A Reel Catch

by Lorraine Bartlett

  Why had he disappeared?

  Why had he been presumed dead?

  Did his friends look for him, and if they didn’t, why not?

  Something about the whole situation didn’t feel right. What did Paul Darcy and Ronnie Collins know about the missing piece of their triad? And what part—if any—had Lucinda Bloomfield played in the scenario?

  Tori had those and many more questions on her mind. Was there any chance they’d ever be answered?

  Kathy stood over the newly patched guestroom floor, studying it in great detail. “How on earth did you match the stain so perfectly?”

  Anissa grinned. “It’s that old Jackson magic. My daddy taught me everything I know about stains and poly, and compared to him, I still know nothing—but I know enough.”

  Kathy looked at the patched wall, which had been sanded to perfection. “Can I put primer on this?”

  Anissa nodded. “And tomorrow you can start painting the whole room.”

  “I’ve been ready for days.”

  “It’ll take you a day to do that, and few hours to put up the border, but then this room will be ready for habitation.”

  “I can’t wait to start decorating. I’ve been itching to do it since the day I first saw this place.”

  “You have been decorating. The downstairs is gorgeous.”

  “Yes, but the heart of the guest experience is the boudoir.”

  “Fancy-schmancy name for a bedroom,” Anissa scoffed, “but I know what you mean.”

  “If you’re not busy this Saturday night, maybe we could do our dry run.”

  “Busy? You mean like with a date or something? Honey, I haven’t had a date in I don’t know how long.”

  “You’re not the only one,” Kathy groused. From what she could tell, the local talent was nothing to get excited about. But then, the only places she ever seemed to go were the grocery store, Reynolds Hardware, and The Bay Bar.

  “Anybody home?” came Tori’s voice from the first floor.

  “Upstairs,” Kathy hollered.

  Seconds later, Tori appeared.

  “Well, don’t you look like teacher Barbie,” Anissa said.

  “Yes, this is my favorite school outfit.” Which consisted of black slacks, white blouse, a tailored black jacket, and black flats. “If only I wore glasses, the look would be complete,” Tori agreed.

  “You’ve even got a matching pocket folder,” Kathy commented.

  “Yes, and it’s what’s in the folder that will be of interest to you ladies—or at least Kathy.”

  “Why wouldn’t I be interested?” Anissa asked, irked.

  “You tell me.” Tori opened the folder and withdrew five sheets of paper, handing several to each of her friends.

  “Whoa!” Kathy said.

  “Holy crap! Is that old lady Bloomfield?” Anissa asked.

  “You got it.”

  “The Three Musketeers,” Kathy murmured, studying the image.

  “Okay, you found their yearbook pictures. Now what?” Anissa asked.

  “By his reaction last night, Paul has obviously been thinking a lot about the past.”

  “Yeah, and he didn’t seem interested in sharing those thoughts with anyone,” Kathy said.

  “He must have shared them with Noreen.”

  “Yeah, and she was the Ice Queen. If you think you’re going to get anything out of her—and I’m sure Paul told her something—you’re crazy,” Anissa asserted.

  “There are other sources of information—ones we haven’t tapped.”

  “Like whom?” Kathy asked.

  “My Gramps, for one. I haven’t spoken to him since Charlie or Mark was identified. He’s the only other person I know who lived here at the time Charlie disappeared. He might know something.”

  “Maybe you should give him a call,” Anissa suggested.

  “I will.” She looked around the room. “Hey, the wall and the floor are fixed. It looks great.”

  “Yeah, I’m going to put a coat of primer on those patches, and tomorrow I’m going to start painting.”

  “I wish I could help, but I’ve got those windows to put in that cottage up at the Point,” Anissa said.

  Kathy looked at Tori. “Do you think you’ll be substitute teaching tomorrow?”

  Tori shrugged. “I won’t know until or unless the phone rings in the morning.”

  “Even if I have to do it all on my own, it will get done,” Kathy said, and neither of her friends looked like they doubted her. She glanced around the room. “This is no longer my prettiest room, but it will be again.”

  Anissa smiled. “You got that right.”

  Tori returned to the Cannon Compound and changed clothes before returning to the kitchen where she usually called her grandfather. Sometimes Herb and Irene went out for an early-bird special, so she wondered if she should wait until later in the evening to call.

  Oh, what the heck. If Herb wasn’t home, she’d try again later. She punched in the number on the old touch-tone phone and listened as it rang three times before it was picked up.

  “Hello.”

  “Hi, Irene, it’s Tori. Is Gramps around?”

  “It’s not Sunday,” she said, sounding rather surprised.

  “What?”

  “You always call on Sundays,” Irene clarified.

  “I know, but I need to talk to Gramps about something.”

  “I’ll go see if he’s available,” she said in that saccharine-sweet voice that made Tori’s molars hurt. Did Irene talk to Herb in that tone? It drove Tori nuts.

  “Tori?” Herb asked.

  “Hi, Gramps.”

  “It’s not Sunday.”

  “I know,” she said and sighed. “I need some information on something that happened on the bay years ago.”

  “No how are you? How’s it going?”

  “Hi, Gramps,” Tori started again. “How are you? How’s it going?”

  “Fine and fine,” he said, and she could picture him smiling. “It was your grandma who liked a good piece of gossip. Not that she spread it—but she listened.”

  “Did she tell you what she heard?”

  “Sometimes, but I didn’t always listen. Now, what is it you want to ask?”

  “First, do you remember a young man going missing about twenty-five years ago? His name was Charles Marks—Charlie for short.”

  “That was no secret. Everybody in the area talked about it for months.”

  “Well, he’s the guy Kath and I found washed up at the south end of the bay last Friday, only now he was called Mark Charles. Apparently, he came back to the area a few years ago and was living on Falcon Island. I guess he pretty much kept to himself, but Tammy at the hardware store said she knew of him and that he came to the grocery store now and then.”

  “So?”

  “Well, did you ever know him?”

  “Now why would I? I worked full-time when he disappeared, and unless he bought bait from me, I probably never laid eyes on him.”

  Tori let out a breath. Well, she hadn’t really expected her Gramps would know everyone on the bay.

  “Is there anything else you want to tell me?” Herb asked. Something about his tone seemed off.

  “Uh, not that I can think of. Why?”

  “Just wondering. You gonna call me on Sunday at the usual time?”

  “Of course. I always look forward to talking to you, Gramps.”

  “Yeah, and I like to hear from you, too,” he said, his tone softening.

  “Okay. Sunday it is. Talk to you then.”

  “Good-bye.”

  Tori hung up the receiver and chewed at her lip. Who else could she talk to? She thought about it for a moment. Maybe some of her older, regular customers. And maybe chief competition, Don Newton at Bayside Live Bait & Marina across the bridge might have some ideas. They weren’t exactly friends, but they weren’t enemies, either. He’d sent some business her way, and she’d done the same. That’s what neighbors did.

  It was getting
a little late in the day for friendly visits. Then again, Don was open year-round, twelve to fourteen hours a day. No wonder he was still a bachelor.

  The phone rang, disturbing Tori’s revelry. “Cannon Bait and Tackle. This is Tori.”

  “Tori dear,” came Irene’s simpering voice once more.

  “Irene?” Why the heck was she calling?

  “Your grandpa was telling me you’re interested in hearing about Charlie Marks.”

  Of course! Irene was known as one of the biggest gossips around. Her church’s Ladies Circle was probably bored without her reporting the latest scandals from near and far. Tori should have just bypassed her grandfather and gone to the real source of information.

  “Did Gramps tell you that Kathy and I found the poor man?”

  “Oh, yes, but then…I already knew that.”

  Of course she would. Despite moving to the Sunshine State, she probably still kept her entire espionage system back in Ward County working at full tilt.

  “What do you remember about him?” Tori asked.

  “Oh, there were terrible rumors … just before he disappeared.”

  “Rumors?”

  “Oh, yes. That he was a young man you didn’t want near your daughters.”

  “Oh?”

  “Apparently, he didn’t know the meaning of the word ‘no.’”

  “Did he force himself on women?”

  Irene lowered her voice. “The word r-a-p-e had been bandied about, but as far as I know, no one pressed charges.”

  Charlie Marks had disappeared two and a half decades before the #Metoo Movement, when sexually aggressive men often had their way with members of the opposite sex and considered it their right.

  Had Lucinda Bloomfield been one of Charlie Marks’s casualties? Her father had been the richest, most influential man in the county. Could he have been responsible for Charlie’s disappearance? But that didn’t make sense. Charlie had been declared dead. And who had done that? Tori really had a lot more questions that needed answering.

  “What else do you know?” she asked Irene.

  “Well, it seems there was a fight at a bar up at Lotus Point over a young woman. Rumor was a couple of Charlie’s friends were upset that he had … had his way with a young woman, and had beaten her up. So … they beat him up. Pretty badly, too. Charlie was taken to Lakeside Hospital—they closed it about ten years ago. Such a shame. Now we have to drive all the way to Rochester—and can you imagine how much an ambulance ride costs?”

  “A lot,” Tori said, frustrated for the interruption in the narrative.

  “Better that than a Mercy Flight,” Irene went on. “I don’t trust those helicopters one bit!”

  Tori was losing her patience. “What happened after that?”

  “Charlie was discharged a day later, but then the Sheriff’s Department was called to his house. He had disappeared. His bedroom had been ransacked and there was blood on the floor and bedclothes. It was assumed he was murdered, but there was no fingerprint evidence of anyone having been in his room—except for him and his mother. Eventually, Mary Lou, his mom, had him declared dead because she had a small insurance policy on him and that was the only way she could collect. Poor thing, she died just a few months later.”

  No wonder Noreen hadn’t wanted to talk about Charlie Marks. It would have brought up the subject of the fight at the bar—and it was probably something Paul hadn’t wanted to dredge up. But knowing that Charlie Marks had been alive decades later would have exonerated Paul. Or did he think that Mark Charles’s death might be pinned on him or Ron Collins? Had Paul even known Mark Charles was in the area? And what about Collins?

  Why would Charlie make it seem like there’d been more violence done to him and then up and disappear? And he had obviously taken Lucinda’s Valentine along with him as—what? As a sick souvenir?

  But why, why, why?

  “It’s getting on to dinnertime. I’m making a nice meatloaf and we’re having mashed potatoes and peas with it. It’s your grandfather’s favorite dish. I made an applesauce spice cake this morning. To cut down on calories, I didn’t make frosting but just to make it look pretty, I put a paper doily over the top and dusted it with confectioners’ sugar.”

  Oh, dear. If Tori didn’t get off the phone, Irene would soon be telling her about her latest shopping trip to the nearest Publix grocery store and what all their weekly specials were.

  “I’d better let you get to it. It was so nice to chat with you, Irene. We need to do this more often.”

  “Yes, we should. Maybe we can have a little chat when you call your grandfather on Sunday.”

  Oh no!

  “Um, that would be nice,” Tori lied.

  “I’ll look forward to it.”

  “Irene!”

  Gramps to the rescue!

  “Gotta go. Talk to you on Sunday,” Irene said and hung up.

  Tori let out an exasperated breath and hung up the phone once more. Though grateful for the gossip Irene felt no qualms about passing along, Tori was not looking forward to Sunday.

  15

  Kathy locked Swans Nest’s front door and headed toward the Cannon Compound. The big willow in the property’s south side was beginning to yellow—a sure sign of spring. Within a month, most of the trees would be fully leafed, the spring flowers would be winding down, and once Memorial Day hit, bookings at Swans Nest should bring her to near capacity—she hoped. Kathy entered the house and found Tori standing at the counter, just staring into space. “What’s up?”

  Tori shook her head. “I just got off the phone with Irene.”

  “But I thought you were going to talk to your Gramps.”

  “I did. Irene called back. She’s not known as the biggest gossip in Ward County for nothing.”

  “She spilled all?”

  “All that she knew—which was more than I expected. It seems that a couple of Charlie Marks’s friends beat him up because he sexually assaulted a woman.”

  “And do we think we have a clue who that woman was?”

  “Who else could it be but Lucinda Bloomfield? They confronted him at a bar on Lotus Point—beat him up enough to send him to the hospital. And then he disappeared a couple of days later, apparently making it look like he might have been a murder victim.”

  “So Paul and Ronnie were suspects?”

  “They couldn’t prove they’d made Charlie disappear because there was no evidence to support it.”

  “Wow. So where does this leave us?”

  Tori shrugged. “Nowhere, really. I mean, that only gives us information on why Charlie Marks left twenty-five years ago. Not why he came back and, at this time, no way of knowing if his death was an accident or a murder.”

  Kathy shook her head. “It’s too bad we didn’t hang around The Bay Bar last night to listen to all the gossip. I’m sure there had to be some juicy stories being passed around.”

  “Maybe. But from the look of Mark Charles’s cabin, he liked to drink beer. Okay, he drank alone—but what if he sometimes went to bars. There’s only The Bay Bar and Cunningham’s Cove at this end of the bay, but there are at least three bars up at Lotus Point. Maybe we should hang around there for an evening on a kind of listening tour.”

  Kathy grimaced. “There’s a reason we stopped hanging out in bars.”

  “Getting hit on by lowlifes?”

  Kathy nodded.

  “Noreen met Paul in a bar and said it was love at first sight,” Tori reminded her.

  “Yeah,” Kathy agreed.

  “It’s too early to go now. What do we do in the meantime?”

  “I think there’s a box of mac and cheese in the cupboard.”

  Tori grimaced.

  “It’s not the stuff in the blue box—it’s the good kind,” Kathy assured her.

  “Oh, okay.”

  “I’ll make supper and you can work on Anissa’s website. By the way, how’s it coming?”

  “I’d say it’s about fifty percent done. I need those pictur
es you talked about. And we need to order those business cards. When do you want to present her with the site, anyway?”

  “Not until the cards come. The gift needs to be a complete package.”

  Tori nodded. “It will take longer for the cards to get here than for me to finish the site.”

  “Why don’t you go online and find a printer. I’m sure it won’t take long to set it up.”

  “Okay, but it needs to go on your credit card. Mine’s about maxed out.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, I had a couple of … unexpected purchases this month. Between that and setting up Anissa’s site—I don’t want to get in too deep.”

  Kathy studied her friend’s face. Did Tori look just a little guilty? She was free to spend her money any way she pleased, and she certainly hadn’t splurged on anything in almost a year—since she lost her regular teaching job. Kathy gave a mental shrug. Tori would talk about it when she was ready.

  “Let’s get going,” Kathy said and turned for the cupboard to get a saucepan to cook the macaroni, while Tori headed for the office. A piece of cheddar sat in the fridge’s butter compartment. She’d grate that onto the hot pasta to enhance the taste. And she was pretty sure there was still a bag of mixed vegetables in the freezer. She could cook some bacon and toss that with the pasta, for extra protein. If they were going to have a couple of drinks while at the Point, they’d need to fill their stomachs to keep the booze from hitting them too hard.

  Kathy filled the pan with water and set it on the stove to boil. It occurred to her that they were probably wasting their time. Who really cared that Charlie Marks/Mark Charles was dead?

  Then again … maybe somebody should.

  Even though the summer season wouldn’t officially begin for another five weeks, Tori and Kathy were surprised to find very little street parking on Lotus Point. They left Tori’s truck in the municipal lot across from the convenience store and had to walk to the most boisterous bar.

  They’d dressed casually in slacks, blouses, and sweaters which wouldn’t have looked amiss in any of the establishments on Bay Street.