Whiskey Beach

Chapter Ten

ELI ARGUED WITH HIMSELF, WEIGHED THE PROS, THE CONS, his own temperament. In the end he justified going to the damn bar because he hadn’t gotten out of the house for his self-imposed hour that day. This would serve as his hour.

He’d check out what the newish owners had done, have a beer, listen to a little music, then go home.

And maybe Abra would get off his back.

And if under it he proved to himself as much as to her he could walk into the village bar, have a beer, with no problem, so much the better.

He liked bars, he reminded himself. He liked the atmosphere, the characters, the conversations, the companionship of having a cold one in company.

Or he had.

Added to it, he could consider it a kind of research. Writing might be a solitary profession—which he’d discovered suited him down to the ground—but it did require seeing, feeling, observing and the rare interaction. Otherwise he’d end up writing in a vacuum.

So, keeping to his vow of an hour out of the house, and getting some local color that might end up painted into his story somewhere made sense.

He decided to walk. For one, it left his car in the drive and that might, in addition to the lights he’d left on, convince any potential B&E candidate the house was occupied.

And it gave him a good solid walk for the exercise portion of his day.

Situation normal, he told himself.

Then he stepped into the Village Pub, and disorientation.

Gone was the watering hole where he’d bought his first legal drink—a bottled Coors—on his twenty-first birthday. No more dark and slightly dingy walls, no more frayed fishing nets, plaster seagulls, tattered pirate flags and gritty seashells that had made up the incessantly seafaring decor.

Dark bronze ceiling fixtures with amber shades replaced the ship’s wheels and added moody lighting. Paintings, wall sculptures and a trio of his grandmother’s pencil sketches depicted local scenes.

Somewhere along the way someone had sanded and scraped off years of grime, spilled beer and very likely old puke stains so the wide-planked wood floor gleamed.

People sat at tables, in booths, on leather love seats or on the iron stools lining the long paneled bar. Others took to a postage-stamp dance floor, just a scattering of them yet, to boogie and shake to the five-piece band currently doing a very decent job covering the Black Keys’ “Lonely Boy.”

Instead of the campy pirate costumes, the staff wore black skirts or pants and white shirts.

It threw him off. And though the former Katydids had been on the crumbling edge of a shit hole, he kind of missed it.

Didn’t matter, he reminded himself. He’d get a beer like any normal guy might on a Friday night. Then he’d go home.

He started toward the bar when he spotted Abra.

She was serving a table of three men—young twenties by Eli’s gauge—balancing a tray with one hand while she set pilsner glasses on the table.

The skirt—short as advertised—showed a lot of long, toned legs that appeared to start somewhere around her armpits and ended in high black heels. The snug white shirt emphasized a lean torso and the impressive cut of biceps.

He couldn’t hear the conversation over the music. He didn’t need to, not to recognize the easy and overt flirting on all sides.

She gave one of the men a pat on the shoulder that had him grinning like a moron as she turned.

And her eyes met Eli’s.

She smiled, warm and friendly, as if that mouth with the accent of the ridiculously sexy mole hadn’t been plastered to his just a couple hours earlier.

She turned the tray under her arm and walked toward him through the moody light and music, hips swaying, sea goddess eyes glowing, mermaid hair tumbled and wild.

“Hi. Glad you could make it.”

He thought he could devour her in one, greedy gulp. “I’m just going to get a beer.”

“This is the place for it. We’ve got eighteen on tap. What’s your pleasure?”

“Ah . . .” Getting her naked didn’t seem like the appropriate response.

“You should try a local.” The quick laugh in her eyes made him wonder if she’d read his mind again. “Beached Whale gets high marks.”

“Sure, fine.”

“Go on over and sit with Mike and Maureen.” She gestured. “I’ll bring the Whale.”

“I was just going to go to the bar and—”

“Don’t be silly.” She took his arm, pulled him—weaving when necessary. “Look who I found.”

With an easy welcome, Maureen patted the empty chair beside her. “Hi, Eli. Have a seat. Sit back here with us old farts so we can actually have a conversation without screaming.”

“I’ll get your beer. And the nachos should be up,” Abra told Mike.

“Great nachos here,” Mike said as Abra scooted off, and Eli—with little choice—took a seat.

“They used to serve bags of stale potato chips and bowls of peanuts of dubious origin.”

Maureen grinned at Eli. “Those were the days. Mike and I try to get in here once a month anyway. A little adult time, and on weekends or in season it’s a great place to people-watch.”

“There’s a lot of them.”

“The band’s popular. That’s why we got here early enough to grab a table. Did you get your power back on and everything?”

“Yeah.”

Maureen gave his hand a reassuring pat. “I didn’t have much time to talk to Abra today, but she said somebody’d been digging down in the basement.”

“Yeah, what’s that about?” Mike leaned forward. “Unless you want it to all go away for a couple hours.”

“No, it’s okay.” In any case Bluff House was a key part of the community. Everyone would want to know. He gave them the basic rundown, then shrugged. “My best guess is treasure hunter.”

“Told you!” Maureen slapped her husband on the arm. “That’s what I said, and Mike’s all poo-poo. He has no fantasy gene.”

“I do when you put on that little red number with the cutouts on your—”

“Michael!” His name came out on a choked laugh.

“You walked into it, honey. Ah.” Mike rubbed his hands together. “Nachos. You’re in for a treat,” he told Eli.

“Nachos, loaded, three plates, extra napkins.” Abra set them down smoothly. “And a Beached Whale. Enjoy. First one’s on me, remember,” she said when Eli reached for his wallet.

“When’s your break?” Maureen asked her.

“Not yet.” So saying, she answered a signal from another table.

“How many jobs does she have?” Eli wondered.

“I can’t keep up. She likes variety.” Maureen scooped nachos onto her plate. “Acupuncture’s next.”

“She’s going to stick needles in people?”

“She’s studying how to. She likes taking care of people. Even the jewelry she makes is to help you feel better, happier.”

He had questions. A lot of them. And considered how to ask without moving it toward cross-examination mode. “She’s managed that variety in a short amount of time. She hasn’t lived here that long.”

“Going on three years, from Springfield. You should ask her about that sometime.”

“About what?”

“About Springfield.” Eyebrow cocked, Maureen nipped into a nacho. “And what you’d like to know.”

“So, what do you think about the Red Sox’s chances this year?”

Maureen gave her husband a gimlet eye as she picked up her glass of red. “More subtle than just telling me to shut up.”

“I thought so. Nobody I like talking baseball with better than your grandmother.”

“She’s a fan,” Eli said.

“She can reel off stats like nobody else. You know I get into Boston every couple weeks. Do you think she’d be up for a visit?”

“I think she’d like it.”

“Mike coaches Little League,” Maureen explained. “Hester’s a non-official assistant coach.”

“She loves watching the kids play.” As the band took a break, Mike caught Abra’s attention, circled his finger in the air for another round. “I hope she gets back for at least part of the season.”

“We weren’t sure she was going to make it.”

“Oh, Eli.” Maureen closed her hand over his.

He’d never said that out loud, he realized. Not to anyone. He wasn’t sure why it had come out now, except he had all these new images of his grandmother in his mind, images he’d missed. Yoga and Little League and pencil sketches in a bar.

“The first few days . . . She’s had two surgeries on her arm. Her elbow just . . . shattered. Then her hip, and the ribs and head trauma. Every day, touch and go. Then when I saw her yesterday—” Had it only been yesterday? “She’s up and using a cane because walkers are for old ladies.”

“That sounds like her,” Maureen concurred.

“She lost so much weight in the hospital, and now she’s filling out again. She looks stronger. She’d like to see you,” he said to Mike. “She’d like you to see her when she’s doing so much better.”

“I’ll make a point of it. Are you telling her about the break-in?”

“Not yet anyway. There’s not a lot to tell. And I’m wondering how many times whoever was in there last night has been in there before. If he was there the night she fell.”

As Eli lifted his beer to drain it, he caught the look Mike and Maureen exchanged.

“What?”

“That’s exactly what I said when we heard about the digging.” Maureen gave Mike an elbow poke. “Didn’t I?”

“She did.”

“And he said I read too many mystery novels, which is impossible. You can never read too many books, any kind.”

“I’ll really drink to that.” Still Eli just turned his glass in circles as he studied Maureen. “But why did you think it?”

“Hester’s . . . I hate using ‘spry,’ because people use that for old people, and it’s almost insulting. But she is. Plus, I bet you’ve never seen her in a yoga class.”

“No, I haven’t.” And wasn’t sure his mind could take it.

“She’s got great balance. She can hold a tree pose, and Warrior Three, and . . . What I’m saying is she’s not wobbly or shaky. Not that she couldn’t have fallen. Kids fall downstairs. But it just didn’t seem like Hester.”

“She doesn’t remember,” Eli commented. “Not the fall or even getting out of bed.”

“That’s not unexpected, right, not after hitting her head that way. But now we know you’ve had somebody sneaking into the house who’s crazy enough to dig in the basement, I wondered about it. And whoever it was who broke in put some bruises on Abra. If she hadn’t fought back, known what to do, he could’ve hurt her more. If he’d do that, he might’ve scared Hester or he might’ve even pushed her.”

“Round two!” Abra carried the tray to the table. “Uh-oh, solemn faces.”

“We were just talking about Hester, and the break-in last night. I wish you’d stay with us for a couple nights,” Maureen fretted.

“He broke into Bluff House, not Laughing Gull.”

“But if he thought you could identify him—”

“Don’t make me agree with Mike.”

“I do not read too many mysteries. I read your short stories,” she told Eli. “They were great.”

“Now you leave me no choice but to get this round.”

Abra laughed, gave him the tab. She ran a hand casually over his hair, left it on his shoulder.

Maureen gave Mike a light kick under the table.

“Maybe Eli could come talk to our book club, Abra.”

“No.” He felt panic lodge in his throat, gulped some beer to loosen it. “I’m still writing the book.”

“You’re a writer. We’ve never had a real writer at book club.”

“We had Natalie Gerson,” Abra reminded her.

“Oh, come on. Self-published poetry. Free verse. Terrible self-published free-verse poetry. I wanted to stab myself in the eye before that night was over.”

“I wanted to stab Natalie in the eye. I’m taking five,” Abra decided, and leaned a hip on the table.

“Here, sit down.” Eli started to rise, but she just nudged him down again. “No, I’m good. Eli never talks about his book. If I were writing a book I’d talk about it all the time, to everyone. People would start to avoid me, so I’d seek out complete strangers and talk about it until they, too, avoided me.”

“Is that all it takes?”

She gave him a punch on the arm. “I thought about writing songs once. If it hadn’t been for the fact I can’t read music, and didn’t have any song ideas, I’d’ve been great.”

“So you turn to acupuncture.”

She grinned at Eli. “It’s an interest and, since you brought it up, something I was going to talk to you about. I need to practice, and you’d be perfect.”

“That’s a terrible idea.”

“I could work on a release of tension, and an opening of creativity and concentration.”

“Could you? In that case, let me think about it. No.”

She leaned toward him. “You’re entirely too close-minded.”

“And needle-puncture free.”

She smelled heady, he realized, and she’d done something dark and dramatic to her eyes. When her lips curved, all he could think of was the way they’d felt against his.

Yeah, one big, greedy bite should do it.

“We’ll talk.” Abra stood, took her tray and walked over to a neighboring table to take an order.

“Don’t be surprised to find yourself lying on a table with needles sticking out of your bare flesh,” Mike warned him.

The hell of it was, he wouldn’t be surprised. At all.

He stayed more than an hour, enjoyed the company. It occurred to him he wouldn’t have to argue with himself the next time he considered dropping into the bar.

Progress, he decided, as he said good night to Maureen and Mike, and headed out.

“Hey!” Abra bolted out after him. “You don’t say good night to your friendly waitress?”

“You were busy. Jesus, get inside. It’s cold out here.”

“I’ve got heat to spare after running around in there for the last three hours. You looked like you enjoyed yourself.”

“It was a nice break. I like your friends.”

“Maureen was your friend before she was mine, but yeah, they’re the best. I’ll see you on Sunday.”

“On Sunday?”

“Your massage. It remains therapeutic,” she said when she caught the look on his face. “Even if you stop stalling and kiss me good night.”

“I already left you a tip.”

She had an irresistible laugh, a sense of happy his system wanted to absorb like water. To prove he could, he moved in, taking his time, this time. He laid his hands on her shoulders, then slid them down her, feeling the warmth she still held from all the body heat pulsing inside the bar.

Then he leaned down, took her mouth.

Slow and smooth this time, she thought, soft and dreamy. A lovely contrast to the earlier shock and urgency. She slid her arms around his waist, let herself drift.

He had more to give than he believed, more wounds than he could admit. Both sides of him pulled at her.

When he eased back, she sighed. “Well, well, Eli, Maureen’s absolutely right. You have skills.”

“A little rusty.”

“Me, too. Won’t this be interesting?”

“Why are you rusty?”

“That’s a story that calls for a bottle of wine and a warm room. I have to get back in there.”

“I want to know the story. Your story.”

The words pleased her as much as a bouquet of roses. “Then I’ll tell you. Good night, Eli.”

She slipped back inside, to the music, the voices. And left him stirred, and wanting. Wanting her, he realized, more than he’d wanted anything but peace for much too long.

Eli worked through a rain-drenched Saturday. He let the story absorb him until, before he realized the connection, he’d written an entire scene with wind-driven rain splatting against the windows where the protagonist found the key, metaphorically and literally, to his dilemma while wandering his dead brother’s empty house.

Pleased with his progress, he ordered himself away from the keyboard and into his grandmother’s gym. He thought of the hours spent in his Boston fitness center, with its sleek machines, all those hard bodies, the pumping music.

Those days were done, he reminded himself.

It didn’t have to mean he was.

Maybe the jelly bean colors of his grandmother’s free weights struck him as mildly embarrassing. But ten pounds remained ten pounds. He was tired of feeling weak and thin and soft, tired of allowing himself to coast, or worse, just tread water.

If he could write—and he was proving that every day—he could pump and sweat and find the man he used to be. Maybe better, he mused as he picked up a set of purple dumbbells, he’d find the man he was meant to be.

He wasn’t ready to face the mirror, so he started his first set of biceps curls standing at the window, studying the storm-churned waves battering the shore. Watched water spume up against the rocks below the circling light of the white tower. Wondered what direction his hero might take now that he’d turned an important corner. Then wondered if he’d written his hero around that corner because he felt he’d turned, or at least approached a turn of his own.

Christ, he hoped so.

He switched from weights to cardio, managed twenty minutes before his lungs burned and his legs trembled. He stretched, guzzled water, then went back to another round of weights before he flopped, panting, onto the floor.

Better, he told himself. Maybe he hadn’t made it a full hour and felt as if he’d just completed a triathlon, but he’d done better this time.

And this time he made it to the shower without limping.

Very much.

He congratulated himself again on the way downstairs on a hunt for food. He actually wanted food. In fact, he was damn near starving, and that had to be a good sign.

Maybe he should start writing these small progressions down. Like daily invocations.

And that struck him as even more embarrassing than lifting purple weights.

When he stepped into the kitchen, the smell hit him seconds before he spotted the plate of cookies on the island. Any idea of slapping together a sandwich went out the rain-washed window.

He lifted the ubiquitous sticky note on the film of plastic wrap, read as he pulled the wrap up and snagged the first cookie.

Rainy day baking. I heard your keyboard clacking, so didn’t want to interrupt. Enjoy. See you tomorrow about five.

Abra

Should he reciprocate for all this food she kept making? Buy her flowers or something? One bite told him flowers wouldn’t make the grade. He grabbed another cookie, hit the coffeemaker. He decided he’d build a fire, pick a book at random out of the library and indulge himself.

He built the fire to roaring. Something about the light, the snap, the heat meshed perfectly with the rain-whipped Saturday. In the library with its coffered ceiling and dark chocolate leather couch, he scanned the shelves.

Novels, biographies, how-to’s, poetry, books on gardening, animal husbandry, yoga—apparently Gran really got into the practice—an old book on etiquette, and a section of books centered on Whiskey Beach. A couple of novels, he noted, which might be interesting, histories, lore, a scattering of those written about the Landons. And several referencing pirates and legends.

On impulse he drew out a slim leather-bound volume titled Calypso: Doomed Treasures.

Considering the trench in the basement, it seemed apt enough.

Stretched out on the couch, fire blazing, Eli munched on cookies and read. The old book, published at the turn of the twentieth century, included illustrations, maps, biographical snippets of whomever the author deemed a major player. Enjoying himself, Eli delved into the fateful last voyage of the Calypso, captained by the not-very-infamous pirate and smuggler Nathanial Broome.

The book carved him as handsome, dashing, full of derring-do, which was probably a crock for any who didn’t subscribe to the Errol Flynn or Johnny Depp school of pirates.

He read of the battle at sea between the Calypso and the Santa Caterina described in an adventurous, bloodless style that made him suspect, perhaps unfairly, the author had been a woman writing under the masculine nom de plume Charles G. Haversham.

The boarding and sinking of the Santa Caterina, the pillaging of its stores, the killing of most of its crew turned into high-seas adventure, with hefty doses of romance. Esmeralda’s Dowry, according to Haversham, had been magically imbued with its mistress’s loving heart so the jewels could be held only by one who’d found true love.

“Seriously?” Eli ate another cookie. He might’ve put the book down for a different selection, but the author had so obviously enjoyed the writing, and the style proved ridiculously entertaining, and took him into pockets of the legend he’d never heard before.

He didn’t have to believe in the transformative power of love—as transmitted in this case by magical diamonds and rubies—to enjoy the telling of it. And he appreciated the consistency of the romantic bent in the author’s contention that rather than a lowly seaman surviving the fateful wreck of the Calypso—with the treasure—it had been the dashingly romantic Captain Broome.

He read the entire book to its tragic (yet romantic) conclusion, then paged back to study the illustrations again. Warmed by the fire, he dropped into a cookie coma with the book on his chest. He dreamed of sea battles, of pirates, of glinting jewels, of a young woman’s open heart and of betrayal, redemption and death.

And of Lindsay, lying in the trench in Bluff House’s basement, the stone and dirt stained with her blood. Of himself standing over her, pickax in hand.

He woke in a sweat, the fire burned to a red simmer, his body stiff. Queasy, shaken, he dragged himself off the couch, out of the library. The dream, that final image, held so strong, so clear in his mind, he went down to the basement, walked through the maze of rooms. And he stood over the trench to be sure his dead wife wasn’t there.

Stupid, he told himself. Just stupid to feel the need to check out the impossible because of the delusion of a dream brought on by a silly book and too many cookies. Equally stupid to think—hope—that because he hadn’t dreamed of Lindsay in a few nights’ running he was done with it.

However foolish it was, his earlier optimism and energy faded like chalk in the rain. He needed to go back up, find something to do before he let the dark close around him. God, he didn’t want to fight his way back into the light again.

Maybe he’d fill in the trench, he told himself as he started back. He’d check with Vinnie first, then he’d fill it in. Make it go away, and screw whoever had come into Bluff House on their idiotic treasure hunt.

He nursed that little spark of anger—so much better than depression—fanning it as he continued back. Letting it grow and heat against whoever had violated his family home.

He was through being violated, through accepting that someone could have come into his home—or what had been his—killed his wife and left him to hang for it. Through accepting anyone might have come into Bluff House and had anything to do with his grandmother’s fall.

He was through feeling victimized.

He stepped up into the kitchen, and stopped dead.

Abra stood, her phone in one hand, and a really big kitchen knife in the other.

“I really hope you’re thinking of slicing some giant carrots with that.”

“Oh God! Eli.” She dropped the knife on the counter, where it clattered. “I came in, and the door to the basement was open. You didn’t answer when I called out. Then I heard someone, and . . . I panicked.”

“Panicking would be running. Sensible panicking would be running and calling the police. Standing there with a knife isn’t sensible or panic.”

“It felt like both. I need . . . Can I . . . Never mind.” She simply got a glass, got a bottle of wine from the refrigerator. After drawing out its jeweled stopper, she poured it like breakfast juice.

“I scared you. I’m sorry.” Her hands shook, he noted. “But going downstairs may happen from time to time.”

“I know. It’s not that. It’s that on top of . . .” She took a long drink, a long breath. “Eli, they found Kirby Duncan.”

“Good.” His earlier anger could round back again, and this time with a target. “I want to talk to the son of a bitch.”

“You can’t. They found his body. Eli, they found his body caught in the rocks below the lighthouse. I saw the police, I saw all these people over there, so I went out. And . . . he’s dead.”

“How?”

“I don’t know. Maybe he fell.”

“That’s a little too easy, isn’t it?” They’d come for him again, he thought. The police, with questions. No getting around it.

“No one’s going to think you had anything to do with it.”

He shook his head, unsurprised she’d read his thoughts. He stepped forward, took the glass, took a long drink of his own. “Sure they will. But this time, I’ll be prepared for it. You came to tell me so I would be.”

“No one who knows you will think you had anything to do with it.”

“Maybe not.” He handed her back the glass. “But it’s going to fuel the beast. Accused murderer connected to victim of another death. Plenty of dirt to throw, and some of it’s going to hit you if you don’t keep your distance.”

“The hell with that.” Her eyes fired at him. The color distress had washed out of her face surged back. “And don’t insult me that way again.”

“It’s not an insult, it’s a warning.”

“The hell with that, too. I want to know what you’re going to do if you believe some people will think you had anything to do with this, if you believe dirt’s going to be tossed at you.”

“I don’t know yet.” But he would. This time he would. “Nobody’s going to chase me out of Bluff House or away from Whiskey Beach. I stay until I’m ready to go.”

“That’s good enough. Why don’t I fix us some food?”

“No, thanks. I ate the cookies.”

She glanced at the plate on the island, and her jaw dropped as she counted a lonely six cookies. “Good God, Eli, there were two dozen. You should be sick.”

“Maybe a little. Go on home, Abra. You shouldn’t be here when the cops come. No telling when, but soon enough.”

“We can talk to them together.”

“Better not. I’m going to call my lawyer, just to let him know. Lock your doors.”

“All right, fine. I’ll be back tomorrow. I’d like you to call me if anything happens.”

“I can handle it.”

“I think you can.” She angled her head. “What happened, Eli?”

“I had a good day, mostly. There’s been more of them lately. I can deal with this.”

“Then I’ll see you tomorrow.” She set the glass aside, laid her hands on his face. “Eventually you’re going to ask me to stay. I like wondering what I’m going to do about that.” She brushed his lips with hers, then pulled up her hoodie against the rain and left.

He liked wondering, too, he realized. And sooner or later, the timing just had to get better.