Busman's Honeymoon (Savannah Martin Mystery #10.5) Read online

  I looked again, but all I saw was a driftwood shack on stilts, up above the sand, with a neon sign in the window blinking on and off.

  Actually, two neon signs. One said OPEN, and didn’t blink. The blinking one said Corona, with an image of a parrot.

  “That’s the restaurant the sheriff recommended?”

  It looked like a low-end biker bar. In fact, there was a handful of bikes parked outside, that looked very much like the one parked in our driveway at home. Big, beefy Harley-Davidsons with lots of chrome and fancy handlebars.

  The first time I’d seen Rafe astride the beast, in Mrs. Jenkins’s driveway the morning Brenda Puckett died, I’d been attracted and appalled in about equal measure. Big, noisy, masculine, and so uncouth.

  Needless to say, he’d changed my mind later.

  “The shrimp po’boys are supposed to be great.”

  Of course.

  “And they have alligator tail. Have you ever had gator tail?”

  I hadn’t. “I bet it tastes just like chicken.” That’s what they say about anything out of the ordinary. Frog legs? Tastes just like chicken. Rattlesnake? Tastes just like chicken. Pigeon? Tastes just like chicken. Iguana? You got it. Tastes like chicken.

  Rafe grinned. “Now that you mention it.”

  “If you want to have alligator tail, I won’t stop you. And I’d be willing to try a shrimp po’boy.” Which—for those of you born north of the Mason-Dixon line—is a sandwich. A Louisiana hoagie.

  “That’s all right,” Rafe told me, as we left the road and wandered into the parking lot of the Sandbar. “I’m sure we can find something that isn’t seafood. If they have shrimp po’boys, they might have roast beef ones, too.”

  “A roast beef sandwich would be OK.”

  “Then let’s see what we’ve got,” Rafe said, and opened the door.

  The interior of the Sandbar looked about like I had expected. Not like I had wanted—it was my honeymoon, and I had envisioned eating gourmet seafood in a dining room with white tablecloths and stemware—but like I figured it would. A long, low, dark room with exposed wood beams in the ceiling, a rustic, sandy floor, no AC, and rough wooden tables with benches around them. The drinks came in cans, bottles, and red plastic cups, and the food arrived on paper plates or in little plastic baskets lined with fake newsprint. A nod to the old way of serving fish and chips, I guess.

  But the Sandbar was hopping. Burly bikers in wife-beater shirts and suspenders rubbed elbows with sunburned kids and their exhausted parents. One TV was tuned to NASCAR, while the other showed an episode of SpongeBob SquarePants. It was hot and airless—the fans didn’t do near enough to move the air through the open windows onto the deck overlooking the beach and ocean—but nobody seemed to care. People were laughing and chattering and obviously having a ball.

  Rafe grinned. It was his kind of place. It wasn’t mine, although I’m getting better about slumming. Mother would have had a conniption, but all I said was, “Can we see if there are any empty seats outside?”

  “Sure.” Rafe took my hand and pulled me after him through the room and out on the other side. It was much easier to breathe out on the deck, and a bit less crowded.

  And there was Nina and Chip, over at a table in the corner, each with a liter glass of beer in front of them.

  “Look.” I nodded in that direction. “Let’s go join them.”

  “They might not wanna be joined, darlin’.” But he went. “Evening.”

  They both looked up. Chip grumbled something and Nina smiled. Widely. “Well, hello, there.”

  I resisted the temptation to roll my eyes. “Mind if we join you? This place is pretty busy.”

  There was a pause, while they tried to think of a way to say no without sounding rude. They couldn’t, so they ended up allowing it. Rudely. Chip muttered under his breath as he moved over to make room for me, while Nina scooted aside just far enough to let Rafe sit down next to her. The better to press her naked thigh up against his, I assume.

  It’s a good thing I’m not the jealous type.

  He gave her a cheerful grin as he sat down. I gave Chip a tight smile. He grumbled and took a swig of beer.

  “Fancy meeting you here,” Nina said brightly. She was dressed in the same—or a similar—white tank top as this morning, and her skin was the color of a walnut. By the time she reached forty, she’d be as leathery as a mummy.

  “I didn’t expect to run into you here,” I told Chip, since Nina was busy exerting her charms on Rafe.

  He slanted a grumpy glance at me. “Why?”

  “We heard you had to go to the sheriff’s office to talk about Frenetta’s murder.”

  It could have been my imagination—it was dark out here—but I thought he turned a shade paler. “Murder?”

  “They wouldn’t interview suspects in a natural death,” I said, and smiled at the waitress who stopped next to the table. “I’d like a glass of ginger ale, please.”

  Chip sniffed.

  “And a menu.”

  The girl nodded and turned to Rafe, who said, “Draft.”

  The waitress sauntered off, and I turned back to Chip. “When they spoke to you this afternoon, didn’t you get the impression that they were investigating a suspicious death?”

  He didn’t answer, just gave me a sullen look. It was Nina who spoke, from across the table. “Somebody told them that I’d been arguing with Frenetta yesterday morning. Like it was any of their business.” She flipped her hair.

  “I guess they figured, since she ended up dead, they’d make it their business.”

  It was Nina’s turn to give me a look. “Not the cops. I understand that they have to figure out who killed her. We want them to figure out who killed her.” She glanced at Chip and then back to me. “I was talking about those two biddies.”

  “Gloria and Hildy?”

  She nodded. “I should have known they overheard me. I didn’t hear them coming down the stairs, but then they were there in the dining room.” She shook her head. “I don’t understand why people just can’t mind their own business.”

  Chip snorted. “Just trying to make themselves look less bad.”

  “What do you mean?”

  For a second I wasn’t sure he’d answer—I don’t think he liked me much—but then he said, “Nina wasn’t the only one who argued with the old... with Frenetta yesterday.”

  “Gloria and Hildy did, too? About what?”

  “Something about the house,” Chip said. “I think they expected her to sell it to them.”

  “And she didn’t want to?”

  He shrugged.

  I glanced at Rafe, who shrugged, too.

  “I don’t see how killing her would get them the house,” I said. “Not unless they think they’ll inherit.” And unless they were related to Frenetta, I didn’t see how they would.

  Chip snorted. “I didn’t say they killed her. I just said they argued with her.”

  “So who do you think killed her?”

  He glanced at Nina. “It wasn’t us.”

  “I didn’t say it was,” I said. “I just thought you might have some idea. You spent a couple days with her. We never even met her.”

  “You could have killed her before you knocked on the door last night,” Chip said.

  I stared at him. “Excuse me?”

  “We heard your car drive into the lot and park. And then we heard your voices. And it was at least five minutes after that, that you knocked on the door and Nina went down and let you in. You had time to go up the stairs to the garage and smother the old lady, and then come back down.”

  “That’s crazy. We never even met her. Why would we kill her?”

  “Why would anyone?” Chip said. “And I didn’t say you did. I just said you could have. You did something during that time. And I don’t think you were standing in the parking lot.”

  “We went to look at the ocean,” I said.

  “It was dark,” Chip answered.

  “I know it wa
s dark. We couldn’t actually see it. But we didn’t know that until we tried.”

  “So you say,” Chip said and drained his beer. “But you can’t prove it, can you?”

  “We didn’t meet anybody, if that’s what you mean. But we were together. Can you prove where you were?”

  “With Nina,” Chip said, with a glance at her.

  “Except for when Nina was downstairs letting us in.”

  “There wasn’t enough time to run downstairs and out the front door and around the house and up the stairs to the apartment to smother the old lady and get back to bed before Nina got back upstairs,” Chip said, in the tone of one who had tried it and failed.

  Grudgingly, I had to admit he had a point. We hadn’t spent that much time talking to Nina. And we’d heard the bedsprings squeak when we reached the second floor, so they’d been back at it by then.

  Then again, it’s possible for a single person to make bedsprings squeak, and make the bed knock against the wall. Granted, I was pretty sure we’d heard two voices, but I was willing to give that the benefit of the doubt, since I didn’t like Chip. If I had to pin the murder on someone in the B and B, I’d rather have it be Chip than anyone else. I didn’t know Vonnie and Groot very well, although I didn’t dislike them, and I liked Gloria and Hildy well enough. If anyone in the house had murdered Frenetta, I wanted it to be Chip.

  Chapter Seven

  As soon as the waitress came back with our drinks and menus, Chip and Nina left. Nina hadn’t even finished her beer when Chip dragged her away. And I don’t think she wanted to leave, because she was looking over her shoulder as she went. It might have been the beer, but I think it was probably Rafe who was the draw.

  We glanced at the menus—there were only a half dozen items to choose from—and then Rafe ordered a shrimp po’boy with onion rings, and I had to settle for a chicken sandwich with shoestring potatoes, since there was no roast beef to be had.

  The waitress took our orders and the menus, and I turned to Rafe. “Do you think he did it?”

  “Chip?”

  I nodded.

  “Dunno,” Rafe said.

  “What about Nina? Do you think she did it?”

  He shook his head.

  “Why not?”

  He shrugged. I sniffed. “Let me guess. It’s because she’s blonde and pretty with big breasts.”

  “Is she?” He smiled. “I didn’t notice.”

  “Sure.” I rolled my eyes. “When she’s forty, she’s going to look sixty-five, you know.”

  He didn’t answer, and I added, “You said the police think Frenetta was drugged before she was killed, right?”

  He nodded.

  “Does that mean whoever killed her wanted to be sure she couldn’t fight back?”

  “It’s possible,” Rafe said.

  “That might mean a woman did it. Not that that’s very helpful. Other than Groot and Chip—and you—everyone in the house is a woman.”

  “Groot’s old,” Rafe said. “Older than Frenetta by a couple years, at least. He might could prefer that she wasn’t in a position to fight back.”

  “Chip wouldn’t care,” I said. “He’s young. Big. And looks strong. Or at least not wimpy. Between the two of you, you could probably take him with one hand tied behind your back. But he’d be plenty strong enough to smother an old woman.”

  Rafe didn’t deny that he could annihilate Chip with one hand tied behind his back. Instead he just said, “If a woman killed her, most likely the drugs in the wine was to keep her from fighting back. But a man coulda killed her and just wanted to avoid the fight, too. It’s hard to make murder look natural.”

  I’d take his word for it, because I wasn’t about to ask how he knew. I was going to continue the conversation, though, when I voice said, “Mind if I join you?”

  The voice was female. So was the speaker. Very much so.

  Here was someone middle age had treated very well, indeed. I put her above forty, maybe closer to forty-five, but she had the toned body of a woman twenty years younger. I wished I looked as good, even when I wasn’t pregnant. She was dressed in skin-tight jeans and a tank-top, one that emphasized toned arms and a very nice—natural—pair of breasts. The face was natural, too: high cheekbones, full lips, and big blue eyes with long lashes, under platinum blond hair—also natural, best as I could see—pulled straight back into a heavy chignon at the back of her head.

  It should have made her look prim. The first time Rafe and I went on a date, I’d styled my hair like that, the better to indicate that there’d be no hanky-panky going on. I’d dressed in a school-marm blouse and calf-length skirt for the same reason. It hadn’t worked. Rafe had told me the clothes and hair was a turn-on, because it made him wonder what I’d look like without the clothes and with my hair down.

  So much for that plan.

  Anyway, this gorgeous—slightly older—woman stood next to the table, grinning down at us—or at Rafe. I started to bristle, and was about to set her straight, when Rafe told her, “Sure, Sheriff. Have a seat.”

  Sheriff? This was the sheriff whose office he’d spent the afternoon in?

  She grinned at me. “You must be the wife. Good to meet you.”

  She held out a hand. I took it, because it would be rude not to. “Savannah Martin. Collier.”

  “Tallulah Engebretsen. You can call me Lou.”

  Or maybe I’d just call her ‘Sheriff,’ the way Rafe did. “What can we do for you?”

  “I saw you sitting here,” Sheriff Engebretsen said easily, “and figured I’d introduce myself.”

  “Uh-huh. I suppose you were here with someone else, and he or she just left? Maybe right behind Chip and Nina?”

  Rafe chuckled. The sheriff looked a bit chagrined. “Something like that.”

  “So you’re following us? Why? We didn’t have anything to do with Frenetta’s death. We never even met her.”

  “So your husband told me,” Lou Engebretsen said, with a glance at him. “If it makes you feel better, I’ve got people on all y’all, to make sure nobody tries to leave town before I figure this out.”

  That did make me feel better, actually.

  “Are you any closer?”

  “We’ve pretty much eliminated the two of you,” the sheriff said. “The sleeping pills were in the wine. It was a new bottle. She opened it after dinner, and had a glass while she was preparing breakfast for this morning. The bottle was in the kitchen during that time, and people came and went. Anyone in the house might have added something to it.”

  “Except Rafe and me,” I said. “We were still in Alabama at dinner-time.”

  “And that’s why I’ve pretty much eliminated you,” the sheriff answered.

  ‘Pretty much’ was better than nothing. “So was it one of the other guests?”

  “It seems likely,” Lou said. “None of the locals have come forward to say they were in the B and B last night. And none of the guests reported seeing any strangers.”

  “So I guess the guests are trying to blame each other?”

  “The ladies from Boston are blaming Chip,” Lou said. “Chip’s blaming everybody but himself. And Vonnie thinks it was a natural death.”

  “Any chance it was?”

  Lou shook her head. “Doesn’t look that way. After cleaning up the kitchen, Frenetta took the bottle up to her apartment and finished it. It was still there this morning. Empty. And we can tell, from the residue in both the bottle and glass, that someone added a sleeping medication to it. In the form of ground-up pills, most likely.”

  Not much chance that was accidental, no. “Could she have done it herself?”

  “I wouldn’t think so,” Lou said. “Most sleeping pills don’t mix well with alcohol. And she wasn’t stupid. She would have taken one or the other, but not both.”

  “Unless she was suicidal. She wasn’t, was she?”

  “If she was, no one’s mentioned it,” Lou said.

  “The pills didn’t kill her,” Rafe added,
“even mixed with the alcohol. The mixture just knocked her out.”

  “And then someone went upstairs and smothered her.”

  Lou nodded. “We’re not sure if she left her door unlocked or whether her murderer had a key. Or whether she let someone in.”

  “Surely she wouldn’t have gone to sleep with someone there.”

  “Depends on who it was,” Lou said. “If it was her sister...”

  “Sister?”

  “Vonnie,” Lou said.

  “Vonnie is Frenetta’s sister?”

  “Yes,” Lou said. “Why?”

  Why? Well, first of all because I hadn’t known. And then— “I guess I’m just surprised she left it to us to check on Frenetta this morning. If it was my sister who didn’t come down to breakfast, I would be the first one up those stairs.”

  Of course, I was a perky twenty-eight, at least when I wasn’t carrying ten extra pounds of baby. Vonnie was older. Mid-sixties, at least. Maybe she had a hard time getting around. So far I’d only seen her sitting down. For all I knew, she was in a wheelchair.

  “Frenetta and Vonnie didn’t always get along,” Lou said.

  “Why not?” Bad blood might be a good reason for murder.

  “When Mrs. Wallin died,” Lou said, and added, “Frenetta and Vonnie’s mother—”

  I nodded.

  “—she left the house to Frenetta. Vonnie had married and moved to Tallahassee by then, and Frenetta was the one who stayed in Davenport and took care of her mother. I guess the old lady figured Vonnie didn’t need the house, but Frenetta would be taken care of if she had it.”

  That made sense. “So what happened?”

  “Vonnie tried to contest the will and lost. Frenetta turned the place into a B and B and ran it on her own. The sisters didn’t speak for years. Maybe decades. It’s only been in the past year or so that Vonnie and her husband have been coming back here.”

  “That’s sad.” Good that they had made up, I guess, before it was too late. But sad that the sisters had lost so much time together, and wouldn’t have any more, now that Frenetta was gone.

  Lou shrugged. “Anyway, the sleeping medicine in the wine would have been enough to knock Frenetta out, but not enough to kill her. And if she’d smothered herself, I would have expected you to find her facedown in the pillows. But you didn’t.”