Murder Hooks a Mermaid (3 page)

Jake nodded while I babbled, then held up a hand to stop me. “You have the perfect logo,” he said. “Bluebeard. He’s the thread that ties everything together. And he attracts customers—I’ve seen it from across the street. They’ll
stroll along the sidewalk, catch sight of him, and turn around and go in your store.”

He frowned. Something about the idea bothered him, and I waited patiently while he worked it out in his head. In the few months I’d known him, I’d learned that Jake’s thoughts were worth waiting for.

“Just don’t do the obvious pirate thing,” he said at last. “Everybody and their dog does the pirate thing down here.”

I knew exactly what he meant. Half the tacky souvenir shops on the Gulf Coast had
pirate-something
in their names. I was grateful Uncle Louis had avoided that trap when he named Southern Treasures.

“It gets worse with every movie,” Jake continued. “Those guys out in Oregon even started Talk Like a Pirate Day.”

“Aye,” I said, unable to resist.

Jake groaned. “Not you, too!”

I shook my head. I wasn’t going to join in the pirate parade. Still, I had an idea for spring break.

“You aren’t going to like this,” I teased Jake, “but you just gave me an idea.” I laughed and continued. “Just for the next few weeks, I promise.”

Jake groaned again and rolled his eyes. “You’re going to rename the place Pirate’s Treasure?”

I shook my head. “But what about a treasure chest display in the front window?” I spread my hands as though holding up a sign. “‘Find the Treasure at Southern Treasures.’ Think it’ll work on the tourists?”

“Unfortunately, yes,” he answered. He tried to look annoyed, but it didn’t last long. “I have to admit, it does fit your shop.” He paused. “But only for a few weeks, right?”

“Deal,” I said, sticking out my hand. “And I’ll throw in a home-cooked meal as compensation.”

“With banana pudding?” he asked hopefully. Jake had become a big fan of my banana pudding.

“I’ll even make the good stuff,” I promised as we shook hands.

“I have one suggestion,” he said.

“Yeah?”

“How about ‘find
your
treasure’ instead of ‘find
the
treasure?’ ‘
The
treasure’ sounds like there’s only one, but ‘
your
treasure’ sounds more like there’s a treasure for every customer.”

I nodded. He had a point. “Good idea. Thanks.”

Jake glanced across the street to the front of his shop. A middle-aged couple, sporting the standard tourist garb of straw hats and shorts in defiance of the temperature, had paused in front of his window.

“Gotta run,” he said, stuffing his phone back in his pocket.

“Go.” I waved him away as he started to pick up the debris from our table. “I’ll take care of this.”

“Thanks,” he said with a quick grin.

I watched him dash across the highway that formed the main drag of Keyhole Bay and greet the couple. By the time I had gathered up our cups and napkins, he was ushering them into the store as though they were old friends.

Which, I supposed, they could have been. Jake’s life before Keyhole Bay was still mostly a mystery; one I would like to solve.

Chapter 3

“BLUEBEARD, SIT STILL!”

With a baleful look, Bluebeard ruffled his feathers and posed on his perch
almost
long enough for me to take his picture. But when I looked at my camera image, all I could see was a vaguely bird-shaped blur of bright colors.

My patience with my avian companion had reached a critical level. I wanted a picture to use on my website, but in spite of two days of too many treats and massive amounts of coaxing, Bluebeard refused to cooperate.

His antics reminded me how few pictures I’d been able to find of my great-uncle Louis. A few grainy black-and-white shots in the local paper, all of them taken from a distance, and one battered photo-booth shot of a young man in an Army uniform, a cigar clenched defiantly in his teeth.

Was it Uncle Louis who didn’t like the camera?

Frustrated, I left Bluebeard to his own devices and went back to assembling the merchandise for the window display.

I had a large collection of costume jewelry that wasn’t acceptable for the sales case: single earrings, brooches with broken clasps, necklaces with missing strands, and decorative watches that didn’t keep time. Spilling out of a worn travel trunk with a smattering of brass coins, they made the centerpiece of the display. I planned to put an ornate silver candelabra filled with dripping candles on one side, and a pair of silver-plated goblets on the other.

It would be enough to fill the larger of the two front windows. I went through the door to the back of the shop, hunting through the jumble of merchandise in my storage room for something for the other window.

The phone rang, and I hurried back into the shop and grabbed it, eager for a distraction.

“Glory?”

At the nasal sound of my cousin Peter’s voice, I took a deep breath and started counting. Ten wasn’t nearly enough.

“Hello, Peter.” I didn’t ask what he wanted; he always wanted me to do something, usually something utterly nonsensical, with Southern Treasures.

Peter owned 45 percent of Southern Treasures, though I had a secret plan to buy him out, just as soon as I figured out how. It really wasn’t much of a plan, I guess, but I had to start somewhere.

Peter also had an engineering degree from the University of Alabama, and he thought his education made him an expert on everything. Including how to run Southern Treasures.

“Hi, Glory. How are you? Okay, I hope. Mother is
worried about you, you know. You missed your visit last month, and you know how she is.”

I knew all too well. I visited my Uncle Andrew and Aunt Missy—it rhymes with
prissy
for a very good reason—a couple times a year. Andrew and Missy, and Peter and his family, were the only blood relatives I had in the world. Missing a visit was a direct violation of family responsibilities.

“I know,” I answered. “But you know how it is when you own a business. You’re working all the time.”

Of course, Peter
didn’t
know how it was. Uncle Andrew put him through college and grad school, and then Peter landed a good job. He couldn’t imagine a career without paid vacations and sick days. But it did no good to tell him that. He thought he understood.

“I know, Glory,” he said, as though he actually did. “But Mom and Dad are getting up there. Your visits mean a lot to them.”

I counted to ten. Again. Uncle Andrew had retired a few years back, just before he’d turned sixty. They traveled several weeks a year and played golf every other day at their country club when they were home. Hardly the frail senior citizens Peter implied.

“They mean a lot to me too, Peter.” They meant closing the store for several days, begging Karen to look in on Bluebeard, and driving a couple hours each way in my aging and not very reliable Civic.

In spite of it all, I still felt the tug of family. “Maybe after spring break,” I told Peter. “There’s usually a little lull before the summer crowds start.”

“Good. Good. Mom and Dad would like that.” Placated,
he moved on to the real purpose of his call. “I was thinking about the shop, Glory.”

A bad sign.
One, two, three…

“Have you considered putting up a website?”

Four, five, six, seven…

“You said most of your business is from out-of-state tourists.”

Eight, nine…

“Why not give them a way to buy from you after they go home?”

Ten
.

“I have a web page. It’s not perfect yet, but I have one, and I’ve put a lot of work into it. Did you even
look
before you called me?”

“Of course I did. I found something about metal detectors.” His whine intensified. “Why are you yelling at me? It’s not my fault I couldn’t find the page.”

I bit my lip and took a deep breath. “That’s because I couldn’t get the exact name, so I used Southern Treasures Shop.”

“I suppose that’s okay then,” he said, though he clearly didn’t mean it. “I guess I’ll have to go look it up and see what you have there.”

“What I have,” I said through clenched teeth, “is what I’ve learned to do so far. I’m still working on it, as time allows.”

There was silence from the other end of the line. I could picture Peter pursing his lips in the way that said he was sure I had more time than I let on, and I was probably wasting it on things I shouldn’t be.

I forced my jaws to unclench. “Thanks for thinking of
me, Peter. Please give my love to your folks, and tell them I’ll be up to see them just as soon as I can. I have to go now. Give my love to Peggy and the kids. Bye-bye.”

I hung up before he could say another word—and before I had to start counting again.

I
really
needed a plan to buy him out.

I also needed a break. It had been a quiet Wednesday, and the sun was sending long shadows across the street. Between Bluebeard and Peter, I’d been frustrated enough for one day.

I locked the door, flipped over the “Closed” sign, and turned out the lights. Bluebeard realized I was closing and let out a squawk of protest.

“Enough out of you,” I answered. “You have been a huge pain all day.”

With the shop—and Bluebeard—settled for the night, I debated what to do with my evening. For about thirty seconds. Then I picked up the phone and called Karen.

“I’ll bring the pizza,” I offered when she answered. “And I’ll bet you still need help getting ready for tomorrow’s dinner.”

Her answering chuckle told me I was right.

“Meet you at your place in half an hour?” I asked.

“Sure,” she said. “Extra onion and pepper?”

“You got it.”

IT WAS CLOSER TO FORTY MINUTES BY THE TIME I
pulled the Civic into Karen’s driveway. Red-brick siding contrasted with bright white trim across the front of her small rambler. Karen and Riley bought the house when they got married, determined to be the perfect young newlyweds.
When they divorced, Riley kept the boat and Karen kept the house. The style didn’t fit with the driven newscaster Karen became, but in spite of the incongruity and the history, Karen loved her place.

I opened the front door, tapping on it as I walked in. “Pizza delivery,” I called out. I carried the box into the kitchen, put it down, and started getting plates out of the cupboard.

Karen came down the hall from the bathroom, wrapped in a fluffy robe with a towel turbaned around her wet hair. She sniffed the air and nodded her approval.

“Pepperoni, onion, peppers, and tomatoes, right?”

Like she even needed to ask. Pepperoni had been our favorite since junior high, and we’d added the vegetables in an attempt to assuage our guilt as we got older.

Karen took a couple wineglasses from the shelf and poured us each a glass of our favorite cheap red. I know there are people that say life is too short for cheap wine, but we were eating pizza. Besides, it was pretty good cheap wine.

Not that we got to drink any of it.

We had barely settled into our chairs when someone knocked insistently on the front door.

Karen looked at me, puzzled. “I’m not expecting anyone…” Her voice trailed off as she rose from her seat and headed for the door.

My manners kicked in and I couldn’t start eating without her, so I trailed along to see who was interrupting our dinner.

By the time I reached the door, Riley was already through it, standing in the living room and cursing like, well, like Bluebeard.

And like Bluebeard, I could only make out every second or third word, many of them profanities. Among the other words were
police
,
Bobby
, and
Coast Guard
.

It didn’t sound good.

Karen had Riley by the shoulders, gently propelling him toward the kitchen. He walked without protest, too caught up in whatever was going on to notice her guiding him to the chair she had just vacated and pushing him down into it.

He was seated at the table before he even realized he had an escort. He blinked at me a couple times, muttered “Hi, Glory,” and went back to his rant.

Karen clamped a hand over his mouth, interrupting the flow of words. “Slow down!” she commanded. “I can’t understand a thing you’re saying.”

A slight exaggeration, I suspected, but it worked.

Riley drew a long, shuddering breath, then another. It took him a full minute of deep breathing, while Karen and I stared impatiently, before he could talk again.

My mind raced with imagined disasters as I willed Riley to regain the ability for coherent speech.

In all the time I had known him, I had never seen him this rattled. Riley Freed was the calm one in any group, the guy who knew how to take care of things. It served him well as the captain of his own fishing boat, dealing with one of the most dangerous jobs on a daily basis. Nothing got to Riley.

Until now. Now his face was pasty beneath his tan and was covered with a sheen of sweat. His hands shook and a vein at his temple throbbed with his racing heartbeat.

“Bobby,” he said at last. “They took Bobby, and the boat.
My
boat. They took it.”

“They? Who, Riley? Who took Bobby?”

“Chief Hardy,” Riley answered. His voice came out in a strangled whisper. He swallowed hard and tried again. “Chief Hardy took Bobby, and the Coast Guard impounded
Ocean Breeze
.”

Karen rolled her eyes. “What the hell has he got himself into this time?” She glared at Riley. “And you let him take your boat to do it!”

Riley hung his head, unwilling to meet Karen’s eyes. “He’s my brother,” he said quietly. “He’s family.”

And there was the core of the argument. Every time, in every way, the commitment to family trumped all other considerations. Bobby was family, and Riley was there for him.

Karen sighed and unwound the towel from her hair. She ran her hands through her hair, finger-combing the damp chestnut strands into a messy ponytail.

She looked longingly toward the rapidly cooling pizza on the table, and the untouched wine, before trudging down the hall toward her bedroom.