Crab Outta Luck

by Ellis Quinn

  “Perfect timing,” he said. “I was just heading out.”

  “Going home?” she said, sounding disappointed.

  “No, not yet. Heading out on the water.” He held up the key fob she’d seen him with earlier, walking past the Steaming Bean.

  “On the water? Where’re you going?”

  He tucked the keys into his shorts’ pocket, said, “Just came from the police station. They released Donovan’s boat.”

  “You said you’d take it to him.”

  “Right. It’s down at the wharf somewhere. I was going to take it up to the Toppehannock.”

  She looked up at the emerging blue sky, shielding her eyes from the new sunlight. “Perfect timing. You’re right.”

  “Lydia’s gone up to Boston, but Donovan said he’d be staying at her place while she’s away.”

  Something about his grim face, his sombre demeanor, the pained effort to smile and be nice with her made her skin prickle. She said, “He know you’re coming?”

  “Yeah. Not right now, but I said I’d bring it to him. I don’t have his number. Do you know it?”

  She shook her head no.

  “I just want to be out on the water, anyway, you know?”

  “It’s been a long time, huh?”

  He grimaced, nodded.

  “Kind of like a little therapy?” He nodded again. She said, “You don’t know where his place is?”

  “I know the boathouse is blue with a white door. I’ll find it . . .”

  She swished her mouth around, getting a funny feeling. Donovan there at Lydia’s all alone, not knowing Troy was coming, Troy maybe harboring a grudge over Donovan taking the money Troy’d been giving his father. The way he’d been congenial with Donovan at the memorial, but on the beach last night saying how he felt like he’d been robbed. That the repair of his relationship with his father had been stolen from him. She didn’t want the guy doing something he’d later regret.

  She said, “Nice day and all—and you know, I think I know where it is. You want some company?”

  TWENTY MINUTES LATER

  While Troy brought Donovan’s Miss Connie up to speed, heading out from the dock at the wharf and into the Bay, Bette used an old rag on the gunwale where there were smudges left by the police dusting for fingerprints. The boat was left in disarray, most of the cupboards, drawers, and cabinets searched, the contents pulled out and not properly stowed away again. Once the fingerprint marks had been cleared, she got to work trying to tidy up the place, first going around and collecting all the empty beer bottles in a trash bag.

  Troy said, “Bette, you don’t have to do that.”

  “No, I know. Marcus should have done it, or whoever it was took the boat apart. But you don’t want to give the boat back to Donovan like this.”

  Troy let her work, standing under the bimini top at the boat’s controls, black wraparound sunglasses on now, the wind whipping back the curl of his forelocks.

  It was shoving an old plastic milk-crate (stuffed with PVC elbows and a rusted old heaving hook) under the work counter she found the toolbox that seemed out of place. Not a big toolbox, a moderate sized one, but in pristine shape in comparison to the mostly junk utilized on the boat; beaten old fishing rods, ancient crabbing gear, dented-in crab pots, dirty rags, frayed cordage; even the cleaning supplies in the head were grubby.

  The toolbox was name-brand, rugged and heavy as heck, with oiled snaps that opened with a quiet click. Inside were vice grips, wrenches, a half dozen chrome ratchets with over a hundred different sized sockets. It troubled her, and she stood a long while, eyes going over the expensive socket set and thinking of Bucky Snead and how he said he was on the Miss Connie that night they interrupted him looking for a pilfered toolset he’d loaned to Royce. I mean, this could be that set, right? It certainly didn’t look like it belonged on this old boat.

  She’d heard that once Bucky’d come around at the police station, he tried talking his way out of the jam, but once it was obvious Marcus had him in the crosshairs for Royce’s murder, he’d clammed up. Wouldn’t say a peep. He was meeting with his lawyer later today. Had he not mentioned the toolset he’d come on board for?

  The engine’s rumble under the floorboards ceased and the boat’s belly heaved on a swell as it slowed. She raised her eyes up to the cabin ceiling, Troy up above her on the bridge, wondering why he was shutting it down. Out the windows she could see they were close to the shore, a heron raising out from a tall swath of grass to take flight. She set the toolbox on the counter and wiped her hands, coming out to the back deck, and looking up to Troy on the bridge, still standing at the wheel though the boat’s motors were cut.

  She called up: “What’s going on?”

  Troy’s gaze was off to the starboard, and she gripped the ladder to the bridge, hung her head around to see out the starboard side. It was a stretch of sandbank; they’d come into the Toppehannock estuary while she’d been examining the toolset, and now Troy was stopping where the boat’d been run aground.

  She climbed up the ladder and joined him on the bridge. “You okay?”

  He took off his sunglasses, looked down toward her feet. “You didn’t have to do all that tidying. I appreciate it.”

  “It’s nothing. Why’d we stop here?”

  Troy laid his hands on the console on either side of the wheel, leaned forward, gaze cast out over the hazy Plexiglas visor toward the sandbank again. “Marcus said there were signs of a struggle on board. A fight.”

  “He did,” she said, looking at the sandbank where she and Pris and Cherry had encountered Bucky that night, wondering now if Troy knew this was the spot where the boat was found, and if he did, how he knew it.

  “Bucky has scuffed up knuckles, Marcus said. Proves he was in a fight.”

  “Scuffed up knuckles? On his right hand? That . . . that could’ve been from when he came by my place—he fell over my trash bins.”

  “Bucky swore he wasn’t with my dad that night.”

  “For some reason Bucky blames himself,” she said.

  “He blew out the motor on dad’s boat.”

  “He did?”

  “Trying to fix it. Blew it out, and that was why Dad had to borrow this boat from Donovan.”

  “And Bucky . . . Bucky thinks Donovan killed your father? And therefore he’s to blame?”

  Marcus shrugged, went down to his elbows and hung his head, his chin touching the top curve of the steering wheel. “But you know how those old fools were,” he said, “they had a reputation for scuffling. I’ve seen it myself back when I was on the boat with Dad.”

  “They did,” she said, feeling uncomfortable, looking down at the prow, then back down to the deck. It’d already occurred to her, but now it seemed more concerning: in her haste to catch up with Troy out front of the Steaming Bean, she’d left her phone on the table with Cherry and Pris. No one knew where she was.

  “And Marcus said Bucky doesn’t have an alibi for that night.” He rubbed his cheeks, touched his eyes tentatively.

  She said, “When we ran into Bucky on the boat that night, he was looking for a toolset, he told me later. A nice one that someone left on his charter that he kept, but shouldn’t have. Said he lucked into finding the Miss Connie, but maybe he knew where it was because he was here when it grounded.”

  “Maybe.”

  “But I think I found the toolset down below.”

  Troy said, “So maybe Bucky wasn’t on the boat fighting with Dad.”

  Did he think Bucky did it or not? She said, “I just don’t—”

  Now Troy sighed heavily, rising from the wheel, but with his weight on his hands again, head so low his chin touched his chest. “It wasn’t Bucky.”

  “O-kay,” she said, folding her arms protectively, chewing her cheek.

  She watched his big hands hold the steering wheel now, veins roped on the back, clenching so tight it squeaked in his grip.

  “No, it wasn’t Bucky,” he said.

  “It wa
s you?” she said, a chill running down her back.

  “It was me and my dad fighting on the boat that night. Not Bucky.”

  A panic raced through her now and her arms began to shake. Could she scramble overboard before Troy got a hold of her?—maybe jump off the side, squeezing through the aluminum bimini supports before he yanked her back by her ankle; or maybe jump down to the deck and hope she wouldn’t blow out a knee.

  Troy breathed deep, squeezing on the wheel, his jaw muscles flexing, and all she could think now was all her bravado to Margaret and Joy, how she could have knocked Royce on the head and thrown him overboard, how silly it was, how she did have noodle arms and no upper body strength, and look at the size of Troy and the size of his hands and how strong they were . . . she wouldn’t stand a chance.

  So she cleared her throat, crossed her arms tighter and braved the fear. She said, “Tell me what happened.”

  When at last he turned his face to hers, she could see the tremble in his bloodshot eyes. He couldn’t hold her gaze for long before looking away.

  She urged: “Tell me, Troy. . . . You can tell me.”

  His fists rotated on the steering wheel and he hung his head again. “I couldn’t stop thinking how Dad had done that to me . . . taken the money I’d given him—taken the good and turned it bad. Gave the money to someone else. A young guy with big dreams about the crabbing business . . . Just like I had . . . He’d support Donovan, but he wouldn’t support me. Using my money to do it.”

  “You were mad.”

  “Mad at first,” Troy sighed. “But it wasn’t just mad. It was . . . hurt. My”—he gave her a sidelong glance—“my . . . therapist said I should confront him. Confront my dad. We talked about it for months after I’d found out Dad was giving my money away and I cut him off. So one night . . . I’m just sitting in my apartment and I think, yeah, I’m going to do it, I grab my car keys, drive four hours out to Dad’s old shack.”

  “You were coming to confront him.”

  “No. I didn’t want a confrontation. I wanted to fix it. Fix the wrong that had been done yet again. I did want him to realize what a terrible thing he’d done, but I wasn’t here to meet him man to man. I was here to meet him, son to father.”

  “It’s exactly what you should’ve done, Troy, if you ask me.”

  Troy nodded, made a soft pained sound. “Dad was heading out, and, Bette, I’m serious”—now he looked at her—“Dad was happy to see me. And I was happy to see him. We drove out in my car. He tells me his boat’s in the shop, Bucky messed it up, saying you know Bucky, guy doesn’t know a carburetor from a crab pot, and we’re driving out . . . We drive out to where he’s got Miss Connie.”

  “So you know where Lydia lives.”

  He nodded again. “We go out on the river on the Miss Connie—get this—he says we’re going out to retrieve some traps . . .” He paused to smile, looked out at the sandbank. “Tells me Bette Whaley dressed him down at The Cracked Crab, told him to get his traps out of her water, laughing about it—”

  “Laughing at me?”

  “Well, yeah, but I think he respected it the way you stood up to him. Said there was a fire in her eyes like her mother’s. We were headed out to bring the traps in, and we had a few beers on the boat here. Dad’d already had a few, I could smell it on him when I arrived. I thought things were good . . . good enough I come out and tell him how what he did hurt me.”

  She watched his hands grip the wheel tight again and squeeze. “And Dad made fun of me. Called me soft, made fun of my German car, made fun of my clothes. But I can take it . . . I can. I really can . . . I’ve known him a long time. This wasn’t new. It went sour from there, Bette, and it wasn’t me, it wasn’t all me . . . Dad doesn’t stop, he’s coming after me saying how I embarrassed him giving him money, trying to shame him—I wasn’t trying to shame him, I was trying to help him, and he’s saying What, that I don’t think he can take care of himself? and I said If you could take care of yourself, I wouldn’t have to give you money! . . .”

  He paused to say something else, his raised voice still in the air, but stopped. His expression crumpled, and he chewed on his lower lip. His features pinched to a grimace, and he lowered his head, turning to face her but unable to meet her eyes. Despite the fear, she stepped forward, finding something like courage somewhere inside her . . . but it wasn’t courage, it was tenderness or compassion . . .

  She put her hand to his cheek, and he flinched, but let her touch him. She tenderly thumbed one of the dark half circles under his eye. “He hit you.”

  Troy gave a quick jab of a nod. “Swung the . . .” He waved down to the lower deck, continuing: “Swung the auto-dipper, and the bar caught me right across the bridge of my nose, I saw stars . . .”

  “You fought with him.”

  “I shoved him, he fell, you see the way the boat is—well, the cops did this—but Dad had junk everywhere that night and he fell into . . .”

  “He got caught up in some line.”

  “And I pick him up by his jacket—this wasn’t the first time we fought—I head butt him, he punches me, I punch him back, then I pull him up . . .”

  His lips trembled and he couldn’t continue.

  She said, “You hit him again . . .”

  “So hard,” he whispered, eyes lost, recalling it all. “And it . . . knocked him . . . overboard.”

  Now he winced and bared his teeth as if he was in psychic pain, curling forward, and she helped him to sit in the white vinyl captain’s chair. It was the closest he would come to crying, she figured. He hid his face in his hands. “I ran up to the bridge, shut the motor down, jumped in after him. It was dark, I’m calling and calling, thrashing, swimming underwater, the boat just keeps going and I’m out there . . .”

  “Your dad was in the current.”

  “I couldn’t find him, Bette, I looked for him forever, I swam and swam . . .”

  She ran her hand in protracted circles on his broad back, telling him it was okay. She could feel the sobs of his breath.

  “I didn’t know what to do,” he murmured. “I came to shore, made it back to Lydia’s place, got in my car and drove home like a coward.”

  “You’re not a coward,” she said, “you panicked.”

  “I’m a coward—I’m letting Bucky sit in jail . . .”

  “You don’t have to do that . . . you can change that.”

  “It was an accident . . .”

  “Hey,” she said, smoothing a hand across his neck, taking his chin and guiding him to look at her. She met his gaze, said, “It was an accident. Your father was a difficult man. A physical man. You fought, he fell overboard, you had no intention for him to die.”

  “I really didn’t,” he said, face twisting up.

  “We’ll go to Marcus, okay?” She cupped both his cheeks now. “I’m going to go with you. I’m going to be right with you, right by your side. We can’t let Bucky sit in jail, and you can’t have this hanging over your head.”

  Slowly his eyes narrowed, then closed, and he nodded; his arms went around her hips, and she hugged his head to her chest.

  * * *

  Lydia’s boathouse was blue with a white door like Troy had said and was about where on the river she’d figured it would be. At the controls of the Miss Connie, she carefully guided the big boat to the dock running alongside the boathouse. The sound of its motors brought Donovan out onto the back deck of Lydia’s cottage, standing watching with a curious look in shorts and a T-shirt, bottle of beer in his hand. She waved to him from the bridge, climbed the ladder down to the deck, took a moment to rest her hand on Troy’s shoulder where he sat on the bench seat in the cabin.

  She said to him quietly: “Hold tight, okay?”

  She tied off the Miss Connie, and Donovan came down to help her. As they walked back up the dock, Donovan said, “Expected Troy was bringing it by.”

  “He’s with me,” she said, looking back at the Miss Connie.

  “Oh, yeah?” Donovan
said, happy look over his shoulder, like he might have a drinking partner for the afternoon. She put her hand on Donovan’s big shoulder and said, “I’m going to need to use your phone . . .”

  A WEEK LATER

  Happy Hour at the Blackwater Brewing Company and the place was packed. Five-thirty on a crisp fall afternoon, both front doors propped open to keep the air flowing; servers weaved through the crowds with trays of beer held overhead; laughter and chatter filled the high ceilings of what used to be the old auto shop, the crowd made up of a good cross-section of the Cove, from white-collar to blue.

  It’d been a week since Troy’d turned himself in, and she’d told the story it felt like a hundred times, but Jonas was at their table now bringing two orders of crab cakes. The crab cakes were on the house, so he’d probably get his own re-telling.

  At the booth: Bette and Cherry (on a short break from the cafe), and sitting across from them, Pris and Chunky Glasses Margaret, popping by following their afternoon T’ai Chi class in Crockett Park. Jonas slid the platters of crisp crab cakes down the center, everyone making room, lifting their beer glasses before resetting them. The banquettes were raised from the floor, and Jonas rested his beefy forearms on their table saying, “What an honor, the hero of the Cove coming to my humble establishment.”

  Pris laughed, and Chunky Glasses Margaret rolled her eyes. Cherry made a sparkly-finger aura around Bette’s head. Bette laughed and grabbed and held Cherry’s hands. “I’m not a hero,” she said.

  Margaret said, “The man was looking to confess. Bette just happened to be there.”

  Bette said, “It was a little more than that, Margaret.”

  Margaret smiled and put a crab cake on her plate.

  Jonas said, “You gonna tell me about it?”

  “You gonna tell me what’s the special ingredient in these crab cakes?” She moved two onto a plate for herself, Cherry and Pris claiming their own as well.