Playing with Bonbon Fire

by Dorothy St. James

  Her children were determined to defeat me. Not that they wanted to run their mother’s shop. They had no interest in her handcrafted chocolates. They were only interested in the land underneath the shop. While Camellia Beach is a shabby little town, it’s a shabby little town perched on the Atlantic Ocean in sunny South Carolina, less than an hour’s drive from the historic City of Charleston and three hours from the ultra-touristy Myrtle Beach. Pressure to replace its time-weathered buildings with something polished and expensive had been building for years.

  One of my uncles had already tried to use violence to get me out of the picture in order to hurry the sale of the property. So the thought that one of Mabel’s greedy children had tossed the rock through the window in an attempt to scare me into packing my bags and going home shouldn’t have surprised me.

  The joke was on them, though. I didn’t have a home to go back to. My father’s side of the family made sure I’d never feel at home in any of the Penn mansions. My half sister Tina was the only member of my family who treated me with kindness.

  If not for her, Bixby Lewis wouldn’t be standing in my shop right now.

  “If this rock was aimed at you, we need to report it,” I said to him. “Even if it’s just a threat from an overzealous fan, we have to keep you safe.”

  “Penn’s right. I hate to say it, but we need to tell Hank Byrd,” Bertie agreed.

  “Not him.” Just the thought of talking with Camellia Beach’s police chief made me groan. According to Byrd, crime hadn’t existed in his quaint beach town until I’d moved in.

  While he didn’t suspect me of breaking any laws, he blamed me for bringing criminals into town with me. The arrival of Bixby Lewis and his crazy stalker fan would only add fuel to that ridiculous theory of his.

  Even so, Bertie was right. I needed to make that call.

  “No!” Bixby grabbed my wrist and pulled the cell phone out of my hand before I had the chance to punch in the numbers. “Don’t tell anyone. The publicity will only cause more crazies to crawl out of their hidey holes to make trouble. Trust me on this one. I deal with this almost every day.”

  “Son, someone tosses rocks through your window on a daily basis? That would burn my biscuits,” Bertie drawled in her lovely, deep Southern voice.

  I introduced Bixby to Bertie and explained how he was a singing star of mega proportions.

  “I know who he is,” Bertie fussed. “I might be old, but there’s nothing wrong with my hearing. I listen to the radio. I love your ‘Honey Got a Hold on Me’ tune. Listen to it while folding my laundry.” She tossed back her head and belted out the refrain, which included a description of the singer going back to his girlfriend’s house and making the walls tremble. It sounded quite naughty coming from someone well over seventy years old.

  Bixby’s cheeks turned beet red as he politely thanked her for enjoying his work.

  I giggled. I often giggled inappropriately when I got nervous.

  He smiled kindly in my direction before saying, “Don’t worry about the window. I’ll replace it. In the meantime, I’d rather focus on celebrating great beach music than wasting time talking with the police.”

  “But—” I started to protest.

  “I’m fine, Penn.” He put his hand on my shoulder in the same way Bertie had earlier to calm me down. With him, though, the gesture had the opposite effect. My insides fluttered wildly. “Sweetheart, you don’t have to worry. I promise nothing bad is going to happen.”

  Chapter 3

  “Something bad is going to happen unless you get yourself over to the pier right now. And I mean right now.” Althea sounded desperate.

  Althea Bays, Bertie’s only child, owned a crystal shop smack dab in the middle of Camellia Beach’s blink-and-you’ll-miss-it downtown. And she was a nut. I mean, what sane person believes in ghosts, crystal powers, and the ability to see into the future? Despite her nuttiness (I tried to ignore that flaw in her personality), Althea was fast becoming my dearest friend on the island.

  “Why do I need to be there? What’s going on?” I asked as I shifted my cell phone from one ear to the other. I hadn’t planned to visit the beachfront pier until after the chocolate shop’s closing at five that afternoon.

  For the past two days, crews had been setting up the sound stage on the two-story pavilion that capped the end of the pier. On the long boardwalk that led out to the pavilion, businesses were busy erecting display booths and outdoor seating areas.

  Althea had volunteered to take the lead in organizing that part of the setup for the festival. Since I hadn’t heard from her in a while, I’d assumed everything had been going smoothly.

  Apparently, I was wrong.

  “Just … just get down here. Please.” Althea sounded even more desperate.

  It was nearly two o’clock in the afternoon. I’d just finished getting Bixby settled in the beach house we’d rented for him to use during his weeklong stay on Camellia. It was one of the newer, monstrously large homes on the beach. I thought it was plain ugly. But it was modern, and everyone on the planning committee had urged me to rent it for our superstar since that was the kind of housing he’d be used to having.

  Now that I was back at the shop, Bertie needed me to work the front counter. I also needed to meet with the man from the window-repair shop while Bertie worked her magic in the kitchen whipping up a new batch of savory bonbons for Congressman Ezell.

  “I’m sorry, Althea. I have my hands full here.”

  The phone went silent save for the background sound of waves crashing against the sandy shore.

  “Althea? Did you hear me?” I asked. “It’s going to be several hours before—”

  “They’re going to kill each other,” she whispered.

  “What? Who? What’s going on?”

  “Lawd-a-mighty, he’s already started to cream his corn,” she drawled with a trembling voice.

  “Who’s doing what?” Even after living five months on this very coastal Southern island, I didn’t understand much of the colorful language most folks spoke around here. “Why in blazes does anyone at the pier have corn?” I never did get an answer to that question. Althea had hung up.

  I explained the situation to Bertie, who seemed to think creamed corn was a terribly serious matter. She nearly pushed me out the door, telling me that she could handle things at the shop. Apparently I needed to stop some guy’s corn from getting creamed.

  My arms pumping, my long legs stretching, I hurried down Main Street toward the ocean. At the end of the road sat a large wooden pier. Initially constructed in the early 1900s, it’d been rebuilt four times in the years that followed. The pier had been destroyed by two fires, one hurricane, and one bankruptcy. From what I’d seen from historical photos, this latest pier and pavilion, constructed in the mid-eighties, was much smaller than previous structures.

  Back in the 1930s and all the way into the 1950s, every Saturday throughout the summer the pier would host evening concerts. The concerts attracted huge crowds and big-name bands. The swinging sounds of beach music would fill the air as residents and tourists shagged the night away. Occasionally, upwards of ten thousand people would turn up.

  I shuddered at the thought. If ten thousand people showed up at the pier that stood here today, I wasn’t sure what we’d do. The pavilion could hold a few hundred, tops. We’d made plans to guide any overflow crowds to the surrounding beach, where they could still listen and dance on the sand. But I doubted the beach was wide enough to hold ten thousand people.

  As I rushed toward the mysterious corn disaster waiting for me on the pier, residents called out happy greetings and expressed excitement at their upcoming opportunity to go shagging under the stars. I noticed the first sign of trouble as I climbed the stairs that led to the pier. A crowd had gathered. I recognized many in the crowd as the white-haired brigade who used the Pink Pelican Inn—an outdated concrete block motel located next door to the pier on the beach—as a retirement home.

  “It’s Pe
nn,” a ninety-year-old woman clad in nothing more than a broad-brimmed straw hat and tiny rainbow-colored string bikini announced with a sigh of relief when she spotted me.

  Many pairs of wise eyes turned in my direction. The crowd stepped out of the way, like the parting of the waters, as I approached.

  “She’ll know what to do,” a man in a seersucker suit and hunched back said with a nod of approval.

  Their blind confidence unnerved me. What could I do that Althea, who’d lived on this island her entire life, hadn’t already tried? I didn’t even understand what was going on.

  But since Mabel had given her stamp of approval by entrusting me with her shop, many of the residents expected me to be as much a leader as Mabel had been. I drew a deep breath and said a little prayer, hoping I wouldn’t disappoint anyone today.

  “Where’s the corn?” I demanded. I hadn’t seen anyone with corn, creamed or otherwise.

  “Corn? Do you really think now is a proper time to be asking about vegetables?” Althea cried, her voice strained from the effort it took to physically hold apart two men who both towered over her. She was dressed in a blue batik sundress. Her wrists and ankles were covered in crystal bangles. Around her neck, she wore three brass mandalas that clanked together as she struggled to keep the men from throwing punches.

  I recognized the bigger of the two troublemakers. The hulking figure windmilling his arms was Bubba Crowley, president of the Camellia Beach business association.

  “You were the one who told me there was corn involved,” I said to Althea before focusing on the trouble she was literally in the middle of. “Bubba, stop that. You nearly hit Althea in the face just now.”

  “Boy, your mama would never forgive you if you hit a woman, even if it were an accident,” the hunched man in the seersucker suit shouted.

  The mention of the formidable Mrs. Gretchen Crowley, a former state senator, had the same effect as throwing a pail of cold water over two fighting dogs. Bubba’s arms, the size of logs, dropped to his sides. His wide shoulders drooped as he stepped back from Althea’s staying hand.

  His opponent, who in contrast was a much smaller man, took advantage of the situation. He swore vividly as he lunged forward, knocking my petite friend to the ground.

  I grabbed hold of Althea’s arm just as her knees hit the boardwalk. With a tug, I pulled her back to her feet.

  “I don’t care what this disagreement is about,” I said as calmly as I could with my heart pumping an angry mile a minute. I jumped in front of the small, aggressive man, putting myself in Althea’s place. I had at least a foot of height on him. And he didn’t look as if he’d seen the inside of a gym in years. “There will be no fighting at my music festival. None. Zip. Zero.”

  He slammed a fist into his hand. “You can’t talk to me like this. Don’t you know who I am?”

  I didn’t. “It doesn’t matter who you are. Anyone who doesn’t behave will be banned from performing at the festival. Do you understand me? This applies to you too, Bubba,” I said to the silent giant behind me.

  Bubba grunted. His foe didn’t take the warning nearly as well. “You wouldn’t dare ban me, missy. You wouldn’t have a festival without me. I am the festival.”

  The threat meant nothing, especially since I really didn’t have a clue who he was. My lips eased into a confident smile. “I have Bixby Lewis. I don’t need anyone else.”

  He leaned in uncomfortably close to my face as if trying to intimidate me. The movement made his blond comb-over slip, revealing a shiny bald spot. “We have a contract. You kick me out, you’ll still have to pay me and my band.”

  “Fine. But I don’t want to kick you out. I just want you to behave.” I drew a long breath, hoping it would calm me. “No fighting at the pier. Or anywhere on the island.”

  “Fine. But get this through your thick head, Bubba, The Embers are dead! D-E-A-D dead!” the man shouted before shoving his way through the crowd and down the steps leading away from the pier.

  As soon as he was gone, I whirled around to Bubba. He was a prominent island leader. He’d been the one who suggested the town host a beach music festival. He’d been the one who walked around Camellia Beach with a goofy grin plastered on his face for the past several months as we worked long and hard to pull all the details together. He shouldn’t be picking fights or scowling like he was now.

  “Tell me the truth, Bubba. What’s going on here?” I demanded.

  Thanks to him and his connections in the music industry, the festival was already a success. While the popular rock idol Bixby Lewis was attracting the younger crowd who, like me, knew nothing about beach music, bands from beach music’s second golden age were gathering to please the older crowd. Music lovers were coming in from miles around to visit the beach and listen to the “oldies but goodies.”

  Almost all the beach rentals were booked. And the motel was full. Business owners were thrilled.

  Even Bubba had been thrilled. The concert festival wasn’t just good for business; it had also given him the perfect reason to bring back his band, The Embers, which hadn’t played for more than forty years. All of this was quite a coup for any small town.

  So why was he acting stupid and getting into a fight?

  “It’s nothing,” Bubba said and started to walk away.

  “Wait. Wait. It’s got to be something, and a whole bunch of somethings,” I called after him. “Talk to me.”

  His long, lumbering stride remained steady as if he hadn’t heard a word I’d said. We all watched him follow the same route the other man had taken.

  “Thanks for your help,” Althea said in the stunned silence. “I wouldn’t have called, but I didn’t know what else to do.”

  The skirt of her silky dress had ripped in the fall, and she’d skinned her knee. Her hair, usually a mass of black curls kept in check with a headband or silk scarf, stood up at all angles completely unfettered.

  “I still don’t understand what’s happening.” I dug around in my pocket for a clean napkin she could press on her bleeding knee. “I assume the argument wasn’t over corn. Am I right?”

  “Corn?” She wrinkled her perky little nose. “Why do you keep asking about corn?”

  “Because you told me on the phone that someone’s corn was about to get creamed.”

  The crowd, still gathered around us as if we were actors in a show, howled with laughter.

  “Honey,” the ninety-year-old bikini babe said with a refined Southern drawl, “that’s just an expression. It means someone is about to get all bloodied up.”

  “You’d think I’d remember you weren’t raised speaking proper English,” Althea said. “That flat accent of yours should remind us that you’re from off every time you talk.”

  “Far off,” someone in the crowd said as everyone nodded.

  “But she’s kin,” another said to more nods.

  “Mabel’s kin.”

  “Even if she does talk funny.”

  “I don’t talk funny. People from the Midwest don’t have accents. You guys are the ones with the nearly indecipherable accent, not me.”

  “Hmm …” Althea said as she laughed. “You don’t talk like us, not one itty little bit. That means you have the accent.”

  “People around here talk how God intended man to sound,” the bikini babe added.

  “That’s the truth.” Althea hooked her arm with mine. When we’d first met, I’d bristled every time she tried to touch me.

  I was raised without a mother and by a family who’d treated me like an unwanted pet. Most of the hugs I got were from people who wanted to use me to get close to my family’s power and fortune. Over time, I’d built barriers. A friendly touch was an assault against my fortress of protection.

  While I still flinched when Althea pulled me snug to her side, my muscles didn’t seize up as they would have done just a few months ago. It was progress.

  “What’s going on with Bubba?” I asked. “And who in the world is that other guy? Should I
have known him?”

  She led the way down the pier toward the pavilion jutting out over the water. “That other guy is Stan Frasier.”

  “Who?”

  “Stan Frasier. Lead singer of Ocean Waves?”

  “Again, who?”

  “Don’t let Stan hear you say that or he really will pack up his bags and leave in a snit.”

  She directed us to a bench near the pavilion. The warm sun beat down on our backs, but the gentle sea breeze kept the heat from feeling unbearable. The breeze carried with it the sound of children’s laughter from the sandy beach below. In the bluish-green water, a line of surfers sitting on their long, waxy boards bobbed silently, waiting for the next big wave.

  “Ocean Waves had one big hit back in the seventies, ‘Love on the Waves.’ ”

  “You don’t mean ‘Love on the Way’? Ugh … some of the girls played that song over and over when I was in high school. They were trying to be retro, wearing bell-bottoms and knit pantsuits while listening to that annoying old song.”

  “That’s the song. It is actually ‘Love on the Waves.’ Lots of people never got the title right. That’s Stan’s song. It won him a Grammy.”

  “Oh, good for him. So what does that have to do with Bubba?”

  She bit her pearly bottom lip. “This goes back to before I was born, so I don’t know all the details. Back in the late sixties and early seventies, Stan Frasier was the lead singer for Bubba’s group, The Embers. For some reason, he abruptly quit and started his own band, Ocean Waves. Growing up, I heard time and again people saying that Stan had gotten too big for his britches and had started thinking he was wasting his talent with The Embers.”

  “That’s right.” Arthur Jenkins, the man with the hunched back, hobbled up to where we were sitting. “Even as a child, Stan felt he was too good for this town. Had big eyes, that one.”