Crab Outta Luck

by Ellis Quinn

  Neither woman wanted to admit this was a race, so they engaged in casual but huffing banter. “Nice day, huff, isn’t it?” And Bette would say, “Oh, look, I ’member Ross Houston, huff, used to live there, wonder if he’s still, huff, in town.” And Margaret would say, “I like how Mr. Simmons’s, huff, trimmed those hedges, huff, back, huff, he let em grow right out on the, huff, street last year . . .” Two grown woman idiots. But she was going to win.

  Yes, she could sometimes be a little competitive, especially when she was riled by a mad-on. Like right now; these ladies going around entertaining the notion she might have been a legitimate murder suspect. It got her hot. She wondered if others thought of her as hot (groan, you’re making me hot right now, Marcus—that one kept her up last night replaying that particular embarrassment), like did she give off that hot-tempered vibe? She didn’t think so, but then Marcus at the grocery store—

  No time for distraction now, she was barreling the final stretch, the last twenty feet up this steep slope. And she was going to win.

  Twenty feet became ten, and as her body tensed from excitement, feeling victory coming close, Margaret came from behind and kept pace. That was when the ache in her hipbones revved up. But she powered through, pumping arms, moving her tired legs as fast as she could without breaking into a trot. Her heart pounded, her pulse raced. Sweat beaded on her brow and temples and upper lip. Breaths came fast and hard. Margaret pulled a pace ahead without running—her hips swinging wide, her sweatpants swishing between her thighs. Unbelievable.

  Her pace quickened despite the shooting pain that went from a hamstring all the way up to her scalp. She winced and grimaced but didn’t give up . . .

  * * *

  When she opened her eyes, she was alone—strutting by herself, Margaret back at the Hill’s crest, walking a circle.

  Who won? She didn’t even see. And there was no one to ask.

  She turned as well, came back to Margaret, Joy joining her and marching in place, arms still pumping. The rest of the group plodded up the hill still, some pushing hands on their knees to get their legs working with assisted leverage.

  Now a new game for her and Margaret: try not to look like you might pass out from the effort.

  Margaret’s glasses had fogged from her exertion and she removed them to clean, mouth open while she tried to breathe without panting. She shone with sweat, too. With a tissue from inside her sleeve, she dried her glasses then put them back on. Now she scrutinized Bette, her chest heaving while she pretended she wasn’t out of breath. She said to Bette, “You okay?”

  “Me? I’m fine and, huh, dandy. Couldn’t be better.”

  “Doesn’t show on your face.”

  She wiped at her brow, felt her fingers wet. “I just”—her pulse throbbed in her neck, and her vision was foggy and vibrating with the jump of her jackhammer heartbeat—“I still can’t believe you ladies could think, huff, I mighta murdered Royce.”

  Joy said, “Bette’s just buying time—come on, we’re not even half way yet.”

  “Nah, she’s sore about it,” Margaret said, gulping a breath, “she’s a Whaley, she’s gonna be sore for a long spell.”

  “Maybe a couple hundred years,” Joy laughed.

  “I’m not sore, I’m, I don’t know, offended.”

  Margaret said, “You told us you were fine about it.”

  “Yeah, but . . . I am fine, it’s just—”

  “Just you’re not fine?—Look, none of us really think you’d done it, we told you that—”

  “You don’t have the upper body strength,” Joy said.

  “We just had a lot of fun, you know . . . speculating,” Margaret continued.

  “But how d'you even think I coulda done it? The real answer would’ve been for you to— Hey, Joy, what do you mean, I don’t have the upper body strength?”

  “You have noodle arms. Royce is older, but he’s a big man. Strong man. How you going to knock him out and tie him up in trotline? Throw him overboard?”

  “I could probably do it—”

  Margaret was on Joy’s side: “Bette, you don’t have the upper body strength.”

  “Maybe I do. Maybe you’d be surprised, Miss Margaret.”

  Joy said, “Do you want us to think again you could have done it?”

  Margaret reached over, gave Bette’s bicep a honk. “Come out to our Wednesday night yoga class then. Show off those guns.”

  Joy said, “Bette looks like she would poison somebody,” arms swishing, surveying Bette from head-to-toe.

  Bette said, “You ruled me out when you heard Royce wasn’t poisoned?”

  “He could’ve been shot, stabbed . . . those are things you could have done . . . Joy means you look like you would poison somebody. Once we found out he’d been bludgeoned, we knew it wasn’t you.”

  “I’m not poisoning anybody—and I could have hit Royce with a baseball bat, or hey, how about this? a fireplace poker . . .”

  Pris crested the hill, coming up behind Bette and putting a hand on her shoulder. “Hon, I just got done convincing em, huff, you didn’t do it, I don’t know why on earth you’re, huff, trying so hard the other way now . . .”

  Margaret said, “This one’s got a chip on her shoulder, mad we didn’t faint with the vapors ‘fore the mere notion her Highness was a suspect.”

  “That’s a little dramatic.”

  Margaret came closer, rested a hand on Bette’s shoulder. “It’s not so much we believe you did it, was just a matter of waiting for more information.”

  “You were going around saying I did it.”

  “Might’ve done it. We waited for more information . . . now, maybe amongst ourselves, we speculated . . .”

  “But I didn’t have the upper body strength,” Bette said.

  “If it’s any consolation, we’re sure glad it wasn’t you. Though it would’ve been great fun to tell all our friends how we spent that day walking, found a dead body and it turned out the killer was right there in our midst.”

  “All right,” Bette said, letting her off the hook, gathering her hair, pushing it back from her face.

  Joy stopped walking in place, the rest of the women catching up now, forming a gaggle, breathing heavy. “That reminds me,” Joy said, putting a hand inside her zip-up top, coming over now with a small paper-wrapped bundle. “This is for you,” she said, presenting it to Bette with both hands.

  “Thanks, Joy,” she said tentatively, plucking free the tape, and unrolling the heavy waxed paper printed with flowers. When the paper was opened, she saw it had wrapped a blue stick with a cartoon whale at the end. Joy’s binyeo. “Joy, you shouldn’t have. Oh my gosh . . . when I mentioned it, I hope you didn’t think—”

  “No, of course not. How would you know I even still had it? I don’t use it, it’s been sitting in a drawer for years. It was touching you remembered. No hard feelings?”

  “No hard feelings,” she said timidly.

  Margaret said, “Now, don’t go stab anyone with it.”

  Bette side-eyed Margaret, smirking. “Margaret, you know I’m a poisoner.”

  Joy laughed, came around behind Bette and began to gather her hair. “Would you like me to put it in?”

  “Would you? My hair’s not too sweaty? . . .”

  “It’s not too bad,” Joy said and shrugged.

  Bette passed over her shoulder to Joy the binyeo.

  The girls gathered around, trying to discern what hubbub they just missed. Margaret folded her arms and said, “We suspected you for two seconds, Bette. This town is full of people who didn’t like Royce. Everybody knows that.”

  “Everybody does know that,” Bette said, chin tucked forward while Joy worked on her hair. “There’re plenty of people who had a problem enough with Royce. But who among them would be riled enough to actually kill the man? If he was so terrible, somebody would’ve run him out of the Cove by now.”

  Margaret said, “Yeah, usually it’s Royce running people out of town. Like Troy.�
��

  Bette said, “Troy? His son?”

  “Uh-huh, practically ran the kid off. There’s no pleasing that man.”

  “When did Troy leave the Cove?”

  Behind her, Joy said, “I don’t know . . . he’s around your age.” She worked the binyeo into a pulled-back swath of Bette’s hair, holding it in place.

  Pris said, “Yep, Troy left town not long after Bette. Woulda been in his early twenties.”

  Bette touched her hair, feeling the cute little plastic whale. “Why did he go?”

  Margaret shrugged, offered: “Royce was his dad.”

  Bette asked what she meant.

  Mavis said, “Royce wasn’t a big fan of Troy working down at the bank with us.”

  “Troy worked with you?”

  “Yeah, he came on full of excitement. Wanted big things. Loved the idea of not being a crabber, if you know what I mean.”

  “That would drive Royce crazy.”

  “Sure did. . . . And Troy loved to dress the part. Whole selection of ties, nice shoes. Real sharp dresser.”

  Pris said, “Dressed like a summer resident.”

  “That would definitely drive Royce crazy,” Bette said.

  “It did. He wanted Troy to stop working in the bank. He started out as a teller, and all Royce would say was that’s what you want to be, a teller? Like that didn’t insult me, standing right next to him being a teller. . . . Nope, Royce wanted Troy on the boat with him. Troy would tell me that was how Royce grew up. Royce grew up on a boat with his dad, his dad grew up on a boat with his dad . . . the guy was practically offended that his son wanted to make a living on dry land.”

  Pris said, “Troy made a go of it.”

  “Go of what? Crabbing?”

  Mavis said, “For a bit. In high school, he worked the summers with his dad. But even then, Troy had big plans. Ways to make the family business better. You know? Ways to appeal to the summer folk.”

  “And Royce didn’t want the business to be better?”

  “He wanted his business to be a crabbing business the way it’d always been a crabbing business. The idea of running a charter made Royce sick. Practically offended by that. So when Troy would make suggestions like they should get GPS navigation and other kinds of things that would attract people who pay for charter, Royce would just squash it. No wonder the kid came to work for the bank and eventually got himself right out of town.”

  Pris said, “Thing was, when Troy was here, Royce did make some of those changes, and the summer folk coming up liked spending time with Troy when it was just Troy on the boat. Troy would take them out, show them a good time. When Troy was gone, they would get repeat bookings, but Royce couldn’t live up to the demands that his son had created.”

  Mavis said, “Probably why Royce kept coming down the bank, trying to tell Troy to get back on the boat.”

  “But it was too late,” Pris said.

  Bette said, “Maybe Troy just wanted something for himself.”

  “I guess he found it,” Mavis said. “Troy left the Cove, found a job at a bank—one of the big branches—up in Annapolis. Last I heard, he was an executive, doing pretty good for himself.”

  Pris said, “Meanwhile Old Man Royce is closing up the father-son component, going back to just crabbing.”

  Now Mavis got closer, looking around at their faces, preparing herself. Everyone could tell she had some secret bit of information she might not want to share with them all, so they got nearer, Pris and Bette and eight lady walkers at the top of Haunted Hill gathered under the shade of a maple tree. Mavis said, “You can’t tell anyone, but I do have some information on the banking.”

  “On Troy?”

  “No, on Royce,” Mavis said. “His account. I shouldn’t . . .”

  They all looked around nervously.

  “It might be important,” Pris said.

  Mavis looked around again. Bette figured there’d been no chance she wasn’t going to share the information, she just wanted to be coaxed. In a hushed voice, Mavis said, “Troy gives Royce money.”

  Bette said, “How much?”

  “‘Bout a thousand a month. He’s been doing it for a while now.”

  “I guess Royce really needed money. But wait: we heard Royce was giving out money.”

  Mavis said, “Royce is pretty much retired. Any grand scheme he had of running a father and son business was gone. Now he gets a bit of a pension, gets cash for his crabs, and Troy floats him a good chunk of cash every month.”

  Bette said, “So there weren’t hard feelings between them.”

  The girls all mumbled agreement, everybody looking at each other and nodding. Troy giving his father money sounded like a good thing.

  Mavis shuffled a few inches closer, and their circle tightened again. Mavis said, “I looked the other day”—now she looked over her shoulder, checking if the coast was clear, returning again—“and Troy had stopped paying his dad that money.”

  “When?”

  “Three months now.”

  It was interesting. What did it mean? A loan, maybe, an agreed amount, repaying a debt perhaps? . . . But Royce was giving out money, lending some to Donovan. Maybe Royce was coming into some cash now somehow. Out of pride, maybe he told his son to stop sending money to his old man. Royce had pride, she could see that. She said it to the group: “What do you think? Royce comes into some money somehow, then calls up his son and says you can turn off the sympathy tap?”

  “Could be,” Pris said. “Three months ago is when Royce was lending Donovan money.”

  Bette said to the group, “Did Pris tell y’all about Bucky at my place?” They nodded. “Him and those stolen tools he had. Were those two up to something . . . stealing, maybe?”

  Margaret said, “They’re the type that coulda been up to something.”

  Pris asked Mavis if she’d told the police about Troy giving money to his father, and Mavis said she didn’t. “I shouldn’t be so nosy.”

  “Marcus won’t care about you being nosy. I think you ought to tell him,” Bette said, wondering now if she should’ve come out and told Marcus that Bucky was on the Miss Connie looking for an ill-gotten toolset.

  Pris said to Mavis, “You oughtta tell Marcus, he’d appreciate it—man needs our help, all of it he can get.” Her hand slipped around Bette’s elbow and gently squeezed. She whispered, “You hungry?”

  She whispered back, “I could eat.”

  Pris said to the group: “Let’s call it here, ladies. The hike up the Hill’s left us all withered, but we certainly got our steps in today . . .”

  THAT AFTERNOON

  The croissant was stuffed with jam, and when she pulled it apart, the buttery pastry was at once soft and stretchy but also falling away in buttery flakes where the outside had gone golden and crispy. With the belly of the pastry pulled open (as Pris had instructed her to do), now the warm and sweet fruit fragrance of raspberries blossomed. Her eyelashes fluttered.

  Pris said, “I know, right?”

  The inside of the croissant was a deep but brilliant raspberry red, the jam gooey and redolent. With the two halves held one in each hand, her eyes moved up to Pris’s, disbelieving the amount of pleasure a baked good could provide.

  Pris asked, “You are gonna give me half, aren’t you?”

  “Yes,” she said, voice shaky, trying to act like she hadn’t been pondering explanations for sudden selfishness. You’re the one made me speed walk up Haunted Hill, Pris, now I feel like I’m crashing . . . I practically need this whole pastry, my life depends on it . . .

  She passed half over to Pris, plopping it on the edge of her coffee cup’s saucer. Pris said, “You know that jam is Cherry’s own preserves? Hand-picked the raspberries down in Virginia.”

  “Oh wow,” she said, getting the half-croissant right under her nose, feeling its baked humidity against her upper lip and philtrum. “Remember Pearl’s jam? Strawberry . . . ‘Member we would go out in the Bronco, mom was there . . . where was tha
t? We’d drive forever, pick em, come back with our hands and knees filthy and I’d be in the back with those wooden pails filled with strawberries, them telling me I couldn’t eat them . . .”

  “But you were eating them?”

  “Probably,” she said, and sunk her teeth into Cherry’s jam filled croissant, every neuron firing focus on the taste explosion happening around the locale of her tongue. “Cheez, Louise, Pris, this, mm, croiss—”

  “Right out of the oven,” Pris said, biting into her own half.

  Mouth full of the most perfect jam, she pursed her lips and said to Pris: “What did we come here for again—murder or something, wasn’t it?”

  “Golly, that’s good. Mm, mm . . . It was Virginia,” she said, wiping her mouth with a napkin.

  “What was Virginia?” Bette asked, taking another bite, pleasure crystals sparkling somewhere along the top of her brain pan, just under her skull lining. “This is incredible . . .”

  “The strawberries we picked. Pearl drove us down there, you and your mom, sometimes you and me, we’d get up at five, drive five hours, pick strawberries, drive five hours home. You were either sleeping in the back or sneaking strawberries into your little skunk mouth—”

  “I know this is raspberry and not strawberries, but, man, this croissant’s getting me in my heart strings.”

  “Pretty powerful croissant—my half’s getting me in my tummy strings.”

  “Tummies don’t have strings, Pris,” Cherry said, saucer and coffee in one hand, another plate held high in the other, gracefully squeezing into the chair next to Bette, the three of them at one of the enclosed patio tables, window side to the chicken yard, a fluffy golden hen popping down the ramp from the chicken house to get her feet scratching again. Cherry set down the plate in the center of the table, and Bette snatched from the top a wafer cookie.