2 On the Nickel (24 page)

She beamed her pleasure. “Thanks,
dear.”

“To answer your question,
Jonette,” I said, “I didn’t go there to grill him about the murder. I went to
tell him why I’m dropping my gym membership. Only once I got there, things
didn’t feel right.”

“Are you psychic?” Light glinted
off Bud Flook’s rimless glasses.

“Absolutely not.” I shook my head
vehemently. “I’m too much of a by-the-numbers person to believe in woo-woo stuff.
All I can tell you is that it felt wrong.”

“Sounds to me like you’re
psychic.” Jonette leaned forward, a grin pasted on her elfin features.

Dean scraped Jonette’s popcorn
stuffing onto his empty plate. “Let her tell the story,” he prompted.

“Yeah, Mom.” Lexy gestured with
her fork. “What happened next?”

After spending the afternoon at
the police station telling and retelling the same story, I wanted to put this
behind me, but I understood my family’s need to make sense of today’s events. “Evan
was celebrating. That was the first thing that hit me wrong. He had Jimmy
Buffet cranked up so loud I could hear it outside his door. It’s a wonder his
neighbors weren’t complaining.”

“Nothing wrong with a little
Jimmy Buffett,” Dean observed. “The best music of the century came out of the 1970s.”

“When I think of Evan Hodges,” I
said, “I don’t think Jimmy Buffett. I’ve never seen Evan wear anything festive
his entire life. Even his body building clothes are drab colors. But today he
wore an aloha shirt.”

“You’re a fine one to comment on Evan’s boring wardrobe.” Jonette waggled a finger at me. “You and I need to have that
shopping trip.”

I blushed. My navy-blue slacks
and a burgundy boatneck couldn’t hold a candle to Jonette’s low-cut fuchsia
sundress. Jonette had been threatening a wardrobe makeover for months.

“That is a really good idea, Red,”
Rafe said. The heat in his voice reminded me he’d glimpsed the black bra strap.
Did he remember Jonette selected the black lingerie set?

“We’ll see.” I tore off a piece
of my sprinkle-coated roll. “Anyway, the music was loud, his clothes were loud,
and he didn’t act like a man whose mother had been murdered by his sister.
Everything about Evan shouted party time. He wanted the junk food I’d brought
for breakfast, so he invited me in.”

“Anybody want that last pork
chop?” Charlie interrupted. When no one responded, he forked it onto his plate
and sliced it up.

That was his third pork chop. I
glanced around in hostess mode, assessing the dishes on the table. Charla’s rainbow
salad had hardly been touched. “I’d like some of your beautiful salad, Charla.”

Charla perked up and passed the
dish. I helped myself and passed it over to Rafe. He took the hint and loaded
up on salad. By the time the bowl got back to Charla, it was empty. She beamed radiantly. “What happened next, Mom?”

“The more I talked to Evan, the
more I realized something was up. From the extreme neatness of his apartment I knew he was detail oriented. He had good credit, good looks, and great taste in
furnishings. I couldn’t figure out why he was single. You know how it irritates
me when things don’t fit together. Evan was a puzzle. But I got a big piece of
his puzzle when I saw his calendar. He’d been following you around for two
months, Mama.”

“That little sneak. He tried to
frame me for the murder he committed. But my smart daughter saved me.” Mama reached over and gave my hand a squeeze.

“I wasn’t feeling too smart this
morning, I tell you. I felt like I had fallen into an alternate universe.
Eleanor had been arrested for the murder, and the case was supposed to be
closed. The calendar suggested otherwise. At first I thought they were in it
together. Then I realized Evan hated both his sister and his mother. And they
didn’t like him or his snake.”

Lexy shuddered. “I can’t believe
he kept a fifteen-foot python in his kitchen.”

“Owning a large snake didn’t make
him a bad person,” I said. “Evan told me he’d had Monty since he was a kid.
That’s more of a commitment than some men make to their wives.”

Charlie avoided my gaze and
stuffed blue ricotta cheese in his mouth.

I took a small delight in his
discomfort. “Then I found out how controlling Erica was.”

“I could have told you that,”
Mama said. “Everything had to be her way. She was impossible to deal with.”

Everyone stopped eating to look
at Mama. Baffled, she stared right back. “What?”

“Never mind,” I said, eating
another bite of rainbow salad. “Anyway, I started thinking about that calendar
and how much Evan hated his family. Put that with his being disinherited and
you have a boatload of resentment. I started praising Eleanor’s brilliant
strategy in planning the murder, and Evan came unhinged. He told me what it had been like to run over his mother. He was very convincing. I had no doubt that he
was telling me the truth.”

“But what about the call from
Eleanor’s phone the night of the murder?” Bud Flook asked.

“Evan lifted her cell phone at
their private dinner earlier that night. Later, he returned it to her car. She
didn’t miss it because she frequently left her phone in her car.”

“Evan must have been pretty
clever to frame not one but two people for his mother’s murder,” Lexy observed.

Clever or desperate? Regardless,
I didn’t want Lexy to idolize a killer. “I felt sorry for him. He claimed his mother killed his father and threatened to kill her children if they told.”

“I hope you didn’t feel sorry for
him when he decided to kill you,” Rafe said.

“No.” I glanced over at Rafe.
He’d stopped eating to listen. “Evan planned to set you up as my killer, Rafe.
That’s when I used my Noodle.”

Lexy frowned. “Your brain?”

“My Noodle brand golf ball. I
shattered the snake cage with it and ran for all I was worth. I’ll never play
golf with anything but a Noodle after this.”

“What about perfect Eleanor?”
Charla bounced in her seat. “Is she still in jail?”

I squared my fork and knife on my
plate. “Britt is releasing her and dropping the charges.”

“What happened to the snake?”
Lexy asked.

Why was she so fixated on the
snake? “We are not adopting Monty. One Saint Bernard with puppies is all I’m
willing to take on.”

Lexy wasn’t satisfied with my
answer. “Did Eleanor inherit the snake?”

My eyes wanted to roll. I closed
them instead. Gathered myself. I gave Lexy a reassuring glance. “Animal control
has Monty. They’ll find him a home.”

Charla propped her chin on her
hand. “You’re good at this figuring stuff out, huh, Mom?”

“My Cleopatra is super-smart, I
tell you. She was right on the nickel when it came to saving my sorry butt.”
Mama raised her glass. “I propose a toast.” Everyone lifted a glass. “Here’s to
family. And to sticking together through thick and thin.”

“Here, here,” Jonette said.

I basked in the warmth of our
gathering. Sharing a meal with family was the best part of life. During the
past few weeks, I’d learned a lot about family. Blood ties were the strongest,
but so were shared experiences. Though Jonette wasn’t blood kin, we were
sisters just the same.

As for the men, I had high hopes
but realistic expectations. Which of the four men at our dinner table would be
here in a year? I smiled wistfully at Rafe. Let him be the one with staying
power, I silently implored.

The sparkling lights in his brown
eyes hinted at mischief. Bedroom mischief. For now, that would suffice.

Here’s a sneak peak of Death, Island Style, a book that will
release as an ebook in Spring of 2013.

One of the perks of my new life is walking on the beach. I
love to sink into the crisp morning sand, leaving behind perfect impressions of
each plump toe, slender arch, and narrow heel. Those footprints proclaim to the
world that MaryBeth Cashour lives here on Sandy Shores Island.

At least until the wind changes,
the tide comes in, or someone else tramples my tracks. Oh, who was I kidding?
My footprints were transitory, just like me. That’s the worst part about
starting over, figuring out who I am and what I’m doing.

I turn to face the wind, taste
the salty spray on my face, and bask in the unfamiliar warmth of the October
sun against my skin. Back in Maryland, a warm fall day like this was called
Indian summer, but here in coastal Georgia, short-sleeved weather is standard
fare. In time, I’d relinquish that northern concern that a howling snowstorm
could hit at any minute, but for now, I was still stuck in that cold weather
mindset of a nasty storm on my horizon.

After my husband of ten years
drowned unexpectedly in April, I sold everything but one framed picture of the
two of us and moved back home, only to discover that my mom had kept her
terminal cancer a secret. I spent the next three months watching her die.

Two deaths in three months gave
me the willies. Worse, it made me responsible for all their possessions.
Grandmother Esther’s gilt-edged porcelain lamp was a family heirloom, but I
hated it. And Uncle Wallace’s faded latch-hooked rug? It had clearly seen
better days. The marble-topped buffets I listed on e-Bay, and I gave away Mom’s
junky old car, which was in worse shape than mine. The horrid checkered tile
bathroom floor I left as was, and the house sold anyway, thank goodness.

By the time I’d finally gotten to
the point of sorting through Mom’s personal papers in August, I believed I
could see daylight. I couldn’t wait to finish this chore and do something,
anything, else, but I learned a hard lesson. Be careful what you wish for. The
information I discovered in her bank lock box knocked the wind out of me.

I’m adopted.

You would think that being
thirty-five years old, I might have heard about this by that time, but my mom
never mentioned it. Not once. I can’t blame my dad for his silence, as he
passed away two decades ago, but Mom had years upon years to tell me the truth.

She sewed my prom dress, mailed
me crafty care packages all through college, and single-handedly created
beautiful decorations for my wedding. No mention of my adoption. Not even a hint.
And it wasn’t like her death was unexpected. She knew the end was coming as
surely as one ocean wave follows the next.

Secrets. I hate them. And yet the
shores of my life were littered with them, much like the scattered shells
dotting this deserted beach.

I stopped at another deposit of
seashells and chucked them one at a time into my plastic pail. Justine
Mossholder, the vibrant woman who’d sold me her gift shop named Christmas by
the Sea, told me that part of owning the craft store was continually harvesting
shells to make into Christmas ornaments. “Tourists love buying these local
crafts as souvenirs,” she’d said.

She’d left detailed instructions
on how to make oyster shell Santas, scallop shell angels, and sand dollar
snowmen. “Paint the shell until the color suits your eye,” she’d said. “Use a
dollop of glue to hold the ornament together, and accent it with a clump of
tulle.”

Her instructions might as well
have been in Greek. Turns out I had no eye for color, glue guns hated me, and I
couldn’t tell tulle from organza. So here I was, collecting shells as
instructed, only I didn’t want the nice big paintable shells.

I wanted the little itty bitty
shells. I picked up one shell, then another, but that pace wasn’t satisfying. I
wanted great glopping handfuls of them. Something about these little shells
felt urgently right.

I couldn’t explain my sudden
unfathomable craving for them, but I needed these tiny shells as much as I
needed air. With increasing fervor, my fingers grabbed clumps of miniature
colored shells and tossed them in my pail. It was as though I was in a timed
contest, and I only got to keep as many shells as I could cram into my hot-pink
pail in the next ten minutes.

Stupid, I know, but so was trying
to start fresh when I’d lost myself along the way. I’d gone from functioning as
a devoted wife and competent receptionist to a berserk seashell-grabber. What
was I going to do?

I had no friends.

I had no family.

I had no roots.

All I had was a yellowed piece of
paper that said I was adopted. How the hell was I supposed to deal with that?
My whole life was a lie.

My throat tightened. I sat down
and allowed the shells and dry sand to drizzle through my curled fingers. How
could I figure out who I was? My past was a jumble of secrets, my lonely future
too dismal to contemplate.

I touched my gold heart-shaped
locket, a treasured gift from Bernie on our first anniversary. Engraved inside
were the words, “All my love forever.” Hollow words for a hollow life. I’m
supposed to grieve and go on with my life, but the little kid in me wanted to
stand up and shout, What happened to my Happily Ever After?

That sappy fairy tale sentiment
wasn’t real. It was fiction, and I’d best realize that MaryBeth Cashour was a
ghost of a person.

The offshore wind whipped my hair
under my glasses. I flicked the tangled locks away from my eyes and stared out
at the sea buoys on the watery horizon. Sea gulls lazily rode on currents of
air above the cresting surf. I huffed out my disgust at their freewheeling
lifestyle. Oh, to be so unencumbered. To let go and glide on the wind. If only
I could be so free, so uninhibited.

After all the changes of late, I
couldn’t fathom living like that. I needed to know what was coming next. I
needed structure and anchors to keep me grounded.

The tides were regular. I’d
learned that in a few short weeks. Natives of McLinn County, Georgia, set their
watches by tidal fluxes. High water meant big waves, depth in the winding
creeks, and delightful onshore breezes. Low water meant lots of beach sand, fish
and crabs that could be caught moving with the tide, and offshore breezes. And
nasty, biting flies.

I smacked one that was stupid
enough to land on my ankle. Take that you bloodsucking varmint. I buried the
insect carcass in the dry sand. My gaze drifted back to the hopeful blue sky
above the cresting waves and noticed those sea gulls were still wheeling over
the same part of the sea as before, just off the beach. That was unusual.

I caught sight of a dark shadow
in the water. Something was out there beyond the breakers. Something big. Like
a dolphin or a shark. Only it wasn’t swimming. It was drifting with the
current.

Curiosity had me rising to my
feet. I brushed the sand and crushed shells from my Bermuda shorts and cupped
my hands around my glasses. The dark shape appeared to be quite long, maybe six
feet long was my guess. And it was definitely cylindrical, like a log.

The object approached the shore.
It bobbed in the surf, slowly rolling over, a dark back, a light underbelly.
That’s when it hit me. My upside-down life wasn’t completely ruined. Things
could be a lot worse.

I could be the dead guy floating
in the ocean.