By changing the topic, I’d carelessly trapped myself. The dining room was nearly empty and the lunch crowd wouldn’t be in for a while. I had no excuse. I set Rowena’s box of muffins in front of her, and while she searched for money in her gargantuan purse, I took off my apron and told Bridgy I’d be AWOL for a couple of minutes.
During the short walk across the parking lot, Rowena asked about Miguel and then segued to Skully.
“I heard he was in a coma. Pretty much at death’s door. You say you spoke to him? And he answered?”
“It’s really sad. He has no idea what happened to him at the Point, although the rest of his memory appears quite intact. He recognized Bridgy and me, remembered the café.” I shrugged. “It’s so hard to predict what a head injury will do. He might never remember what happened.”
As magnificent as Skully’s wire jewelry was, I was enamored by the down-home charm of the fishing line pieces. Rowena had a fairly large quantity of both. Although I intended to look, not buy, I found a necklace my mom would love. A calico scallop shell pendant shaded from light pink to a darker mauve hung from fishing line that Skully had woven with a macramé-like touch. Its aura was delicate and strong all at the same time, just like mom.
I asked Rowena to set it aside for me, saying I’d come in tomorrow to pay. Always pushy about every dollar, she asked me to come back after work, and she pouted when I said I had an appointment at the library to do some research right after the café closed.
“You’re going snooping, aren’t you? Trying to find out what happened to Delia? You think I don’t know? The entire island knows that Augusta recruited you to help her look into the murder. Well you listen here. With a killer running all over the island, only a fool would keep on snooping. I didn’t think you were that kind of fool.”
Chapter Twenty-four ||||||||||||||||||||
When I returned to the café Bridgy was straightening tables and chairs. She looked at me with one eyebrow raised in a definite question, which I answered immediately.
“It was easier to go over to the Emporium and buy a gift for my mother than to waste my breath trying to tell Rowena that I refuse to intervene between Augusta and the nephews. You were right,” I added, “Rowena’s life and death issue is all about money—her commission when the nephews sell the island to the company Tighe Kostos represents.”
Then I started laughing.
“OMG! You didn’t tell her, right?” Bridgy was jumping around like a flea. “We agreed we wouldn’t tell anyone.”
“Oh, calm down. Rowena’s the last person I’d tell. She deserves to get skunked when the truth comes out. Skully’s a quiet man. If he wants the world to know he’s Delia’s widower and heir, he can grant Cady an interview and have the story printed for the world to read. My lips are zipped.” I closed my mouth tight and ran my index finger and thumb across my lips as if locking a plastic sandwich bag.
We got louder and louder until finally Ophie poked her head all the way out the pass-through.
“You two are worse than a couple of tweens stopping in for a shake after school.” And she ducked back into the kitchen, which only set us laughing harder until the front door opened. The new snowbird members of the Potluck Book Club came in, accompanied by two men, recently sunburned, whom I took to be their husbands.
“We could hear you gals giggling all the way across the parking lot,” said the one whose name I remembered as Iris, “and I said to Ed—this here is my husband, Ed—‘I told you this is the happiest place in town.’ Is the chef around? I need her to give me the chervil recipe again. I lost it between here and home. And Connie here never wrote it down at all.”
She stopped speaking long enough to look sideways at her negligent friend, but as Bridgy and I so often do, Connie simply ignored her.