After silently scolded myself for getting so worked up, I pulled down a large metal mixing bowl from an open shelf. It still amazed me how spending time in the kitchen working with my chocolate made me feel so calm. If Althea had been here, she would have told me it wasn’t the chocolate but the spirit of my maternal grandmother Mabel Maybank, watching over me and placing her hand on my shoulder, that allowed this feeling of peace to pass through me.
I, in turn, would have told Althea that she was delusional. And then I’d wonder why my thoughts kept going back to ghosts. Althea would have suggested that the universe was trying to tell me something important and that I should listen.
I sighed. I missed my friend.
I wanted to do something nice for her.
While I’d always been a disaster in the kitchen, I did have a handful (a tiny handful) of recipes I’d mastered over the years. Stepmother Number Two, who’d tried to mother me for the short time she’d been married to my father, had taught me her family’s secret brownie recipe. The deliciously simple ingredients included sweetened condensed milk, graham crackers, and of course chocolate chips. I hadn’t made the recipe since I’d moved to Camellia Beach, but thinking of Althea and how hard she’d been working to rebuild her crystal shop, made me think about Stepmother Number Two and how patiently she’d worked to teach me this recipe. The secret to having the brownies come out right was not to overwork the batter.
Since I didn’t want to give Althea brownies with the same rock-hard structure as the bricks they were using to rebuild the shop’s back wall, I found a large wooden spoon in a drawer. I used it to mix the ingredients by hand. And because this was something special for Althea, I pulled down the large ancient wooden box that held the rare and wonderful Amar chocolate bars. These bars of chocolate were worth more than their weight in gold. As I chopped up two of the bars and added them to the brownie mixture, the deep, tropical scents of the rich dark chocolate made me dizzy with pleasure.
The oven timer beeped. I dropped the bowl I’d been washing back into the sink and hurried over to the oven. One of my downfalls when it came to baking was that I often forgot to take the food out of the oven before it turned into a charred mess. When I was cooking with inferior ingredients, the loss of a tray of brownies would be an inconvenience, at best. Adding the Amar chocolate to the batter upped the stakes considerably. It’d taken the combined efforts of a village to grow, harvest, and ferment the beans used to make the chocolates I’d mixed into the brownies. Burning them would be a crime.
I was just pulling the pan out of the oven when there was a sharp tap-tap-tap on the kitchen window. Startled, I nearly dropped the hot brownies. As it was, I ended up burning my fingertips when I caught the hot pan with the hand not wearing the oven mitt. I made sure to set the brownies safely on the stainless-steel countertop before turning to investigate the window tapping.
“Mary?” I said with a gasp.
Joe’s daughter was standing at the window. Everything about how the stiff way she held herself to how her wide eyes darted left and right scared me. She waved rather frantically when she saw I’d spotted her. I rushed over to the window and opened it.
“Mary?” I repeated. “What’s going on?”
“I need to talk to you.”
“About what?”
“About my father’s murder,” she said. “Can I come in?”
I glanced around the kitchen. The brownies needed to cool in the pan for at least fifteen minutes before I could cut them. The mélangers were grinding cacao beans. The batch of pumpkin seed butter balls I’d rolled were cooling in the fridge, waiting to be dipped into dark chocolate. Now was a good time to take a break.
“Just a minute,” I told her. “I’ll be right out.”
On the way to the back door, I texted Harley and let him know that I was meeting Mary on the back patio. An hour ago, such a text would have seemed silly and totally unnecessary. Now, after staring at Sammy’s dead body in the marsh, I wanted to put on a suit of armor before stepping outside to talk with anyone.
“I heard my stepmother killed Sammy Duncan,” Mary said in place of a greeting. She was breathing hard. “I heard you confronted her about it.”
I nodded. I shouldn’t have been surprised that someone had already told her about Sammy’s murder and Delilah’s role in finding him. While the residents of Camellia Beach rarely gossiped to outsiders, I could understand why an islander had told Mary. The matter, after all, did concern her and her father’s death.
There were so many suspicions and clues I could have told Mary. Her large guileless eyes seemed to plead with me that I confess everything I knew. And yet, even though I was working on becoming a better person, I still had trouble trusting…well…anyone. Even someone who appeared as innocent as Bambi in the woods.
“Why do you think Sammy was murdered?” I asked her.
She dabbed a tissue to her damp cheeks. “He must have known something about the money. That’s all my stepmother cares about—money. She’d lie, cheat, steal, and apparently kill for it.”
“The money? Do you mean the money Sammy stole from the bank he worked for in Cedar’s Hill? Or the pirate treasure? If it’s the stolen goods she’s looking for, why would she or anyone think your father had it? How in the world would he have ended up with it?”
She shook her head. “I’ve been thinking about that quite a lot, you know? Dad disappeared shortly after Sammy was arrested. And as soon as Sammy got out of jail, someone killed my father. Did Sammy kill him? Or did my stepmother? If only we could find the money Sammy took. I’m sure it would explain what happened to my father. Wouldn’t it?”
She was watching me with those big vulnerable doe-eyes as if expecting me to have the answers she needed. My heart ached for her. She’d not only lost her mother to cancer, her father had run away, presumably, because he loved riches more than his family. And she’d found him only to discover he’d been murdered.
But there was something about Joe’s history that didn’t sit right for me. Joe had lived like a man on a tight budget. His rented cottage was small. He never purchased new clothes. His treasure hunting tools were all secondhand. And when he’d come into the Chocolate Box, he’d only buy one chocolate at a time. That wasn’t the lifestyle of a man with a fortune at his fingertips. Nor was it the lifestyle of a man who loved money more than family.
True, his search for Blackbeard’s treasure had been an obsession. He’d acted desperate to find…something.
“What if your father didn’t have the stolen money?” I wondered aloud.
Before she could answer, Harley came down the stairs. He’d changed out of his business suit and was wearing a pair of black board shorts and a gray T-shirt that pulled tight across his muscular chest. The sight of him in his surfer gear made me sigh with a mixture of attraction and irritation. No matter what that man wore, he always looked irresistible.
“You must be Mary Fenton,” he said and took her hand in his.
“Um…I…am…” she managed. Her cheeks turned pink. “And…you…are?”
“He’s my friend and lawyer,” I said, again wishing for a word to describe our relationship that didn’t sound as juvenile as boyfriend or as vulgar as lover. I was also wondering why he was still holding onto her hand. Mary was petite, and soft, and very pretty. I didn’t feel jealous of her appearance until I saw how she was looking at my Harley and how he was touching her hand.
“I’m Harley Dalton.” Was it my imagination, or had his voice gotten deeper as he spoke his name? At least he’d finally released her hand.
“Pleased to meet you.” Mary’s already pink cheeks blushed a shade pinker.
“I told Mary that I’d help get some answers about her father’s death,” I told him, rather needlessly, since we’d already discussed Mary and her family quite thoroughly.
“I am sorry for your loss. It must have come as quite a shock to you to simultaneously learn your father was living here under an assumed name and that he�
�d died during the storm.”
She looked down and nodded. “It’s…hard…”
“Mary and I were discussing the possibility that her father didn’t have the stolen money. Perhaps Sammy thought he did. Perhaps others thought the same. But, as I explained to Mary, her father didn’t live as if he had access to riches at all.”
“That’s true,” Harley agreed. “The residents out here on Camellia Beach aren’t a wealthy lot, and your father was living at about the middle-range of our general lifestyle. We’d all assumed he’d retired with a tiny retirement fund. Many professional fishermen put so much of their income back into their boats and equipment, there’s rarely much left over for retirement. And that was how he lived.”
“But he was never a fisherman, professional or otherwise,” Mary pointed out.
“No,” Harley agreed. “He wasn’t.”
“What’s more,” Mary said as she fidgeted with her tissue, “he’d always enjoyed having nice things. Well, he did before he ran from that woman. Do you think he’d experienced some kind of attack, like a stroke that affected his mind?”
“It didn’t seem as if his mind was addled,” Harley said. “He was quite the local expert on Blackbeard and his treasure.”
But was that correct? I didn’t want to say anything about it in front of Mary. She was already dealing with enough hard truths about her father. But according to Bertie, Joe Davies had shown signs of memory loss. Was it dementia? Or Alzheimer’s? It wasn’t something the coroner had checked for in trying to figure out a cause of death, so we might never know.
“Then perhaps he simply wanted a break from his old life.” Mary’s shoulders sagged. “Maybe he finally learned he couldn’t find happiness in the lavish lifestyle his wife had wanted to live, so he came here to see what it’d be like to live a simpler lifestyle. Perhaps he wanted a clean break from his former life, a break”—she sniffled—“even from me.”
“As hard as it might be to accept, that could be the case,” Harley said using his calming lawyer voice that when directed at me often made me want to scream. “He wanted peace and a break from the business world. It’s common around here. In fact, that description fits over half our population.”
Mary smiled wanly. “I hope he found a paradise here.” She gazed out over the marsh. “But what if he did have the money? What if he was waiting for Sammy?”
The tall spartina grasses were in the process of turning gold. By winter they’d be a soft brown. It was rather stunning to look at, with the deep blue water and the flecks of silver and golden sunlight dancing on the river’s ripples. I don’t know if the stooped-back Joe, with his quest for pirate treasure, ever slowed down long enough to fall in love with the island’s natural beauty. But for me, this place was a heaven on earth.
“Can’t you do something?” she pleaded. “First my father and now Sammy. I feel like I’m living in a nightmare, and I can’t wake up. I want to wake up and have them alive again.” She grabbed Harley’s arm. “Please, please help me find out what’s happening. Please, help me make this nightmare end.”
Harley, with the gentlest voice I’d ever heard him use, promised he’d do his earnest best, which seemed to placate her.
After she’d left, I turned to Harley.
“She’s pretty,” I said, feeling a pinch of jealousy. I didn’t have a good track record when it came to relationships. In the past, I’d dated a man who’d wanted my father to hire him, a man who’d cheated on me with his secretary the entire time we were going out, and a man who’d wanted me dead. While I knew I should trust Harley, part of me couldn’t.
“I suppose you could say she’s pretty,” he said, “if you like small and mousey. Personally, that’s not the kind of woman who revs my motor. She acted awfully upset about Sammy’s death. And yet, she claims she barely knew him. And her grief feels a little overdone, don’t you think?”
“I imagine it’s her anger at her stepmother that’s driving her emotions. She thinks the woman is ruining everything in her life.”
“Well, then, I suppose our next step will be to figure out if she’s right. Did Delilah drive Joe away? Or was she in on Sammy and Joe’s embezzlement scheme?”
“And,” I added, “we need to figure out what happened to the money. Like Mary suggested—find the money, and we’ll find the killer.”
With Sammy dead, I worried our treasure hunt would lead us straight to Big Dog, who was still missing. If that was the case, part of me hoped we would never find a dime or solve this one. Harley trusted Big Dog.
My sweet, big-hearted beau had been hurt too many times in the past because he’d trusted the wrong people. I hated to think what yet another crushing betrayal would do to him. Would the discovery that he’d trusted yet another murderer turn Harley into someone different, someone I could no longer love? I hoped not, especially now that I’d finally found the perfect word to describe my relationship with Harley that was neither childish nor vulgar.
Harley was my beau.
My beau.
What a perfect Southern term.
I prayed our relationship would last long enough for me to be able to use it.
Chapter 22
Harley followed along as I carried the plate of brownies to Althea’s shop. He’d said he was accompanying me because he wanted to taste one, and I hadn’t let him. But I suspected he was worried and wanted to keep close. I shared his worry. Not for myself, but for his safety.
Yet again, a snake lurked in my paradise.
“Has Big Dog contacted you yet?” I asked.
“No.” His jaw tightened. “It’s been radio silence with him. But I know my friend. Despite everything that’s happening, he’ll still want to find the stolen money before he puts himself under his brother’s control. I’m sure that’s why he’s staying away. Even from me.”
“You said he was out last night, searching for Sammy. This morning, Delilah finds Sammy dead in the marsh.”
“Yes?” Harley’s tone turned guarded.
“I understand that he’s your friend.” I made sure my tone was gentle.
“He took me in after Jody betrayed me. He helped build my confidence back up. Jody had tried to take Gavin away from me…completely. Her anger and lies had crushed me. I might not have fought so hard for shared custody if Big Dog hadn’t pushed me to do it.”
“I understand that he’s your friend,” I repeated, slowly, carefully. “I hate to even suggest it, but with Sammy dead, you have to agree that we’re running out of suspects. Big Dog was in town before the hurricane hit, and—by his own admission—he was searching for Joe.”
“No.” Harley was emphatic.
“You can’t tell me his actions don’t appear suspicious. I mean, he’s living without any money from his brother, with no real job, going from beach to beach to catch the best waves. And yet, he wears fairly expensive clothes. Where does his money come from? Is he knee-deep in debt? Was he in town searching for Joe because he wants to prove his innocence, as he claims? Or was he in town to get the money from Joe before Sammy could? Seems to me an infusion of cash would make his life easier.”
Harley stopped walking.
“I’m sorry,” I said, truly meaning it. I. Was. Sorry. “But you were the one who required we don’t keep secrets. Wouldn’t you rather I tell you what I’m thinking instead of pretend I think Big Dog is some kind of free-spirited saint?”
He swallowed and gave a sharp nod, a noncommittal nod.
“Could you say something?” His silence was killing me.
“Big Dog is not without means.” His flat tone sounded hollow. “He’s a top surfer on the circuit. He’s signed with three corporate sponsors who make sure he’s never without. He doesn’t need his family money. And he certainly doesn’t need to kill for money.”
“Oh.” Corporate sponsors might explain why he was wearing designer clothes. “Still, you cannot discount that he followed Sammy from the moment of his release from jail all the way to Camellia Beach and now
Joe and Sammy are dead. You told me yourself how determined Big Dog can be. And now he is hiding from the police and his brother so he can do whatever he’s here to do.”
“Yes, I know all that. I’m not stupid. And I did talk to Gibbons, remember? Because I’m worried.”
“Because you do agree with me.”
“No, Penn. I don’t agree with you. Not about this. Despite all the stupid things he might do I know my friend wouldn’t kill anyone. Ever. He’s not the killing type. But he is the kind of guy who would do something stupid that might get himself killed. That’s why I’m worried.”
I tightened my hold on the plate of brownies. Harley was a good man. A kind man. An honest man.
Why couldn’t I trust him when he told me he believed Big Dog?
Harley must have read the distress on my face. “I get it,” he said, his voice low, his tone still stiff. “I’d be lying if I said it didn’t hurt. But I understand why you won’t believe me when I say helping Big Dog is the right thing to do.”
I tried to smile. The muscles in my face trembled. “Why can’t Big Dog step out of the shadows already? I mean, he’s causing everyone so much trouble. Gibbons is busy with this silly search for a rich man’s brother. He needs to go back to solving murders. I, for one, would be awfully glad if I never had to talk to Detective Prioleau again.”
“It doesn’t work that way,” Harley cautioned. “Even if Big Dog reconnected with his brother this afternoon, this most recent murder investigation still belongs to Detective Prioleau. Like it or not, we’re stuck with him.”
I groaned.
“Well, at least there is one thing about Big Dog we can agree on,” I said, desperate to smooth things over with Harley.
“What’s that?” he asked.
“We both want to find him. We can work toward that goal together. And I promise to try and trust your instincts about him.”
“Thank you,” he said softly. “That’s all I ask. For you to try.”
Bonbon With the Wind Page 18
