Murder Hooks a Mermaid (2 page)

With my notes ready, I pulled the computer keyboard toward me. I might not be able to program a web page yet, but online ordering had made my life much easier.

The bell over the front door jingled, and I looked up just as Bluebeard wolf-whistled.

“Bluebeard!” I admonished. He loved pretty girls—a trait from Uncle Louis, perhaps?—but not everyone considered his behavior a compliment.

Fortunately, it was Julie Nelson, my part-time clerk, and not a potentially offended customer.

Julie laughed at Bluebeard’s whistle. It was good to hear her laugh, something she hadn’t done much over the past few months. Not since her young husband had been arrested for murder, leaving her pregnant and alone.

Tougher than the pretty, blue-eyed, blonde cheerleader she had been only a couple years ago, Julie filed for divorce and took back her maiden name. Jimmy Parmenter would likely spend the rest of his life in a Florida penitentiary, but Julie wasn’t going to wait for him.

“Bluebeard likes you, you know,” I said as Julie walked across the store. Her eight-months-pregnant belly forced her into an ungainly waddle, and she slid cautiously into the narrow space behind the counter.

“I like him, too,” Julie answered.

I wondered if she would like him quite as much if she knew about Uncle Louis. I had only shared
that
news with a few people, and Julie wasn’t one of them. Not yet.

She settled into a tall director’s chair with a sigh. It allowed her to watch the shop without having to stand all day, an advantage over her regular job as a checker at Frank’s Foods.

“Man, I’ll be glad to see my feet again,” she said.

“How much longer?”

“Three weeks, give or take. I’ll know more when I see the doctor on Wednesday.”

I instinctively glanced at the calendar, checking her schedule. Off Tuesday and Wednesday, working Thursday and Saturday.

I was getting spoiled having Julie around three days a week, even if only for a few hours, and I hated to think I would lose her when her baby arrived. We had talked about her coming back in a general way, although I knew how completely things could change.

I went back to my ordering and was just finishing when the bell rang again, and Bluebeard whistled again.

“Bluebeard!”

In answer, Bluebeard chattered angrily, with an occasional clear profanity.

“Language,” I cautioned, and his chatter quieted to a soft mutter. I could still catch an occasional curse, but his voice was so low I was the only one familiar enough with his antics to discern what he said.

“He’ll never change.” The new arrival, my best friend, Karen Freed, sounded upset. The “Voice of the Shores” for local radio station WBBY, Karen was usually calm and collected, but not this morning.

“He’s just a parrot, and a spoiled one, but he isn’t that bad, is he?” I asked, truly puzzled. Her anger seemed out of proportion, especially since she usually laughed at Bluebeard’s flirting.

“Oh no!” Karen said, crossing to Bluebeard’s perch and petting him on the head. “Not you, Bluebeard,” she cooed. “Although you are pretty incorrigible.”

“Pretty girl,” he answered, rubbing against her hand.

Forgiven, Karen came back toward the counter. “Not Bluebeard,” she repeated. “Riley.” Annoyance made her ex-husband’s name sound like one of Bluebeard’s curses.

“Riley? Are you kidding me?” I struggled not to laugh. Karen and her ex were good friends, in spite of their brief, disastrous attempt at marriage. “There must be a statute of limitations on being mad at your ex, Freed.”

Realizing what I’d just said, I stole a furtive glance at Julie, afraid I might offend her with my flippancy. Fortunately, she didn’t seem to have related my comments to her own situation.

“It has nothing to do with being my ex,” she said, a faint whine of defensiveness creeping into her tone. “It has to do with not living up to his commitments.”

“And what would those be?” I asked.

“Fish! He promised me fish for Thursday.”

Now it made sense. Housecleaning-induced stress, not anger.

And maybe a touch of panic. This week was Karen’s turn to host our weekly dinner with Felipe and Ernie. Karen claimed her only domestic quality was that she lived in a house, and only by hosting dinner every four weeks could she make herself cook or clean. It was an exaggeration. I think.

“Did they open the fishing season early? I thought the commercial boats weren’t going out until next week?” I asked. Riley made his living as a commercial fisherman, and owned his own boat,
Ocean Breeze
.

“No, they aren’t. But he and Bobby planned to do a little sport fishing, and he promised he’d bring me something. Now he calls and says he’s lending the boat to Bobby and he can’t get me anything for dinner on Thursday. He always bails his little brother out, no matter what he promised anybody else.”

Bobby, the little brother in question, worked for Riley as a deckhand. He attracted trouble like black trousers attract lint. Bobby always had some big deal that would make him rich and famous, if he could just borrow some money, drive your car, crash on your couch, or use your boat. And Riley helped him out every time.

I groaned. “I get it. No fish. But if I remember right, you always thought Riley looking out for his little brother was sweet.”

Karen shook her head. “Sure, when he was sixteen and Bobby was twelve. But not when Bobby’s thirty-three. He’s old enough to take care of himself. Or at least he should be.”

“Whatever. But the real problem is you need a main dish for Thursday.” I held up one finger, signaling her to give me a moment. I quickly finalized my order and logged off the computer.

Pushing the keyboard away, I stood up and came around the counter. “I have an idea,” I said.

I led the grumbling Karen to a shelf of old cookbooks against the back wall and pulled down several yellowing, spiral-bound volumes.

“Extension groups, women’s clubs, lodge auxiliaries, they all made these cookbooks as fund-raisers,” I explained. “I know we can find something in one of them. But I want the rest of the story about Bobby while we look.”

We carried the books back, spread them across the counter, and started leafing through the pages. Julie slid her chair closer and took one of the books.

“The story?” I nudged Karen. “I deserve that much.”

Karen shook her head. “The usual. Bobby’s mouth wrote a check his body couldn’t cash, and his brother came to the rescue. He met some guys in the Mermaid’s Grotto.” She named a tourist-trap restaurant and bar on the waterfront. “They wanted to go diving, said they had gear and wanted to charter a boat, but nobody was available. You know Bobby. He can’t resist a quick buck, or acting like a big shot. Told them he could get them a boat, for the right price.”

“Eeeewww!” Julie’s exclamation made us both turn and look. She pointed at a page of the book open in front of her. “There are a bunch of recipes for minced meat, and this one starts with ‘meat of two hogs’ heads.’ Yuck!”

Karen laughed. “Okay, I can pass on that one.”

“So, Bobby said he could get a boat,” I prompted.

“Yeah. Of course, the boat in question belongs to his brother, not him, but that never stops him.” She shook her head. “Why should it, when he knows Riley will bail him out?”

“They’re taking
Ocean Breeze
on a dive trip? Have they looked at that boat? No way they’re going to be happy with her.”

Karen shrugged. “According to Riley, Bobby said they didn’t care. Or course, that’s Bobby’s story. Who knows what the truth is.”

I had to agree. Most sport divers didn’t want the cluttered deck of a commercial fishing boat for their excursions into the Gulf.

“Here.” I handed Karen a cookbook from 1950. “Chicken and dumplings.”

She glanced at the recipe. “Cut up a chicken as for frying,” she read. “Cut up a chicken?” She glared at me. “What do I know about cutting up a chicken?”

“Easy, Freed. Buy the chicken cut up. That’s hardly a violation of the rules.” Like we had any rules for our dinners. Sure, we were trying to experiment with traditional southern dishes, but nothing was set in stone. “It’s not like the dinner police are going to come and get you.”

She rolled her eyes. “Fine.”

She took the book and headed to the corner of the warehouse I grandly called my office. A minute later I heard the whirring of my printer/copier/fax machine, and soon Karen returned with a thin stack of copies. She wordlessly handed back the cookbook, unwilling to give up her pout quite yet.

“I have to get back to the station,” she announced, stuffing the copies into her oversize shoulder bag.

“Later,” I called over my shoulder as I placed the cookbooks
back on the shelf, but I didn’t think she heard me. She was already on the sidewalk, hurrying to her SUV.

I looked at the vintage black-and-white cartoon-cat clock above the quilt display. Karen’s next newscast was in ten minutes, and the station was a three-minute drive. She was cutting it close.

“He’s waving,” Julie said.

I didn’t need to ask who. Julie had noticed my budding friendship with Jake, and had actively encouraged it, from her first week in the store.

“We said we’d have coffee if there was time,” I said dismissively. “I suppose I could go, since you’re here and my ordering’s done.”

A snort of decidedly unladylike laughter greeted my offhand manner. Julie still looked like a delicate southern belle, but she was more a steel magnolia with a bawdy sense of humor. “Yeah, you could probably tear yourself away for a few minutes. After all, he’s only gorgeous and single. Why would you want to spend any time with him?”

Although she intended it as a joke, the question loomed a lot larger than she could know. My romantic history was beyond anemic: a boyfriend or two in high school and an occasional date during my short time in community college several years ago.

Orphaned before I finished high school, I had been too busy supporting myself and making Southern Treasures successful. It didn’t leave a lot of time for a personal life.

Besides, dating in a small town was a dicey prospect. There were fewer eligible men each year, and I knew far too much about who cheated on his wife, who didn’t pay his bills, or who gambled too much at the casinos over in Biloxi.

Or who, like Bobby, decided to “go with the flow” and let somebody else take care of him. No thank you. I was already taking care of myself—and Bluebeard.

Jake Robinson was smart, well educated, read a lot—he owned a bookstore, didn’t he?—and he was definitely easy to look at. He defied the odds, though I had the nagging suspicion that one day I would find something that destroyed my fantasy of the perfect man.

In the meantime, though, a cup of coffee wouldn’t hurt anything. At least that was my excuse, and I was going to hang on to it as long as I could.

It was safer that way.

Chapter 2

JAKE ALREADY HAD TWO LATTES ON THE TABLE BY
the time I walked into The Lighthouse, on the west side of Southern Treasures.

“Thanks,” I said, pulling out a chair at our regular table by the window. We always sat in the same place, where we could watch both our stores while we talked. “My treat next time.”

Jake nodded, but I knew he’d manage to pick up the check the next time, too. He always did.

We talked for a few minutes about our plans for the coming spring break invasion. Jake bought Beach Books just before the summer season last year, and hadn’t yet been through a spring break on the Redneck Riviera.

Keyhole Bay is on the edge of the madness. North of the intense crowds that clogged I-10, we fill with the overflow
from the beachfront hotels and condos and the refugees from the inflated holiday prices.

The younger visitors flood out of town in the morning, heading for the white sands of the Gulf, straggling back when the sun goes down. Or when the bars close.

In between, families wander the streets and shops, visit the waterfront and local parks, and turn pink in the springtime sun.

“Sounds like the summer,” Jake said, sipping his coffee. “And I survived that okay.”

I shook my head. “I don’t quite know how to describe it. There’s a different energy. Sure, everyone is in a hurry to see the sun because they’ve been buried in snow for months, but they’re almost
desperate
to have fun, no matter what. Whatever they want, they want it right now, not in five minutes or an hour.”

Which might have explained Bobby’s pals from Mermaid’s Grotto.

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

I fiddled for a moment with my drink, stirring it with the straw, trying to get the nerve to ask for more of Jake’s help.

“Uh, Jake, about the website? I was looking at what I’ve done so far, and it just seems really
plain
. It needs something.”

He looked thoughtful for a moment, then pulled a smartphone from his pocket and tapped at it. After a few seconds, he laid it on the table where I could see the front page of my site.

We both stared at the tiny display for several minutes. Each time the screen dimmed, Jake reached out and tapped on the display. Although it was a far cry from the simple
address and phone number listing I’d started with, something was still missing.

Jake reached out and touched one of the links from the front page. Photos of one-of-a-kind quilts filled the screen, and I knew detailed information about each of them was loaded onto the site, even if it couldn’t be read on the tiny screen.

He tapped the back button and tried several of the other links. “I’m impressed,” he said, sincerity clear in his voice. “You’ve done a lot with the site since you started.”

“Thanks.” I appreciated the compliment. “But what am I missing?”

Flipping back to the front page, Jake studied it again. “Where’s your logo?” he asked. “Didn’t we talk about having an image that was on every page?”

I slapped my forehead, and said, “Duh!” before I could stop myself. “Yes, we did. But I wasn’t sure what to use, and then I got so caught up in doing the quilts, I completely forgot.”

Jake looked puzzled, and I rushed ahead, trying to explain. “You have a bookstore, that’s easy. One main product line. But I have this huge mix of things, and none of them really go together. Vintage cookbooks,” I said, thinking of my morning recipe hunt with Julie and Karen, “don’t have much in common with T-shirts and snow globes. And collectible magazines don’t go with shot glasses and seashell jewelry.”