Bonbon With the Wind

by Dorothy St. James

  I could almost hear Mabel’s voice whisper in the light breeze that was tickling my ears saying, “The older residents won’t be able to do this on their own. They’re going to look to you, Penn.”

  I glanced up to see Althea watching me with a I-know-what-you’re-thinking smile. She was acting as if she’d heard the voice too.

  “It’s my conscience, not the voice of a ghost,” I wanted to snap. But to say that wouldn’t convince her. And besides, even if she was standing right next to me, it she couldn’t hear the thoughts in my head. So instead of saying something crazy, I said what I thought would make Grandmother Mabel proud, “As soon as we get the doors open, we need to make a plan for helping the residents get back on their feet. We need to start a volunteer list and a needs list. I’ll keep them posted in the window.”

  Just as Bubba moved the last sandbag out of the way, Althea leaned toward me and said in a knowing way, “Mabel used to post lists just like those on the shop window after a hurricane. She wouldn’t happen to be whispering advice in your ear, would she?”

  “Any reports of major damage?” I asked Bubba as I nudged Althea out of my face.

  He hesitated before answering. “You saw the roads and our yards. Sand is everywhere. There are damaged roofs. A few buildings are pretty badly beat up. Flooding occurred nearly everywhere. And there was one bad house fire. Because it happened during the height of the storm, the place burned completely to the ground before the fire department could get out to it with their equipment.”

  “Not Althea’s house,” I cried.

  “See, you do worry about me. We’ll be friends again before you know it.” Althea patted my shoulder.

  I hoped she was right.

  “Why would you think it was Althea’s house that burned?” Bubba asked.

  “Because you seem reluctant to tell us about it, and I’m standing right here where Bertie, Harley, and I live.”

  “Stop acting like you’re on the stage and blurt it out already, Bubba,” Bertie said with a huff.

  “Very well.” He eyed me cautiously again. “But you need to know, Penn, that I’m not saying anything. I’m just telling you what you asked me.”

  “Why does everyone around here think I have a volcanic temper?” I complained.

  “Because you do!” Bertie, Althea, and Bubba all howled at once.

  Harley, smart man, had kept his lips clamped tightly shut and his expression fairly neutral.

  “It was Joe Davies’ house,” Bubba said it like he was ripping off a band-aid and then winced.

  “That poor man,” I said quite calmly. Why would they think I’d react in any other way? “He once told me that he had reams and reams of research stored in his house.”

  “The Gray Lady had warned him.” Althea took a step away from me before making that pronouncement. Her eyes opened as big as an owl’s. “She warned him. And now he’s lost everything.”

  I chose to ignore her.

  “At least he was smart enough to get off the island. Just think what would have happened if he’d been foolish enough to try and ride out the storm,” Harley said.

  “Well, I know who’ll go on my needs list,” I said. A piece of me felt proud—and quite frankly surprised—that I could manage to sound so calm. I hadn’t snapped at Althea or lectured that only fools believed in ghosts. Instead, I’d focused on moving forward after the storm.

  My aversion to ghosts and magic went back to my childhood. I’d been told (wrongly) that my mother—the woman who’d abandoned me on my father’s doorstep—was a fortune teller and a con-woman who took advantage of gullible people eager to believe in the unbelievable. She was the villain in my life’s story. If not for her, my father’s family wouldn’t have suffered the humiliation of my existence. It was people like her, people who claimed to have magical powers who caused the most damage, or so I’d believed.

  And then I’d met Althea.

  She believed in every kind of magical woo-woo nonsense out there, yet she’d managed to charm her way past my defenses. She was funny and easy-going. She was like a butterfly flitting from flower to flower. One couldn’t help but be drawn to her.

  The last of the sandbags had finally been moved out of the way. I used my shoulder to push open the shop door. The wood must have swollen from the flood waters. The copper bell above the door made a joyful sound like a puppy happy its owners had finally returned home.

  There were puddles here and there on the wood flooring, and there was a brown stain low on the walls that reminded me of a ring in a bathtub.

  “So the flood waters did get inside,” Bertie said pragmatically. “It’s nothing a little cleaning can’t handle.”

  Not willing to breathe easily yet, I headed straight to the heart of the shop…the kitchen.

  “She’ll have to have someone come in to dry out the place and make sure mold doesn’t grow,” I heard Harley saying behind me as I hurried down a hallway to the back kitchen with Stella following along.

  “I know someone who’ll give her a good price,” Bubba’s low voice rumbled.

  I stepped into the kitchen and flipped on the overhead lights. Nothing happened. Of course nothing happened. The power still hadn’t been restored on the island. While I knew that, it was hard to break old habits. The kitchen was usually a bright, sunny area. But with plywood boards covering every window, including the windows that opened up to the marsh behind the shop, it made the space dark and gloomy.

  As I peered into the darkness, suddenly a bright, almost ghostly, light flitted around the room. Startled, I spun around to find Harley standing there with a flashlight in his hand.

  “Bertie found this in the office. The carpeting in there is ruined. And you might want to replace that old desk. But other than that, I think it’ll be okay.”

  I nodded somewhat absently while my gaze followed his beam of the flashlight.

  Like out front, there were puddles of water on the floor and a watermark stained the walls, but none of the ovens or chocolate making equipment—all of which we’d tightly wrapped in plastic—seemed damaged. Even the burlap sacks of Amar cacao beans were exactly how I’d left them, untouched by the flooding waters. I breathed out a sigh of relief.

  It was okay.

  I wanted to pinch myself.

  My shop had survived.

  An hour later, Troubadour was happily munching his food upstairs in our apartment. I had the volunteer and needs lists posted to the newly uncovered storefront window. My name was at the top of the volunteer list. I was ready to help the town get back on its feet.

  We followed Bubba as he led the way back to Main Street and the shops there. Harley wanted to take a look at his office, which was on the second floor above Althea’s crystal shop and Althea wanted to see how her place had fared as well.

  We were halfway down Main Street, which was currently being cleared of sand with a large bulldozer, when Stella slipped out of her collar and took off running.

  Thankfully, she steered away from the heavy equipment being used on the road. She zigged and zagged while running as quick as a world-class sprinter toward the beachfront.

  “Stella! Come back here!” I chased after her, stumbling several times in the rolling sand dunes where there should have been roads. If anything happened to my little dog, I didn’t know what I’d do.

  “Go on without me!” I called to my friends and ran even faster after Stella.

  The ocean waves were visible as they crashed against the battered shoreline. I half-slid, half-fell down one of the damaged dunes where the storm had sharply eroded the beach just as Stella disappeared over another sand dune far to my right.

  “Come back!” I yelled like a crazy person. “Please.”

  That’s when I heard it. A yelp and then a whine.

  Oh, gracious no. Stella sounded hurt. I crested the dune she’d disappeared over and found my little dog.

  She pawed the sand and continued that odd, deep throated whine. I’d never heard her make a sound
like that before.

  “Stella?” I whispered as I approached her cautiously. Had she cut her foot? Was that why she was pawing the sand?

  I stepped even closer.

  What I saw stopped me cold.

  Her paw scraped at what looked like a white cotton buttoned-up shirt. But the shirt wasn’t wadded into a pile as if it’d been washed out of a house. The material was buried less than an inch under the sand and lying flat and slightly rounded. And the smell…

  I scooped Stella up in my arms and hugged her to my chest.

  She hadn’t found a crab to chase or a piece of detritus from someone’s life that had been washed away. She’d found someone. Although I wasn’t an expert in these things, I guessed by the horrific odor that the body had to have been there for several days.

  Chapter 4

  I needed to report this. I pulled my cell phone from my back pocket to call my friend, Detective Frank Gibbons who worked with the Charleston County Sheriff’s Department. When I hit the call button, my phone beeped twice. A message popped up on the screen that read, No Service.

  Right. I’d forgotten that cell service in the area hadn’t been restored. Losing my phone and access to the outside world felt like someone had cut off my arm. It took me a panicked moment to figure out how to report the body.

  I hated to leave whoever was buried in the sand alone. It felt disrespectful. But there was no helping it. I had to hike back to the downtown and hope I’d be able to find someone at the police station who would know what to do.

  “Why didn’t you listen to the news media and stay away from my town?” Police Chief Hank Byrd complained when he saw me rush into the police department’s front office. He tugged at his ill-fitting pants. “We won’t have power for days. Go find a safe place to stay and leave me alone.”

  “I-I—” I stammered, feeling suddenly out of breath from the burst of adrenaline that was coursing through my veins. “Body.”

  He rolled his eyes to the water-stained ceiling tiles above his head. “Do not tell me you’re saying what you’re saying. Tell me, instead, that you’re getting in your car and going as far away from here as possible.”

  “I-I—” I dragged in a deep breath as Stella wiggled out of my arms. She sniffed his sandy boots and then growled. “I think I found a body washed up on the beach.”

  Still gazing at the ceiling—was it drooping?—Byrd heaved a heavy sigh. “Of course you did,” he said.

  When he didn’t say anything else, or even look at me, I asked somewhat hesitantly, “Would you like me to show you where?”

  A muscle in his cheek twitched. Sure, in the past year there had been a few incidences involving dead bodies. But no one had died because I’d moved to Camellia Beach. And I had assisted in solving the mysteries surrounding those deaths.

  He finally tore his gaze from the water-damaged ceiling. “I had such a quiet life as Police Chief before you moved to town. Never had to deal with a murder or a—”

  “I know. I know. The worst crime that you had to handle was speeding cars and rowdy kids on weekends,” I said before he could.

  “Exactly. Glad you’re starting to understand.” He hitched up his pants again.

  “I’m sure it’s an accidental death,” he said more to himself than to me. “Let me go see if I can get someone with the EMS to join us out there.” He exited through a door on the far side of the police department and left me alone.

  The air in the city building felt damp and muggy. I hoped the town would be able to restore power soon. Even though it was the middle of October, there wasn’t even a hint of fall this deep in the South. Air conditioning was desperately needed not only to cool things off, but also to keep mold from growing all over…well, all over everything.

  While I was standing there with sweat making a path down the center of my back and Stella sniffing a stain on the carpeting, a man burst through the front door. He was older, perhaps in his mid to late seventies. His thinning gray hair stood up here and there. He was wearing a long-sleeved dress shirt and dark blue wool suit pants. Startled by his entrance, Stella jumped in the air and began barking with a high-pitched sound I now recognized as a sign that she was terrified.

  “I need to report—” He grabbed his knees in an effort to catch his breath.

  “What’s with all this infernal racket out here?” Byrd growled as he lumbered back through the same door he’d gone through not a few minutes ago.

  At the same time the man dressed far too warmly for the weather blurted, “I need to report a murder!”

  “Not this again,” Byrd said. He turned to glare at me. “There’s no reason to jump to conclusions. Accidents can—”

  “No!” he rushed past me and grabbed Byrd’s arm. “No! He was murdered. My brother was murdered.”

  Hank shot me another hard glare before focusing on the man who was gripping his arm. “Who are you, and what in blazes are you talking about?”

  He released Byrd’s arm. “I’m Silas Piper.”

  “Really?” Byrd raised his eyebrow with disbelief.

  I shared the police chief’s reaction. Silas Piper was a multibillionaire with business holdings all over the globe. Why would an important man like him come to Camellia Beach? Wouldn’t he hire someone to come and ask questions for him? I knew my father would.

  “My brother has been murdered, and I expect a full investigation,” Silas said importantly.

  “Did he often wear a tweed hat?” I asked.

  The man eyed me cautiously before answering. “I don’t know much about what he might or might not wear. I haven’t set eyes on him in over ten years.”

  “You’ll have to excuse me for sounding callous,” Byrd said. “But if you’ve not been in contact with your brother, why would you even start to think he was killed out here on Camellia Beach? This town is a paradise. Our residents are peaceful and—”

  “Because of this.” Silas had pulled a crumbled letter from his pants pocket. “I received it yesterday. Taylor wrote the letter. He said it was insurance, the fool. It’s a letter that he supposedly left with a friend only to be mailed if that friend failed to hear from him.”

  He handed the letter to Byrd. The police chief read it through quickly and snorted out a frustrated breath. “This doesn’t prove anything. As you might have noticed, a hurricane has hit our area. The power is out. The phones are down. The cell service is down. The only thing that’s working for communication around here is our radio system. Give it a few days and I’m sure your brother will call you.” He pushed the letter back into the older man’s hand. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m horribly busy. Penn, you had something to show me?”

  “I—um—of course,” I muttered while Silas, his shoulders slumped, shuffled toward the door. “Give me a minute. And you might want make sure the EMT has a good shovel.”

  I heard Byrd groan behind me as I followed Silas out to the street.

  “Mr. Piper?” I crossed the distance between us and, after setting Stella down, held out my hand. “I’m Charity Penn. I didn’t recognize you at first. You used to visit my father when your business headquarters were in Chicago.”

  He’d visited my father’s house several times when I was growing up, but I’d only ever seen the top of his head. I remember watching from my perch on the stairs as the family butler led the way through the vaulted foyer and down the wide hallway. Silas’ purposeful stride had made his shoes clack on the marble floor as he headed toward my father’s domain—a study that smelled of leather and books.

  “Charity Penn?” His brow furrowed with confusion as he tentatively shook my hand. “And you claim you’re George’s child?”

  My father, like his father before him, was the head of Penn Industries, a multinational conglomerate that bought companies, restructured them, and sold shares of the rejuvenated businesses at large profits. My father’s family, especially my paternal grandmother, liked to deny my existence. My mother, who I’d only recently learned was Mabel’s daughter, h
adn’t been a debutant handpicked from a well-heeled blue-blood Chicago family. Worse, my father couldn’t even remember my mother’s name.

  “I’m his oldest child.” I drew a deep breath before adding, “I’m not surprised he’s never mentioned me. I’m—you know—a bit of a family secret. A black sheep of the Penn clan.”

  “I see.” He wiped the hand that had touched mine on his pants.

  “I live here on Camellia Beach. Perhaps there’s something I can do to help you?”

  He sighed. “I suppose you want a fee for this help?”

  “A fee?” I hadn’t even thought of that. All I wanted was a peek at that letter in his hand. But I couldn’t pass up an opportunity to get Silas to release his grip on some of his riches. “I don’t need anything personally. My business escaped relatively unscathed. However, you could donate some money to help with the hurricane relief around here.”

  He shook his head, so I quickly added, “The police chief means well, but with the hurricane and having to protect the shops and homes from being looted, he doesn’t have time to search for a missing person on an island where nearly everyone is missing right now. We were only given the go-ahead to return this morning. I, on the other hand, am a business owner and resident. I have time to ask around as a favor to a family friend.”

  His eyes narrowed. I had a feeling he was trying to figure out what kind of con game I was playing. I locked my fingers behind my back and tried to appear as unthreatening as possible.

  “You say you’re the black sheep of the Penn family, huh?” he said. “Why didn’t you try and hide that from me?”

  I smiled awkwardly and shrugged. “I have no reason to deny it. You could find that out with one phone call to my father. It’s the circumstance of my existence that makes my family think I’m an embarrassment, not anything shameful that I did as an adult, if that’s makes any difference.”

  “You’re a bastard, then?”