Bonbon With the Wind

by Dorothy St. James

  Everyone in the shop stopped their conversations to turn and stare. I set down my tray of dirty mugs on the closest empty table before hurrying across the room to greet the newcomer.

  “Welcome to the Chocolate Box,” I said with a smile.

  Her perfectly plucked eyebrows flattened. She glanced over my shoulder as if searching for someone, anyone, who wasn’t me. Her reaction was not at all what I was expecting.

  “We sell chocolates,” I said slowly. “We—you know—make them from the bean.” I cleared my throat, hoping that would chase away my sudden hesitation to talk with her.

  I couldn’t put my finger on it, but something about her unnerved me. I wanted her out of my shop. And I had no idea why. There were very few people who caused me to act that way. And none of them were strangers to me.

  “You’re not here to buy chocolate,” Fletcher came up from behind. He put his hand on my shoulder.

  I tried not to flinch. I’d always been a flinch-whenever-someone-touches-me kind of person.

  “You’re here because you’re frustrated that the police chief didn’t give you the answers you were looking for,” he added.

  “Why would you say that?” I scolded the younger man. I then quickly said to our customer, “I’m sorry. My assistant loves playing detective. Please, come in. We have coffee, tea, pastries, and a wide assortment of chocolates.”

  Her silvery-blue eyes flicked from Fletcher to me and back to Fletcher again. “He’s right,” she said with a long sigh. “Chief Byrd told me the case was closed. Actually, he said there was no case to be opened or even investigated in the first place.”

  “I don’t understand.” I really didn’t. What case was she talking about? And how had Fletcher guessed that she’d talked with the police chief?

  She looked at me as if I should already know everything there was to know about her story and huffed. “Joe was my husband.” Again, she said it as if I should have already known.

  “Joe was married?” I asked. He’d told everyone that he was a retired fisherman. “He’d once told me he’d been married to the sea.”

  “Well, as you can plainly tell, I’m not a large body of water. For better or worse, I was married to him.” She closed her eyes and gave her head a sad shake. “Only, ‘Joe’ wasn’t the name I knew him by. I was married to John Fenton. He disappeared about eight years ago. I didn’t know if he was alive or dead. But when they ran that article in yesterday’s newspaper, a friend of mine saw it and emailed it to me. The man in the picture, the man they called Joe Davies, is—I mean—was definitely my John Fenton. I want to know who killed him. And I want to know why.”

  Fletcher hissed under his breath before saying, “I-I knew it!” while beating a fist against his thigh.

  I swallowed hard. “I see,” I said. I would have said more, but before the words could form, a television crew stormed through the door.

  “I’m Stevie McWilson,” a tall man with large, gleaming white teeth and a full head of hair slicked back with some kind of thick styling product, announced to the room.

  “I’ve seen you on Channel Six.” Ethel Crump rose from her chair with the speed of a much, much younger woman. I don’t think I could have moved as fast as she had, and I was at least fifty years younger than her ninety-plus years. “Young man, you make listening to the news tolerable.”

  Stevie’s bright, bleached smile widened. “I’m always pleased to meet a fan. But I must warn you, dear lady”—he showed off a diamond-studded wedding band—“I’m taken.”

  Ethel hooted with laughter. She loved it when people didn’t treat her like a doddering invalid. She wasn’t. Although she suffered from stiff joints and some hearing loss, she was as spry and sharp as anyone I knew.

  “As you might imagine,” Stevie continued, his voice booming with authority. “We’re pursuing a story about the Gray Lady and her latest victim. I was told that this was the best place to come on a Sunday morning in search of residents who would know about the ghost and her history.”

  He shot an inquiring glance at me and then at the woman standing beside me.

  “We can go talk over there,” I told Joe’s estranged wife. She didn’t need to be harassed by the press. I was confident that no one in the shop would tell Stevie (an outsider) who she was or why she was in town. While Camellia Beach was a typical small town where there were no secrets, the town was also protective of its own.

  The woman pulled away from me. “Mr. McWilson. I’d like to talk with you,” she said boldly. She pushed herself in front of Ethel who was giving Stevie a lecture about the Gray Lady. “I’m Delilah Fenton, the dead guy’s wife.”

  Did she actually call her late husband the dead guy? Yikes!

  “If you’ll give me a few moments to fix my hair and freshen my face, I’d be happy to talk with you on camera. My husband, it seems, was hiding many secrets.”

  “Really?” Stevie flashed a wide smile. “Let me buy you a coffee and some pastries.” He hooked his arm through Delilah’s and guided her to a private table at the back of the shop.

  Everyone watched. Ethel’s mouth had dropped open. She quickly snapped it closed.

  “I wouldn’t have figured she’d want to air her dirty laundry like that,” she said.

  “I s-suspect she thinks it’s th-th-the only way to g-get a police investigation,” Fletcher offered. “She’s on a qu-quest for justice.”

  Ethel looked to me, expecting me to comment. I bit my lower lip and kept silent. Not because I agreed with Fletcher—I didn’t agree with him. He was young and naive. He didn’t understand the heart of a woman scorned. I did.

  A woman in her position might be looking for answers. She might be looking for revenge. She might even be looking for a hidden stash of inheritance she thought she was owed. I doubted, however, she’d come to Camellia Beach looking for justice.

  I started to wonder aloud why Joe would want to keep his marriage a secret, when I suddenly got an odd feeling that I was being watched. I whirled around, fully expecting to have a quick laugh at my wildly out-of-control imagination. My gaze crashed into Delilah’s. While Stevie was sitting with his back to the room, Delilah had positioned herself—going as far as to maneuver her chair so it was at an odd angle to her table—so she could stare at me. Or perhaps she was staring at Ethel or Fletcher and I’d merely gotten in her path. Either way, the look she was directing our way got stuck like a choking lump in my throat. Her silvery blue eyes had frosted over. The gentleness of her features hardened until her pale skin looked like stone. The corners of her mouth turned down in an extremely disapproving manner. Even her hair seemed to bristle. Any one of those things, when taken by itself, hinted at a vague sort of dislike. But when they were added all together, her face became the portrait of pure hatred.

  I didn’t understand it. And seeing it chilled me to the bone.

  Chapter 7

  “Did you see who’s here?” Bertie grabbed my arm, interrupting my attempt to escape through the door that led to the back kitchen. In the hubbub following the camera crew’s entrance, I hadn’t noticed that she’d returned from church. Bubba, dressed in his coat-and-tie Sunday finery, followed along beside her like a puppy. A ridiculously oversized puppy.

  “I’m kind of shocked about it,” I said. “Joe talked and talked and talked, but he never mentioned anything about having a wife.”

  “That? Oh, yes, there is that.” Bertie fluffed her hair a bit. Unlike every other day of the week, Bertie looked like one of the older fashion models that my sister would hire to display her clothing line. Her navy-blue dress was tailored to compliment her pear-shaped contours. Instead of encased in cheap, white sneakers, her feet looked elegant in the dark-blue heels. “But did you see who’s with her? That’s Stevie McWilson. From Channel Six News. He’s such a hottie.”

  “Hey!” Bubba protested. “A man doesn’t like his woman talking about how good another man looks.”

  Bertie swatted his broad chest. “Don’t fuss. For one thi
ng, just because I let you accompany me to church doesn’t mean I’m your woman. You haven’t earned me yet. And for another thing, my eyes won’t drop out of my head the moment I decide to let you call me your woman. I’m always going to be my own woman.”

  Bubba’s shoulders dropped with defeat. “At least do your fawning over other men out of my hearing. It’s hard on a man’s ego.”

  Instead of agreeing, Bertie chuckled. I suspected she would go on doing exactly as she pleased when it came to Bubba. I envied her for it.

  “We need to get you in front of the camera,” Bertie announced.

  At first I thought she was talking to Bubba. After all, he was the president of the business association. I realized my mistake when she gave me a gentle nudge.

  “Me? Um…no,” I said. “I’m not—” I didn’t bother to finish what I’d started to say. She wasn’t listening.

  Instead she was frowning at my jeans with a rip in the knee and short-sleeved white blouse with a coffee stain in the middle where a customer had accidentally spilled their double shot of espresso on me that morning. “Perhaps you should put on one of those stodgy work dresses you used to wear when you first arrived.”

  “None of them fit anymore.” Owning a chocolate shop, while wonderful for my mental health, had been a disaster for my waistline. I’d been shopping local thrift stores to build a wardrobe that wasn’t nearly as form-fitting.

  “Then one of your sundresses.” She herded me toward the back door. “Make sure it’s a bright color.”

  “I can’t go on TV.” I might have worked in advertising before inheriting the Chocolate Box, but that didn’t mean I liked to be in front of the camera.

  “Sure, you can,” she said, giving me a push.

  “No, I can’t.” My family had once tried to disown me after I’d agreed to be interviewed for a national magazine. I’d been told the interview was for an article about how I was graduating at the top of my class from college. The reporter had lied. The article had ended up being a hit piece against me and my family.

  Never again.

  “How about that new purple and blue sundress you wore the other night? Bright colors pop on camera. And you’ll want to pop.”

  “You do know that reporter is here to do a piece about the Gray Lady?” I asked.

  She still wasn’t listening. “Be sure to mention the Chocolate Box in a way that it cannot be cut from the footage.”

  “He’s here about the Gray Lady,” I repeated.

  Bertie nodded. “Yes. That’s why he’ll want to get you on camera. You saw her.”

  “I saw a woman. I didn’t see a ghost,” I protested. But it was too late. Bertie had already pushed me all the way out the back door and onto the small courtyard that opened up to the marsh.

  “I’ll stall McWilson for you,” she called as she returned to the front of the shop. “And don’t forget to put on some makeup while you’re up there.”

  “You heard her,” Bubba said, sounding surprisingly serious. “You’ll be representing the store and the town. The businesses have suffered in the aftermath of the hurricane. We need you to get people to return to Camellia Beach and start spending money again.”

  No. No. And no. They could find someone else to field questions about some nonexistent ghost while talking up the town. I wasn’t going to do it.

  End.

  Of.

  Story.

  Period.

  I did go upstairs and change out of my coffee stained blouse. It would have been silly not to. Now that Bertie had returned from church, she could help with the morning crowd.

  I usually spent this time working in the kitchen or tackling the business’ bookkeeping. But today, I felt restless. My legs itched to get as far away as possible from the reporter and the talk of a haunted island. After slipping into comfortable running shorts and a white Chocolate Box T-shirt—it might have been October, but the high temperature for the afternoon was going to be close to ninety degrees—I snapped the leash to Stella’s collar and then headed toward the beach.

  Halloween was a week away, which explained why the reporter was hungry for a good ghost story. The real estate office next door had hung ghosts from the eaves of their porch and witches’ legs with striped stockings stuck out from the part of the roof that was covered with a blue tarp. Pumpkins with grim expressions lined the front of the Dog Eared Café. Stella barked happily at them, prompting one of the servers to give her a doggie bone.

  While I had meant to go straight to the beach, I took a detour onto a side street. I told myself that I’d turned that way because I was enjoying the spooky decorations and because I’d wanted to check on the progress of recovery for some of the houses that had been damaged. It wasn’t the truth. My feet knew exactly where they were headed.

  I stopped in front of the lot where Joe Davies used to live. The house had been one of the cottages that had been built atop tall towers of cinder blocks to elevate it above flood level. The cinder blocks were still there. Charred wooden beams still connected them to form the bottom part of where a house used to stand. Nothing else remained. What the fire hadn’t destroyed, the hurricane had washed away.

  Had it simply been a run of bad luck that Joe had died in the storm and his house had burned so completely? It felt as if someone were trying to erase…something. But what? And if that was the case, was foul play involved?

  A small Honda with a dented hood and a faded blue paint job pulled up to the lot near where I was standing. A petite woman with flaming red hair stepped out of the car. She looked up at where the house once stood and burst out into ugly, noisy sobs. Her slender shoulders shook violently as she buried her face in her hands.

  Who was this woman? Another wife no one had ever met? Or one of Joe’s friends no one on the island had known about? Whoever she was, she was obviously distraught by his death.

  I debated whether I should leave and let her have this private moment of grief alone or if I should try and comfort her. I’d started to back away from the broken remains of his house when the woman cried out in a raspy voice that tore at my chest, “Daddy.”

  Goodness, no.

  It was bad enough that he’d abandoned his wife. How could he—or anyone—abandon a child? It was a question I’d asked myself over and over from the time I’d learned my own mother had left me outside my father’s dorm room door. And I still had no answer.

  I took a couple of steps closer to the woman and then cleared my throat.

  “Excuse me,” I said. I must have whispered it since she didn’t look up. I cleared my throat again. “Can I help you?” I drew a breath. “I knew the man who lived here.”

  She turned toward me with a look of horror.

  “I mean…I knew the man he’d presented himself to be,” I amended. “I suppose some of it was a lie. He’d told us that he was a retired fisherman.”

  She sniffled. “He was a car salesman. He didn’t retire. He—” She gasped. “I’d assumed he’d-he’d died.”

  I nodded. “I’m sorry. I know what it’s like to have a parent leave. My mother…” I cleared the lump that had formed in my throat. “She left me. If you’d like to talk, I could tell you what I knew about Joe.”

  “He was John Fenton,” she said with a sob. “He lived in Virginia and worked at the Cedar’s Hill Imports car lot.”

  “Did he like to fish?” I asked.

  She sniffled again before answering. “Not even a little. Did he fish here?”

  “Not that I ever saw. He was more interested in searching for pirate treasure than putting a line in the water.”

  That bit of news seemed to confuse her. She jerked her head back. “Pirate treasure?”

  “Blackbeard’s treasure, actually. He was obsessed. He’d tell anyone who he met how he was certain that Blackbeard had buried his treasure somewhere on this beach. He was determined to find it.”

  “Are you sure? My father actually told people he was looking for pirate treasure? That’s not…” Her large
gray-blue eyes widened. She shivered. I wondered if she was going into shock.

  “Can I buy you a coffee or tea or something?” I asked. “I’m Penn. I run the local chocolate shop.”

  “Chocolate?” That news seemed to cheer her up a little. “I think I could use some coffee and chocolate right now. I drove all night from Virginia to get here. I’m Mary. And thank you for your kindness. Not everyone would stop to help a stranger.”

  “You’ll find the people in this town are different. In a good way. Come on. If you don’t mind walking, my shop is a few blocks down this road. Your mother is there. She came in looking for answers as well.”

  Her head snapped in my direction. “My mother died twenty years ago.” Her words were brittle.

  “I’m sorry. A woman who claims to be Joe’s—I mean, John’s—wife is at my shop. I assumed—”

  “She’s nothing to me. A gold digger.” She had to stop to catch her breath. She held up her hand. “I’m sorry. This-this is just so hard. A friend who lives in Charleston contacted me. After seeing my father’s picture in the local newspaper, he called and read me the article. That’s how I found out my father been killed in the hurricane. I had to come see for myself. If you see that woman again, don’t tell her I’m here. She’ll only try and kick up trouble for me like she did for my dad.”

  “Do you have any idea why he might have run away and changed his name?” I asked as gently as I knew how.

  Her upper lip trembled as she thought about the answer. “You’d have to ask that woman he married. I wouldn’t be surprised if she’d chased him away. She married him for the money that came to him through my mother’s estate. And once she ran through it, I heard from family friends that she’d pressured him to get more. She didn’t love him. She only loved what he could buy for her.”

  Mary began to sob again. I wasn’t sure what to do. Did I hug her—a stranger? That seemed awkward. But just standing by with my arms helplessly at my side while watching her struggle with her grief felt a hundred times more awkward.

  Steeling my spine—hugs never came easily for me—I crossed the distance between us and wrapped my arms around her. “I’m so sorry,” I said and immediately thought how inadequate that sounded. And because hugging a stranger was making my skin feel all jumpy, I kept talking. In fact, I couldn’t seem to stop talking. “I can’t imagine what you must be going through. If there’s anything I can do, anything at all, just let me know. Please, I want to help.”