“Yeah, right.” But I followed him through the lobby and around to the bar side of the fish tank.
The light was dimmer in the bar, the blue of the tank more intense in the low light. I’d never been on this side when the mermaids still performed; the bar had always been off-limits to kids. But as I watched the brilliant colors of the fish gliding past, I could imagine the mermaids in their glittering tails and flowing hair swimming gracefully by, turning slow loops, and throwing kisses to the men at the bar.
Jake led me to a small table in the back of the bar, as far as possible from the wooden postage stamp that passed for a dance floor. The small square was packed with young bodies in a wide variety of shapes, colors, and sizes. But no matter the size or shape, the girls wore a standard uniform of short dresses, strappy high-heeled sandals, and dangling earrings.
I felt impossibly old and underdressed. The jeans that were just fine on the restaurant side branded me as out of touch with the hip crowd in the bar.
The band was surprisingly good, and I found myself smiling as Jake threaded his way through the crowd to snag Mexican coffee from the bar. He came back with a single coffee, and a tall glass of clear liquid with a slice of lime. “Club soda. I’m driving,” he said, putting the footed glass mug in front of me.
“So now I know one place not to go,” he said as he sat down, leaning close to be heard over the music. “Are there any places you recommend?”
“There are a few good places,” I said, scooting my chair closer. “Curly’s makes the best burgers in town.”
Jake nodded in agreement. “I’ve had theirs a time or two. Glad to know they’re on the approved list.”
“For barbecue, York’s is the best, and Neil’s has the best pizza.”
“Outside of your kitchen, of course,” Jake amended, raising his glass in a mock toast. He liked my homemade versions, and I was secretly delighted when I found out we were pizza compatible.
“Nice of you to say so.” I returned the salute and took a cautious drink of the hot spiked coffee.
“And then there’s The Shark Tank. But nobody calls it that; it’s just The Tank if you’re a local.”
“Haven’t been in there,” he said. “It’s good?”
“It’s basically a tavern, and they serve tavern food,” I answered. “Fried fish, chicken strips, fries, the best onion rings around, and the best chowder in the state. No, really,” I added at his skeptical look. “They’ve won competitions. It’s down next to the dock, and it’s where the guys go after they unload a boat full of fish. It’s not fancy—some people would call it a dive—but it’s good, and the prices are reasonable.”
The band finished their number, and the dance floor thinned. A few couples remained on the floor, as though not wanting to break the tenuous connection they had formed while shouting at each other over the pounding beat.
As I watched the crowd filter back to their tables, I was reminded of the reason I’d wanted to come here in the first place. This was where Bobby hooked up with the divers who had hired him, and while I could understand clueless tourists looking for a charter—or a hookup—in a tourist bar, I couldn’t understand what Bobby was doing there in the first place.
Or maybe I could. Because when the crowd thinned and I got a good look at the bar, I was pretty sure I knew what brought Bobby into Mermaid’s Grotto on a regular basis: Megan Moretti.
When Megan and Bobby were in high school, she’d dated him for a while, mostly as a way to get closer to his big brother. But Riley and Karen were inseparable, and Megan had finally given up and dumped Bobby.
I’d heard she’d married a guy from Jacksonville and moved over there a few years back. But now she was back, standing behind the bar in a tight leather vest that displayed two of her greatest assets. She had bottles in both hands, and there was no ring on her left hand.
I wondered if she would remember me.
Megan’s gaze swept the room, a practiced look that missed nothing. She’d been doing this for a while. She turned her head, looking past me, then snapped her head back. He eyes widened in recognition, and she handed the bottles to the other bartender. She said something over her shoulder, coming from behind the bar and heading directly for our table.
“Glory! Glory, is it true? They really arrested Bobby?” Her voice was thick with emotion, her full lips trembling. Tears pooled in her dark eyes, threatening to spill over.
She was still a beauty. Dark curls framed a face that could stop a man in his tracks, her olive complexion still as flawless as when she was voted Most Photogenic her senior year.
I bit back the impulse to ask her if she really cared. She’d treated Bobby badly, broke his teenage heart, and left him convinced he would never be as good as his older brother.
He’d spent the years since living down to that expectation. Not that it excused his behavior; lots of people managed to get over their teenage selves and become adults. Bobby wasn’t one of them, and Megan bore part of the blame.
“It’s true,” I said, keeping my voice low.
“What happened?” she asked. Concern creased her brow, a preview of what she would look like at fifty if a surgeon didn’t intervene. “Is there anything I can do? Can I see him?”
I noticed she hadn’t asked about the rest of the family, including Riley. Maybe she had grown up in the last decade, even if Bobby hadn’t.
“I can’t tell you much. Not here.” I glanced around at the nearby tables. A couple guys were watching us. Correction: they were watching Megan. And it was clear they weren’t interested in what she was saying.
Megan nodded. “I get a break in about half an hour.” She looked down at our table. “I’ll send another round. If you’ll wait?”
“Sure.” Jake spoke up, to my relief. “But make mine a plain black coffee. I’m the designated driver.”
She flashed him her million-watt smile. “Got it. But I’ll make you something tastier than plain coffee.”
She went back to work. A few minutes later a waitress brought a tray to our table. She put another Mexican coffee in front of me, and a steaming mug in front of Jake. “These are from Megan,” she said. “Her cappuccino is to die for.” She gestured at Jake’s mug and sighed dramatically.
I tried not to flinch at her choice of words. She had no way to know Megan wanted to talk about murder.
Chapter 10
THE BAND STARTED THEIR NEXT SET. JAKE AND I sat in our corner listening and watching, comfortable with our own silence as we sipped our drinks.
Jake offered me a taste of his cappuccino. I hesitated at the familiarity of drinking from the same cup, finally compromising by using the straws from my coffee. It felt safer, less intimate somehow.
It only took Megan about twenty minutes to escape from behind the bar. She waved to us to follow her and slipped through a door at the end of the bar.
I led Jake through the door, expecting a storeroom resembling the one at The Grog Shop. Instead we found a cramped room, little more than a closet, stacked with cases of beer and booze. In one corner a tank and regulator stood next to a rack of soda syrup boxes, the tank making a little hiss each time it charged the soda gun at the bar.
There wasn’t really enough room for three people in the center of the room. Jake was so close I could feel the warmth of his body through the back of my T-shirt.
“Come on up here,” Megan said, starting up a narrow flight of stairs. As we climbed the stairs, I realized we must be right next to the giant fish tank.
At the top of the stairs, we found a large room with tables and chairs, obviously retired from the restaurant, their scratched and pitted tops relegating them to the employee lounge.
Several benches, bolted to the floor, ran through the space. Next to the benches, discolored patches showed where something had been removed.
“That’s where the mermaids changed,” Megan said, waving at the benches. “There used to be lockers in front of each bench, where they kept their stuff.”
&
nbsp; I stared at the benches. This was the place I had dreamed about all those years ago. Of course, in my four-year-old brain it had been an underwater castle, not a utilitarian concrete locker room. Still, I was here.
I didn’t have time to explore, though. Megan was only on a break, and Jake was waiting to drive me home.
We dragged chairs around one of the tables, and Megan looked at me expectantly. “What’s happened to Bobby?”
“He was arrested on smuggling charges on Wednesday.”
“I heard about that. But I thought he got out on bail. Besides, it was a bogus charge. Bobby didn’t do anything wrong. He only came in here to see me, and those three guys just kept bugging him until he said he could take them.”
I sat up, the fuzziness of the alcohol from the Mexican coffees chased from my brain by her assertion. “You saw them?”
“Of course I saw them. Bobby and I were trying to have a private conversation, and one of these big blond guys comes over and says Bobby looks like a boat captain, and could he talk to him? Bobby says, in a minute—cause he never says no to anyone, ’less he can’t help it—and the guy just stands there like he was listening to our conversation.
“Finally Bobby stops talking to me and asks the guy what he wants. He says they need a boat to take them diving and they can’t find one of them that’ll take them the next day.”
She stopped and I waited, afraid to ask the wrong question and derail her story. She stood up and grabbed a bottle of water from a case on the floor behind her, holding two more out to me and Jake.
“Anyway, Bobby told him no, that he was going fishing with his brother the next day. But that didn’t stop the guy. He says Bobby can go fishing any day, that they really want to dive. Bobby shook his head, and then the guy started flashing a wad of cash. Said this was the last day of some special dive trip, and basically he gave Bobby a big sob story about how they didn’t want to waste their last day, and blah, blah, blah.”
She sucked down about half the bottle of water and sighed. “Bobby was just trying to be a nice guy, to help these guys have one last day of diving. Instead they got him arrested.”
She balled up her fist and smacked it on the scarred tabletop. Away from her customers, her accent thickened. “It ain’t fair! Bobby’s sweet. He don’t deserve this.”
Her story changed everything, and it changed nothing. It meant Bobby was telling the truth, he hadn’t been involved in whatever the divers were up to.
It also meant he had a helluva motive for murder.
“Didn’t he get out on bail, Glory?” she asked.
“Yeah, I thought he got bailed out yesterday,” Jake said. “That’s what Linda said when I stopped in the store last night.”
Obviously Jake was at least starting to tap into the local gossip circuit.
I propped my elbows on the table and buried my head in my hands. “He did,” I said, not looking up. “But they arrested him again, and this time he can’t get bail.”
Megan jumped up, fists at her sides, ready for a fight. “What did those guys tell the cops? What lies did they tell?” She grabbed a jacket off the row of hooks near the door. “I told the cops Bobby didn’t know those guys! I’m going down there right now and make Boomer let him out!”
“Sit down, Megan,” I said softly. “There isn’t anything we can do right now.”
She didn’t budge, and I looked up at her. “Please, sit down.”
Jake looked at me warily, then up at Megan. Although we never got around to my story over dinner, he could tell I had more to say, and he could guess it wasn’t going to be good.
“I think you better sit down, Megan.” He got up and took her jacket, putting it back on the hook. “I’m pretty sure Glory knows more than she’s told us so far.”
Megan perched on the edge of the chair, ready to bounce back up at any moment.
I drew a deep breath, dreading the reaction my next words would bring.
“They found one of the divers behind The Tank last night. He’d been killed with a gaff hook from Ocean Breeze. Bobby can’t get bail because they’ve charged him with murder.”
Jake stared at me in shock, and the fight drained out of Megan. “No,” she whispered. The tears that had been threatening spilled over and ran down her face. “He would never…” Her voice trailed off into a sob.
I went to her and put an arm around her shoulders. She turned her head and buried her face in my side.
Below us a door opened, and the noise of the bar blasted up the stairs. “Megan?” a voice called over the din. “Band’s about to take a break. We’re gonna get slammed. We need you down here.”
The door slammed again. Megan pulled away from me, her eyes red. “I better get back to work.” She dragged a tissue from her pocket and wiped her eyes.
She walked over to a small sink, splashed water on her face, and added a quick dash of dark coral lipstick from a tube in her pocket. When she turned around, her eyes were clear and there was no sign of the emotional storm that had passed through her.
“Better go,” she said, leading us toward the stairs. The calm mask slipped for an instant, and she gave me a quick hug. “Thanks for talking to me. I’m glad I didn’t have to hear that from the radio or something.”
I nodded my agreement, though I wasn’t quite sure of her meaning, and we followed her back downstairs to the bar. As she’d been warned, the band was putting down their instruments, and the crowd was headed for the bar.
Megan turned around long enough to wave, then was swallowed up in the crush of bodies clamoring for fresh drinks.
“Ready to leave?” Jake leaned down, so close I could feel his breath against my neck as he spoke.
I nodded, and he reached for my hand, pulling me along as he snaked through the crowd. He seemed to anticipate which way the crowd would move, as he found a narrow path to the door.
As we walked out and the doors closed behind us, I felt as though a physical load had been lifted from my shoulders. I realized it was the noise and heat of the crowd, now trapped inside the building. I let the relative silence fill me as I drew a deep breath of the cool night air, and relaxed for the first time since I’d spotted Megan behind the bar.
Jake continued holding my hand as we walked to his car.
Adrenaline had chased the effects of the alcohol from my system, but I was still relieved Jake was driving.
When we were in the car with the doors locked, safely away from prying eyes, I turned to Jake. “Why would somebody pressure Bobby like that? What were they doing?”
Jake shook his head. “Beats me,” he said, putting the car in gear and pulling out of the lot. “It doesn’t make any sense.”
“I wonder if Karen has heard Megan’s story. Or Riley.”
“Why don’t you call her?” Jake asked. “They need to know what she said, if they don’t already.”
I took out my cell phone and hit speed dial. Karen was at the top of the list.
“Hi, Glory. What’s up?”
“Just wondered how you guys were holding up.”
“Hanging in there, I guess. Still trying to find a lawyer and figure out just what is going on. Nothing we have heard makes any sense.”
“Actually, that was kind of one of the reasons I called. Are you still at the Freeds?”
“Yeah. I went and got the cake and a clean shirt, but I came right back here, in case there was anything I could do.”
Jake pulled up in front of Southern Treasures, but he left the engine running and gestured to me to get my attention. I told Karen to hang on a sec and put my hand over the phone.
“Do you want me to take you to the Freeds?” he asked.
I shook my head. The last thing I wanted to do was intrude on the family. They needed each other, but they didn’t need outsiders.
“How about we meet her somewhere, then?”
I noticed he said we.
“Karen? How about we meet you somewhere? I don’t want to barge in there, but I’ve heard a
couple things you might want to know.”
I could hear her talking to someone in the background for a minute, then she came back on the line. “Actually, I think it would do us some good to get out of here for a while.” She named a chain restaurant near the Pensacola airport. “Meet us there in twenty?”
I glanced over at Jake, who had overheard her, and he nodded.
“See you there,” I answered, without mentioning my companion. I was pretty sure the us she referred to was she and Riley, which was going to be awkward enough.
“I can take my car,” I said to Jake as I gathered up my purse and jacket. “No sense running you all over the county in the middle of the night.”
“First off, that isn’t all over the county, and second, I haven’t been drinking. Third, I heard what Megan said, too. I might actually be of some help.” He stopped and grinned at me. “Oh, and fourth, you don’t get rid of me that easy.”
He put the car back in gear and pulled away from the curb before I could argue. Not that I really wanted to.
We arrived first, which wasn’t surprising. I could imagine how long it would take Riley and Karen to break free from the family gathering.
I just hoped they wouldn’t be too much longer. Megan’s story was like found money burning a hole in my pocket, and I could hardly wait to see what it was worth.
Chapter 11
JAKE AND I GOT A BOOTH. HE ORDERED COFFEE, FOR which he seemed to have an infinite capacity, and I ordered an herbal tea.
“Another cup of coffee,” I told him, “and I won’t sleep until Tuesday.” It was an exaggeration, but the mix of alcohol, coffee, and adrenaline already in my system was enough to keep me wired for quite a while. No need to add anything more.
A few minutes later, Karen and Riley arrived. I spotted them as they pulled in, but I was surprised to see Riley climb out from behind the wheel of Karen’s SUV.
If she let him drive her prized vehicle, this was getting serious. And, as they crossed the parking lot to the front door, their body language reinforced my suspicions. If they weren’t a couple again, they would be soon.
Murder Hooks a Mermaid Page 7
