Amanda sighed. “Let’s do something radical. Let’s not talk about guys today, okay? What else is going on with you? I haven’t hardly seen you the past week or so.”
Meg was instantly all smiles again. “Oh, I forgot to tell you! I’m starting online classes for a degree in psychology. Isn’t that great?”
“Wow! Good for you. I didn’t know you’re interested in psychology.”
“Well, maybe it’s weird,” Meg said, “–but I thought it would help me understand men better, for dating, I mean. Who can tell what sort of weird things are in their heads?”
Amanda mentally winced. So much for the ‘no talking about guys’ rule.
“Um…” she began, but Meg interrupted her.
“They’re staring at you again.” She nodded at the other people in the café, several of whom were looking at Amanda.
“It’s okay, just ignore it,” Amanda said, ducking her head down so she could pretend to study her menu.
Apparently, that wasn’t good enough for Meg. Before Amanda realized it, her normally sweet friend had jumped to her feet and was addressing the entire café in a voice that was all business.
“All right, everybody! Listen up! I don’t know why you’re all so worked up about the news that’s in the paper, but I’ve got something to tell you. This woman–“ she pointed at Amanda “–does not deserve to get your attitude. Lydia was the one who was going to stab her in the neck with a pair of scissors. Lydia was the one who was going to attack her before she even thought to ask her any questions. Lydia’s the one who’s in jail right now for doing something awful, not Amanda! So if any of you people who have your panties all in a bunch want to come and talk to us about whatever it is that you’re all bent out of shape about, come on over! I’ll buy you pie. But, if you’re too chicken to do that, then you’d better shut up and quit being mean, because Amanda Graham doesn’t deserve that. She’s done a lot for this town and she’s good people.”
There was total silence in the aftermath of Meg’s defensive outburst. Finally, Solomon Culpepper popped his hand up. Seeing he’d gotten Meg’s attention, he asked, “What if I’m not being mean but I still want pie?”
Meg broke out into a laugh, which melted the tension from the room. “Solomon, I think they’ve got apple and peach. Which one do you want?”
Chapter 20
Being the owner of a bed and breakfast wasn’t always easy, but if there was one thing she truly hated, it was the paperwork.
It seemed like Amanda was always signing paperwork or going over contracts, and even though it was a necessity in her line of work, she would’ve still rather been planning out a new garden or baking something delicious.
There had been a lot of interest in her online romance and whale-watching packages, and to be sure there was no confusion about how much profit each business got or what discount was expected she’d put together a simple contract. The last thing she wanted was one of the merchants to be upset with how things turned out, and having a written agreement on file would ensure there was no confusion.
Amanda spent most of the morning visiting with shop owners in downtown Ravenwood Cove, enjoying chatting about their window displays and their plans for spring. She got signatures from Heinrich at the pizzeria and Madeline at the fish store. The only person not downtown was Ian Victor. His boat rental yard was out of town, and it was a beautiful day for a drive. Setting her mocha in the cup holder of her car, Amanda put her folder full of contracts on the passenger seat and headed down to Ian’s place.
The gravel parking lot was deserted except for Ian’s old pickup. She was almost surprised to see Ian sitting in the shed of his boatyard, phone in hand. She’d tried to find him downtown in a couple of places, with no luck. If business was slow he was known to spend hours at a time at the downtown Ravenwood Cove restaurants, drinking gallons of coffee and avoiding his wife. Today must’ve been busy enough to make him stay by his boats.
She walked across the gravel parking lot and inside the rental shack. He jerked his chin at her in recognition, then cupped a hand over the mouthpiece. “On the phone, come on in. Be just a minute, beautiful,” he said, turning back to his conversation.
The waiting area inside the small building was cramped, with no chair. Ian’s minute turned into several minutes and after a while of standing in one spot, Amanda began to look around. Wandering over to the cork bulletin board covering one wall, she admired the impressive photo collection customers has posted. It was a jumbled chaos of snapshots and bits of paper thumbtacked up for display. Picture after picture showed happy anglers holding huge fish, or tails or backs of whales the tour boats had managed to see. There was a business card for a local bait shop and a realtor, a notice of someone selling deep sea fishing tackle, and a flyer of someone looking for their lost beagle.
It was the torn corner of a white piece of paper, innocuously thumbtacked near the edge, that caught her eye and stopped her breath. Just was a simple cartoon, drawn in black ballpoint pen. It was Mickey Mouse, styled like his oldest version, Steamboat Willie, and shown as captain of an ocean fishing ship.
Amanda would’ve known that style anywhere. She’d seen the exact same cartoon drawn on the back of the cell phone in Petunia’s flower shop. Leaning forward, afraid to breathe as if the previous clue might blow away, she looked at the author’s name and date.
Nelson King. Dated the day he had disappeared.
Ian Victor had access to boats, and here was evidence that Nelson King had been at the boatyard the day he died.
Silent, Amanda darted a glance out of the corner of her eye at Ian, still intent on his conversation. He was obviously flirting with whoever was on the line, his eyebrows moving up and down suggestively as he cooed into the phone. He looked her way and she summoned a quick smile, then pointed at her cell phone and gestured that she going outside to make a call. He nodded and waved a limp hand at her, gesturing his approval.
Once out the door, Amanda let out a pent-up breath that she didn’t even know she was holding. She scrambled to dig her keys out of her purse, and a sudden thought crossed her mind. Ian was a true wheeler-dealer, always seeming to have a new boat or be refurbishing one that he bragged about picking up for cheap. Sneaking a peek behind her, Amanda could see Ian still chuckling and chatting on the phone, so she ducked around the back end of one of the rentable charter boats, cradled on elevated supports for repair. As soon as she was out of the line of sight from Ian’s rental office, she ran pell-mell down the hill toward the tiny marina where Ian corralled his boats.
It took several minutes for her to duck between the boats and check the name painted on the side. She’d seen the four boats moored at the same dock before, and felt a pang of disappointment that there wasn’t anything tied to the dock that she didn’t recognize.
Still, the hand-drawn cartoon would be enough evidence to get the cops to come talk to Ian in person, and maybe they could find out more when they investigated.
Amanda popped her head up, mentally charting a path back to her car that would block her from sight as much as possible. She darted between two boats up on blocks for repair, putting a hand on one as she skulked silently around the back of it.
Her hand came away wet.
Wet with paint. Her entire hand was white.
Amanda stopped, then backed up a step. The name of the small, white boat was Skyward Ho, printed in tall black letters. Leaning closer, Amanda could smell the fresh paint, and she angled her head sideways to look down the side of the boat.
There was a faint impression just before the name Skyward Ho, where someone must’ve peeled off latex letters to rename the boat. A sparse speckling of leftover adhesive still remained.
Amanda could barely pick out a couple of the letters, but the first was an S, and one of the middle ones was an M.
Summer Sky.
She’d found Nelson King’s missing boat.
Gripping her keys so tightly they almost cut into her hand, Amanda suddenly spr
inted for her car as if the hounds of hell were behind her. Legs pumping, arms flailing, she wrenched the driver door open and practically fell into the seat, jamming the key into the ignition. The car started with a roar and she had jerked it into gear and slammed down the gas pedal just as she saw Ian Victor fling open his office door, a look of surprise on his face.
Amanda was driving so fast that she couldn’t take her hands off the wheel to dig her phone out of her purse. Rocketing over the rough back road, she constantly shifted from looking in her mirror to trying to avoid potholes ahead of her. After a full two minutes of no one showing up in her rearview mirror, she slowed enough to frantically dig into her purse with one hand, and press the numbers with trembling fingers.
The emergency dispatcher had never sounded so good.
Chapter 21
By the time the police, sirens blaring, had arrived at Ian Victor’s boatyard, nothing was found of the owner except a lukewarm cup of coffee and a couple of tire marks showing where’d he’d sped out of the gravel drive. He was long gone.
Amanda hadn’t wanted to be anywhere near the scene when they arrested him, but when George Ortiz came back to the Ravenwood Inn to tell her that Ian had fled, he could see the fear in her eyes. “We missed him,” the police chief admitted, standing in front of her on the parlor floor, holding his hat like a boy who’d been caught doing something very bad. “Don’t worry, though. We’ve got bulletins out all over the place, and every law enforcement officer within two hundred miles will be looking for Ian Victor and his car.”
Amanda didn’t feel reassured. She was curled up under a quilt on the sofa by the fireplace, cuddling with Oscar and trying not to think about how close she had come to having Ian Victor discover her when she’d found Nelson King’s disguised boat. “So the Mickey Mouse cartoon links Ian to Nelson the day that he died, and we know that Ian repainted and kept his boat. Is that enough to prosecute him for murder?”
“Prosecutor may call it circumstantial,” George admitted. “It’s not up to me to make that call. It’s up to me to be sure he faces justice.”
Amanda kept in touch with the police for the next several days, but it appeared that Ian Victor had gotten away scot-free. After a couple of sleepless nights, Amanda threw herself into her normal routine of guests and entertaining, making sure that the evening gatherings were interesting and featured delicious snacks and wine, and that the guests are well-fed and happy.
On Friday afternoon she ventured into town to get supplies for the nine people currently staying at the Inn. They’d been thrilled to discover Amanda’s list of antique stores in the area, and had let Amanda know that they’d found a great seafood restaurant in a nearby town for dinner, so they wouldn’t be back until late. Planning quiche for breakfast, she made short work of her list at the market, but after days of anxiety about Ian’s disappearance, just walking down the street of Ravenwood Cove made her feel better. Ravenwood may have blamed her for Petunia’s leaving or Lydia’s attack, but after news came out about what had happened down at the boat rental place, Amanda could feel the tide of opinion shift again. People stopped and talked with her, or waved and smiled from across the street. Whatever their suspicions may have been, the evidence pointing toward Ian Victor’s connection to Nelson King’s death made Amanda a hometown hero.
Jennifer was standing at the front door when Amanda drove up, coming out to help carry groceries into the kitchen. There was a strained silence between them sometimes now, though they were always polite to each other. It was as though they were constantly watching the other one, almost stepping on eggshells as they tried to figure out if they could work together. The conversation they’d had in the car had opened a window into Jennifer’s private life, and Amanda wasn’t sure what to do about that.
After all the groceries were safely put away in the kitchen, Amanda smiled at her employee. “I think I can handle it from here. You’ve put in a lot of hours today already. Would you like to head home?”
Jennifer thought about it. “I’d like that,” she said, almost formally, and made sure to feed an anxious Oscar before she got her coat and slipped out the front door.
The rhythm of cooking was somehow healing to Amanda. It gave her time to think and it felt good to make something delicious. Pulling out the ingredients for quiche, she chopped the onions and grated the cheese, then grabbed the wire egg basket before pulling her coat back on and stepping outside. No store eggs could top the quality she was able to get from her flock of hens at the back part of the Inn’s land.
It was quite a walk, but the sight of her little chicken coop made Amanda happy, and her obnoxious rooster, Dumb Cluck, gave a loud crow as she unlatched the gate.
“All right, I hear ya,” she told him, keeping an eye on him as she opened the hen house. He was truly gorgeous, with iridescent feathers and a bright red comb on his head, but she never quite trusted him to not attack her if she was looking for eggs. He took the protection of his little harem very seriously.
The waning sun didn’t give much light through the shed’s small window, so Amanda flipped the light switch, but nothing happened. Flipping it again, she had the same result, but just as she started to wonder if the bulb was burned out she heard a rustle of movement from the corner behind the hanging feeder.
Large movement.
The size of a man.
“Stop.” The voice was deep and familiar.
“Ian…”
“I knew you’d be back here sometime today. You always come check on your chickens.”
Amanda started to back up, her hand groping for the door wildly, but she heard the click and knew what it meant.
Ian had a gun, and he’d just cocked it to kill her.
“I’m sorry it has to be this way.” Ian was breathing heavily, either from anxiety or from having to crouch so long in the hen house. He smelled like onions and dirty straw. “It isn’t what I wanted.”
“Ian, the police already know about you. There’s no reason to hurt anyone.” Her heart was hammering, but she did her best to keep her voice calm.
“Did you know that until Nelson came along, I’d never held more than a thousand dollars in my hand at a time?” Ian asked. “Nelson was my ticket out of here, and now that future is gone.” There was a note of bitterness in his words.
“Nobody needs to get hurt,” Amanda said, trying to calmly reason with him, but Ian’s mind seemed tangled in what had happened. His dreams of a new life had died with Nelson King.
“It was the only way I could have enough money to keep my boats and my business. I never meant to hurt anyone. I knew he was cheating me out of the money and that the last two shipments had been short, and when I met up with him out of the harbor he lied right to my face!” Ian’s face contorted, almost as if he was going to cry. “To my face! He said he’d never kept back any coke or cash and that if I just gave him a chance he’d show me. When he pulled out the hidden bundle of cash I grabbed for it and he went over the side. He wouldn’t let go, the stupid idiot.” He gave a short snort of laughter. “Wouldn’t let go of it to save his own life.”
Amanda’s mind was racing as she straightened up a bit. Maybe if she balanced on the balls of her feet she might get a chance to run. “How could he save his life, Ian? You didn’t let him back in the boat.”
“Well, if he’d tried I…” Ian’s voice trailed off, not willing to admit the terrible truth.
“You left him in the water, Ian. With a high tide like that and the rip currents off the Cove, he didn’t stand a chance of swimming back to shore.”
“He couldn’t swim back to shore. He would’ve told someone.”
There it was.
Ian took a deep breath, then blurted out, “I couldn’t let him back in the boat. It wasn’t personal. Just business.”
“How did his phone get in Petunia’s store, Ian?”
“I…I couldn’t have things point back to me…” He became suddenly defensive. “You know how much parts and diesel and re
pairs cost for my business? You think I could keep that up over a stormy winter without some help? What did I care what he was smuggling? I just had to meet him and make sure everything got transferred. It wasn’t my fault it was drugs. Just business…”
He raised his gun and pointed the huge barrel of it at Amanda’s heaving chest. “Now, just close your eyes, love, and it won’t hurt a bit.”
Amanda’s mouth was dry. She glanced from side to side. There was no clearance to slip out, nowhere to run. Holding up both hands, she started to plead for her life.
And there was an enormous bang.
Amanda opened her eyes, previously shut in reflex, her ears still ringing from the shot right by her head.
From behind her head.
In front of her, Ian Victor lay crumpled on the floor, clutching his chest and swearing a blue streak. Amanda spun around to see where the shot had come from, only to have her heart stop in absolute shock.
It was Mrs. Hortense Sandford, former mayor, all around pain in the backside, and her cousin, of some sort or other. The older lady was looking through the open window of the henhouse, a small revolver still smoking in her blue-veined hand.
“Mrs. Sandford!”
The old lady sighed, her gun still trained on the moaning Ian Victor. “I think, after all this, you may now call me Hortense.”
Amanda sucked in her breath, relief flooding every bit of her as she realized how close she’d come to death. “Oh, holy cow, Hortense! You’re amazing. Why are you here?”
The ex-mayor nodded toward Ian. “Call the police first. I’ll tell you later.”
“You saved my life.” Amanda’s voice was shaking. “Can I come outside and hug you?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” the ex-mayor snorted, pretending offense. “I would deny it ever happened.” And then she winked at Amanda, a small smile playing around the edges of her thin lips.
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