I debated what to do about Uncle Louis. I was convinced he was responsible for both the mess on Wednesday and the quilt sale yesterday, but what could I do about it?
I had always dismissed the odd things Bluebeard said, maybe because I hadn’t wanted to admit my suspicions. But now it was more than just the random comments of a talking bird. And why was he interfering now, after all the years I’d been here?
He could have chosen so many times: the death of my parents; my high school graduation, a couple months after my eighteenth birthday; the milestone birthdays that followed at twenty-one or thirty; or when my finances forced me to quit community college after a year and find a job in Pensacola. Or even when I took full control of Southern Treasures.
What had changed? Had Kevin’s death somehow triggered a reaction from Uncle Louis?
“Bluebeard.”
The parrot looked up as I crossed the shop to his perch. He had been here when Uncle Louis was alive, but he wasn’t exactly going to carry on a conversation with me.
Still, he had commented on both the mess in the shop and the quilt being out of place.
“Coffee?” he said expectantly.
I shook my head. “No coffee, Bluebeard. You know better.”
I reached in the plastic bag I’d carried down from the kitchen above. Taking out a single hush puppy, I put some of the seasoned cornmeal in the center of his dish.
He let out a squawk and dived for the dish. Corn was one of his favorite treats. He needed a low-fat diet, but an occasional hush puppy was a treasure in his eyes.
He devoured the hush puppy crumbs and followed them with a drink of water before eyeing me intently.
“More,” he said.
I put the rest of the treat in his dish and quickly tossed the bag in the covered trash can. I’d empty the can before I left him alone; otherwise, he would dig through it. Both the greasy crumbs and the bag could be dangerous for a parrot.
When he finished the treat, Bluebeard hopped over and landed on my shoulder. He rubbed his head against my cheek, his signal that he wanted pets.
I scratched his chin. “I wish I knew what you were thinking, big guy. You’ve been around here longer than most anybody, and you know all the secrets, but you’re not telling.”
“Secret,” he repeated. “Tell the secret.”
“But you won’t tell me,” I sighed. “And that is the problem.”
Bluebeard leaned forward to look me in the eye. He might be just a parrot, but parrots were smart animals, and this one was scary smart. Especially when there seemed to be an almost-human intelligence in his gaze.
I held out my arm and Bluebeard walked down it from my shoulder to my wrist. His claws were strong, and I could feel the tips of his sharp nails through the sleeve of my sweatshirt. I’d need to trim those nails soon.
I carried Bluebeard back to his perch and held out my hand for him to step across.
“Coffee?” he asked once he was settled.
I shook my head. “No coffee, Bluebeard. It isn’t good for you. And you already had a hush puppy.”
I pulled the liner out of the trash can and knotted the top. Pulling a fresh bag off the roll at the bottom of the can, I quickly relined the can and dropped the lid back in place.
“I’m going next door to talk to Linda for a few minutes, Bluebeard. I do not want another mess, understand?” I paused a moment and continued. “If this keeps up, you’ll be seeing more of that closed cage than you’re used to.”
I had a large cage that sat in the corner of the shop, but I usually left it open for him to come and go as he pleased. I had almost put it out for sale in the shop, but now I was glad I hadn’t. If Bluebeard kept disrupting the shop, I would have to keep him locked up in the cage when I wasn’t watching him.
Bluebeard didn’t care for the closed cage, enjoying the freedom of the shop, and he recognized the word. He unleashed a string of profanity in protest.
“Language!” I said sternly. Even though the shop was empty, I wanted to curb his vocabulary. I never knew when a customer would be offended by an outburst, and I couldn’t afford to offend the people who kept me in business.
His voice dropped to a mutter, and though I could still discern a word or two, I let it slide for now.
I flipped the “OPEN” sign over, threw the deadbolt, and went out the back door to drop the bag of trash in the bin. I let myself in the back door of The Grog Shop, calling out to Linda and Guy as I came in.
I had lived with them for several months after my parents died, and their shop was almost as familiar as my own. I threaded my way between stacked cases of beer and wine and passed tall metal shelves with liquor bottles carefully lined up and labeled.
“Up here,” Guy called from the front of the storage room.
He had several cases of beer piled on a hand truck, ready to restock the walk-in cooler up front. I squeezed past and opened the door for him.
“Thanks, Glory,” he said, maneuvering the loaded hand truck through the door.
I moved ahead of him again, and pulled open the heavy glass door of the cooler. Cold air flowed out, chilling my feet as it slid across the floor.
Guy pushed the hand truck inside, and I let the door close behind him as I turned to look for Linda.
As usual, she was at the register, ringing up a purchase for a customer. I waited for her to finish the sale and hand over the receipt before I approached.
As soon as she caught sight of me, Linda came around the counter and gave me a quick hug. At five-two, she was shorter than me by several inches, but that didn’t stop me from feeling protected by her embrace.
Linda had been my mother’s neighbor growing up. She’d attended Mom and Dad’s wedding with her parents and been my first babysitter, and I’d been a junior bridesmaid when she married Guy. And at thirty years old, with no children of her own, she had taken me in as a teenage basket case when my folks were killed.
It wasn’t until I turned thirty myself—and understood how young she had been—that I realized just how phenomenally lucky I had been to have her. My life could have taken so many wrong turns without Linda and Guy, and I still depended on her to steer me straight.
Like today.
“You got a minute?” I asked, returning the hug.
“For you? Always!”
Guy emerged from the cooler with the empty hand truck. He pushed it through the door into the storage space and came right back.
My worry must have been all over my face, because he gave me a long look and said, “Why don’t the two of you go get a coffee? I’ll take care of the shop.”
I ran over and gave him a hug of pure gratitude. There are times a girl just needs her mom—or the closest thing she has to a mom—and this was one of them. Lucky for me, Guy was one of those men who understood that bond. Lucky for me and Linda—that she had found him.
“You’re the best,” I said as I gave him another squeeze.
As Linda and I walked past the front of Southern Treasures, I examined the window displays. They definitely needed updating, but that was a project for another day. Today I wanted to learn about Uncle Louis.
Walking in the front door of The Lighthouse was olfactory overload. The heady aroma of roasting beans and brewing coffee was laced with the sweet warmth of treats, fresh from the oven. It made my mouth water before I even looked in the case to see what the special was today.
I ordered lattes and lemon scones before Linda could object. If I was going to ask for her help, the least I could do was pay for the coffee.
Before we could sit down, we had to spend a few minutes chatting with Chloe at the counter while she made our coffees. A student at Keyhole Community College, Chloe wanted to talk about the accident.
“I was just a couple years ahead of Kevin,” she said. “I was a senior when he made varsity his sophomore year. He was an amazing ballplayer. Way better than Jimmy Parmenter, and he got a full ride at State.”
“Parmenter?” Linda asked. �
��Is that one of the Parmenter boys from out on Highline Road?”
Chloe nodded. “Jimmy’s a couple years older than me. Went down to State, but he came back a couple months before we graduated. Said he blew out his knee and lost his scholarship.”
She handed over a tray with the lattes and scones. “Now this happens to Kevin. Man, I don’t know if being a football star is a good thing in Keyhole Bay.”
I led Linda to a table in the back of the store, as far as possible from the hum of gossip. Now that we were here, I didn’t know quite where to start.
Linda took my hesitation as sadness over the accident. “Did you know Kevin?”
I shook my head. “I knew who he was, but I didn’t know him personally.” I paused again, trying to find a way into my questions. “I was out there Wednesday, at the accident. Karen and I were on the way back when we heard the call, and she headed over there. We saw the car.” I stopped, remembering the sight of the baby-blue Charger sitting upside down in the middle of the field.
Linda reached out and put her hand over mine. “You went out there? Are you okay?”
“I, I think so. We didn’t get that close, but it was obvious it was a bad one.”
Anger twisted Linda’s features. “It shouldn’t have happened. Those kids shouldn’t have been out there. Not with a keg, certainly.”
“Where did they get the beer?” I knew it sure wasn’t The Grog Shop; Guy and Linda were careful who they sold to, especially kegs.
She shook her head. “I don’t know, but I don’t think anyone in town sold to any of those kids. Either they went down to Pensacola or someone bought for them.”
I didn’t want to think about it. It made sense, and I wanted to believe no one in town would sell beer to kids. But no matter who sold the beer, the outcome was the same. Kevin Stanley was dead.
“That was why you were late getting back, wasn’t it?”
“Yeah. We were out at the accident scene, and then we went to Thompson’s Corner, where the party was. Lots of kids picked up and taken into the station instead of just calling their parents.”
“Is all of this bringing up memories of your parents? Is that what has you so upset?”
“Yes. No. I don’t know.” I fiddled with my scone, breaking it into pieces and exposing the tiny fragments of lemon peel. I hadn’t actually eaten any of it.
My throat was suddenly dry, and I took a swallow of coffee.
“I need to know about Uncle Louis.”
“UNCLE LOUIS?”
“Yeah. I don’t know anything about him. I mean, why did he leave me his shop?”
“Who else would he have left it to? He never got married or had kids of his own. Your mom and her brother were his only close relatives.”
“But why did he leave me a bigger share than Peter?”
Linda sipped her coffee, as though she were stalling. “I didn’t know Louis that well,” she said finally. “He died before Guy and I bought The Grog Shop, and he was always kind of a private person.” She stopped, her eyebrows scrunching together in concentration. “I’m not sure if anybody knew him that well.”
“But he lived here his entire life.”
She nodded. “Sure, but Louis was already middle-aged when I was a kid, and he kept to himself a lot. If he hadn’t had Southern Treasures, I think he would have been a hermit, living out in the woods by himself.”
She studied me for a minute. “Why the sudden interest? You’ve been in the gift shop for almost fifteen years, at least part-time. Why now?”
That was a question I didn’t want to answer, but I needed to share my concern with someone. And if there was one person I could count on, one person I could trust, it was Linda.
I hoped.
But I couldn’t just blurt it out. I had to go at it kind of sideways. “Was there anything out of place when you locked up the shop the other night?”
Linda shook her head, her expression puzzled. “You know I would have put it away if there was. But what does that have to do with your sudden interest in your uncle?”
“Well,” I swallowed hard and forged ahead. “There was a mess when we got back.”
“What?!” Linda almost yelled, and a couple people turned to look at us. “What do you mean ‘a mess’?” she said, more quietly this time. “Everything was just fine when I left.”
“I didn’t mean you did anything, honest. And that’s what makes this so, well, strange. The magazine rack was knocked over and there was stuff on the floor. I just figured Bluebeard had thrown a tantrum and made a mess because I was late coming home.”
Linda chuckled. “That’s not strange. He’s just the most spoiled parrot on the planet.” Her expression got serious again. “So what has you so upset? One of Bluebeard’s tantrums shouldn’t be the cause of this much concern. There’s got to be something else.”
For a moment she actually sounded like my mother. That not-so-subtle demand, mixed with just-tell-me-what’s-wrong concern, brought back the feeling of being sixteen and facing my mom when there was something I didn’t want her to know.
And yet I wanted to tell Linda my suspicions, if only to have her laugh them off and reassure me.
“There was,” I admitted. “There was a stack of newspapers on the counter, all open like somebody had been reading them.” When I said it out loud like that, it sounded pretty silly.
“Karen wanted me to call Boomer. It looked like someone had trashed the shop. But I knew Boomer was busy with Kevin’s accident, and I figured it could wait till morning.” I shrugged. “By morning, it just didn’t look that serious. No sense in calling Boomer for a parrot tantrum. But when I started putting those newspapers away, it seemed like every one was open to a story about Uncle Louis, and it got me thinking. I really don’t know much about him.”
Linda patted my hand, and I looked up. She wasn’t laughing anything off, but I hadn’t said anything about a ghost.
Yet.
“You were just a kid when he died, Glory. You never got a chance to know him. And, like I said, he kept to himself a lot. This is what I can tell you. Louis Georges was born right here in Keyhole Bay. His dad was from up North, but he ended up here after World War I and married a local girl. Your granny idolized her older brother, but she was a lot younger than Louis—she was just a little girl when he enlisted in the army.”
I nodded. I’d seen pictures of Uncle Louis in his army uniform, and he looked like he wasn’t much more than a kid himself.
I thought for a minute. “So he enlisted? I saw pictures from the war, and just figured he was drafted.”
Linda shook her head. “I think your mom told me once that he was already in the army before they started drafting anybody.”
“But he obviously came back to Keyhole Bay,” I said, remembering the “Business” section headline from the newspaper. “He bought the shop before my mom was born.”
Linda finished her coffee and stuffed a crumpled paper napkin in the empty paper cup. “That’s all I know,” she said. “The News and Times keeps an archive, though. You should be able to go down to the office and look up the stories about your uncle. It might be a place to start.”
Linda paused as though there were something more she wanted to say. But she seemed to think better of it and gave me another questioning look instead. “Still, why were you upset about newspapers on the counter? They weren’t damaged, were they?” She waited, taking my silence for agreement. “Then what has you in such a state?” She was starting to sound irritated by my stalling.
I squeezed the napkin I was holding into a tight ball. “Linda,” I said, my eyes on the table and my voice almost a whisper, “do you believe in ghosts?”
Linda was quiet for so long I was afraid to look up. She was probably trying not to laugh out loud at the ludicrous question I had asked.
Finally, I couldn’t stand it any longer, and I slowly raised my eyes to look at her.
She wasn’t laughing. In fact, she didn’t even look like she wanted to la
ugh. Her expression was dead serious.
Ooh. Bad word choice there!
She studied me for a moment, as though trying to guess why I was asking.
After a couple of minutes that felt like centuries, she smiled at me. “Honey child,” she used my childhood nickname, “of course I believe in ghosts. We live way south of the Mason-Dixon Line, and we have a fine tradition of ghosts. Besides, we aren’t that far from the bayous, and there’s way worse things than ghosts in those swamps.”
RELIEF FELT LIKE A WARM GULF WAVE WASHING OVER me. “You mean that? You don’t think I’m going crazy?”
Linda smiled and nodded, and I felt my stress level drop about a thousand percent. “And you think it’s Louis, and that’s why you wanted me to tell you about him. Right?”
It was my turn to nod. “Those newspapers all had stories about him,” I said. “That has to mean something.”
“Do you remember any of the dates? That’s probably where you should begin.”
I thought for a minute as I gathered up the empty cups and carried them to the trash. One of the papers had been Uncle Louis’s obituary, and there was one about him buying Southern Treasures. I didn’t remember the third one, but it had been even older.
It was a place to start.
When I came back to the table, Linda stood up. “I better get back, before Guy thinks I ran off with the beer man.”
It was a running joke between Guy and Linda. The delivery man from the local beer distributor was approaching retirement. His pot belly and bald head didn’t stop him from flirting with every woman on his route, and he always asked Linda if she was ready to run away with him.
We left the store and stepped back onto the sidewalk. Midday traffic had picked up, locals waving to us as they drove past. We waved back, continuing our conversation as I unlocked the front door of Southern Treasures.
“You really don’t think I’m nuts?” I asked again.
In reply Linda gave me a hug. “Not for a second.” She stepped back and turned toward The Grog Shop.
I started to call after her, but the phone rang in the shop, and I ran to answer it.
Murder Buys a T-Shirt Page 5
