Shayla groaned, and Tim complained, “I wanted to go over there, Dae.”
“Me too,” Shayla added.
“You guys can still come over,” Kevin assured them. “I think Dae might be a little quick on the draw anyway. There’s no drawer behind the cash register. It’s up against the wall. There isn’t anything behind it. I sanded and repainted that whole area. There’s nothing there.” He held out his hand. “Want to look again?”
I realized then that he had held my hand to see if I could tell him where the key was. It made me a little surly, I’m afraid, since I realized something else when he was touching me. I felt more than friendly toward Kevin, despite my protestations to Shayla. “I don’t need to look again. It’s in a drawer behind the cash register in the bar. Take it or leave it. Once I see something, I don’t need to look again.”
“Okay.” He put his hand down. “We’ll all go look after dinner.”
“No thanks to you, Miss Kill Joy,” Shayla hissed across the table.
“No need to be so hard on Dae,” Tim said. “Speaking of which, there might not be anything for the SBI to ask you about tomorrow. When we arrested the boy who took your purse today, we searched his motel room and found a hundred purses stuffed in the closet. He’s been here a few weeks from Virginia Beach. Seems like he has a record there for doing the same thing. The chief and I figure he might have gotten a little rough with Miss Elizabeth when he stole her purse.”
“So you found her purse in his closet?” I asked, hoping he was right and it was an outsider who had killed her.
“Not exactly. Not yet anyway. It’s taking a while to go through all of them,” he explained. “But by this time tomorrow, we could have all the answers.”
I recalled the way the purse snatcher had shoved me against the wall when he’d taken my purse. If he’d done something of that nature to take Miss Elizabeth’s purse, I could understand how she could have been hurt—or worse, in this case.
“And that’s how it goes from a simple purse snatching to armed robbery,” Kevin said. “They find out they can do it, and it escalates.”
“Poor Miss Elizabeth. I hope he killed her dead before he left her out there.” Shayla sighed as she nibbled at a barbecue chicken leg.
“Shayla!” I couldn’t believe she’d say something like that.
“What? I was only hoping she wasn’t left out there, unable to get any help. I’d rather be dead than out there in the dunes barely alive with the gulls and the turtles eating me. You ever see what they can do to a body?”
“Well, we don’t know for sure yet what happened,” Tim said. “I hope we can get a confession from this boy and put it all behind us. The chief and I don’t like loose ends.”
He smiled at me and winked. I’d lost my appetite after Shayla’s remark. The conversation turned to the upcoming dance in the park and other less gruesome things. Everyone was done eating a few minutes later. Shayla and I stepped outside while Tim and Kevin paid for dinner.
“I hope Tim’s right about this kid being the killer,” Shayla said after taking a deep breath of night air, which was sweetly perfumed by the roses blooming near the restaurant entrance.
“So do I. It’s bad enough it happened. I don’t think any of us wants to think someone who lives here did it.”
“I guess it was a close call for you today,” she suggested. “I mean, that boy could’ve killed you too.”
“If he had, I promise I would’ve come back and told you.” I knew Shayla’s one earthly goal (besides money, great boyfriends and everyone’s respect) was to find proof that there was an afterlife. We’d talked about it many times. Shayla and I believed the souls of the dearly departed were never far away. Proving it was another thing.
“You’re a good friend, Dae O’Donnell. If I go first, I swear I’ll come back and visit you too.”
I smiled and encouraged her. We didn’t write anything in blood, so I was probably safe. I believed in the afterlife too, in ghosts. But I didn’t need to prove anything. There was only one person I wanted desperately to see again.
Duck Road was crowded as we walked down to the Blue Whale Inn, on the Atlantic side of town. It took a good fifteen minutes to get there from downtown Duck, a long walk compared to the five minutes between my house and Missing Pieces.
We passed the walk-through where Kevin and I had found Miss Elizabeth. I couldn’t keep from shivering as we neared the spot. The wind off the ocean stirred the sea oats, some of them still smashed flat from the investigation. They’d have to be replanted. I made a mental note to put the public works guys on it.
“The real estate agent said the inn is close to two hundred years old,” Kevin told Shayla as we approached the front of the impressive structure. A large fountain with a mermaid in it splashed in the middle of the circle drive. There was still a place to tie your horse right off the big, wide veranda.
“He’s probably right,” Tim agreed. “This place has been here forever. My grandpa told me it had a speakeasy in the basement during Prohibition. People came out here from all over, even with the long ferry ride from the mainland.”
“Every place out here had a speakeasy,” I added. “We were famous for bootleg rum. Some of it was smuggled in, but some of it just washed up. People out here have always taken advantage of what the sea brought them.”
“It’s a great old place,” Kevin said proudly as he opened the front door. “I found ledger books and old trunks full of stuff in the attic. I don’t think anyone moved anything out of here when the last owner left.”
“Probably because he died and there wasn’t an heir.” Tim followed Kevin into the inn. “It was years before it could go on the market. Then it sat empty for at least twenty years. Must’ve been a mess to clean up.”
“Not so bad.” Kevin flipped on the lights.
Shayla and I toured the old-fashioned lobby. There was a high desk on one side and a large, circular seat in the middle. A few chairs were scattered on the expensive-looking rugs.
“Good furniture,” Shayla observed. “It looks like it’s straight out of the fifties.”
“I suppose he could leave it this way and advertise it as a retro place to stay.” I went behind the tall desk where a bell still sat on the counter. The telephone was one of those heavy black landlines everyone used to have out here.
“Are you two coming into the bar to look for the key or not?” Tim demanded from the doorway.
“This is like a treasure hunt.” Shayla picked up an old Tiffany lamp from the marble-topped table. “You could use some of this stuff in Missing Pieces, Dae. Maybe then you could sell something.”
I made a face at her and thought about the dog painting I’d sold to Kevin. I didn’t see it in the lobby. Maybe he hadn’t had a chance to put it up yet. Not that I was worried about it. It wasn’t one of my important pieces. Still, I like to know the things I sell are appreciated.
I followed Shayla and Tim into the bar area. The bar itself was amazing. It was a large wooden slab, smoothed and polished to a mirrorlike finish. It appeared to have come from a single tree. There were cute old bar stools with rattan seats set up to it and a large number of tables near a big bay window that overlooked the Atlantic. The faint smell of cigar smoke permeated the entire room. I could almost hear the tinkle of ice cubes in glasses of bootleg whiskey and the laughter of the Blue Whale’s patrons enjoying themselves.
“Wow!” Shayla circled around the room a few times. “Look at this! This place could become the hot spot for the whole community. I hope you’re going to have food too.”
“I hope to,” Kevin assured her. “I have a lot more work to do before I open. I’ve been living on the ground floor. I haven’t done any work on the other two floors yet.”