That’s about all Florence had done. Just thinking about my mother made my chest ache. My birth mother had abandoned me on my father’s doorstep hours after my birth. My father, who’d been a college sophomore at the time and unprepared for fatherhood, had swiftly handed me over to his mother, Cristobel Penn. For my entire life, I’d been told that my mother had been a fortune teller and con artist who had taken advantage of my young, innocent father.
I now know that had been a lie.
This past winter, I’d come to Camellia Beach to investigate my friend’s death. What I’d found was Mabel Maybank, the maternal grandmother I hadn’t known existed. Both Mabel and I had suspected that her daughter, Carolina, was my mother. After all, Carolina would have been older than my father. She’d also run away from home at a young age, never to be seen again.
Running away seemed be a trait that perfectly fit the profile of a woman who’d abandon her child. So of course I had believed Carolina was my mother. Yet after investigating the circumstances surrounding her disappearing act, I’d learned that she hadn’t run away as everyone had believed. She’d died.
At about the same time, Mabel’s middle daughter Florence had come to my apartment to inform me that, while on summer break from college with her friends, she’d hooked up with my father and had gotten herself in a difficult situation. She’d also demanded that (for her sake) I keep our relationship secret. She’d wanted me to tell everyone that Mabel wasn’t my grandmother and that I wasn’t related to anyone in the Maybank clan.
If she’d taken any time at all to get to know me, she would have discovered that I seldom did what I was told and rarely kept my mouth shut about anything. For several months now the entire island had been buzzing about Florence’s indiscretion some thirty-seven years ago.
“I haven’t heard from her in a while,” I said to Ethel as I served the next table. “I’m not sure either of us is ready to pursue any kind of a relationship.” That tidbit of news should keep the gossipmongers happy for a week or so.
“Well, I heard from a friend who saw for herself that Florence has been visiting the island regularly. She’s been meeting with a real estate agent, that cutthroat Cassidy Jones fellow. At his house, no less.” She’d gagged a little when she said his name. “Do you think your mother is looking at buying a piece of property because she wants to move closer to you, her only child?”
Not likely.
She liked to openly display dislike for me and this town. If she’d been visiting a real estate agent in town, it was probably because she was trying to figure out how to make trouble for me.
Florence had wanted me to deny our relationship. I hadn’t. Was she now planning a devious plot to accuse me of lying to the town in an attempt to get back at me for revealing her secret? I’d only told a few people. But gossip on this small town spreads like a wildfire in a windstorm.
Oh, I didn’t want to think about Florence. I certainly didn’t want to talk about her. So I asked Ethel, “How are you and that sweet kitty of yours faring these days?”
“Didn’t you hear?” the white-haired woman on Ethel’s left said, while clicking her tongue.
“That Cassidy Jones fellow hit Charlie with his behemoth of a car last Tuesday night,” the other woman said in a stage whisper that was actually louder than her regular speaking voice.
“No!” I pressed my hand to my heart. “Is he going to be okay?”
“My boy broke his leg and banged up the rest of his old body pretty badly.” Distress deepened the wrinkles on Ethel’s brows. “He spent three days in the hospital.”
“But he’s home now and healing?” I hated the thought of Ethel going home to an empty house. Charlie may have only been a cat, but to Ethel he was her only living family member.
She nodded but still looked worried. “It’s just … Honey, I don’t want to bore you with my troubles. You’re so busy today. The vet says Charlie should make a full recovery. But he’s sixteen. I worry about him so.”
The other women nodded in unison.
“Of course, you do.” I moved to another table that was near theirs and quickly served the last of the milkshakes on my tray before heading back to their table. “If there’s anything I can do to help, please let me know.” I made a mental note to send her some colorful flowers and cat toys in hopes the small gifts would help ease her worries.
Ethel took a sip of her milkshake. The tension in her shoulders loosened a bit. “I hate to drink and run,” she said both to me and her friends. She then looked directly at me. “I have a meeting with that handsome lawyer of yours about Tuesday’s car accident.”
“Har-ley,” Ethel’s friends sang in unison as they gave me goofy looks.
Harley Dalton wasn’t my lawyer. Well, I had hired him to represent me and the shop. I liked to think we were friends. And for a while I had tried to move our relationship out of the “friends” category. But Harley either wasn’t interested or hadn’t noticed my coy advances. Bottom line: He wasn’t mine, not in the romantic way that would make others sing his name while waggling their eyebrows at me. “He’s just a good—” I started to tell them when the brass chime over the shop’s door clanked.
The bell usually tinkled serenely. Sometimes it jingled excitedly. It never clanked. I looked up in time to see the door swing open as if blown in by a hurricane.
Jody stepped into the shop. A scowl hardened her already sharp features. I instantly tensed. Had she come to expose whatever lie she thought I’d been telling around town?
With her head held high, she made her way across the shop. My heart beat in time with each of her quick footfalls. I held my breath, preparing for the confrontation.
She walked by me as if I didn’t exist and then stopped at the plastic draping that was serving as a barrier to the painter’s work area. Her lightly tanned hands curled into fists. They landed on her trim hips.
I’d started to ask her to leave, but before I had a chance her voice boomed angrily throughout the room. “Johnny Pane”—since she originally hailed from the upstate, her clipped accent had the familiar twang I’d associated with a Southern accent—“what in blue blazes are you doing wasting your time in here? Putting lipstick on this pig, that’s what you’re doing. I told you I needed you to get to work on the new construction out on West Africa Street.”
“I’ll get to it when I can,” he answered without altering his steady brushstroke. “It’ll likely be sometime next week.” He dipped his brush into the paint can. “Or the week after that.”
I groaned. He needed to finish this week. I squinted up at the ceiling again. Certainly, he was nearly done with his job here. I started to tell Jody that she needed to leave my painter alone, and that she needed to leave my store … preferably forever.
But she wasn’t paying attention. With an angry grunt, she tore down the plastic draping with one violent tug. “Johnny Pane, your obstinance is making me a crazy woman.” Her voice was nearing a screeching pitch. “You git down here right now, you hear me?”
“I hear you. With all due respect, I reckon half the state hears you.” His brushstrokes remained as steady as ever, which was amazing considering how loudly Jody was ranting at the base of his steps. “You need to listen to me, Miss Jody. If you want my services, you’ll get them when I’m available. Otherwise, you’ll need to hire someone else.”
The patrons of the shop all seemed to hold their collective breaths, eager to witness Jody’s reaction.
Surprisingly, she didn’t shout. She didn’t explode. She spoke so quietly that if I hadn’t been standing as close to Johnny’s work area as I had been, I wouldn’t have heard her. “Do I need to ask Cassidy Jones to come and have a talk with you?”
I didn’t know what kind of pull this Cassidy Jones fellow could have over my painter. But it must have been something big because his brush stopped. For the first time since she’d arrived, he took his eyes off his work and looked down at her.
“What did she say?” someone behind me y
elled out.
“If you hush now, perhaps we’d hear,” someone else answered.
Jody turned to glare at them … and at me. The killing look lasted for just a brief moment, but it still made me shiver. She put her hand against the ladder and lifted her gaze back to Johnny Pane, who was now looking down at her with worry darkening his eyes.
“I’m dating him, you know,” she said, her voice still pitched low.
That last bit of news surprised me. Jody had found a man willing to date her? Her? The woman was a thorn in the side of everyone who knew her. At least it seemed that way to me. When I’d first met Jody, she’d pretended to be my friend while trying to convince me to sell my chocolate shop to her employer, Sunset Development. When I didn’t sell the shop, she turned on me faster than a sailfish in pursuit of its prey.
Jody had a man in her life? And I didn’t?
That … stung.
“He promised just last night to do whatever I ask of him,” she told Johnny. “He’s that smitten.”
Although I’d never met the man, I’d seen real estate signs around town with CASSIDY JONES emblazoned in bold letters across the top and a picture of an older man with Fabio-styled long blond hair and wearing a flashy Hawaiian shirt. What kind of pull could a Fabio lookalike have over my painter?
Apparently the kind that had him climbing down off his ladder. “Let me clean up here,” he said, his voice unusually subdued.
“What did he say?” someone behind me shouted.
“He said he’s leaving,” someone else shouted.
“Even with these ear-cheaters, I can’t hear a dang word of what anyone is saying,” I heard Ethel Crump complain.
Several people chuckled. And, as if everyone had then taken a collective cleansing breath, the conversations in the shop started up again. While I was sure my customers were still keeping a keen eye on what was happening at the work area, things seemed to go back to normal in the shop as Johnny Pane wiped his hands on a clean rag.
“I expect to see you at the worksite in ten minutes,” Jody said. Was she serious? Had she seen how fast Johnny Pane moved? It took him longer than ten minutes to fold up that ladder of his.
Before she left, Jody turned her killer glare in my direction one more time. “Enjoy this place while you can. As I already told you, your lies will be catching up to you. Any day now, it’s going to happen.”
“What lies?” I demanded. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Instead of answering, she swept out of the building as if pushed by the same ill-wind that had brought her into it.
“Sorry about this, Penn,” Johnny mumbled as he started to gather up his painting supplies. “If you don’t mind, I could come back tonight and work on the ceiling then.”
“Of course I don’t mind.” If he worked when the shop was closed, it would allow me to move the tables and chairs back into place during operating hours.
While Jody’s threat (I don’t lie!) unsettled me, Johnny Pane and the tortured look on his face troubled me even more. “Are you okay?” I asked him.
He looked down at his hands as he wiped them on his rag again, this time with an odd sort of determination. “I will be.”
Chapter Three
“Are you okay?” Althea Bays called to me.
“This adventure you promised, it doesn’t involve magic, does it?” I yelled back as she stood on the ocean side of a wooden walkover while I hesitated near the road. We were headed toward the beach late at night. Or was it early the next morning? I never knew what to call the small hours after midnight.
Althea was Bertie’s adult daughter and my closest friend in Camellia Beach. Heck, she was my closest friend in the world. I loved her like a sister. What I didn’t love was magic. Not that I believed in magic. I didn’t.
“It’s not magic,” Althea called back. Her voice sounded different in the darkness. Deeper. More mysterious.
“You know how I feel about magic.” I detested it.
But because I trusted her, I’d agreed to meet her near Camellia Beach’s centerpiece, the public pier and pavilion that stretched out from the middle of the island into the dark ocean. She had arranged for the two of us to go on a midnight adventure. Now that I was out here and standing at the base of the walkover that led down to the beach, doubts started to run circles in my mind.
Althea owned a crystal shop. She believed the crystals she sold contained magical powers. She also believed in ghosts, voodoo, and fortune tellers. I believed in none of that. Magic didn’t exist. It was a tool swindlers and con artists used to trick those who were too innocent and too trusting.
“Don’t fret so much, Penn.” Barefoot, with her naturally kinky black hair secured with a yellow bandana and a shovel slung over her shoulder, she paced the sandy beach while waiting for me.
I stood my ground and stared at the LIGHTS OUT FOR TURTLES sign that had been posted on the walkover instead of looking at her. If I looked at her, I knew I’d give in. I knew I’d follow her anywhere, and I didn’t want to do that. Not tonight. Not when I was still reeling over Jody’s empty threats. They had to be empty, didn’t they? “I need to know where we’re going and what we’re doing.”
She didn’t answer right away. The necklace with twin brass mandala Althea wore tinkled like tiny wind chimes. I looked up and saw that she’d turned toward the ocean. The water sparkled in the bright moonlight. “I think the first part is obvious,” she said. “We’re going to the beach.”
“And the second part?” It was silly that we were shouting at each other with a beach walkover between us. But despite Althea’s assurances that magic wasn’t involved, apprehension had wound around the muscles in my neck so tightly I could barely turn my head.
She huffed. “I was hoping to make it a surprise. Some babies are about to be born. Actually, they’re several days overdue. We’re out here to greet them and make sure they get a good start in life.”
“Babies?” That intrigued me. And since I really should trust my friends, I walked (albeit slowly) over the wooden walkover that served as a bridge over the beach’s fragile rolling dunes. Once my feet reached the sand, I kicked off my sandals.
The midnight air still held most of the heat and humidity from its mid-August day. But the damp sand beneath my toes felt cool. Refreshing.
“There are babies on the beach?” I asked.
“Not yet. But soon there will be loads of them.” She handed me her shovel and started searching inside the large red and white striped beach bag that had been hanging from her shoulder. From its depths, she produced a neon yellow T-shirt. She pulled it on over one of her favorite silky batik-dyed sundresses (this one was pale yellow). A silhouette of a sea turtle took up much of the back of the T-shirt with the word “volunteer” in bold block print underneath it.
“Turtle babies?” I jumped up and down like an overeager child. “You’re taking me to see baby sea turtles?”
Althea answered with one of her wide smiles. After she took her shovel from me, she turned her face to the sky. The full moon illuminated her dark, elegant features.
After exhaling a long, satisfied sigh she said, “They’ll be Leos, you know, which means they’ll have a strong will to survive. They’ll need it.”
“Baby turtles? We’re going to help baby turtles hatch? Where’s the nest?” I started a mad dash down the sandy beach, my arms pumping, because I didn’t want to miss the little ones’ arrival.
“Penn, we don’t need to run,” Althea whispered as she jogged next to me.
“But it’s so late already. I don’t want to miss it.” I don’t know why we were whispering, especially considering how we’d just finished shouting across an expanse. Perhaps it was the night’s stillness or the darkness that suddenly had us keeping our voices low.
“I’ll get a call from one of the other volunteers if the babies start to emerge. You need to pace yourself. It could be a long night.”
“I don’t care,” I said, but I heeded he
r advice and slowed down. “This is so exciting. We’re going to play midwife to sea turtles. I’ve been reading the literature you gave me about them. You can count on me.”
“Now remember what I told you,” she warned. “You’ve not been formally trained. You’re not an official volunteer, so you’ll just be observing tonight.”
Gentle waves lapped at the shore. The pale full moon appeared to float on the water. A few tourists were still out roaming the beach, the light from their flashlights swinging like beacons from a distant lighthouse.
“I now understand why you didn’t bring flashlights for us to carry,” I said. The excitement had me speaking too quickly and too much. “We don’t want to be seen.” There were signs, banners, and flyers posted all over the island celebrating the sea turtles and reminding us to keep the lights on the beach turned off. It was the bright light of the moon that guided the babies toward their vast home in the ocean. And freshly hatched sea turtles, not much more than a few minutes out of the egg when they set out in search of the Atlantic, wouldn’t know how to discern the glow from the moon from the glow from any other source.
Althea shifted the shovel that balanced on her shoulder and hooked her arm with mine. “That’s right. A flashlight or a streetlamp or porch light could lead the babies astray. Instead of ending up in the water, they could lose their way in the sand where they’d be easy prey for crabs and raccoons. They might even end up trekking toward the road, a fatal situation.”
For the most part Camellia Beach’s coastline was veiled in darkness. Nearby street lamps had been equipped with shields that blocked their light from reaching the beach. The homes we passed on our way to the sea turtle nest sat like silent, shadowy sentries, watching and waiting.
As we continued down the beach at a more sedate pace, the activity inside an old beach house caught my attention. The home, with its redwood shingle siding and low, shallow-sloping roof, looked as if it belonged in a 1950s surfing movie. A faint jazz beat carried on the wind from an open sliding glass door to our ears. With it, Ella Fitzgerald’s soulful voice gently crooned about lovers. A soft yellow light spilled out from around the home’s heavy curtains, which had been drawn across the partially open door that led out onto a wide deck.
In Cold Chocolate Page 2
