Playing with Bonbon Fire

by Dorothy St. James

  His small house sat atop tall wooden stilts, giving it the look of an enclosed boathouse in search of a river. Blue paint peeled off here and there, revealing a bright yellow hue from an earlier time. Behind the house, a long wooden dock snaked through the marsh and all the way to the salty river beyond it.

  After kicking my pumps off my throbbing feet, I climbed the narrow staircase to Bubba’s whitewashed front door.

  I knocked.

  The door, which hadn’t been latched, swung open.

  “Bubba?” I called into the cottage’s dark interior.

  Nothing.

  “Bubba?” I called again.

  A fat orange cat came out the door and rubbed against my legs.

  “Hello, there. Do you know where I can find Bubba?” I asked as I bent down and scratched the kitty behind its ear. It meowed an answer. Unfortunately, I didn’t speak cat.

  My imagination began to work overtime, conjuring up all sorts of fantastical and horrible reasons why Bubba wasn’t answering his phone and why his front door might be sitting open. Steeling myself, I stepped inside his cottage.

  What I discovered shocked me.

  The cottage’s interior, unlike its unkempt exterior, was neat as a pin. Much neater than the apartment Bertie and I kept—and we kept a clean house.

  Bubba’s cat followed as I moved through the living room—filled with matching wicker furniture and a few knickknacks and photographs—to the kitchen (every surface gleaming), poked my head into a small bathroom (also gleaming), and then stepped into his bedroom.

  The double bed that sat next to an open window had been so tightly made that there wasn’t even the slightest crease in the brown bedspread. Sheer white curtains fluttered in the summer breeze coming in the window. Even so, the air felt wet and warm in the cottage.

  As I stood in the middle of Bubba’s bedroom, I couldn’t help but wonder how anyone in the South could survive without an air conditioner and, even more important, where in the world he was. It was so quiet in the house I imagined I might start hearing one of Althea’s wandering ghosts whispering in my ear.

  “Finding you here”—a reedy voice sounded behind me—“now, that is interesting.”

  I nearly jumped out of my skin. With my hands clutched to my chest, I whirled around. “Police Chief Byrd, aren’t you supposed to knock or announce yourself or something?” I demanded breathlessly.

  “Don’t rightly need to when the door is standing wide open and I’m holding a search warrant for Bubba’s house.” He held up a paper. He then tilted his head to one side. “What are you doing here? Planting evidence?”

  I ignored his insinuation that I had anything to do with Camellia Beach’s latest murder. He knew well enough the trouble Stan Frasier’s demise had caused for both me and the music festival. I planted my hands on my hips. “You and I both know the door wasn’t open. I closed it behind me to keep Bubba’s cat from running off.”

  The police chief shrugged. His massive belly wobbled up and down with the movement. I imagined he played a perfect Santa during the Christmas holidays. “You still haven’t answered my question, Penn. What are you doing here?”

  “I’m here the same as you. I’m looking for Bubba. He’s not answering his phone.”

  “Nope, he’s not,” Byrd agreed.

  “He always answers his phone.”

  “Yep, he does.”

  “He’s not here,” I pointed out. “The door wasn’t latched. And his cat”—I pointed to the orange purring machine circling my legs—“came out to greet me. So I brought him back inside.”

  Byrd frowned at the cat and then at me.

  Since there wasn’t anything else I had say to the police chief, I started to leave. Byrd moved to block the doorway. “I’m going to be keeping my eyes on you,” he warned.

  “Just find Bubba,” I said. “I need to talk to him.”

  * * *

  “He wasn’t there, was he?” Bertie asked as her car pulled to a slow crawl alongside me. I was limping down the main road, heading back to the shop. My “comfortable” pumps had rubbed a raw blister on the back of my left heel.

  Bertie was behind the wheel of a boat-sized bronze-colored Pontiac. Well, I thought its color had once been bronze. The car’s body was so coated in red rust that the metal had given way in several spots, leaving gaping holes in the hood and in the roof. But the car’s engine had a smooth purr that rivaled Troubadour’s. Troubadour was the hairless cat Bertie had inherited from Mabel.

  “Hop in,” she said. The breaks squealed the car to a stop. “I’ll drive.”

  I wrestled the rusty door open and slid onto the cracked but immaculately clean vinyl bench seat. Since the car predated automobile air conditioning, all the windows were rolled down. A damp ocean breeze, heated by the bright summer sun, blew against my face. I felt as if I were sitting in front of a space heater.

  Bertie pushed on the gas. The engine revved just a bit before the car rolled forward. I could have walked just about as fast as Bertie was driving, but with the blister burning my heel, I was glad for the ride.

  “Do you have any idea where Bubba might have gone?” I asked.

  Bertie shook her head. She gripped the steering wheel as if she were strangling it.

  “Police Chief Byrd was at Bubba’s house,” I said. “He had a search warrant.”

  Her jaw tightened as if she were keeping whatever she wanted to say locked behind her teeth.

  “Tell me the truth, Bertie. You can trust me. Why is this business with Bubba upsetting you so? You barely know him.”

  She glanced in my direction for the briefest moment before fixing her gaze back on the road. A car filled with teenagers zoomed around us. I didn’t blame them. Bertie was driving slower than a slug on a hot day.

  “Bubba’s not a killer,” she said as her large car rolled to a stop in front of one of the newer, monstrously grand beachfront homes. She pulled onto the grassy easement that served as free public parking up and down the beach and turned off the car’s engine.

  “He threatened to kill Stan,” I reminded her.

  “And Althea told me she heard Stan threatening to kill Bubba yesterday. They’re words. Bitter words. But only words. Bubba’s got passion. That’s why he loves his music so much. It’s an outlet for all that passion burning up in his veins.”

  She swung her car door open.

  “Where are you going?” I asked. “Why are we here and not back at the shop?”

  “Bubba’s band rented this place so they could hang out and practice.”

  “And you think Bubba might be here?” I pulled on the handle and pushed at the passenger side door in an effort to get it open. It wouldn’t budge.

  “No, but wouldn’t that make things easy?” she said over her shoulder. She didn’t wait for me but started up the long run of steps of the elevated beach house.

  “Then why are we here?” I called out as I kicked the rusted car door until it opened.

  “We’re here because your friend Bixby is here, and someone just tried to kill him.”

  Chapter 11

  “It was an accident,” was the first thing out of Bixby’s mouth when I found him pacing the back porch. His thick black eyebrows were singed. Soot was smeared across one side of his face. It looked as if he’d tried to clean it off but hadn’t taken the time to use a mirror.

  I dug around in my purse and handed him one of my cosmetic mirrors and a tissue.

  He took one look at himself and shuddered.

  “What happened?” I asked. Bertie had stayed inside to talk with Bubba’s band members. As I’d rushed through the house in search of Bixby, I’d overheard her asking where Bubba might have gone and if any of them had heard from him since last night.

  At that moment I couldn’t care less about Bubba’s whereabouts—or Stan’s murder, for that matter. Bixby was the one I needed to protect. He was here as a favor to Tina, and Tina was the only sibling who seemed to like me. I wasn’t going to let some overze
alous, lovesick fan hurt him—not when he was in my town.

  My town?

  Just thinking that this town could be mine—as in my home—took me aback. But the words felt right. Despite the police chief’s objections, this was my town now. It was my home.

  And I wasn’t going to let some wacko who thought Bixby should love her destroy the peace I enjoyed in my town. Concern for his safety growing, I asked again, “What happened?”

  He looked up from cleaning his face. He’d managed to wipe away most of the soot. There was no helping his eyebrows. They’d been burned cleanly off in some parts. “As I’ve told everyone, it was just a freak accident.”

  A short man with pitch-black hair stepped out onto the porch. He took one look at me before agreeing with Bixby, “Must have been a faulty gas tank on the grill. We were fixing to cook up some hotdogs when Bixby fired up the pilot light and—boom!” He threw his arms in the air as if to demonstrate. “Done tossed our boy here back at least fifteen feet. The railing stopped him from going halfway to Spain. Done called the rental agency and gave them hell. If any of us had been standing directly in front of the grill, we’d been toast. Dead toast.”

  “Where were you standing?” I asked Bixby.

  He gave me one of those sheepish grins the magazines liked to feature on their covers since they made young girls swoon. Despite singed eyebrows, he was still nearly swoon-worthy. “There was a mini fridge next to the grill.” He pointed to a blackened spot next to the melted and twisted metal frame that had once been a gas grill. “I was bending down to pull out a beer when Alvin here yelled out, asking me to fire up the grill.”

  “He done flipped the switch and then—boom!” the dark-haired man shouted, reenacting the explosion with the same enthusiasm he had shown the first time, complete with arms flapping in the air.

  “Did anyone call the police?” I asked.

  “Heavens, gurly, no.” Alvin had such a thick, rocks-in-the-mouth Southern accent I had to watch his lips to interpret the garbled sounds coming out of his mouth. “Gurl, weren’t you paying attention? Done called the rental agency. They’re the ones who should have known it’s a hazard to leave a gas grill out on a beachfront deck. Things rust to nothing out here.”

  “The name’s Penn, not girl,” I said. I hated being called “girl” nearly as much as I hated being called by my first name, Charity. My paternal grandmother, Cristobel Penn, had named me Charity because she wanted to remind everyone how much of a charity it was that she’d taken me—the bastard child—into her home to raise. “Why would Bertie tell me the explosion was a murder attempt against Bixby? She’s not one to jump to conclusions.” Unless, apparently, they involved Bubba.

  “Got to be nerves. She’s an old lady. Everyone knows the older a woman gets, the quicker she gets hysterical over the simplest things. Heck, done left my wife because all she could do was scream anymore.”

  “Marella left you because you stayed out drinking every night for the last two years of your marriage and you know it, Alvin,” Bertie scolded as she came out onto the deck.

  “And why did I feel the need to stay out of the house if not because of her constant hysterics?” he countered.

  “I don’t know. Perhaps it was because every day you peered into your bathroom mirror, you could see a clearer and clearer vision of the grim reaper smiling back at you. I bet that’s why you dyed your hair that ridiculous shoe polish black and started carousing all hours of the night in hopes of recapturing a piece of your misspent youth.”

  He opened his mouth and then closed it again before mumbling, “Couldn’t stand her screeching at me about it.”

  Bertie just shook her head and then turned to me. “Bixby got another letter. A rock came sailing through his bedroom window at the beach house you’d rented for him this morning. Set off the security alarm. The security company called the rental agency, which in turn called the shop shortly after you left. Althea called me.”

  My voice sounded a little bit shrill as I demanded, “Another letter?” I turned to Bixby.

  He shrugged as if it were nothing.

  “It was another threat,” Bertie said as she crossed her arms over her chest. “It told him to keep away from fires. The rental agency called the shop and read it to Althea.”

  “Did they call the police?” I asked, my voice growing shriller and shriller still. I glanced at Alvin, who was eyeing me with a knowing look. I felt like telling him I was not becoming hysterical, but saying that would probably sound exactly like the kind of hysteria he expected from women.

  “I told the nice lady from the rental agency I’d cover the cost of damages,” Bixby said and gave me his innocent boy look. “Once she heard that, she agreed the police didn’t need to be brought in.”

  “I’m sure you just about charmed the pants off her,” I grumbled. I didn’t know why I’d thought the kisses and hugs he’d given me had been anything special, but I had. And my ego certainly shouldn’t have started feeling bruised just because he flirted with anything in a skirt, but it did.

  Bixby gave another one of his innocent shrugs.

  Despite my knowing he used that smoldering brown-eyed gaze on everyone, butterflies swirled in my stomach as if they were dancing the shag when he looked in my direction.

  I put my hand on my belly. “This wasn’t a freak accident. You must know that, Bixby,” I said as I pulled out my phone. I was about to dial Detective Gibbons when a tall man came out on the deck. He had striking bright red hair streaked with silver locks. If he’d been a woman, I would have said he had a willowy frame. He kind of looked like a long-legged elf, especially since he was wearing green jeans and a faded green T-shirt.

  He had a guitar in one hand and a beer in another.

  “Yo, Bix, I couldn’t find the score sheets you were asking for,” the man in green announced before taking a long sip of his beer. “Bubba must have taken them with him.”

  “Score sheets?” I asked.

  The tall redhead looked me up and down in the same way his smaller bandmate, Alvin, had before answering. “Bix wanted to see the full scores for several songs, including ‘Camellia Nights.’ I couldn’t find them.” A sly smile curved his lips, making him look all the more elfish. “I’m Fox, by the way. Fox Caldwell. And you must be the new chocolate shop owner everyone has been talking about. Penn, is it?”

  “That’s right,” I said, and before I knew it, I’d gotten caught up in several minutes of meaningless small talk with Fox and Bertie.

  Alvin left to go search for a beer. Bixby leaned against the railing and alternated between gazing out at the waves crashing against the shore and into the compact mirror I’d handed him to frown at his seared eyebrows.

  I frowned, too. Someone had tried to kill one of the country’s top pop stars while another had killed a singer who had aspired—but failed—to make it to the heights of fame Bixby enjoyed.

  Were there two murderers in Camellia Beach?

  Two murderers in one tiny town?

  While I’d never believed Police Chief Byrd whenever he’d claimed crime didn’t exist on this tiny strip of sand, I found it equally unbelievable that an island this size would have two killers on the loose at the same time. And if there weren’t two murderers, that would mean that—

  “What did you just say?” I rounded so suddenly on Fox that he threw up his hands and jumped back.

  “I don’t know,” he cried with alarm.

  “You were talking about Stan and what he was wearing last night. What did you say?”

  “Oh, that. I was saying how silly it was that Stan had dressed in the same leather pants and black T-shirt Bixby wears at the end of all his concerts. It was like he was trying to be Bixby.”

  I closed my eyes and tried to remember everything I’d seen at that terrible bonfire. There’d been the congressman’s bag of bonbons. There’d also been the two legs jutting out from the piled-up firewood.

  I screwed my eyes tighter as I remembered how the leather pants
along with the bag of chocolate had made me think I had found Bixby’s body in the fire.

  What if the killer had thought the same thing? What if Stan, dressed as Bixby, was the victim of an unfortunate case of mistaken identity? What if once the killer had learned of his or her mistake, he or she rushed out to try again?

  “I will see you burn,” that first threat had read.

  Had Bixby’s overzealous fan tried—not once, but twice now—to make him burn? The more I thought about it, the more I believed it. For one thing, that second rock hadn’t smashed through Bixby’s bedroom window until after word had gotten out that it was Stan who had perished in the fire.

  And if the first murder was a case of mistaken identity, I needed to make sure Bixby’s crazy fan didn’t manage to get close to him again, which meant I needed to call Detective Gibbons and alert him to the killer’s mistake. And I also needed to tell him how the killer had tried to burn Bixby again.

  It wasn’t a call I wanted to make. Gibbons was going to scold me for not calling the police right away to report the threatening letters Bixby had been getting. But I could take it.

  Besides, Gibbons would have to be grateful I was coming to him now. The threatening letters would explain everything about Stan’s murder.

  Everything … except for Bubba’s disappearance.

  Chapter 12

  “I don’t know,” Detective Gibbons frowned at the charred remains of the gas grill. He poked at it with the end of the pen he carried everywhere with him. “There are signs of rust. It could have been an accident. I’ll have to get an expert down here.”

  “It was an accident,” Bixby called from inside the beach house. “None of my fans would do this. Sometimes they threaten, but none of them would ever go through with it. My fans love me.” He’d been pacing in front of a pair of open sliding glass doors. A cell phone was pressed against his ear. I’d thought he hadn’t been listening to what was happening on the deck. Apparently, I was wrong.

  Despite Bixby’s objections, I’d called the detective and reported the explosion as an attempted murder. Since Gibbons was already on the island questioning witnesses from the previous night’s murder, it hadn’t taken long for him to arrive at the beach house in his white Crown Victoria. He’d come straight out to the deck to have a look.