by Ellis Quinn
“These are fresh, too,” she sighed, taking a bite.
Cherry watched her, putting a cheek in a palm, shaking her head. She said to Pris, “Why’s she so ravenous?”
Bette answered, saying, “‘Cause this one made me walk up Haunted Hill today.”
“Darling niece, I’d like to remind you your aunty is almost seventy, and you’re a young and fit woman of forty-two. You don’t see me slobbering all over—”
“Yeah, you probably ate breakfast,” Bette said, backhanding crumbs from her mouth, then saying to Cherry, “What are these cookies—is that coconut? If you tell me you went down to Florida to handpick the coconuts, I’m gonna lose my mind.”
Cherry said, “No, they came from the store on Birch street.”
Pris said to Bette, “Don’t get mad at me because I ate breakfast, and I’m also going to point out I’m not the one who decided to race up Haunted Hill.”
“It wasn’t a race,” Bette said.
Pris said to Cherry, “You should’ve seen the girl’s arms pumping, trying to get up there before old Margaret, both of their butts bouncing around like sacks of basketballs.”
Cherry laughed, said to Bette, “Did you beat her?”
Pris said, “No, she didn’t.”
Cherry laughed again, and Bette said, “It was really close, but it wasn’t a race anyway,” and took another bite of the coconut cookie. Then with her mouth full, covering her lips with fingers, she said, “Can we just get down to why we’re here, please?”
Cherry said, “If you’re hungry, you want me to get you something substantial? Want me to make you a sandwich?”
“No,” Bette said, “no, I’m good.”
Pris said, “You got a minute to talk, Cherry?”
Cherry leaned back in her chair to take a look at the front counter, the silver haired woman she’d hired to help her out five days a week doing all right serving at the cash, smiling, getting coffees.
“I got a few minutes,” Cherry said. “What’s going on?”
Pris said, “We’ve discovered some more evidence. I think we should go through our list of suspects, see where we’re at.”
Cherry asked what the new evidence was. Bette wiped her mouth with a napkin, took a sip of coffee. Pris waited, making an impatient face. Bette said, “Troy was giving Royce money.”
“His son?” Cherry said, “But Royce was giving Donovan money.”
Pris said, “Right, but what for?”
Cherry frowned saying, “Could Royce have been a middle man, Troy buying something or paying for services from Donovan?”
“Why would Troy have to go through his dad?”
Cherry agreed, holding bunches of her braids at her neck, putting her elbows on the table. “Right. And what on earth would he want from Donovan?”
Pris said, “Look, it seems like Royce’s business’s on hard times, he’s down to his pension and his little bit of crabbing, and I’m getting the feeling not a lot of savings.”
Cherry said, “Then why’s he been lending money to Donovan?”
Pris said, “This is what we’re thinking now. Royce was getting money somewhere. Not from Troy. Maybe him and Bucky together, you know? Like they were up to something. Some sort of scheme going on. Enough so Royce’s got extra spending money, and he starts giving out money to Donovan—who knows, maybe he was going to start a better crabbing charter business with a young man like Donovan who was actually interested in it. And then Royce tells Troy to take a hike, stop sending him money because he doesn’t need the charity anymore.”
“I could see it that way,” Cherry said, “a combination of pride and spite. It sounds like Old Royce.”
Pris said, “But neither of them, Bucky or Royce, is exactly criminal mastermind material.”
“Bucky told me he was looking for a toolset,” Bette said. “Maybe they’re swiping tourists’ gear and selling it online.”
Cherry said, “And how does Donovan fit in?”
“Maybe he’s the real mastermind,” Bette said. “Big plans you guys said he had, aquaculture, two boats . . .”
Pris frowned. “But if he’s the mastermind, how come it’s Royce giving him money?”
Cherry said, “A tribute, maybe? Like in the mob.”
They kept straight faces a moment, shifty eyes darting over one another, then burst out laughing.
Bette said, “Maybe we’re getting ahead of ourselves here. What do we really know?”
They were quiet a moment, lost in thought, all of them staring and not saying anything, sipping their hot drinks. At last Cherry said, “Bucky’s the only one, out of the three.”
Pris said, “How’s that?”
“Only one of them that’s been around. No one’s seen Donovan in more than a week. Maybe he went off on a trip with that girl friend of his.”
Bette looked to Pris. “And Troy? Has he been around?”
“Don’t think he’s been back to the Cove in years. Fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t even show up to the service.”
“So strange, then, that Troy’d be giving his dad money.”
Cherry said, “But if it’s Bucky, then why’s he the one making most of the funeral arrangements?”
Bette sighed. “I don’t know . . . guilt, maybe?”
There was the murmur now of hushed but concerned voices from the front of the cafe, the squeaky sound of chair legs being moved on the floor. Cherry leaned back in her chair to peek out to the front of the house and frowned.
Bette said, “What’s going on?”
“Don’t know,” Cherry said, rising, and Bette and Pris followed suit, all three of them heading into the main house, Cherry in the lead. The patrons sitting in the front of the house had mostly abandoned their tables and chairs, and were gathered around the front windows.
Cherry said to Terry, “What is it? What’s going on?”
“Some commotion across the street at the brewery. Cops’re there,” she said, drying her hands on a dish towel and peering out the front window behind the counter.
Pris said, “Come on, let’s go take a look,” pushing open the front door with her shoulder.
Cherry said to Terry now, “Mind the counter for me, would you?” Terry nodded.
Bette followed them both out to the front courtyard of the Steaming Bean. The patio out front wasn’t fully occupied, but the handful of patrons who’d been sitting at the tables out there had come out from the fenced-in patio and were lining on the sidewalk now, watching up the street. Pris walked out ahead of them, and Bette and Cherry followed. Up the street and across was what used to be the old auto garage. Now it was the brewery owned by Marcus’s brother, Jonas.
In the middle of the narrow and tree-lined street there were two Chesapeake Cove police SUVs stopped on angles out front of the brewery, lights flashing but no sirens. A burly, bearded guy in black pants and a dress shirt stood in the open doorway of the brewery, one hand on a hip, looking irritated. Three brewery workers stood out front as well, all dressed in black with aprons on. Everyone’s attention was drawn to the scuffle occurring a dozen feet from the brewery’s front door at the curbside. Marcus and another cop trying to wrangle an unruly brewery patron, it looked like. No fists being thrown, just lots of irritated grumbling, awkward wrestling, the patron resisting the officers. Marcus and the other cop were trying to corral the guy with open arms now, like they were trying to settle him down without hurting him. But when they got him squashed between them, the man resisted, throwing his arms up, not striking Marcus but knocking his trooper hat flying up in the air.
“Oh shoot,” Pris said, and bustled quicker.
Bette got out front ahead of her aunt (maybe actually winning this foot race), and as they drew nearer, the three entangled men moved out where she could see them more clearly, the unruly patron facing her now.
Marcus had one of the man’s arms trapped, the other cop trying to get the man’s other arm behind his back. The man shouted, “Lemme alone,” his bi
g bushy mustache jumping up and down above missing lower teeth . . .
MINUTES LATER
Bette swiped up Marcus’s trooper hat from the sidewalk and held it to her chest as they watched Marcus and the other cop finally get control of Bucky, get his hands behind his back and put the cuffs on him. Bucky’s eyes were bloodshot and unseeing; drunk as a skunk. His mouth hung open and he swayed as he stood, eyelids hooded, his ball cap gone missing somewhere, the long hair at the sides of his head hanging forward around his scruffy cheeks. It didn’t look like he’d had a minute’s sleep since she’d last seen him—in fact, he was still wearing the same clothes he’d been wearing in her kitchen. Maybe he’d been drinking since then as well.
“Let me alone,” he said again, “jes lemme be,” both cops steadying him now, and with his hands behind his back, the fight had left him. His chin drooped and his head hung forward. “Jes lock me up, n throw away th’key,” he mumbled.
Marcus said, “I don’t know why you have to give us such a hard time, Bucky.”
“You deserve it.”
“I deserve it? For what?”
“Naw,” Bucky lamented, “Me . . . I deserve it,” snarling it slurred.
“All right,” Marcus said, “we’re going to take you for a little ride down to the station and you’re going to have a nap. You hear me?”
“Pull up my pants,” Bucky murmured.
Marcus sighed, tried tucking in the man’s work shirt around his stomach. During the scuffle it had come unbuttoned and his pale paunchy middle showed. Both cops worked at tucking the shirt in and hoisting his pants up his skinny butt.
“Mm, they were gon fall down . . .”
“We’ve got you,” Marcus said, and they escorted him to the backseat of the other cop’s SUV, opened the door and guided him in, protecting his head. Bucky fell to his side on the bench back seat and they pushed his feet in and closed the door. They talked a moment, then the other cop got in behind the wheel of the SUV and put it in gear.
They approached Marcus, Bette showing him she had his hat. He gave a sheepish smile, brushed his hair back. “You saw all that, did you?”
Pris said, “Of all the days you don’t have that big boy Jason with you.”
“We could’ve used him,” Marcus said. “But we didn’t want old Bucky getting hurt.”
“Here’s your hat,” Bette said, passing it to him. Their eyes met a moment and he thanked her, smoothed his hair back again and put on the hat.
With the commotion over and the SUV with Bucky in it heading up the street, the crowd began to disperse. Cherry said, “I better get back to the Bean.”
Bette went to follow her, but Pris said, “So what was all the hubbub, Marcus, how bout an update?”
Marcus showed a troubled face, smiling but perplexed by bothersome Pris. “You and your detective friends don’t—”
A loud voice from the brewery: “Is that Bette?”
The voice was familiar, and she turned to see that the big bearded guy in the white dress shirt and the black pants was, in fact, Jonas Seabolt, Marcus’s brother and proprietor of the Blackwater Brewery.
“Oh my gosh,” she said with genuine shock. “Is that you, Jonas?”
He held open the door for a moment so the brewery employees could get back inside, then came toward her. “I heard you were back in town,” he said.
She approached him with her hand out to shake, saying, “I didn’t even recognize you—I haven’t seen you in so long, gosh, you would have been what? fifteen or sixteen . . .”
Jonas put out his hand as if to shake, then got awkward, chuckled, and put his arms out for a hug.
She chuckled too and put her arms around him. He hugged her, hugged her tight. It was the perfect sort of greeting after being away for so long, and one she would’ve liked to get from Marcus (though of course the first thing Marcus thought when he saw her was that she might’ve killed Royce). She hadn’t even been that close with Jonas, but he did often hang around with Marcus, his big brother and idol. “It’s so good to see you,” she said, letting their embrace go. “I heard from Marcus that this was your brewery.”
“Oh yeah? I hear from Marcus you’re a murder suspect.”
Her happy expression faded, and he instantly showed her extreme remorse. “Oh shoot, that was a joke, Bette. I’m only kidding.” He took both her hands and squeezed them now. “Sorry, Bette, I was trying to make you laugh how Marcus is only about business, Mr. Serious over there. I know you’re not a suspect, I know you couldn’t be, not you.”
“It’s just I’m trying to get this town to forget about that.”
“I’m pretty sure they forgot about it now.”
“How do you mean?”
He thumbed over his shoulder saying, “Why don’t you come on inside and check out the brewery?”
She said over her shoulder, “You coming, Pris?”
Behind Pris, Marcus showed a grim expression. He shook his head, raised his eyebrows, gestured for Pris to go ahead.
All of them went into the brewery, and Bette marveled, head swiveling around. What’d been an old auto garage had been completely gutted. Now it was just a big wide open space painted in charcoal gray. It was strung with twinkling lights, and from the high ceilings dropped big globe chandeliers, hanging down over black tables. The place was at half-capacity, the patrons getting back to their seats after the debacle with Bucky. Straight ahead on the back wall, the Blackwater logo’d been painted; against the right wall there was a long bar, and mounted to the exposed unpainted brick behind it was a huge chalkboard outlining all the different beers they served and some other menu items.
She said, “You serve food, too?”
Jonas looked to the menu board. “We keep it simple. Crab cakes and potato salad. Best crab cakes in the Cove.”
“I like that kind of simple,” she said.
“So what do you think of the place?” He folded his beefy arms over his chest, white smile showing through his thick beard.
“I don’t even recognize it . . . it’s absolutely . . . it’s amazing—I’m so proud of you.”
“I couldn’t have done it without that guy,” Jonas said, nodding his chin to Marcus. “You know he did most of the wiring, almost all the plumbing . . .”
Marcus said, “Well, I helped,” taking off his hat again now he was indoors.
“Yeah, well, he helped me make my dream come true,” Jonas said, now looking around his own creation admiringly.
Pris said, “So what’s this about Bette not being a suspect anymore? Everybody knows that’s true . . . But it sounds like you think there’s an alternative.”
Marcus groaned and sighed, and Jonas said, “Yeah, what just happened with Bucky.”
“What happened?”
“Bucky came in here, the guy was already loaded. Looked like he’d been through the wringer. I was not going to serve him. One look at him, you knew that he’d already had too many—and it’s just after lunchtime. So we tell him that we can’t serve him, and he says he’s going to go down to the general store and buy a six-pack and what we can all do and where to stick it. I tell him that’s not a good idea to go get a six-pack. But that’s when he starts getting unruly. So some of the servers and I tried to sit him down at a table for a minute, I got him some crab cakes and potato salad. But he didn’t want it, he was angry then, knocks it all on the floor. Says he’s mad at Royce. Mad, saying how he had to make all the plans for the funeral, how come Royce had to die, but then when one of the waiters tries to get him up—we were going to go make him lay down in the back, we got a couch back there in my office—that’s when he starts tussling. Doesn’t want anybody touching him, and then he starts saying how it’s all his fault.”
“What’s all his fault?”
Jonas shrugged. “He was just saying it was all his fault. Like it was all his fault Royce was dead—”
“All right,” Marcus said, in the tone of the man with the voice of reason. “The less you say to Nancy
Drew and her partner here, the better. At least for my sake.”
Jonas smiled and nodded his head and pretended to zip his mouth shut.
Marcus took out his notepad and pen, said, “Why don’t you nice young ladies move along now, let me get back to business and talk to my brother a minute, okay?”
Pris winked, said, “We’re gonna hear all the gossip from everyone sitting at the tables, Marcus, and I know most of the servers.”
Marcus rubbed his forehead, and Bette said, “Hey, Marcus, did you ever get a chance to ask Bucky about being on the boat, on the Miss Connie the other night?”
“Didn’t get a chance—but I’ll be doing that down at the station . . . once Bucky sleeps it off.” He nodded his head to the side, indicating she and Pris should skedaddle.
Jonas said, “Hey, Bette, you coming to the funeral tomorrow?”
“Royce’s? I don’t know.”
Marcus said, “You’re not going to let that old family rivalry get in the way, are you?”
“No, the dumb old rivalry’s not what I was thinking of.”
“No one thinks it was you,” Jonas said. “If that’s what you mean.”
Marcus said, “You know I saw Royce at Pearl’s funeral.”
“You did?”
“He hung back, but he was there.”
Bette looked to Pris, then back to Marcus. “Yeah, I’ll be there.”
* * *
Out front of the brewery, Pris stopped her. “What do you think?”
“I really am proud of him,” she said, folding her arms and looking up at the metal letters spelling out across the brick exterior wall: BLACKWATER BREWERY. “The place seems to have a really nice vibe, and that September Ale was really good. I’m just so surprised it was Jonas and—”
Pris rolled her eyes saying, “Not about the brewery, hon.”
“What about?”
“Bucky. Do we think Bucky did it?”
She shrugged, put her hands in her pockets. Back in the brewery, she could see through the windows that Marcus and his brother were close together and talking, Marcus writing down what his brother was saying in his little official police notepad. Off to her right, a spot of color caught her eye; a cream and green dome sitting in the garden behind a knee-high iron railing that closed in a garden against the brewery wall. She went over, leaned across and snatched it up. Bucky’s hat.
