But he wasn’t homeless. He was a killer.
“What’s going on?” Bertie emerged from her bedroom. She tugged at the belt of her quilted flowered housecoat and yawned. “Harley, what are you doing here this early in the morning?”
“She told the police I killed her friend.” Harley pointed an accusing finger in my direction. “And then she sicced her vicious dog on me.”
“Penn?” Bertie had to raise her voice to be heard over Stella’s barking. “Is this true?”
“I told the county detective in charge of the case what I’d learned over the last couple of days. He’s the one who decided to make an arrest. Hold on a minute—if he arrested you, why are you here and not in jail?”
“He didn’t have enough evidence to make an arrest,” he grumbled. “Not yet.”
By this time, Mabel’s cat came slinking out of Bertie’s bedroom. It crossed the kitchen and hissed in my direction before making a beeline to Harley, where Stella was still acting like my protector.
With a loud yowl, Troubadour slapped Stella in the face with his razor-sharp claws. Stella yelped and then darted under the sofa.
With a satisfied sniff, Troubadour pressed himself against Harley as if he’d fallen in love. He rubbed against our intruder, doing that figure-eight thing cats do around Harley’s legs.
Stella peered out from under the sofa, her eyes wide with shock. Her gaze was fixed on Troubadour, who was still rubbing himself shamelessly against Harley. Seeing that she’d have to get past the cat to get back to my attacker, my fearless dog backed farther under the sofa and let out a long, mournful whine.
“Come inside and sit down,” Bertie said to Harley. She moved over to the stove. “I’ll fix you some coffee and eggs. It looks as if you haven’t eaten in ages.”
“Don’t come inside.” I raised my hands like twin stop signs in an attempt to keep him from getting into the apartment. “Don’t invite him in. Don’t make him breakfast. He killed my friend.”
“No, he didn’t,” Bertie said. “Sit down, boy.”
He obeyed Bertie by stepping around me and dropping into a teal-blue vinyl chair at the vintage Formica kitchen table.
Bertie moved through the kitchen like a force of nature, pulling out a carton of eggs and a package of bacon from the fridge and a frying pan and a loaf of fresh bread from the cupboard.
“Tell me, Penn, why do you think our boy here committed murder?” she asked as she dropped a pat of butter into the pan.
I looked at Harley. He’d raised his brows and had fixed his deep-green eyes on me. Nervous, I grabbed the bacon and eggs and put them back into the fridge. “He threatened to kill Skinny that night. Half the town heard him. We shouldn’t be feeding him.”
Bertie tsked. “People argue all the time and say stupid things. What else did you hear?” She sliced two pieces of bread from the loaf and dropped them into the toaster.
“Yes, Penn, what else do you have against me?”
My gaze stayed glued on Harley. This wasn’t a wise conversation to be having in front of him. What if I said something to anger him? What violence might he do to us? “The detective in charge had promised to keep the source—namely, me—confidential. He shouldn’t have told you the information came from me.”
“The detective didn’t tell me anything. He was like a freaking brick wall, that one. Heard it all from Police Chief Byrd,” Harley said.
“He shouldn’t have been talking.” I hit the cancel button on the toaster and pulled out the half-toasted bread.
“If it makes you feel any better, he didn’t actually say your name. He just told me ‘that crazy lady’ had provided some new evidence.”
“That doesn’t make me feel better.” I crossed my arms over my chest.
“Where did I put those eggs?” Bertie frowned at me. “Penn? Did you move them and the bacon? I can’t find the bacon.”
“We shouldn’t be feeding him,” I said again. “He’s a killer.”
“Not that again.” Bertie dropped some more bread into the toaster. “The boy is innocent. And I’m not going to let him go hungry.” She retrieved the carton of eggs and bacon from the fridge and pushed down the pedal on the toaster on her way back to the sizzling frying pan. “Now what were we talking about again?” she asked after cracking a couple of eggs into the pan and adding a few slabs of bacon.
“Penn was telling us why she called the cops on me,” Harley said. “Please, do go on. What other damning evidence do you have against me?”
“The car,” I said.
“My car?” Harley sounded honestly baffled.
“That old thing?” Bertie said at the same time. She carried over a plate piled with a hearty breakfast and set it down in front of our resident murderer.
“Yes, your car. Skinny left me a message on my phone the night he was killed.” I cut an angry gaze in Harley’s direction. He didn’t notice. He was too busy devouring Bertie’s breakfast as if he’d been wandering through a desert for several years. “Anyhow, Skinny said he was being followed, and I could hear a rumbling muffler in the background.”
“Could be any car,” Harley said with a mouthful of eggs.
“No, not any car. Everyone who heard the message identified it as your car,” I said.
“Everyone?” Harley looked up from his breakfast.
“Don’t be a fool,” Bertie said. Her back had been to us because she’d moved to the sink and had started scrubbing out the pan she used for the eggs. She wiped her hands on a towel and turned around. She scowled so fiercely my insides quaked. I wasn’t sure if she’d directed that scold toward me or to Harley. Or maybe she meant it for the both of us. Either way, it was intimidating. “Anyone and everyone in town knows Harley keeps the keys to that old jalopy of his under the front seat. He does it so whoever needs to borrow it can.”
That didn’t make sense. “What do you do if you need to drive somewhere and someone else has driven off with your car?” I asked.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, child, he takes his motorbike.”
“You mean to tell me Harley drives a Harley?”
He rubbed the back of his neck, a move I’d noticed his younger brother also did when feeling embarrassed. “Actually, it’s a Yamaha.”
“You should totally trade it in for a Harley,” I muttered. Thankfully, neither of them seemed to have heard me. “So what did you do after you threatened to kill my friend? Leave your car parked at the Low Tide and make nice with the hermit crabs in the marsh?”
“Fiddler crabs,” Harley said.
“What?” I asked.
“Fiddler crabs live in the marsh, not hermit crabs. And yes, I did leave the car in the parking lot. After the argument, I walked home to cool off.”
“And who saw you ‘walk’ home?” I asked.
Harley shrugged. “Can’t say I remember seeing anyone.”
“Boy, what a mess you’ve gotten yourself into.” Bertie came over and patted his shoulder.
“Just like that you’re taking his side? What about the evidence? What about the threats? What about the fact that Harley knew about the vat of chocolate and how to get into the chocolate shop through its broken back door? A stranger to the town—as Police Chief Byrd wants me to believe—wouldn’t have known about either of those two things. Nor would he have known that Harley always keeps his keys in his car. You can’t dismiss all that.”
“I’ve known this boy since he was running around on the beach in his diapers. I know when he’s telling the truth. And I know when he’s not.”
“Thank you.” Harley patted Bertie’s hand that was still resting on his shoulder. He smiled up at the older woman.
“People change, and not always for the better,” I said, thinking about how much I didn’t know a lick about Skinny’s adult life.
“What about Jody?” Bertie asked.
“You think Jody killed Skinny?” I asked, my eyes growing wide.
“No, that isn’t what I’m saying at all,” Bertie answer
ed sharply.
“After what happened on Sunday,” Harley said, “she’s already filed the paperwork to drag me back into court.” His frown deepened and his shoulders slumped even lower, nearly touching the kitchen tabletop. “She left a message on my phone last night saying she’s going to push to revoke our custody agreement. She even threatened to petition the court to block all visitation rights.”
“Visitation rights? For who?” I asked, unable to follow what the two of them were talking about.
“Harley and Jody have a son.” Bertie scooped up Mabel’s cat and hugged him to her chest.
“A son?” For some odd reason, that news shocked me.
“She uses Gavin as a weapon to hurt our Harley.”
He nodded. “One step out of line and I’m back in court fighting to keep what little time I have with him.”
“What does she say you did this time?” Bertie asked. “Other than committing a murder, I mean.”
“I took Gavin surfing Sunday morning.” Harley let out a long, unhappy sigh.
“What’s wrong with that?” I asked. “Can’t he swim?”
“Of course he can swim.” Harley’s head snapped up to frown at me. “Both Jody and I made sure he learned to swim even before he learned to walk. He was up on a surfboard by age three. He’s nine now and has won the last two surf competitions he’s entered for his age group.”
“So what’s the problem?” I asked. “Why would she haul you into court for taking your son surfing?”
“It wasn’t my weekend.”
“Your weekend?” I asked.
“I get him every other weekend. And heaven forbid I see him even for a moment when she has him. But he’d asked me to show him a few new carving techniques. What was I going to say, no?”
“I can’t believe she’d involve the courts over something like that. Wasn’t she the one who followed you here from Atlanta when you quit your high-paying job and moved hundreds of miles away from her and your only son?” I asked. “It sounds like she’s the one trying to keep the family together, not keep Gavin from having a father in his life.”
“That Jody girl is here for one reason and one reason only—to make our Harley’s life a living hell. He wasn’t abandoning his son; he was escaping her tirades.” Troubadour rubbed his face against Bertie’s chin. I shivered at the sight of all that wrinkly skin. The cat’s, not Bertie’s. Bertie’s skin looked radiant, youthful, especially when compared to Mabel’s cat, which was now rubbing his head shamelessly against Bertie’s cheek.
“After my father passed away, I came here to close up his office, flying Gavin in to visit during my assigned weekends. Living hundreds of miles away from Jody, as you’ve pointed out, was the breath of fresh air I dearly needed. So I made the decision to stay in Camellia Beach full time.”
“That witch couldn’t stand that our Harley could offer Gavin something she couldn’t.”
“I wouldn’t call her a witch. She is Gavin’s mother,” Harley said, even though the situation clearly troubled him.
I’d watched enough of my father’s marriages fall apart. I’d seen the deep pain that lingered with both parties, especially when children were involved.
“After I finalized the move,” Harley continued, “Jody grew more and more jealous of how much Gavin enjoyed coming to stay with me and surf. She’d call him several times a day. One time when he was staying with me, she told him she’d bought him a kitten; another time it was a puppy. She’d tell him over and over how much she missed him and needed him to come back home. Naturally, Gavin started feeling guilty about coming to visit even though my apartment here is supposed to be just as much his home as mine.”
“She dragged our boy into court, accusing him of parental alienation,” Bertie said.
“That’s a serious charge. What happened?” I asked.
“She lost the case,” Harley said. “The next week, she packed up her things and moved to Camellia Beach.”
“Things must have gotten better for everyone.” I couldn’t imagine how it could have gotten worse.
“In some ways it’s been better,” Harley admitted.
“That woman makes sure nothing is easy for Harley.”
“I find it hard to believe Jody could act vindictively like that. She’s been nothing but friendly to me.” Except for that one time when she thought I was going to keep the chocolate shop open.
Had she really left a threatening message on Harley’s phone about me? Quite honestly, I didn’t want to know. My father’s exes constantly did stupid, destructive things in the heat of an angry moment. Jody was probably no different.
“You have to respect how she’s working to rebuild her life, starting a new career here in town and making new friends. A few of my stepmothers haven’t done anything other than stay at home and fume.”
“She only took the job at the development company because she knew it would get under Harley’s skin. What kind of person thinks tearing down our town to build a concrete tourist trap in its place would be a good idea? That’s not community. That’s not preserving the deep history of our land. That’s 110 percent opportunism from an outsider. That’s what it is.” Bertie had gotten so worked up during her speech she’d accidentally squeezed Troubadour too hard. The cat let out a high-pitched yowl and leapt from her arms. He scooted across the room and disappeared through Bertie’s bedroom door.
When Stella noticed her feline nemesis was gone, her ears perked up. It was as if a butterfly was spreading its grand wings. She wiggled out from under the sofa. She charged Harley only to be thwarted by Bertie stepping in the way. “I didn’t forget you,” she said in a low, calm voice and tossed my pup a small piece of bacon.
With a happy growl, Stella devoured the bacon. She then sat herself down next to Bertie and waited for more. Amazed by her quick turnaround, I decided right then and there to start carrying bacon in my pocket.
Bertie smiled at my dog and then patted Harley’s shoulder. “Now if you’ll excuse me, there’s a store that needs to be opened and Mabel’s last batch of chocolate that needs to be tempered. I need to get dressed and ready to get to work.”
I stood in the middle of the kitchen, not sure what to do. Harley didn’t move from where he sat slumped at the kitchen table. It looked as if he had no plans of leaving anytime soon.
“I’m sorry about your troubles, Harley. Truly I am.” I might not trust him or believe him. But I hated the thought of his young son being kept from having two parents in his life. And I hated even more the thought of his son being punished for something his father had done. The scars of my childhood affected every part of my adult life. Those were scars no child should be forced to bear. Unable to keep silent about that, I added, “You need to think before you act, especially considering how you have a son to watch over. Hanging out at bars at all hours of the night. Threatening my friend. You’re a father. You can’t do things like that.”
“I didn’t kill anyone.” He lifted his head to protest.
“And stalking me. You shouldn’t stalk people.”
“I’m not stalking you. I’m the one trying to help you.”
“Why?” I asked. “Why would you want to help me, a stranger?”
“Because I’m a nice guy.” He threw his hands in the air and pushed back from the table. His chair nearly fell over as he stood. “Just because you don’t see it doesn’t mean it ain’t so.”
I took a step back as he marched toward me. No, not toward me. He stepped around me and strode toward the apartment’s only exit.
He was halfway out the door when I chuffed a breath and said, “Wait.”
He stopped but kept his back to me. His shoulders tensed. “What?”
“Can you prove it?” I asked.
He turned around. Anger sparked like lightning in his green eyes. “That I’m a nice guy? I thought I’d been proving that all along. I stood out in the snow because you told me you didn’t feel safe in our town.”
“No,” I said quietly. �
�No, not that. Can you prove you didn’t kill Skinny?”
He closed those stunning eyes of his and drew a deep breath. “No, I can’t.”
Of course he couldn’t. He had the means, the motive, the opportunity, and no alibi. Yet Bertie’s faith in him seemed to be rubbing off on me. “What time did you take your son surfing?”
“What?” he asked gruffly.
“What time did you take Gavin surfing last Sunday? The surfing excursion that got you in trouble with Jody? What time was that?”
He closed his eyes and thought for a moment. “I got in the water around seven. You saw me.”
“And when did Gavin arrive?”
“Around eight, I think.”
Eight? That was too early.
“How long did you stay in the water with your son?” I asked.
“We finished up at 10:36. Jody put the time in her petition to the court. She’d stormed out onto the beach and practically dragged Gavin out of the water to get him away from me.”
“10:36?” I repeated.
He nodded.
The wheels in my head started churning. A car with a loud muffler had tried to run me down on my first morning in Camellia Beach. Was the car Harley’s black sedan?
My near miss with the fender of that car had occurred a little after ten o’clock, which meant, if both his son and an ex-wife who clearly distrusted him could back up his story, he had an alibi for the attempt on my life.
If evidence against him for one murder attempt fell apart so easily, how long would it take before the evidence against him for Skinny’s murder started to fall apart too?
If Harley didn’t kill Skinny in a fit of mad jealousy, who did?
Could it have been one of Mabel’s kids angry over not inheriting the shop? Or had Jody retaliated against Skinny for rebuffing her advances? But that didn’t explain the attempt against my life.
Asking for Truffle: A Southern Chocolate Shop Mystery Page 16
