“Thanks,” I said. I was looking forward to a fun evening with my friends; there was no way I was going to call Peter tonight. Whatever he had to say, I wouldn’t like it. It could wait until tomorrow. Or next week. Or next month. Heck, maybe I would just wait until he phoned me again.
A few minutes later Julie called out to tell me she was leaving. She went in and out the back door a couple times, carrying baby gear to her car before she liberated Rose Ann from her crib. With a final shouted “Bye!” they were gone. I listened to make sure the door locked behind them.
A late rush of customers kept me busy through the last couple hours and left a satisfying stack of bills in the cash drawer at the end of the day.
I locked the front door, flipped the sign from “Open” to “Closed,” and emptied the cash drawer into the big safe under the stairs. I was still taking care of Bluebeard when I heard a knock at the front door.
I looked over to see my best friend, Karen Freed—otherwise known as “The Voice of the Shores” newscaster on local radio station WBBY.
With her shoulder-length auburn curls and a body that still fit into her high school jeans—though she wouldn’t be caught dead in anything that out of style—she could have been a TV reporter. If she’d been willing to put up with the restrictions that went with the job. Instead she stayed at the local radio station, where she had a larger say in what stories she reported.
Bluebeard wolf-whistled when I let Karen in. She immediately went over and gave him a scratch on top of his head. He rubbed against her hand, enjoying the attention.
“You’re only encouraging him,” I complained as she talked softly to the bird. “I can’t get him to stop whistling, and you just reinforce his bad behavior.”
I relocked the door. Ernie and Felipe weren’t due for another half hour. I signaled Karen to follow me and headed for the stairs. She gave Bluebeard a last pat and came up the stairs behind me.
While we waited, Karen finished setting the table while I added sugar to the tea and put it in a big spigot jar with lots and lots of ice.
“No Jake tonight?” she asked, counting the four places at the table.
“He’s keeping the store open late,” I answered. Jake Robinson owned Beach Books, across the street from Southern Treasures. We were edging closer to being a couple, although there were still a lot of unanswered questions. He’d been a frequent visitor at our Thursday dinners, but he wasn’t a permanent member of the group. Yet.
“How about Riley?” I countered. Karen’s ex-husband wasn’t so ex lately, and he’d been to several of our dinners in recent weeks. “You said he couldn’t make it tonight?”
“Family obligation,” she said. “Bobby’s birthday is Monday, so they’re celebrating tonight, before the holiday weekend craziness.”
I had to admit the Freeds had a lot to celebrate. Bobby, Riley’s younger brother, had been accused of murdering a federal agent a few months earlier, and the Freeds were only now getting back to a semblance of normal family life.
“Too late,” I said, thinking of the crowds I’d seen earlier in the day. “And you didn’t go with him?”
She shook her head. “I didn’t want to miss dinner. It’s the only time I see Felipe and Ernie once summer starts.”
Felipe Vargas and Ernie Jourdain owned Carousel Antiques. Once the summer crowds arrived, the two of them worked nearly every waking hour. The four of us rotated hosting duties every Thursday—had for several years—and it was the only night they closed early during the lucrative summer season.
The phone rang and I picked it up.
“Hello, darlin’,” Ernie drawled. “We’re running a few minutes late getting out of here, but we are on our way. Felipe is driving like a crazy man, so in two minutes we will either be at your door or we will be dead.”
I laughed. “I’ll open the door.”
Karen started down the stairs before I could hang up the phone. “Got it,” she called over her shoulder.
Minutes later I heard the three of them coming back up. Ernie looked elegant as always, the pale green of his crisp Oxford cloth shirt contrasting with his dark skin, his long legs covered with fashionably faded denim.
The man made blue jeans look like a tuxedo. I sighed. Some people just knew how to exude style, and I wasn’t one of them. I kept my wardrobe simple—jeans and T-shirts mostly. I tried to look approachable when someone came in the store. That meant dressing just a step above the beachwear customers, with a casual hairstyle, light makeup, and minimal jewelry. Felipe was right behind his partner, carrying a six-pack of frosty longnecks, and Karen brought up the rear. Felipe immediately open four beers and passed them around as we all exchanged greetings.
Ernie instantly took in the lack of activity in the kitchen. “Where’s the food?” he asked. “Did you give up and order out?”
I put the plate of deviled eggs on the table and planted my fists on my hips in mock outrage. “How dare you? I’ve been cooking for two days.”
Behind me, Felipe swung open the refrigerator door to stash the last two beers. His startled “Wow” was all the corroboration I needed.
“How many people do you think you’re feeding, girl?”
Chapter 2
ERNIE LOOKED OVER MY SHOULDER AND LET OUT A long, low whistle. “I take it all back. You have been cooking.”
“Of course,” I answered sweetly. “Would you care for an appetizer?” I gestured toward the eggs.
We nibbled on the eggs as we took the rest of the food from the refrigerator, arranged the unmatched bowls on the table, and sat down on an assortment of kitchen chairs.
Most of my apartment had been furnished with bits and pieces from my inventory downstairs. Searching the piney woods of north Florida and south Alabama for vintage furniture, kitchenware, and magazines was one of the best parts of running Southern Treasures. Occasionally I found a piece I couldn’t bear to part with. At least until I found the next piece and had to move something out to make room.
As I expected, we spent the first hour debating the authenticity of a “cold supper.”
“I really don’t know,” I finally admitted. “I have no idea how far back the idea goes. But my mother used to make cold meals when it got too hot to cook.”
Karen admitted she remembered my mom’s cold suppers when we were in high school. “She wasn’t the only one either. Mrs. Freed used to do cold suppers sometimes.”
The mention of Riley’s mother snagged Felipe’s attention. “Which reminds me, where is your Mr. Freed tonight?”
“He’s not my Mr. Freed,” Karen protested. Her red face contradicted her words as she repeated her earlier explanation, but we didn’t bother to point it out.
“How is the shop doing?” she asked Ernie in an attempt to change the subject. “Are the tourists being good to you?”
“Pretty good,” Ernie answered. “Good thing, too, since we’ve lost several of our best local customers.”
“You mean the Andersons?” I asked, helping myself to another scoop of potato salad.
“Them,” Ernie agreed, “and Lacey Simon. And Jennifer Marshall.” He shook his head. “This bank mess is spilling over the whole town.”
“That reminds me,” I said, remembering my afternoon visitor. “I met the bank auditor, the McKenna woman. She came in the shop this afternoon.”
My three dinner companions all stared at me for a silent moment, then everyone spoke at once.
“What’s she like?”
“How old is she really?”
“How much did she spend?”
The last question made me laugh. Trust Felipe to cut to the heart of the matter.
“I don’t know. I was upstairs fixing dinner when she left, and Julie would have taken care of her.” I answered Felipe’s query first, then I turned to Karen. “At least forty, I’d guess, maybe a little older.” I tol
d them about the careful makeup, the designer suit, and the stiletto heels. “Her haircut probably cost as much as any of us spends on haircuts in a year.”
It was a pretty safe bet. Karen and I both visited the local beauty school a couple times a year, and the guys mostly cut each other’s hair. In fact, Felipe had become a wizard with a pair of scissors.
“But what’s she like?” Ernie repeated his question.
“Smart.” I had only exchanged a few words with Bridget McKenna, but it was the one word that instantly came to mind. “Seems genuinely friendly, but she speaks her mind.”
“That isn’t exactly a news flash,” Ernie said. “Last Merchants’ Association meeting we got an earful from Andrew Marshall. Rumor has it his wife kicked him out, so maybe his views on women are a little skewed, but he was blaming the McKenna woman, and her bank, for everything that’s happened.”
“Marshall was a mess,” Felipe said. “And I think he’d started happy hour a wee bit early, if you know what I mean.”
Ernie nodded, and continued. “He acted like a guy who’s lost everything. Which you would know if you’d been there.”
He delivered the verbal jab with a resigned air. It was a ritual every Thursday, nagging me because I refused to join. But I wasn’t one of the good ol’ boys, and I didn’t want to be.
“Marshall’s already had a couple run-ins with her,” Felipe added. “Said she has a bad temper, real short fuse, and a tongue sharp enough to slice bread.”
“Well, he may have an attitude, too,” Karen said. “After all, Bayvue Estates is the real reason she’s here to begin with. If Marshall hadn’t borrowed so much money from Back Bay for that development, the bank wouldn’t be in trouble.”
I shook my head. “You know it’s more than that, Karen. Back Bay didn’t have to lend that much to him. Or to anybody else. From what I hear, there were a lot of loans that were too big. Besides that, the Andersons treated the place like it was their own private piggy bank.”
Felipe nodded, leaning back in his chair and clasping his hands over his stomach. “True that. Felicia Anderson never met an antique she didn’t think she should have. Usually with some story about how it once belonged to old General Anderson, so we should give her a discount because it was really hers to begin with.” He made a rude noise. “She only married into the family a couple years ago, but she acts like she’s been here since plantation days.”
It was a slight exaggeration. Billy Anderson had been a year ahead of Karen and me in school, and he’d married Felicia right out of college. So closer to fifteen years than just a couple.
The Andersons claimed they were descended from Civil War General Richard Anderson, based on evidence no one could confirm, and acted accordingly. To hear them tell it, we were all little more than sharecroppers and squatters on their ancestral estate.
Felipe’s description wasn’t far off. Felicia Anderson might have started out as a Yankee schoolgirl, but she quickly acquired a synthetic Southern drawl and the Andersons’ superior attitude.
It was Karen’s turn to sigh. “Billy’s grandpa would just die to see what Billy’s done to that bank. I remember the old man coming to school and starting us all on savings accounts when we were first-graders. Real proud of all the things he did for the community.”
Karen stood up and waved away the topic of Billy and Felicia Anderson. “Anything else about the bank woman?” she asked as she started gathering the dirty dishes.
I shook my head. “I only talked to her for a couple minutes. She did like Bluebeard, though.”
“Everybody likes Bluebeard.” Felipe laughed. “What’s more important is whether he liked her. He thought for a second, then continued, “Or whether Louis did.”
“Indeed,” Ernie agreed. “What did Louis think?”
“Glory said she was attractive,” Karen called over her shoulder from the counter, where she was stacking dishes. “Of course Louis liked her.”
I laughed. “He is a sucker for a pretty face,” I conceded, “but he still has his standards.” Was I actually defending the judgment of a ghost? I guess I was. “She did get a whistle, so he at least approved that much.”
We cleared the table quickly, stashing leftovers in the fridge. Ernie filled the sink with soapy water and washed the plates and silver—someday I’d get a dishwasher!—while I started a pot of coffee. It didn’t matter if it was a hundred degrees out, Felipe would want coffee with his dessert.
I scooped ice cream into bowls and put a plate of cookies in the middle of the table. They looked like messy chocolate blobs, but I knew from my taste testing the night before that they would be good.
Karen eyed the plate, then looked up at me. “Are those what I think they are?”
I nodded.
She grabbed a cookie and took a bite. “I haven’t had one of these in a million years!” she exclaimed around a mouthful of chocolate and oatmeal.
“What are they?” Felipe asked. He gave the brown blob a suspicious look.
“Lunchroom cookies,” Karen and I answered in unison.
“What?”
As hostess, it was my job to explain. “I don’t know what other people call them, although I’m sure they have a real name. We just call them lunchroom cookies because they used to have them in the school lunchroom when we were little kids.”
Felipe didn’t look like he was sold on the idea, but he took a tentative bite, chewing carefully. “Tastes kind of like fudge-coated oatmeal.”
“You’re pretty close,” I agreed. “It’s cocoa, sugar, butter, oatmeal, and peanut butter.”
Felipe snapped his fingers. “Peanut butter! I knew there was something else. Just couldn’t place it.”
“The best part is they don’t take much cooking. Cook the sugar, butter, and cocoa into a syrup, boil it for a minute, mix it with the oatmeal and peanut butter, and drop spoonfuls on waxed paper to cool.”
Karen quizzed me about the recipe, and I fetched the copies I’d made for my guests. We always gave one another our recipes at the end of dinner. Over the years my Thursday notebook had grown fat with things I would cook someday.
“I haven’t been able to come up with a definitive origin for the cookies,” I admitted. “But I do have my own theory of why they were so common in the lunchroom.”
My friends looked at me expectantly, and I explained. “When we were in grade school, there was a commodities program that provided food to the school lunch program. I don’t know a lot about it, but I seem to remember a lot of peanut butter and butter in the cafeteria, and oatmeal. I’m guessing that most of the ingredients came from that program.”
Karen nodded. “Keyhole Bay was definitely a rural school district back then,” she told Felipe and Ernie. “We bused kids in from way out in the country.”
As always, we talked far too late, catching up on the week’s news and eventually circling back to the impending takeover of Back Bay Bank.
“Is it really that bad?” Ernie asked.
Karen nodded. As the lead reporter for WBBY, she took her news-gathering duties seriously, and usually had the inside track on whatever was happening in town. “I think it is,” she said. “They sent down one of their big guns to run the audit, in the middle of the high season. Even at top rates they couldn’t find her a hotel room.”
“Then where is she staying?” I asked. “Pensacola’s got to be worse.”
“In one of the model homes,” Karen answered. She yawned and stretched her arms over her head before standing up. “The bank owns the houses”—she shrugged—“so I guess it makes sense. Got some rental furniture out of one of those discount places over by Eglin, and moved in.” She gathered up the oversized bag she carried with her everywhere. “Early morning tomorrow. I need to be getting home.”
Felipe and Ernie were on their feet, too. Ernie carried the ice cream bowls to the sink, but I wav
ed him away. “You’ve done enough already,” I said. “I can take care of the rest of this.”
I walked them downstairs and said good night, carefully locking the door behind them and arming the alarm system. I’d become a fanatic about the alarm in the last year.
I checked on Bluebeard, giving him a shredded-wheat biscuit for a treat. He nibbled the biscuit, then dropped the rest of it in his dish and hopped onto my arm. Bumping against my chin, he asked “Coffee?”
I shook my head. “You know the answer,” I said, stroking his head. He leaned into me, as though the show of affection would change my mind.
I petted him for another minute or two, but I was already yawning, and it was time to go to bed.
I urged Bluebeard back into his cage, gave him a few seeds to assuage my guilt over the coffee, and made sure he was settled down for the night.
Through the wide front window I could see the lights still on across the street in Beach Books.
I made a quick mental calculation of the leftovers in the refrigerator. There were a lot of leftovers, I realized. I’d wanted to be sure I had enough of everything, but because I’d made so many dishes, I had ended up with a refrigerator full of food.
I picked up the phone and dialed Jake’s cell number.
“Hi,” I said when he answered. “You hungry?”
Chapter 3
FIVE MINUTES AFTER I HUNG UP, THE LIGHTS WENT out in Beach Books, and two minutes after that, Jake was at the front door.
I let him in, and Bluebeard squawked a greeting. Jake, understanding his duties as guest, went directly to the parrot to say hello.
“He’s already had his biscuit,” I warned Jake as he reached in his pocket. Jake often carried treats for the cantankerous bird.
“Not a @#%^$%#% biscuit,” Bluebeard shot back, fixing me with a beady stare.
“Language!” I cautioned. Bluebeard could swear like, well, like a pirate, and I hadn’t had much luck breaking him of his lifelong habit.
He muttered for a minute, the words indistinguishable but the tone crystal clear, then turned back to Jake. “Pretty boy,” he cooed and quickly exited his cage.
Murder Sends a Postcard (A Haunted Souvenir) Page 2
