Playing with Bonbon Fire

by Dorothy St. James

  “Then what is the purpose for all this?” Fox asked as he pointed to the rear end of the car behind us. “Why shoot at us and then try to run us down?”

  “That cursed song.” Alvin looked as if he’d suddenly found religion. “Stan didn’t want us to sing his song, so his haint done come back to sabotage our reunion concert.”

  “Alvin, I don’t think this is the work of a ghost or your ex-wife. But I do aim to find out what’s going on,” Gibbons said. He then looked directly at me. “And I don’t need your help doing it. Go to the hospital and take care of Bertie.”

  Chapter 34

  “Though I want to, I can’t leave and go to the hospital,” I told Tina after Gibbons, Alvin, and Fox had left. “Not now. Not with everything that’s going on.”

  I picked up a broom and started sweeping the broken glass into manageable piles on the porch’s broken floorboards. I didn’t know why I felt compelled to do that. The messes both outside and inside were too big to clean up with a push broom.

  Both Harley and Althea had recently sent texts to let us know that Bertie was out of surgery and doing as well as could be expected for someone who’d just been hit by a car.

  “Of course you can’t go to the hospital. You have to wait for the engineer. And then we need to figure out what to do about this gaping hole,” Tina said.

  “Um …” Yes, there was that. And I hadn’t forgotten that I’d promised to help young Tom Ezell smooth things over with his uncle.

  “Penn,” Tina demanded, “what are you planning to do?”

  “I need to go to the pier.” I explained to her about Tom’s situation and the promise I’d made.

  She looked around. “Where did he go?” she asked.

  The last I’d seen him, he’d wandered away from the group to stand under the large oak tree that provided quite a bit of shade to the front of the building. But he wasn’t there now.

  “Perhaps he was worried about staying away too long and rushed back to face his uncle?” I knelt down and swept glass shards into a dustpan. “I need to get over to the pier to make sure security is being tightened and that everything Althea was supposed to be handling tonight is getting done. I also need to find out if we’re going to have a headliner band for tonight’s performance. Have you heard from Bixby lately?”

  “I sent him a few texts. He said he was looking for Bubba … again. What about Bubba?” Tina asked. “What is he doing? Have you heard from him?”

  “I haven’t.” Which was troubling, seeing as it was his car that was sitting in the middle of the Chocolate Box. “If you could stick around here to meet with the engineer and watch over the shop, I could run over to the pier and check that everything is ready for tonight as well as talk with Ezell about Tom. And I’ll also try to get in touch with Bubba. I need to make sure he’s not been arrested, because if he has been, there definitely won’t be a concert tonight.”

  “No way,” Tina said. “I’m not letting you run off on your own.”

  “But I can’t just leave the shop open like this.” I pointed to the gaping hole.

  She, in turn, pointed to the police officers, who were standing around while we waited to get word that the car could be moved without causing the second floor to collapse. The car was, after all, evidence. “They can watch the shop, and the engineer doesn’t need you or me hovering around while she works.”

  Tina was right. Hanging around the Chocolate Box wasn’t going to protect anyone at the festival or help us find the vile person responsible for putting Bertie in the hospital.

  “Very well,” I said. “Let’s go.”

  We’d made it as far as Main Street when I grabbed Tina’s arm. I then glanced at my phone just long enough to check the time. “Bertie was worried about something over at the lighthouse. Although I told Gibbons what she said, he didn’t write it down in his notebook. He’s not going to do anything.”

  “But what about tonight’s concert?” Tina asked. “Shouldn’t we make sure everything is okay at the pier?”

  She was right, of course. But I didn’t make a move toward the pier. We stood at the corner of East Europe and Main, dumbly staring at each other.

  “Let’s go take a quick look,” we both said at the same time.

  Ten minutes later, I was parking my car where East Africa came to a dead end on the north end of the island. The drive had led us to where a footpath led out to the abandoned red-and-white-striped lighthouse.

  At one time, there’d been a house connected to the lighthouse. The two-story clapboard structure had crumbled into the encroaching sea decades ago. Black-and-white photos of the old keeper’s house with the lighthouse rising up behind it were popular items at the tourist shops. I’d purchased a hand-colorized print and had it framed and mounted on the wall behind the cash register in the shop.

  “Are you sure you want to do this?” I asked Tina, who sat in the passenger seat with her seatbelt still wrapped across her slim middle.

  “Of course I do.” She unsnapped the seatbelt. “Don’t you?”

  “I’m having second thoughts,” I said. “It could be dangerous.”

  Just then a large family came down the sandy path. The father was pulling a wagon piled with beach chairs, a cooler, and a volleyball net. The mother chased after two young boys, who were spraying the rest of the family members with oversized water guns.

  “Yeah, it looks like it’s really dangerous down there,” Tina said as a second family—also pulling a packed wagon—came into view. A third family parked their SUV next to my Fiat and started to get ready to follow the trail to the lighthouse, which was apparently a popular family picnic spot.

  We kicked off our shoes, got out of the car, and headed down the well-used path.

  The lighthouse sat at the edge of the water. At high tide, the ocean completely cut the lighthouse—and the small surrounding strip of land, protected by a tall red brick seawall—off from the rest of the island. Fundraising efforts were under way to slow the lighthouse’s slow slide into the sea.

  By the time we reached the shoreline, it was slack tide. Soon the water would start to rise again. But for now, getting to the lighthouse was as easy as crossing the wet sand and climbing the brick seawall.

  We followed a family over the seawall and stood on the elevated weedy ground surrounding the lighthouse. I didn’t see anything out of place. There wasn’t any evidence of digging beyond shallow holes made by children.

  The opening for the lighthouse itself had been boarded up long ago due to safety issues. Again, there wasn’t any evidence that the boards had been tampered with. The heads of the nails holding them up were coated with thick ruddy rust.

  “Nothing,” I said as I looked up the lighthouse’s brick exterior.

  “Why did Bertie want you to come here?” Tina asked as she turned a full circle.

  “I don’t know. We’ll have to ask her.”

  “This is a beautiful spot.” She picked up a conch shell and held it to her ear. “I can hear the ocean.”

  “So can I,” I said, laughing. “It’s right there.”

  Tina handed the shell to a young girl who was running around with a bucket filled with “treasures.” The girl squealed with delight and ran off to show her mother. Tina and I climbed down from the lighthouse and trudged back across the damp sand.

  Since it was such a beautiful evening—and, yes, because I did want to show off to my sister just a bit—I led her down a side trail that cut through the heavily treed maritime forest. The trail led us to a hidden cove at the back of the island. While we could hear conversations of beachgoers in the distance, this part of the island felt as if it were separated from the rest of the world.

  Dolphins frolicked in the cove. Birds flew overhead. And to our left, a large animal—a deer perhaps—crunched through the trees and thick underbrush.

  Tina tossed her arm over my shoulder. “I can see why you like it here. It’s quite magical, isn’t it?”

  “Not magic, but it is b
eautiful.”

  Tina poked me in the side and laughed. I laughed too. And for a glorious moment, I forgot about all about my ruined shop, Stan’s murder, and the search for my mother. But moments like these were as ephemeral as the tide.

  The large animal that had been rustling in the nearby trees suddenly charged at us like a raging bull. Tina yelped. I screamed.

  We were on the verge of diving into the water for safety when the figure barreling toward us stopped abruptly and raised her hands.

  “Candy?” I said, because it wasn’t an animal at all, but a woman. Scratches crisscrossed her face, arms, and legs. A gash on her chin oozed blood. I was glad to see her. Glad to know my worries that she’d met a bad end had been unfounded.

  Her breaths came in sharp huffs as she turned her head left and right before focusing on us. Her shoulders hunched as if she planned to charge again.

  I held up my hands. “We’re not your enemy.”

  Worried about what she might do, I kept a keen eye out for any sign that she might have a gun. Sure, I thought someone had set her up to take the blame for the shooting yesterday, but that didn’t make me cocky to the point of stupidity. She might easily have gotten that gash on her head when she crashed Bubba’s car through my shop’s front window.

  “I’m not dating Bixby. I’m not even interested in him,” I said, my hands still in the air as if I was surrendering. I tried to push Tina behind me.

  Candy huffed several more times before straightening. She propped a hand on her hip. “You’re not his type. He likes”—she looked me up and down—“fashionable women.” Her gaze moved to Tina. “Like her,” she added.

  I knew I shouldn’t have taken offense, but I did.

  “What’s wrong with what I’m wearing?” I’d paired a pale pink pleated skirt with a white silk blouse. It was an outfit I’d worn to my former job as director of marketing for the Cheese King. Nothing about the outfit was shabby.

  Candy, dressed in the same white dress she’d had on yesterday—it was now tattered and stained—waved a hand at me. “It’s all too plain. Boring. You look like a secretary who hasn’t an ounce of imagination. Nothing you wear has any personality.”

  “Oh.” I bit my lip. She might be delusional, but she also might have a point. “Wait. What I’m wearing and whether it appeals to Bixby doesn’t matter.” What mattered was that a killer—probably not Candy—was still on the loose.

  Candy’s chin was still bleeding, which worried me. “Are you okay?” I asked. I started digging around in my purse in search of a tissue or a bandage.

  “What?” She seemed confused by my concern.

  “What are you doing?” Tina asked.

  “She’s bleeding.” I pointed to Candy’s chin and then held up a pack of tissues. “Do you need help?”

  Candy backed up. I supposed she didn’t want to risk the possibility that I would try to get within arm’s reach. “I … I just ran into a little trouble. I’m okay.”

  She’d been on the run from the police all night. I had no idea where she might have been hiding herself. But I did know that the vegetation on the island included tough plants sporting thorns, thick leaves, or stinging hairs. They had to be tough to survive the harsh conditions they faced on a narrow spit of sand at the edge of the ocean. If she’d been keeping to the island’s wild areas, she was probably lucky to look as good as she did.

  “I know someone set you up yesterday,” I said, hoping I might gain her trust. If she had seen someone in those woods, I wanted to know. “I know that whoever lured you to my shop wanted you to be blamed for shooting at me.”

  Her hunched, ready-to-run stance loosened just a bit. I took that as a positive sign.

  “I also know that you didn’t kill Stan.” I didn’t know that as a fact, but I was hoping to make her believe I thought it was true.

  Her brows furrowed. “Who’s Stan?”

  “The man who died in the bonfire,” Tina said.

  “Oh!” Her eyes widened. “That guy. Yeah, why would I hurt him?”

  “Why would you?” I agreed. “What I’m wondering is why anyone would want you to take the blame for his death and for shooting at me yesterday?”

  She shook her head. “There are lots of nuts in this world. I don’t even begin to try and understand them.”

  “That’s rich, coming from a nutter like her,” Tina whispered in my ear.

  “Of course she doesn’t think what she’s doing is nuts,” I whispered back.

  “What? What are you saying over there?” Candy demanded.

  “Nothing,” I said. “When you ran from the shop yesterday, did you happen to see anyone in the woods with you? Someone with—I don’t know—a gun?”

  She shook her head.

  I decided to try another line of questioning. “Who do you think sent you that text telling you to come to the Chocolate Box?” I asked.

  “Bixby sent the text, of course. He wanted to see me.”

  “Are you sure?” Tina asked. “Did it come from his number?”

  “Oh, yes.” She plucked her phone from her back pocket and held it up for me to see. As it had been the day before, the screen was blank. I didn’t know what she thought our seeing her phone would prove. “He texts me all the time.”

  “He does?” Was that the truth or another one of her delusions?

  I hated to think of Bixby as a suspect, but I’d be negligent if I ignored his strange behavior. That he was obsessed with buying Bubba and Stan’s song and that Stan’s death had cleared one hurdle to his purchasing the song made his actions look suspicious.

  Heck, he could have rigged the grill to explode in his own face just to make it look as if his life was in danger as well.

  I knew Candy would shut down if I suggested the man she loved might be capable of murder, so I asked her about his motive instead.

  “Why do you think Bixby is so interested in buying Bubba and Stan’s song, ‘Camellia Nights’?” I asked.

  “He needs it,” she said, as if it were as simple as that. “Just like he needs me.”

  “Needs it? I don’t understand,” Tina said.

  Candy’s shoulders slumped. “I provide Bixby with supplies for his … you know … habit. And Bixby also needs new material in order to keep the hits coming. Didn’t you know? He hasn’t written a new song since he’s dated you,” she said, wagging her finger at Tina. “Why do you think he travels around the country, visiting these obscure music festivals every couple of years?”

  “Because he’s looking for inspiration?” Tina asked.

  “That’s what he wants everyone to think. He’s looking to buy prewritten songs, songs that he can make into hits.”

  “Lots of singers don’t write their own work,” I pointed out. “Why doesn’t he simply hire songwriters to do the work for him?” And why was I having this conversation with a crazy woman?

  She huffed. “This is Bixby Lewis we’re talking about. Haven’t you read his Wiki page? He’s considered the preeminent songwriter of this generation. Songwriter, not singer.”

  “And what supplies do you give him?” I asked.

  She smiled coyly. “Hits of another kind.”

  “Drugs?” Tina sounded shocked.

  “My boy doesn’t do drugs. But I’m his Candy shop,” she giggled as she said it. “He loves me for it.”

  Had Chief Byrd been right all along? Was the motive for Stan’s murder and everything else that had been happening on the island drugs? Ohhh … rock stars and drugs. How had I been so naïve?

  Drugs would explain why Bixby had been acting so cagey around the police. It would also explain why he’d never wanted to press charges against Candy and why he’d sometimes ditch his security team.

  “I don’t believe you,” Tina said.

  “You don’t have to.” Candy pulled a Ziploc bag filled with white pills from her pocket and tossed it at Tina. “With the crazy crowds around here, I haven’t been able to get close to him, and I can’t get past his security
to get into his bedroom. Give that to him for me. My poor boy needs it.”

  “If you do this for him, why did you throw a threatening letter tied to a rock through my shop window and then through his bedroom window? And why did you try to burn my shop down?”

  “I keep telling you, I didn’t set fire to your silly chocolate shop.”

  “And the rocks?” Tina asked. “Did you throw those?”

  “Sometimes Bixby needs to be reminded who really loves him. He needs to know I’m here for him. Always here for him. I’ll make him burn.”

  “You’re crazy,” Tina said.

  I think I was a bit crazy too, because I believed her.

  The leaves behind her started rustling again. Candy jerked her head in the direction of the sound.

  I grabbed her arm before she could run off. “Let me help you.”

  She shook her head violently. “He’s coming.”

  “Who?” I tightened my grip on her arm. “Bixby?”

  “No, why would I run from him? It’s the man who’s trying to kill me.”

  “Who?” I asked again.

  “Some old guy. He must want what’s in that bag I gave you.” Like a slippery fish, she twisted her arm out of my grasp and took off running past the cove into the marsh’s tall grasses. “You’d better run too. He’ll kill you!”

  Both Tina and I tried to chase after her, but she’d disappeared from view within the maze of tall grasses, and Tina refused to step foot in a place where snakes and alligators might live. So we doubled back to the cove to confront the “old guy” who’d so thoroughly frightened Candy.

  It was Bubba who came out of the woods. He stood huffing and puffing in the clearing with his hands on his hips. “There you are, Penn,” he said when he spotted us. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you.”

  “You have?” I asked. “Why didn’t you call my cell phone?”

  “Someone stole my cell phone and my car too.”

  “I know where your car is. It’s in my shop,” I said. “And I mean that literally. It’s in the middle of my shop.”

  “Someone used your car as a weapon and crashed it into Penn’s shop,” Tina added as she discreetly picked up the bag Candy had tossed at us. I took it from her and stuffed it into my purse. “Do you know anything about that?”