going by the book.

  It didn’t take long to tell Abby Clifton about it. The young woman listened in silence for the most part, asking only a couple of questions to clarify Phyllis’s connection to the owners of the bed-and-breakfast and why she and her friends were staying there. Abby didn’t take any notes, but Phyllis had a feeling that she wouldn’t forget anything she was told.

  When Phyllis was finished, Abby nodded and said, “Thank you. You said that Mr. Fletcher slapped Mr. McKenna on the shoulder?”

  “Yes, but it wasn’t a hard slap or anything like that. More like a friendly pat.”

  “But it was enough to knock Mr. McKenna into the water.”

  “It wouldn’t have been if he hadn’t already been dead. He was hunched forward, and I’m sure he would have toppled on into the water sooner or later on his own, if we hadn’t come along.”

  “But you don’t know for certain that he was dead at that time,” Abby said. “Maybe he’d had a heart attack, just like you supposed, but was still alive until he was knocked into the water.”

  “Sam didn’t actually knock him into the water.” Phyllis frowned. It sounded almost like this woman was trying to blame Sam for Mr. McKenna’s death, when in reality Sam had done everything he could to help the man. He’d just been too late, that was all.

  “Well, I’m sure the autopsy will give us the answers we need.” Abby smiled again. “You’ll have to come down to the police department and sign a statement.”

  Phyllis nodded. “Of course. I understand. My son is a deputy in our hometown.”

  “Really? Then you know something about police work.”

  “A little,” Phyllis said.

  She wondered if she ought to mention that she had also been involved in four murders and an attempted murder.

  Probably not, she decided. Not unless someone asked her about them. Thank goodness this wasn’t anything like that!

  Chapter 3

  By this time the white-haired officer had finished talking to Sam, who had moved over to stand well out of the way with Carolyn, Eve, and the guests and employees from the bed-and-breakfast. The EMTs had covered Ed McKenna’s body with a rubber sheet and moved back as well. Clearly, they had determined that he was indeed dead, but they were waiting on the medical examiner to make the official pronouncement.

  “That policewoman give you the third degree?” Sam asked as Phyllis came up to him.

  “She just wanted to know what happened.” Phyllis hesitated. She didn’t want to worry Sam, but she thought he ought to know about some of the questions Abby Clifton had asked. “She seemed to think that maybe Mr. McKenna was alive when he went into the water.”

  Sam’s somewhat bushy eyebrows rose in surprise. “You mean she thinks I knocked him in on purpose and drowned him?”

  “Oh, no,” Phyllis said. “She didn’t seem to doubt that he had a heart attack or something like that, but she just thought that maybe he hadn’t died yet when we came along.”

  “I reckon that’s possible.” Sam shook his head. “Doesn’t seem likely to me, though.”

  It didn’t to Phyllis, either, and she was confident the autopsy results would confirm that Mr. McKenna had been dead when he toppled into the water. She didn’t see how anybody could blame Sam for anything. He’d just been trying to be friendly.

  The white-haired man was talking to Abby Clifton now. Phyllis leaned closer to Sam’s shoulder and asked him, “Who’s that?”

  “The local chief of police. Name’s Dale Clifton, he said.”

  “Really?” Phyllis wondered if he was related to Abby. It seemed too great a coincidence to be otherwise, and as she looked at the two of them standing together, she thought she saw a family resemblance. She g
uessed that the chief was Abby’s father, or at least her uncle.

  “Yeah,” Sam said, “evidently this is a pretty quiet little town, so when a body gets fished out of the water, the chief himself comes to investigate.”

  The Blaines and the Forrests were standing close by. Leo Blaine said, “This place is quiet, all right, at this time of year. It’s a lot busier during the summer. That’s why Jess and I started coming in the fall with Shel and Raquel. They told us how nice it is now.”

  “But it can still get crowded on the weekends, even in the fall,” his wife put in. “Especially on SeaFair weekend.”

  That was coming up in several more days, Phyllis reminded herself. She still had to figure out exactly what she was going to make for the dessert competition. Carolyn probably had her recipe already worked out to the last detail.

  A white SUV with a flashing light on its roof but no siren came along the road and pulled off to the side near the benches and the pier. A man got out and spoke to Chief Clifton for a moment, then knelt beside the body and pulled back the rubber sheet. He had to be the medical examiner. After making a cursory examination, he stood and nodded to the EMTs, who moved in with a gurney and a body bag. Phyllis turned her head, not wanting to see the slackness of the corpse as it was placed in the black plastic bag.

  Chief Dale Clifton came over to the group of bystanders, trailed by Abby. He had the tanned, weathered face of a man who spent a lot of time outdoors, and Phyllis wondered how much of the white hair was due to age and how much to being faded by the sun. He looked around at them and asked, “Did any of you folks happen to see anything unusual this morning? Other than Mr. Fletcher and Ms. Newsom, I mean.”

  Phyllis wanted to point out that she and Sam weren’t all that unusual, but then she realized what the chief meant. Everyone else must have, too, because they all shook their heads.

  “My wife and I were in the house,” Nick Thompson said. “We didn’t even see Mr. McKenna leave this morning. He goes out to fish before we get up.”

  “All he does is fish,” Kate added. Then she caught her bottom lip between her teeth for a second before adding, “I mean, all he did was fish.”

  Clifton nodded. “Everybody else was inside, too?”

  “My daughters and I were working,” Consuela said. “I was in the kitchen; the girls were upstairs.”

  Clifton smiled at her. “How’s Tom these days?” he asked. Obviously, he knew the Anselmo family. “Haven’t seen him for a while.”

  “He’s fine,” Consuela said. Phyllis thought she looked and sounded a little nervous. Some people got like that around the law, whether they had anything to hide or not.

  “We were all at breakfast,” Leo said, making a vague gesture that took in himself, Jessica, and the Forrests.

  Clifton turned to Carolyn and Eve. “What about you ladies?”

  Phyllis stepped forward and said, “These are my friends, Mrs. Wilbarger and Mrs. Turner. They came down with Mr. Fletcher and me.”

  “I see.”

  “We didn’t see anything,” Carolyn said. “I was in the kitchen with Consuela.”

  “And I was in my room putting my face on for the day,” Eve added. She gave the chief a bright smile. She had an eye for any eligible bachelor of a certain age, and Phyllis would have been willing to bet money that Eve had already noticed the absence of a wedding ring on Chief Clifton’s hand.

  “All right, then,” the chief said. “We’ll canvass the other people who live along this stretch of road, but it seems pretty cut-and-dried to me. I expect the autopsy will show Mr. McKenna died of natural causes. I’m sorry you folks had to go through all this uproar so early in the day. I hope it doesn’t spoil the rest of your stay.”

  He was dismissing them, Phyllis realized. Telling them to go on about their business, only being polite about it. The EMTs were loading the body in the ambulance now, the medical examiner was getting back in his SUV, and in a minute the two police officers would get back in their patrol car and leave. There was nothing more to see.

  They turned and began making their way back across the road, straggling out into smaller groups. The Forrests and the Blaines walked together, as did Consuela, Theresa, and Bianca and the four friends from Weatherford. Nick and Kate were the only ones walking alone, talking quietly to each other.

  Phyllis paused on the porch to watch the ambulance pull away, followed by the police car. No lights or sirens now on either vehicle. There was no hurry.

  Sam lingered with her. “Darned shame,” he said. “I don’t reckon Ed and I would’ve ever been buddies, but I hate to see somebody go like that, all sudden and unexpected-like.”

  “Yes, but he was doing something he enjoyed. At least, I hope he enjoyed fishing. Why else would he do it?”

  “Yeah, there’s that.” Sam paused. “I’ve given considerable thought to how I’d like to go.”

  “Sam!” she said. “How morbid.”

  “Nah, just realistic. I don’t care much how it happens, just so it’s quick.”

  Phyllis knew that Sam’s late wife had died of cancer, a slow and painful passing that must have been hell for Sam to watch, helpless to do anything about it. She understood why he felt the way he did. He didn’t want to put anyone else through what he had endured.

  Right now, though, Phyllis had thought about death enough for one morning. She had a pressing problem of her own. The soaked shoes and socks she had been wearing for the past hour had made her feet cold, clammy, and uncomfortable.

  “Well, I’m not going anywhere,” she said, “except upstairs to soak my feet in a pan of hot water.”

  Phyllis didn’t come back down for an hour. When she did, she felt better, although she was still somewhat shaken by the morning’s experience. She found Carolyn in the kitchen, looking through the cabinets. The way Carolyn quickly closed the cabinet door she was holding open told Phyllis that her friend had been checking to see what ingredients Consuela had on hand. Just as Phyllis had suspected, Carolyn was thinking about the Just Desserts contest.

  Phyllis didn’t let on that she had figured that out. Instead she said, “Where’s Consuela?”

  “Gone to the store, I believe she said.”

  There was a giant Wal-Mart about a mile away on the main highway through Rockport. Phyllis had gone in it once and realized that it was laid out almost exactly like the one where she shopped in Weatherford. If they ever opened Wal-Marts in Moscow or Peking—and for all she knew there was already one in both of those places—they would look just like the ones in Texas.

  “I should probably do some shopping myself,” she said. That ought to get Carolyn thinking. She hoped her friend would assume that she already knew exactly what she was doing for the competition. Their rivalry was a friendly one, but neither of them was above a little psychological warfare, even though Phyllis knew that was a ridiculous term to use in conjunction with a cooking contest where nothing was at stake other than a ribbon or a cheap trophy or some bragging rights.

  She went on. “Where’s everyone else?”

  “Sam went out on the pier to fish. He said he’d left all his gear out there, so he might as well use it.”

  Phyllis nodded. If it had been her, she probably would have lost all desire to fish after what had happened, but Sam was made of stronger stuff … or at least he was more pragmatic. The fact that Ed McKenna had died on that pier wouldn’t keep Sam from fishing.

  “Eve said she was going to walk down to that shop across from the boat basin,” Carolyn went on. “She asked me to come with her, but I was too busy.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Oh, this and that.” Carolyn evaded the question, convincing Phyllis more than ever that her friend had been working on her recipe for the contest. Carolyn hurried on. “And don’t ask me about that young couple, because they went back upstairs. I imagine they’re doing what they do all the time.”

  Phyllis couldn’t help but smile. “They’ve been married less than a year, they said. Techni
cally, they’re still newlyweds.”

  “Maybe so, but they could show a little restraint. There are other things in life, you know.”

  “Of course there are.”

  Before that discussion could go any further, the doorbell rang. Phyllis turned and went toward the foyer. She heard footsteps on the stairs and glanced up to see Theresa Anselmo starting down.

  “If you’re coming to answer the door,” Phyllis said, “I’ll get it.”

  “All right, Mrs. Newsom.” Theresa went back upstairs.

  Phyllis opened the front door and found a heavyset, middle-aged woman with short, curly brown hair waiting on the porch. The woman smiled and said, “Hi. I’m Darcy Maxwell, from next door.”

  Phyllis recognized her. They had nodded to each other several times without speaking in the past few days since Phyllis and her friends had gotten here.

  “Of course,” Phyllis said. “Won’t you come in?” She stepped back and held the door.

  Darcy Maxwell stepped into the house. She wore a short-sleeved blouse and capri pants, which was still suitable attire for the weather in this area during October, at least most of the time.

  “I’m Phyllis Newsom,” Phyllis introduced herself. “Dorothy’s cousin.”

  Darcy nodded. “I know. Before she left Dorothy told me you were coming down to keep an eye on things while she was gone.”

  “I’m not sure that was even necessary,” Phyllis said as she ushered the visitor into the parlor. “Consuela is so efficient, I’m sure she could have kept everything running just fine without any help.”

  Darcy laughed. “You don’t have to tell me! I would have hired Consuela away from Dorothy years ago if she’d any interest in changing jobs. She’s too loyal to do that, though.”

  Phyllis motioned for Darcy to have a seat on the sofa and offered a cup of coffee or something else to drink, which the woman refused politely. Then Phyllis asked, “Is your house a bed-and-breakfast, too?”

  “Oh, no. It’s just a private residence. But it’s a big place, too big for me to keep up with on my own. It was a different when my kids were at home, but since they’ve moved out …” Darcy shrugged.