Playing with Bonbon Fire

by Dorothy St. James

  She carried a paper grocery bag in each arm. She’d come in through the window because the police were blocking the door.

  A younger uniformed officer from the town spotted her and trotted over. “Ma’am, you can’t come in here.” He held up his hands as if he were directing traffic. “This is a crime scene.”

  “And Penn is my sister.” She gestured with her elbow since her hands were full. “I’m coming in.”

  The officer looked at Tina, who’d been taught by our father how to hold her own in the toughest of situations, then over at Chief Byrd. Byrd was busy questioning Alvin, who waved his arms wildly as he explained quite loudly what had happened. Seeing that he wasn’t going to get help from a higher source, the young officer held up his hands again. “You’ll need to leave.”

  “You’ll probably want to question her,” I told him. “She might have seen something. She can sit with me while I wait my turn to give our statements.”

  He frowned at me and then at Tina and finally shot a pleading glance toward Chief Byrd, who was still busy with Alvin.

  “She can sit right there.” He righted an overturned café chair. “But she cannot move from that spot or touch anything.”

  I nodded.

  “You made the right decision, officer,” Tina said, then handed him her groceries. “Be a dear and carry those to the upstairs apartment. There are several items in the bags that need to be refrigerated.”

  “He can’t do that,” I told her, shocked she’d act so brazenly around an officer of the law.

  “Oh, you’re right, Penn. I don’t know what I was thinking. Give the man a key.”

  The officer, his hands now filled with the shopping bags, sputtered unintelligibly.

  I found the key in my purse. Tina took it from me and slid the key ring over the officer’s pinky finger. “It’s the first apartment up the back stairs,” she told him. “You can’t miss it.”

  He sputtered a bit more before realizing no one was going to come to his rescue. Standing up to a determined Tina was rather hopeless. With a grunt, he headed back out the way Tina had come in.

  I had to give him credit. Most men put up more of a fight before giving in to her demands.

  Tina didn’t sit where the officer had told her to sit. She didn’t sit at all. Instead, she stood with her hands on her hips and glowered at me.

  “You told me you were going to work in the kitchen,” she said.

  “I did.”

  “No, you were lying to me. I could tell by the way your nose twitched when you were talking that you were lying.”

  “You’re making that up. My nose doesn’t twitch when I talk.”

  “Am not.”

  “Are too.” I held up my hands. “This car accident didn’t happen because of anything I did. I wasn’t even near the front of the shop. I was out back talking with Harley when the car came careening around the corner, tires squealing.”

  “Really?” Tina squinted at my nose as if trying to see if it was twitching.

  “My nose doesn’t twitch.” Even so, I slapped my hand over it to keep her from seeing whether it was twitching or not. “I was out back talking with Harley about the court case concerning this shop.”

  I looked around at the crumbling walls, the broken window, the long, jagged crack that had opened up in the ceiling, and the smashed tables and chairs in the seating area. The display cases and most of the items on the shelves had survived unscathed, which was a blessing. But I worried about the structural integrity of the building. Fixing the damage would involve much more than a call to the glaziers. I was going to have to close the shop during the height of tourist season, which could mean a loss of thousands of dollars of dearly needed income.

  I dropped into the chair that the officer had set up for Tina. The adrenaline from the accident and from seeing Bertie rushed to the hospital was starting to wear off, leaving my legs feeling like wet noodles.

  “Bertie was hurt,” I said. “Her leg looked pretty bad.”

  Tina gasped. “Is she okay?”

  I shrugged. “They took her to the hospital. I haven’t heard anything since they left.”

  “Who did this? Candy?” Tina asked.

  I shook my head. “The police can’t find the driver. And no one inside saw who was driving. Heck, both Harley and I witnessed the accident, and we didn’t see the driver run away from the car.” I gazed at the chrome grill of the red sedan sitting silently like a beached whale in the middle of my shop. “It’s Bubba’s car.”

  “I knew it!” Tina slapped her leg. “Didn’t I tell you? He’s behind all of this.”

  I shook my head. “He’s not a stupid man. And why would he want to crash into the shop? Look who’s here. His bandmates Alvin and Fox. Alvin told me that the two of them had just entered the shop when the car came crashing through the window. If Bertie hadn’t pushed them out of the way, they might have been …”

  Oh my goodness. Why hadn’t I thought of it before? I pressed my hands to my mouth. It was so obvious.

  “What?” Tina demanded. “What are you thinking? Talk to me, Penn.”

  “I just realized I’ve been wrong about everything. And I mean everything. Will you please stop hovering over me like that? Try to find a chair that’s not broken and sit down next to me.”

  It took her three tries to find a chair with four sturdy legs. She set it up so it was facing the chair I was using and then perched at the edge of the seat, her body leaning eagerly toward me. “Spill it.”

  “Stan, a former member of The Embers, was killed in the bonfire,” I said as I held up one finger. I held up another. “The exploding grill was at the beach house The Embers had rented, not Bixby’s rental house.” I lifted a third finger. “Fox and Alvin were standing right next to me when someone shot at us. No, someone didn’t shoot at us. Someone shot at them. I’d assumed I was the target because Candy had been there confronting me and because this is my shop and perhaps because I’m totally egotistical and make everything about me.” Was that why Tina thought Bixby and I would make a good match? “But this isn’t about me.” I lifted a fourth finger. “Someone tried to run down Alvin and Fox with Bubba’s car. Someone is trying to kill off the members of The Embers. And I suspect that person is trying to do it before tonight’s concert.”

  “Tonight’s concert?” Tina gasped. “That means the killer is getting desperate.”

  “Which would explain why someone would drive a car through the front of my shop,” I agreed. “Sounds like an act of desperation to me.”

  “It could still be Bubba who’s trying to knock off his bandmates. After all, the killer hasn’t tried to kill him.”

  She had a point. But then I remembered the incident on the shrimp boat. “The killer hit him over the head and set him adrift in the ocean. That’s a murder attempt.”

  “Which he could have faked,” Tina was quick to counter.

  I would have continued the argument, but Harley, who’d been on the phone with the hospital, came over. His expression was grim. He still held his phone in his hand.

  “What’s going on? How’s Bertie?” I asked, terrified of the answer. Broken legs could be serious. They could be deadly if the leg broke at the wrong point.

  Harley shook his head. “She’s in surgery. We won’t know the extent of the damage until she gets out. It’s a wait-and-see situation right now. If you’d like, I could drive you to the hospital when we’re done here. Althea is there all by herself. She’s a mess.”

  “No,” I said. I felt guilty saying it, but as Tina had pointed out, the killer was getting desperate. The concert was tonight. If the goal was to kill off the band members in order to keep them from playing, things were about to get very deadly in the next couple of hours. “There’s something else I need to do. Can you go and sit with her and tell her that I wish I could be there too?”

  “Please tell me you’re not going to the old lighthouse.” Harley said.

  “I’m not going to the old lighthouse,�
�� I said.

  He leaned down with his hands on his knees and gave me a hard look. “Are you telling me the truth?”

  “What’s at the lighthouse?” Tina asked.

  “I’m not looking to put my life in danger. I just need to stay here to make sure there’s enough security at the pier tonight. I need to make sure no one else gets hurt.”

  “What’s at the lighthouse?” Tina asked again.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Bertie told me I needed to go to the lighthouse because she’s worried about something that’s happening there.”

  “Is that where Bertie has been going? The old lighthouse?” Tina wondered.

  “I wish I knew,” I said. I then implored Harley to go comfort Althea at the hospital and send constant updates on Bertie’s condition. I also begged him to put Stella and Troubadour in his apartment, since there was a chance that my apartment, which was directly above the Chocolate Box, could end up falling into the shop.

  “So where are you going?” Harley asked after he’d reluctantly agreed to do both. “What are you planning to do besides arrange for additional security on the pier, which you could do by phone?”

  “After talking to Gibbons, you mean?” I nodded toward the detective who’d just trudged through the door. He stopped to talk with Chief Byrd. “I think I need to have a talk with Fox and Alvin. Hopefully, they’ll have some idea why someone is trying to kill them.”

  Chapter 33

  “It done must be my ex,” Alvin exclaimed after I suggested the killer was trying to go after the band members. “She’s always said she’d be the death of me.”

  “It ain’t your ex. She’s always said you’d be the death of her,” Fox corrected.

  “Well, the way she done nagged at me, you’d think she was gunning for my death.”

  We were all standing outside in the heat of the afternoon—Detective Gibbons, Tina, Alvin, Fox, and I—while I waited for the engineer I’d called to come and take a look at the building. I needed her to tell me if the ceiling would collapse if we moved the car. The police had completed their job, except for towing Bubba’s car off to the impound lot. Gibbons had sent a few of his men out to pick up Bubba for questioning, even though he seemed about as convinced as I was that if Bubba had wanted to kill his fellow bandmates, he wouldn’t be stupid enough to use his own car.

  Gibbons, after hearing Alvin accuse his ex of murder, held up his hands. “I find it hard to believe that Marella would steal Bubba’s car and drive it through the shop in order to kill you, Alvin.”

  “And what do you know of her?” Alvin demanded.

  “As it so happens, I know her well. She sings in the church choir with my wife and me,” Gibbons said. “She’s been singing in that choir with us for the past twenty years. You’d know that if you’d ever attended service.”

  “Never been one for churchin’,” Alvin said, then snapped his mouth closed.

  “What?” I asked. “What did you just realize just now?”

  “Done realized that if someone doesn’t want the band to play tonight, we might get slaughtered on that stage.” He paled and then leaned against a display case as if his legs could no longer hold him. “I ain’t playing.”

  “Do you feel the same way, Fox?” Gibbons asked.

  The lanky man scratched his ruddy whiskers. “Don’t rightly know.”

  Even though Gibbons had questioned everyone extensively already, he flipped open his notebook again. “Chief Byrd and I have already made plans to beef up security, but no one will be upset if you decide not to perform tonight.”

  Speak for yourself, a heartless voice in my head snipped. You don’t have to pay the refunds on the unused tickets. Luckily, I had my lips pressed together tightly enough that those words didn’t escape.

  “Have you had any luck locating Candy Graves?” I asked. Although I didn’t suspect her of this crime—why would she want to hurt The Embers’ band members?—her involvement couldn’t be ruled out altogether.

  Gibbons shook his head. “I think she must have somehow gotten herself off the island. But we’ve not been able to trace her. It’s as if she’s just vanished.”

  Just like Carolina Maybank had vanished? That sinking feeling returned to the pit of my stomach.

  “Do you have any idea why someone wouldn’t want the band to come back together and play?” Tina asked Fox and Alvin.

  I was as interested in the answer to that question as anyone else, but I didn’t get to hear it.

  Tom Ezell came running up to the shop. “Miss Penn! Miss Penn! I need to have a word with you.”

  He’d shed his suit coat and tie and had rolled his white, sweat-stained shirt up to his elbows.

  I stepped away from the others. “What is it, Tom?”

  He skidded to a halt and stared wide-eyed at the car sitting halfway in the shop. “What happened here?”

  “Someone thought we offered drive-through service,” I said. “What can I do for you?”

  “I didn’t put the bags of chocolates into the cooler, and they all melted. My uncle is furious. Is there anything you can do? Can you make some more?”

  The poor sweaty boy looked miserable. I had a feeling his uncle, who’d said more than once that he was grooming his nephew to follow him into politics, had given Tom a hard time. That was something I could relate to.

  I patted his shoulder. “I wish I could whip you up a couple dozen more bags of our pretzel bonbons, but”—I gestured back toward the shop—“as you can see, we’re not open for business.”

  Tears filled his eyes. “Uncle Trey is going to murder me.”

  “Would it help if I spoke to him on your behalf?” With Bertie in surgery, a killer looking to strike tonight, and the intrigue that Bertie seemed to think happened at the old lighthouse, I really didn’t have time to go play peacemaker for a family squabble. But I also didn’t have the heart to send young Tom away. All I could do was hope he wouldn’t take me up on my offer.

  “You’d do that?” he asked hopefully.

  “Of course I will.” Granny Mae, who’d once worked as Grandmother Cristobel’s personal assistant, had occasionally stepped in for me when things got tense between me and either my father or Grandmother Cristobel. When she did, it had felt as if she’d saved my life. How could I not do that for Tom? “Let me wrap up here, and then I’ll follow you down to the pier. I’m sure we can come up with a plan for tonight. That is, if the concert isn’t canceled.”

  “Canceled?” he asked.

  “Sadly so,” I said. “It looks as if someone is trying to kill the band members. It might be too dangerous to go forward with the concert.”

  He followed me like a lost puppy over to where Gibbons and Tina were still talking with Fox and Alvin.

  “I’d put my money on whoever stole that song Stan wrote,” I heard Fox say as we got closer. “Stan never did let us play the song. Doesn’t that seem strange? If nothing else, he should have insisted that we let Ocean Waves sing it in order to give his band a second hit and a shot at winning a second Grammy. I reckon if you find the song, you’ll find the killer.”

  “Bah,” Alvin scoffed. “You done never heard it. It wasn’t all that great.”

  “What about Carolina Maybank?” Tina asked. “Do you know why she left town? Do you know where she might have gone?”

  Alvin shook his head. “Bad happenings, that.”

  “She and Bubba had a falling out,” Fox said.

  “Over Bertie,” I said.

  The two men looked surprised. “Bertie told you about it, then?” Fox asked.

  “No, she didn’t,” I confessed. “But I’ve been asking questions around town.”

  It was the detective’s turn to look surprised. “Penn! You promised you were going to leave the police work to the police.”

  “I have been.” I raised my hand like a Girl Scout making a pledge. “I’ve only been asking around about Carolina Maybank because I think she’s my mother, and I’ve been trying to find her. It�
�s nothing new. I’ve been trying to find her for the past several months.”

  That sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach dropped several notches deeper. Besides all of those fantastic reasons (such as her being in witness protection or a spy) that I’d dreamed up to explain why the private investigator couldn’t find even a trace of Carolina, there was one other (and perhaps even more plausible) reason why her whereabouts couldn’t be traced. It was because she’d never left the island.

  No, she couldn’t be dead. Because if she were, that would mean that Florence really was my mother. And that would simply be awful.

  “Carolina has to be my mother, and I have a right to know what happened to her. I have every right to try to find her,” I protested a little too loudly.

  Alvin raised his brows at my outburst. I was sure it had only further proved to him that all women were prone to hysterics.

  Tina put her arm around my waist. “Yes, you can’t tell my sister what to do.”

  “Let the poor girl find her mother,” Fox implored.

  Gibbons sighed. “I’m not trying to stop you from looking for your mother. I am concerned about your safety, though. Someone tried to burn down your shop while you were in it. Someone shot at you.”

  “Shot at Alvin and Fox,” I corrected.

  “We have no way of knowing that for sure. You were in the line of fire too,” he was quick to say. “And now this happened. And Tina has been telling me about how Carolina Maybank left town shortly after The Embers broke up, and that you think what’s happening in town today could be related to the reason she left.” He paused just long enough to suck in a breath. “Something is going on, Penn, something that is terribly dangerous. You can’t go running around asking questions that might make you vulnerable.”

  “Point taken,” I said. “But the concert is tonight. And then, whether The Embers sing or not, the festival is over. The danger should be over too, right?”

  “I don’t know.” The detective’s brows dipped. “If someone wanted to stop a concert, there are simpler ways to accomplish it than attempting to commit multiple murders.”