A Time to Swill

by Sherry Harris

  I stood up. “I’ll walk you to your car.” Or motorcycle, or whatever mode of transportation Ann was using today. At this point it wouldn’t surprise me if a helicopter swooped in to pick her up. Everyone gave me a look, because if anyone needed walking to their car, Ann would be the last on the list. She managed to project a don’t-mess-with-me attitude. Her comment to Vivi was the most vulnerable I’d ever seen her. It made me wonder how she became a fixer in the first place. It wasn’t as if you applied for a position like that, or advertised what you did.

  Instead of heading to the parking lot we walked down to the edge of the Gulf. We both looked out at it.

  “The Gulf looks so mild and yet hides so many secrets,” I said. “It makes me wonder what else is happening out there.”

  “You probably don’t want to know,” Ann said. “And you haven’t seen it during a hurricane. I hope you never do.”

  I’d seen some violent thunderstorms and the waves they produced. I’d read about the category five storm that had hit fifty miles east of here in Panama City and Mexico Beach. They were still recovering three years later. A hurricane in Emerald Cove would be unimaginable. “I hope I never do either.”

  “Rip didn’t know about the red boat being in his name,” Ann said.

  My eyes widened. “How did you find that out?” It was amazing the way she rooted out information.

  “I asked him.”

  Well, that was one way to find out. “You went from not trusting him to trusting him? Why?”

  “Things weren’t adding up. No one from last night mentioned Rip to Deputy Biffle or he would have been brought in too.”

  “Did I just get run over by a truck? Because I sure feel like I have whiplash.” I rubbed the back of my neck.

  “I get it,” Ann said. “I was wrong.”

  “What did he have to say that made you change your mind?”

  “His family has layers of different corporations and LLCs. That the boat was in his name was news to him. It was one Cartland owned a long time ago and was stolen at some point. Even though red boats are unusual here, they aren’t so unusual that Rip would assume the one you saw was his dad’s stolen one.”

  “What did he say when you asked him about it?”

  “First he was mad that I’d even considered him to be involved in anything that might hurt you.”

  “And then?” I had a sinking feeling in my stomach.

  “Then he asked if you knew.”

  “Oh.”

  “I told him you did. He said that explained why you’d acted so funny around him lately.”

  Ann didn’t bother to add that she’d asked me to behave as usual around him. No acting awards were in my future.

  “He’s leaving tonight,” Ann said.

  “For where?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. We hurt him by not trusting him. By not asking him immediately.”

  My shoulders sagged. “I didn’t know him well enough to trust him.” That might sound as if I thought Ann should have. “And I don’t mean to imply you should have. The evidence was damning.”

  “It was. If you want to see him, he might not have taken off yet.”

  I kicked off my shoes, picked them up, and took off running. Did I mention I hate running in soft sand? I cut up the beach. I turned back to shout a thank-you and saw that Deputy Biffle had joined Ann at the water’s edge. They were standing so close to each other that you wouldn’t be able to slip a picture book between them. Interesting. “Thank you,” I said, but not loud enough to interrupt them.

  I set off again, and popped out onto the harbor walk between the Briny Pirate and the condominium building. I took a left and ran down to the arm of the dock where Rip kept his boat.

  Rip looked up from untying his boat when he heard me pounding toward him. The vapor light lit his face. I slowed at the look of disappointment when he saw me. I stopped at the edge of the dock and looked down at him.

  “Ann told me you’re leaving. I’m sorry.”

  “Me too.”

  He wasn’t apologizing to me. He was disappointed in me. “I don’t know you that well. What did you expect me to think when I found out you owned the red boat? It made me view everything that had happened through a different lens.” I wouldn’t point out that Ann had known him longer and had doubts too.

  “Why would I have collaborators who went out of their way to shoot at me? And you? In my own boat.”

  “I thought it was to throw me off. To make me believe you were a good guy.”

  “I am a good guy.” Rip paused. “People have to trust one another.”

  “Trust has to be built and earned. It doesn’t just happen. It’s not like being innocent until proven guilty.” I’d heard my dad say that many times. I gestured toward the boat. “We won’t ever be able to learn to trust each other if you leave.”

  “What are you saying, Chloe?”

  I hated having to spell it out. It made me mushy inside, and scared. I’d been rejected by my share of handsome men. It probably contributed to my suspicions of Rip. “Don’t go. There’s something between us. I’d like to find out what it is.”

  Rip bent back over the rope. Disappointment cascaded through me. I should have kept my big mouth shut. My face heated up. He’d probably be telling everyone the story of the loser girl who liked him. I had my answer and turned to go.

  “Chloe.”

  I paused at the warmth in Rip’s voice.

  “I’m tying her back up. I was planning to go away for the weekend. Ann knew that.”

  Ann! She’d tricked me into believing he was leaving for a long time. I turned back around. Rip reached his hand up to me. I put my cold one in his warm one and stepped down onto his boat.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thanks to everyone who takes the time to read my books. This is book number eleven for me, and I always have to pinch myself to believe the dream of being published really did come true. I’m so blessed to have Gary Goldstein as my editor at Kensington and John Talbot as my agent. The team at Kensington is amazing and I have to give a special shout-out to Larissa Ackerman. I’m so lucky to work with her.

  Thanks so much to The Wickeds—Jessie Crockett, Julie Hennrikus, Edith Maxwell, Liz Mugavero, and Barbara Ross. We’ve all grown so much since our early days together and I can’t imagine better blog mates and friends than all of them.

  Barb Goffman, independent editor, always reads an early draft of my books. And by early I mean a bunch of scenes strung together that she somehow manages to make sense of. If there are mistakes, it’s on me, not her.

  Shari Randall is my go-to children’s librarian. I send her questions asking, “What would Shari do?” She always has an answer for me. Shari also writes amazing novels, so check them out.

  Another thank you to Shari’s husband, Bill Randall, Coast Guard Commander (Ret.), for sharing his expertise with boats and the Coast Guard. All mistakes are mine!

  Thanks, Vida Antolin-Jenkins, Captain (Ret.) JAG Corp, for your advice on military wills and what could go wrong with one. It was brilliant! And again, if there are mistakes, it’s my fault.

  To all the Coast Guard spouses that reached out when I asked a question on Facebook—thank you! And a huge thanks to the spouse and her active-duty Coast Guard husband who helped so much but wish to remain anonymous!

  To my three beta readers extraordinaire, Jason Allen-Forrest, Christy Nichols, and Mary Titone, thank you for always dropping everything and reading for me. An extra thanks to Mary for a second last minute read through. This book is so much better because of your contributions. I’m a lucky woman to have all of you supporting my stories.

  Also, thanks to Jen; you are so much more than a virtual assistant.

  To Clare—now my angel. A couple of years ago she handed me a newspaper clipping about a ghost ship washing up on the beach of Destin, Florida. It’s what set this story off. I miss you, but know you are still here helping me with my books.

  And as always to my fabulous
, funny family—you make life an adventure. I wouldn’t want it any other way!

  Don’t miss the first book in the Chloe Jackson Sea Glass Saloon Mysteries!

  FROM BEER TO ETERNITY

  by Sherry Harris

  With Chicago winters in the rearview mirror, Chloe Jackson is making good on a promise: help her late friend’s grandmother run the Sea Glass Saloon in the Florida Panhandle. To Chloe’s surprise, feisty Vivi Slidell isn’t the frail retiree Chloe expects. Nor is Emerald Cove. It’s less a sleepy fishing village than a Panhandle hotspot overrun with land developers and tourists. But it’s a Sea Glass regular who’s mysteriously crossed the cranky Vivi. When their bitter argument comes to a head and he’s found dead behind the bar, guess who’s the number one suspect?

  In trying to clear Vivi’s name, Chloe discovers the old woman isn’t the only one in Emerald Cove with secrets. Under the laid-back attitude, sparkling white beaches, and small-town ways something terrible is brewing. And the sure way a killer can keep those secrets bottled up is to finish off one murder with a double shot: aimed at Chloe and Vivi.

  Look for FROM BEER TO ETERNITY on sale now!

  CHAPTER 1

  Remember the big moment in The Wizard of Oz movie when Dorothy says, “Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore?” Boy, could I relate. Only a twister hadn’t brought me here; a promise had. This wasn’t the Emerald City, but the Emerald Coast of Florida. Ruby slippers wouldn’t get me home to Chicago. And neither would my red, vintage Volkswagen Beetle, if anyone believed the story I’d spread around. Nothing like lying to people you’d just met. But it couldn’t be helped. Really, it couldn’t.

  The truth was, as a twenty-eight-year-old children’s librarian, I never imagined I’d end up working in a beach bar in Emerald Cove, Florida. In the week I’d been here I’d already learned toddlers and drunk people weren’t that different. Both were unsteady on their feet, prone to temper tantrums one minute and sloppy hugs the next, and they liked to take naps wherever they happened to be. Go figure. But knowing that wasn’t helping me right now. I was currently giving the side-eye to one of the regulars.

  “Joaquín, why the heck is Elwell wearing that armadillo on his head?” I asked in a low voice. Elwell Pugh sat at the end of the bar, his back to the beach, nursing a beer in his wrinkled hands. I had known life would be different in the Panhandle of Florida, but armadillo shells on people’s heads?—that was a real conversation starter.

  “It’s not like it’s alive, Chloe,” Joaquín Diaz answered, as if that made sense of a man wearing a hollowed-out armadillo shell as a hat. Joaquín raised two perfectly manicured eyebrows at me.

  What? Maybe it was some kind of lodge thing down here. My uncle had been a member of a lodge in Chicago complete with funny fez hats, parades, and clowns riding miniature motorcycles. But he usually didn’t sit in bars in his hat—at least not alone.

  Elwell sported the deep tan of a Florida native. A few faded tattoos sprinkled his arms. His gray hair, cropped short, and grizzled face made him look unhappy—maybe he was. I’d met Elwell when I started working at the Sea Glass. I already knew that Elwell was a great tipper, didn’t make off-color comments, and kept his hands to himself. That alone made him a saint among men to me, because all three were rare when waitressing in a bar. At least in this one, the only bar I’d ever worked in.

  It hadn’t taken me long to figure out Elwell’s good points. But I’d seen more than one tourist start to walk in off the beach, spot him, and leave. There were other bars farther down the beach, plenty of places to drink. So, Elwell and his armadillo hat seemed like a problem to me.

  “Elwell started wearing it a few weeks back,” Joaquín said with a shrug that indicated what are you going to do about it. Joaquín’s eyes were almost the same color as the aquamarine waters of the Gulf of Mexico, which sparkled across the wide expanse of beach in front of the Sea Glass. With his tousled dark hair, Joaquín looked way more like a Hollywood heartthrob than a fisherman by morning, bartender by afternoon. That combination had the women who stopped in here swooning. He looked like he was a few years older than me.

  “It keeps the gub’ment from tracking me,” Elwell said in a drawl that dragged “guh-buh-men-t” into four syllables.

  Apparently, Elwell had exceptional hearing, or the armadillo shell was some kind of echo chamber.

  “Some fools,” Elwell continued, “believe tinfoil will stop the gub’ment, but they don’t understand radio waves.”

  Great, a science lesson from a man with an armadillo on his head. I nodded, keeping a straight face because I didn’t want to anger a man who seemed a tad crazy. He watched me for a moment and went back to staring at his beer. I grinned at Joaquín and he smiled at me. Joaquín didn’t seem concerned, so maybe I shouldn’t be either. I glanced at Elwell again. His eyes always had a calculating look that made me think there was a purpose for the armadillo shell that had nothing to do with the “gub’ment,” but what did I know?

  CHAPTER 2

  “Whatta ya gotta do to get a drink round here?” a man yelled from the front of the bar. He was one of two men playing a game of rummy at a high top. They were in here almost every day.

  “Not shout for a drink, Buford,” Joaquín yelled back. “Or get your lazy as—” he caught himself as he glanced at Vivi, the owner and our boss, who frowned at him from across the room, “asteroid up here.”

  Vivi’s face relaxed into a smile. She would have made a good children’s librarian considering how she tried to keep things PG around here. Joaquín tilted his head toward me. I took a pad out of the little black apron wrapped around my waist and trotted over to Buford.

  “Would you like another Bud?” I asked Buford. “Or something else?”

  “Sure would,” Buford said. There was a “duh” note in his voice suggesting why else would he be yelling to Joaquín.

  “Another Maker’s Mark whiskey?” I looked at Buford’s card playing partner as I wrote his beer order on my pad.

  “You have a good memory,” he said looking at his half empty glass. “But I’m good.”

  Good grief, I’d been serving him the same drink all week, I’d hoped I could remember his order. I made the rounds of the other tables. By each drink I wrote a brief description of who ordered it: beer, black hair rummy player; martini, dirty, yellow Hawaiian shirt; gin and tonic, needs a bigger bikini. I’d seen way more oiled-up, sweaty, sandy body parts than I cared to in the week I’d been here. Not even my dad, a retired plumber, had seen this many cracks at a meeting of the Chicago plumbers union.

  Those images kept haunting my dreams, along with giant beach balls knocking me down, talking dolphins, and tidal waves. I’d yet to figure out what any of them meant—well, maybe I’d figured out one of them. But I wasn’t going to think about that now.

  Nope, I preferred to focus on the scenery, because, boy, this place had atmosphere—and that didn’t even include Elwell and his armadillo shell hat. The Sea Glass Saloon I’d pictured before I’d arrived had swinging, saloon-style doors, bawdy dancing girls, and wagon-wheel chandeliers. This was more like a tiki hut than an old western saloon, though thankfully I didn’t have to wear a sarong and coconut bra top. I could fill one out, but I preferred comfortable tank tops. Besides, the Gulf of Mexico was the real star of the show. The whole front of the bar was open to it, with retractable glass doors leading to a covered deck.

  The Sea Glass catered to locals who needed a break from the masses of tourists who descended on Emerald Cove and Destin, the bigger town next door, every summer. Not that Vivi would turn down tourists’ money. She needed their money to stay open, as far as I could tell.

  Like Dorothy, I was up for a new adventure and finding my way in a place that was so totally different from my life in Chicago. I only hoped that I’d find my own versions of Dorothy’s Scarecrow, Tin Man, and Cowardly Lion to help me on the way. So far, the only friend I’d made—and I wasn’t too sure about that—was Joaquín. He, and everybody,
seemed nice enough, but I was still trying to adjust to the relaxed Southern attitude that prevailed among the locals in the Panhandle of Florida. It was also called the Emerald Coast, LA—lower Alabama, and get this—the Redneck Riviera.

  You could have knocked me over with a palm frond when I heard that nickname. The chamber of commerce never used it, nor would you see the name in a TV ad. But the locals used it with a mixture of pride and disdain. Some wanted to brush it under the proverbial rug, while others embraced it in its modern-day form—people who were proud of their local roots.

  The Emerald Coast stretched from Panama City, Florida, fifty miles east of here, to Pensacola, Florida, fifty miles to the west. The rhythm and flow was such a contrast from the go, go, go lifestyle in Chicago, where I’d lived my entire life. The local attitude matched the blue-green waves of the Gulf of Mexico, which lapped gently on sand so white you’d think Mr. Clean came by every night to tidy up.

  As I walked back to the bar Joaquín’s hips swayed to the island music playing over an old speaker system. He was in perpetual motion, with his hips moving like some suave combination of Elvis and Ricky Martin. My hips didn’t move like that even on my best day—even if I’d had a couple of drinks. Joaquín glanced at me as he added gin, tonic, and lime to a rocks glass. I’d learned that term a couple of days ago. Bars had names for everything, and “the short glasses” didn’t cut it in the eyes of my boss, Vivi Jo Slidell. And yeah, she was as Southern as her name sounded. I watched with interest as Joaquín grabbed a cocktail shaker, adding gin, dry vermouth, and olive brine.

  “Want to do the honors?” Joaquín asked, holding up the cocktail shaker.

  I glanced at the row of women sitting at the bar, one almost drooling over Joaquín. One had winked at him so much it looked like she had an eye twitch, and one was now looking at me with an openly hostile expression. Far be it from me to deprive anyone from watching Joaquín’s hips while he shook the cocktail.