Crab Outta Luck

by Ellis Quinn

  Marcus said to Pris: “I don’t think I’ve seen someone put their feet in warm water like that except in old cartoons.”

  Pris said, “Why do you think they put it in old cartoons, Marcus? cause it works is why. Don’t blame me cause you’ve never thought to done it.” To Bette: “You know he’s on Fire and Rescue, too? gets his picture in the paper for swimming out and rescuing the governor’s son and his girlfriend, the two of them falling out of their canoe in freezing water—probably necking—swimming those teenagers back to the boat. The kids was practically frozen but they made it.” Back to Marcus: “You should have talked to me, put your big feet in a bucket of warm water, bet you had a terrible night of shivering.”

  “We have special suits that warm us up.”

  “Well, excuse me, Mr. Navy SEAL, but I don’t have any special suits round the Promise so I’m just going to leave my feet in this here bucket of warm water.”

  “Don’t let me stop you, Pris. You want a hot water bottle, we’ll rest it on the top of your head?”

  Pris chuckled, shoulders shaking under her tartan wool blanket. “I’m cold, not sick, you smart aleck. Let’s get on with this, we got serious murder business here.”

  “You’re not in the murder—”

  “Hey, Jason, don’t you eat all my stew,” Pris called aside into the kitchen.

  Jason paused, soup ladle ready to drop a second helping into his bowl. He was a young officer, six-and-a-half feet tall, enormous, a Highland Games competitor with arms and chest that strained the sleeves and stitching on his black uniform shirt. He said, “You told me to have some.”

  “How is it? good, right? Try it with some of that bread there. Cherry made that fresh.” Cherry’d got busy making Pris a warm meal when they’d brought her back shivering and shaking in the jon boat.

  Jason said, “You sure it’s all right?”

  “Put butter on it. Marcus, you oughtta have some. Jason, fetch Marcus a bowl . . .”

  “I’m okay, Pris, thank you—what I want to know is,” Marcus said, back to business, “why you ladies didn’t call in the suspicious boat last night, right after the incident.”

  “The incident,” Pris scoffed under her breath, taunting Marcus.

  Bette said, “We had to get Pris home and dry and warm.”

  “You had your phones on you, you should have called Rescue. That water’s gotta be seventy degrees.”

  “That’s not deadly and you know it,” Pris said, pausing to sip her tea, both hands curled around a heavy pottery mug. “When I was younger, I’d go for a skinny dip in October.”

  “That’s not advisable,” Marcus said.

  Bette said, “All I cared about was making sure Pris was all right. I called as soon as the sun came up.”

  “And where’s Ms. Jambo?”

  “Cherry? she just left, has to go open the Bean.”

  “What made you all decide to take Bette’s old jon out in the middle of the night, go out and look for some mystery boat?—I warned you against doing police work.”

  “Would you like being suspected of murder?”

  Marcus sighed, then cleared his throat. He said, “You girls been drinking fore you headed out?”

  “Not even a drop,” Pris said, and Bette could feel her sidelong glance glaring her way.

  “We wanted to give you something to go on, Marcus,” Bette said.

  Marcus sighed again, scratched his forehead this time, struggling against impatience maybe, shaking his head. There was no point in trying to scold Pris, and she could see it frustrated the cop in him. “All right,” he said, exasperated, “just tell me what happened.”

  Bette told him how Pris’d heard about this boat Royce’d been using, loaned to him by a man called Donovan McNeal, and how all they wanted was to get eyes on it, not to find any trouble. Told him how they took the jon up north and went down the Toppehannock River, let him know where they could find the Miss Connie run up against some driftwood on a sandbar near the river’s southern shore.

  “What can you tell me about this person on the boat with a flashlight?”

  “Not much,” she said.

  “Were they looking for something?”

  Pris said, “We seemed to startle em. They were on there doing something, took off when they saw us coming.”

  “Man? Woman? . . .”

  “Bette says—”

  Bette said, “I saw him lit up by his dash lights when he took off, I’m pretty sure it was a man.”

  “Can you describe him?”

  “No. But I’m sure the boat was a pumpout.”

  “A pumpout? Really?”

  “That’s gotta narrow it, doesn’t it?”

  Pris said to Marcus: “Who round here runs a pumpout?”

  “I don’t know—not many. Marine Services’ll do it for free now, come by pump your tank out whether you’re on your boat or not. Environmental motivation, trying to keep the excrement out of the Bay.”

  “Somebody used to run a pumpout . . .?”

  “I’ll look into it. There’re probably lots.”

  “I was hoping it was useful,” Bette said, folding her arms, crossing her legs.

  Pris grumbled, swishing her feet in her warm water, stretching her legs a little and grumbling. “Oh, I wish we coulda caught him. Bet you it was that Donovan, maybe he was getting rid of evidence, wiping his prints—”

  Marcus said, “If it was his boat his prints would be expected to be there, Pris—and what do you think you woulda done to catch him?”

  “Maybe there’s a bloody thumb print, Marcus, or something none of us can come up with right now, and as far as catching him, there was three of us and only one of him . . .”

  “And you ended up in the river.” He rubbed his forehead again, looking like a man with a headache. “Pris, I just want to remind you there are bad men out there in this world, this isn’t the movies.”

  Pris had her chin up again, thinking. “Even if it wasn’t Donovan, I bet you whoever it was, they murdered Royce. And I’d like to point out it wasn’t a certain young redheaded someone sitting here in this room was on that boat . . .”

  Marcus looked to Bette, then back to Pris. “No, but it was about to be. Wouldn’t you three have boarded it if you hadn’t encountered your man with a flashlight?”

  Low, Pris said, “We wouldn’t have disturbed anything.”

  “You say.”

  Marcus let out an exhausted inhale, tucked his notepad back into his chest pocket. His shoulder radio squawked and he turned the volume down. “You ready, Jason?”

  Jason tried to answer, looking Marcus’s way, mouth full, leaning over the sink with his bowl of stew.

  Pris said to Marcus, “You’re not gonna let this clue run way from you, are you now?”

  “I’ll look into it,” Marcus said as Jason rinsed his bowl out under the faucet.

  “We practically broke your case open. I imagine you’ll thank us later.”

  “I wouldn’t hold my breath if I were you,” Marcus said and winked before turning to head out.

  Pris said into the kitchen, “Leave those dishes, Jason—Bette’ll get em.”

  “Oh, I will, will I?”

  Pris rolled her head in Bette’s direction, showing her a pained expression.

  “I’ll do em, Jason,” she said, and feigned a sneer to her aunt.

  Jason put his hat on, Marcus walking out behind him toward the front door. He took a step in their direction, said quietly, “You were waiting for Marcus to come on shift, that’s why you didn’t call?—what’s wrong with me, you don’t want to call me?”

  “Marcus is the detective, Jason,” Pris said, “I’ll call you when I need to move all my upstairs furniture downstairs and all my downstairs furniture upstairs,” then aside to Bette, her eyes still on Jason, “Boy’d probably carry a couch under each arm.”

  Jason rolled his eyes at her, grinning wide. “Thanks for the soup, Ms. Pris, you take care—you too, Miss Bette.”

&n
bsp; “Take care, Jason,” they said together, Pris adding, “Say Hey to your mother.”

  Once the front door closed and they heard the police truck door open, Pris said to her: “He’s a tall, good-looking drink of water, a girl wouldn’t even have to be thirsty to want a sip of that.”

  She cocked an eyebrow, eyeing her aunt dryly. “Jason?”

  “You know exactly who I mean.”

  “Marcus is tall.”

  Pris showed her about the same smile she wore in the Cove article hanging on her wall, nodding, making smug little noises in her throat. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but—”

  “Don’t say it.”

  Pris’s smile widened, still nodding her chin up and down, staring off at the fire. “Just going to ask you to jog my memory.”

  “Your memory’s fine, Aunt Pris.”

  Pris settled into her chair, looking content and like she was going to drop the subject. Then said, “That boy Marcus was your first kiss, now, wasn’t he?”

  TWO NIGHTS LATER

  Two nights with no further sleuthing adventures meant she was almost done unpacking. It felt good to have it out of the way.

  There’d been no forthcoming information from Marcus, the stone-faced policeman not sharing any of his leads with Pris’s Detective Agency. Inter-agency and jurisdictional squabbles, apparently.

  She said to Ripken: “I mean, the man could say he checked on that boat, let us know what happened. As a courtesy, you know? It would just be polite. He used to have manners when I knew him.”

  Grandma Pearl had left the sitting room much the way Grandpa had done it, him spending a lot of evening time in here, or hanging out with some of his cronies from the Lodge. Big brass replica revolutionary cannon on the chunky center table, leather chairs and sofa, antique muzzleloader mounted over the mantle of the brick fireplace where Bette lay on the rug before the hearth soaking up the heat through the soles of her bare feet with a pillow under her head and one under her ankles.

  “But I guess people change, Ripken. It’d be nice for him to keep me updated, let me know if I’m still a suspect. If he was accused of murder, I’d be sure to let him know every day how it was going, wouldn’t want him to worry. Selfish.” She sucked her teeth, shook her head, staring at the ceiling fan going around. “Although . . . I bet you he’d say behind my back I was the selfish one.”

  She tossed a cheese curl in her mouth, Old Bay seasoned, plucked from a half-eaten bag of Pearl’s she found in the pantry. The open bottle of California red on the table next to the brass cannon was hers, a fortunate find in one of her moving boxes.

  “What do you think, huh? Ripken? . . .” She tossed a cheese curl his way, landing it exactly where she wanted a half-foot away from him where he lay curled on the sofa (facing away from her, of course). It was meant to tempt him, but Ripken raised his head slowly, looked over his shoulder at her, golden eyes mildly perturbed.

  She said, “The kiss with Marcus? What, Ripken, you want to hear about the kiss? Oh, you’re so silly.”

  Ripken stirred, uncoiling, stretching shivering legs before rising to sniff the cheese curl.

  “I guess I could tell you. You can keep a secret, right? So, the kiss . . . What can I say? I don’t know if I’d call it my first kiss, Pris can be so dramatic, if you know what I mean. . . . Boys’d kissed me before, you know how boys’ll do when they’re young, try and sneak a smooch. . . . I guess—you know, in a way it was my first kiss because I wanted it. . . . Wanted it and couldn’t believe it was going to happen.”

  Ripken didn’t interact with the cheese curl, but jumped and came her way, pausing to rub his chops on the sofa corner.

  “If you’re coming, you bring my wine?” She made a grabby hand gesture toward the coffee table, showing him she couldn’t reach.

  “No, huh?”

  He came closer, tucking his head right inside of the cheese curl bag by her hip. She stroked his back and he flinched. “You like my friend, Cherry, huh? Maybe you want to go live with her? . . . No way, champ, Vance would kill me.”

  Ripken pulled his head out, his fuzzy face powdered with cheese dust, avoided her eyes—but she was sure there was the slightest purring rumble from him. He padded cautiously up onto her stomach, and she flexed and held her breath as his paws poked into her. “You going to lay on me? . . . Nope, guess not . . .” He climbed over her, curled at her waist on the fire side of her body. She would take it.

  “The kiss? Really? You’re a persistent one. . . . All right, I’ll tell you. You want to guess where we were? . . . It was the summer of nineteen—”

  A tremendous clamor had her jumping—and if she thought she jolted, Ripken was startled worse, bursting from her side, hissing, and she covered up, knees high, elbows tucked in, hands on her face, picturing those scratchy claws looking for traction on her cheekbones.

  Then she was up and on her feet faster than she would ever have thought possible, heart hammering, eyes wide and electric, ear drums ringing. The sound replayed in her head; a whomp, clinking, rattling and tumbling. Did she imagine it, or was there the hiss of a man swearing? It came from outside, the sound traveling the pantry hallway leading to the side door. The door’d been left open, the screen door closed and latched, but it was just a teeny hook-and-eye.

  She was a lone woman on a thirty-five acre estate. If there was a chance Ripken could be her savior, he’d let her know his dependability by practically teleporting out of the room.

  Phone, phone, phone . . . where was her phone?

  In the kitchen, on the counter . . .

  She wheeled, a weakness in her knees she had to fight; first instinct was to grab that musket off the mantle. Thing hadn’t been fired in probably a hundred years and she had no satchel of gunpowder, no musket balls . . . she could grab it by the barrel, swing it round like a club. No, the fireplace poker . . .

  Now she was creeping through the kitchen on the balls of her feet like a prowler in her own home, fireplace poker hoisted up over one shoulder like she was ready for baseball.

  Maybe it was nothing. A raccoon? But then what about that man’s grumbling she swore she heard? Maybe, just maybe, that was a mishearing, or maybe there was a local raccoon who grumbled.

  Further sounds of scraping and grumbling came from just outside her screen door, only a dozen feet away. Her bladder tingled, the soles of her feet went sweaty.

  Then a gruff smoker’s voice from outside—a man’s voice: “Oh, shoot, oh rats, hey there, Miss Whaley, I’m sorry . . .”

  The man could see her lit up in her hall, but all she could see was the light on the mesh of the screen. “Who . . . who’s out there?”

  “I’m so sorry, Miss Whaley, it’s me, I jes . . .”

  “Who’s me?” she said at the door now, trying to peer outside. She flicked the switch of the overhead light and it bathed a man with a mustache standing just past her door, a step down from her. At his feet was one of her garbage bins, knocked on its side and the lid fallen off. The man was attempting to stuff her bags back into it. He rose to stand and pushed back his green and cream mesh-back ball cap from his scruffy face. He was a man in his late sixties, familiar to her, wearing a cotton duck work jacket, button-up shirt untucked, trousers sagging from his skinny hips.

  “It’s Bucky,” he said, eyes and nose shadowed by the peak of his cap. He was missing his front four lower teeth.

  “Bucky Snead?” she said.

  Now he turned up his face to the porch light and she could see it was Bucky Snead, one of the men sitting at Royce’s table out back of the Cracked Crab the day she’d threatened Royce. “What the heck are you doing creeping around my back door in the dark for?”

  Bucky tipped her trash can to stand upright again, then turned and stooped to retrieve the lid, showing her a flash of his butt crack. When he closed the lid in place, he said, “It was dark, Miss Whaley, I was just coming up to your back door to knock and I walked right into your trash can here.” With that he gave her trash can a thump wi
th his fist and it almost toppled it again. He flinched and rushed to return it to standing.

  She said, “I didn’t see any headlights coming up my drive. You walk here from the town?”

  “Came by boat,” he said, taking off his hat and holding it at his waist in some ritual of protocol he retained from his youth. He stroked back his long but thinning hair. “I just need to talk to you. I just want to get something straight.”

  Bette slipped the hook out of the eye on the screen door and stepped down, bare feet on cold brick pavers. She tipped forward to crane her neck, looking around the corner of the house and down to the beach. The shape of a boat swayed at the end of the jetty, black against the gunmetal water.

  “I swear, Bette, just a minute so I can explain myself.”

  Bette said, “Can I ask you a question?—that a pumpout boat tied to my jetty?”

  * * *

  In the kitchen, Bucky stood politely waiting to be told where he could have a seat, still holding his greasy ball cap at his stomach. Bette motioned for him to pull out one of the stools.

  “Much obliged,” Bucky said, pulling out the stool then sitting himself at the island counter, his sagging sock feet curled over the stool’s bottom rail. When they’d walked to the kitchen from the side door, she’d followed behind him in a wake of bourbon. “How about a cup of coffee, Bucky?”

  Bucky checked his watch, said, “That would be swell, Miss Whaley.”

  “Bucky, you can call me Bette.”

  “Thank you, Bette,” he said, rubbing his cheeks and eyes with his big working man's hands.

  She set down the fireplace poker and flipped on the kettle, measured out spoonfuls of ground coffee into the French press. She returned to the counter saying, “How long you been in the pump-out business for?”

  Bucky set his hands down, moved his tired and bloodshot eyes in her direction. He said, “Not for a while now. I just kept that old boat cause it’s paid for.”

  “High horsepower. Good for zipping errands around the Bay.”

  He nodded, his face solemn.

  She said, “Saw a pumpout just the other night,” and held his gaze.