“Grandy!” I jerked open the front door. The short, rotund woman standing there threw her arms around me.
Worry lines etched her forehead. “What’s wrong, Eve? All is not well here, is it?”
Whenever my grandmother shows up, I wonder if she is there to rescue me or cause more trouble. We have very similar personalities. Why wouldn’t we? We are blood relatives, and she raised me from the day my parents’ sailboat went down in the Sound. Their bodies were never recovered. I was nine then, and I can hardly remember a time before she came into my life. To me she is my Grandy and my mother.
Madeleine took one look at the woman in the doorway and flew across the room to embrace her.
“It’s my little Madeleine.” Grandy enveloped her in a hug. “You gotten into any trouble lately?”
Madeleine stole a glance in the direction of the kitchen, blushed and shook her head.
Grandy bore a striking resemblance to Paula Dean and was often mistaken for her, but once she opened her mouth, everyone could tell my Grandy wasn’t the famous television cook. Her accent was pure Connecticut blueblood. Her secret was, she wasn’t gentry at all. She had worked most of her life as a servant to the wealthy and was very good at imitating their speech.
“Max and I just got back from a week-long trip and nothing was on our calendar,” she said, “so I thought I’d drive down here to see what was wrong in your life.”
I introduced her. She wiggled bejeweled fingers at everyone in the room then approached Alex with her hand held out. He reached out as if he meant to plant a kiss on her plump fingers, but instead he softly patted it. In return for his gallantry, she gave him one of her famous coquettish smiles. Even at seventy-five my Grandy oozed allure.
“So I see not everything is amiss.” She continued smiling at him. Then she turned her attention to Frida. “But something is. A police detective, huh?” She grabbed the glass out of my hand and took a sip of it, wrinkling her nose at the taste. Plopping herself onto the couch, she patted the cushion next to her as a gesture for me to join her.
“Max isn’t with you?” I asked. “I thought you said there was nothing on the schedule for a while.”
Her eyes slid away from my gaze for a moment, then reconnected. “He’s doing an overhaul of the boat engine. He said I should get out of his way and, since I had a dream about you last night, I thought I’d stop by.”
Max was Grandy’s third husband. The two of them ran a charter fishing boat out of Key West. Like all the Key West men over fifty, Max sported the Hemingway beard and mustache combination. He even entered the Papa Hemingway look-alike contest, which he had won several years in a row. Not lately, however. For, while “Papa” never aged, Max did, and the loss of hair put him at a disadvantage against the younger competitors.
“Enough about me.” Grandy said, turning her attention to Frida. “What kind of trouble has Jerry gotten Eve into now?’
“Jerry?” asked Frida.
“My Eve is a good girl, within reason, of course. She does have her playful side, as I’m sure you’ve discovered, Mr. Montgomery.” She threw a suggestive look his way.
“Call me Alex.”
“Alex. Anyway, having a husband who plays as loose with the rules as Jerry does is bound to bring on a load of trouble.”
“You’ll be happy to know I divorced him.”
“When?”
“Yesterday. He’s getting married again, though. Soon.”
Frida, Alex, and Madeleine filled Grandy in on Valerie’s death, the car bombing and my more recent encounter with the knife.
“So how’s the black SUV fit into this?” she asked.
“Huh?” I said.
“The one that keeps driving by here. There it goes again.”
We all ran to the window and, sure enough, a black SUV with chrome wheels slowed in front of the house then sped up again, probably because of all the faces staring out through the glass.
“Half of the people in this town own a black pickup or SUV. Anybody get the plate number?” asked Frida. “I couldn’t see because the sun was reflecting off of it.”
No one else had even thought to check.
Frida got out of her chair. “I’m going out to the cruiser. If the vehicle comes by again, I’ll follow it. You guys stay away from the window so we don’t scare him off. Before I go, Eve, I’ve got some information about your car.”
“Faulty wiring?”
“In a manner of speaking. Someone planted an incendiary device under your car, but whoever planted the bomb was incredibly stupid. That was the worst homemade bomb the arson boys had ever seen. It was dumb luck that it went off when it did. It was just as likely to blow when they were planting it as when you were driving.”
Oh, now, that was comforting.
With the words “incredibly stupid” and “dumb luck,” an image of my ex-husband flashed through my mind. Why was that, do you think?
“I can give you more details later.” Frida dashed out to the police car, got in, and slid down in the seat. After a few moments, her head popped up and she signaled us to get away from the window.
Speaking of “incredibly stupid.” We all took the seats that we had occupied before, except Madeleine, who slid beneath the window so that she could peer over the sill every few seconds.
“Go make some coffee.” I waved her away from the window.
Madeleine looked at me with hurt in her eyes but stormed across the room and into the kitchen. I remembered the earlier episode with the iced tea just a little too late. By letting her roam free in my kitchen, I was just asking for more trouble, but I didn’t have the heart to tell her not to bother with the coffee.
Alex turned his attention to Grandy. “Are you psychic? You said you felt something was wrong here?”
She chuckled at first, and then erupted into rumbling laughter. “I wish I were. I had a dream about you, darling, but that was after I got the message from you on my cellphone.”
“I left that days ago.”
“We get lousy cell service when we’re out on the water. What’s up? Something to do with Jerry, right?”
“Kind of.” I wanted to talk to Grandy about Valerie Sanders, but I didn’t want to have the conversation in front of the others, not even my best friend Madeleine, and certainly not Alex. “Madeleine. Come out here.”
“I’m making coffee like you said.”
“Never mind the coffee. I could use a pizza or some ribs. I’m starved. Maybe you and Alex could do a run to the Burnt Biscuit and get us all something.” I turned my attention to Grandy. “I’ll bet you’re hungry after your drive, right?”
“They deliver. I’ll put in a call.” Madeleine grabbed the kitchen wall phone. “What does everyone want?”
I gave up. “Grandy and I haven’t seen each other in months. We can catch up while you two do the hunting and gathering thing.”
I thought that was pretty direct, but Madeleine persisted, trying to fill my shoes as a good hostess and oblivious to the request for privacy.
“I’m sure you have a lot to say to each other, but you need food, Eve. Besides, they deliver. We can save gas …”
Alex grabbed the receiver out of her hand and led her gently to the front door. “We’ll be back soon,” he said, waving.
Madeline protested, “We don’t even know if they want ribs or pizza. With or without fries or slaw. Coke or Pepsi—”
“We’ll get a little of everything.” Alex opened the door and nudged her through.
I watched them drive off in Alex’s car. Frida’s head appeared over the top of the seat of her cruiser. She shot a look of disgust my way and shook her head, then disappeared once more below the level of the car window.
With everyone gone, Grandy and I could talk girl stuff, but she surprised me.
“I’ve got some news for you. Max and I have decided to downsize a bit.”
“What’s wrong?” I was suddenly aware of my Grandy’s advancing years and worried that she and Max might be having health problems. “Are you and Max okay?”
She laughed, but I saw worry in her eyes.
“Oh, we’re fine. It’s the economy that’s the problem. We’ve been running charters out of Key West for over twenty years now. The dock fees are killing us. They go up every year and our boat keeps getting older, just like us. In order to pick up enough charters to pay our fees and make money, we’d have to re-equip the boat or get a new one. We’re just too damn old for that.” She sighed. “Besides, we don’t have that kind of money. To compete with the other charter companies, we would have to buy a much larger boat.”
She shifted about on the couch and added, “Folks nowadays want to fish, yes, but they also want an upscale experience—Jacuzzi tub in their room, gourmet meals three times a day, fancy dining area, fully equipped bar. We can’t afford that.” She jumped up from the couch and walked over to the window.
I steered her back toward the couch.
“I thought having a clean place to sleep and tasty grub for a few days was all anybody could want on a fishing charter,” she said. “I always put together tuna salad sandwiches or burgers and sometimes we even cook the day’s catch or steaks out on the grill. Now they want a flat screen TV and cocktails delivered to them in the lounge. We don’t have a lounge and we’re not getting one, either.”
She gave me a defiant look. “We can’t pay our docking fees any longer. We’re busted, honey.”
I put my arms around her soft, sloping shoulders. I’d never seen my Grandy beaten by anything. This was a first. She was always the one who led the way out of any trouble—financial or otherwise. She had been my compass in all the storms of adolescence. She was the only one who had warned me that marrying Jerry would be a mistake. Everyone else had agreed with her, but none had the courage to say so to my face.
“What will you do?” Any troubles I might be having seemed miniscule in comparison to the idea of Grandy without hope.
She shook herself free of my embrace.
“Now, let’s not get too maudlin here. We’ll manage.”
“You could live with me.”
“Have you lost your mind? We’re not land people. We like a boat under our feet. If I can’t feel the rock of the waves, I can’t get to sleep.”
“So, what are your plans?”
“We’re heading for the marina in Key Largo, where a vacancy recently came up. Got a deal there. We’ll only be doing day trips. Anyways, it’s a lot closer to you than Key West. You can come down for a weekend to visit.”
She reached up, patted my cheek and smiled. There was still concern written on her beautiful, cherubic face, but I could tell that she was finished talking about her woes for the evening.
“So, in your message you said that Valerie accused you of being a thief.”
“Actually, she said that she never would have brought her items to our shop if she had known that I was married to Jerry. Then she put two and two together and realized that I was your granddaughter. That seemed to bother her just as much as my relationship with Jerry. She accused you of being a thief, saying that the apple didn’t fall too far from the tree. I kind of popped her in the puss.”
“I suppose you want to know what that remark was all about.” Grandy fixed me with her round blue eyes.
“I didn’t believe her for a moment. But, now she’s dead, and I keep thinking that her comment might be relevant somehow. Alex thinks that whoever killed her was really after me.”
“I can see how he might arrive at that conclusion, given the similarity in looks.”
“How do you know that we looked alike?”
“Oh, come now. Even as children, you looked alike, age-difference aside. Valerie’s nanny used to take her to the park in West Hartford, the same one I would take you to when the weather was nice. Your parents lived just a few blocks away.”
“How did you know Valerie’s family?”
“I worked for them when I was a young woman. I was one of their maids.”
A quick smile created a tiny dimple, indicating a half-truth.
“Valerie’s grandfather was my lover.”