A Timely Vision

“But I’m sure Kevin will be able to find lots of year-round help once he opens.” Trudy smiled and crinkled her pretty eyes at him. She didn’t cause those frown lines for just anyone.

“Thanks,” he said. “I hope all of you are suitably impressed enough to recommend me to the locals. I plan to pay a good salary too. With benefits.”

Shayla leaned against him (she’d managed to sit between Kevin and Tim again). “Don’t make it sound too appealing, sugar. I might give up my shop and come to work for you.”

Tim leaned his elbows on the table beside his empty lasagna plate. “Just how is it an ex-FBI agent came up with enough money to buy the Blue Whale and do all these renovations and still have enough to hire help?”

If Kevin noticed Tim’s irritated tone, he didn’t let on. “Not everyone in the FBI comes from poor families. My parents were very well-off. They left me a nice nest egg. It was one of the reasons I decided to get out.”

“But wasn’t it exciting?” Shayla asked. “All that cloak-and-dagger, spy rings and late night meetings in smoky nightclubs. It sounds sexy to me, baby.”

Kevin laughed. “As I was telling Dae, it gets old. I didn’t want to spend my whole life chasing bad guys. It’s a good game for someone right out of college. I like being an innkeeper. Bad paint and rotten wood are about as exciting as I want nowadays.”

“Not to mention dead men in your upstairs,” Nancy quipped. “Maybe you can leave the job, but it never really leaves you.”

“You might be right,” Kevin conceded. “I hope the dead man upstairs was the only thing left over from the previous owner. By the way, does anyone know anything about him? The previous owner, I mean. Bunk something, wasn’t it?”

Tim laughed. “Of course. That’s like asking if you can find your way from Corolla to Duck! Old Bunk Whitley is a legend in these parts. People say he bought the Blue Whale with smuggling money, like so many other people in this part of the world.”

“But people also say the pirate gold he claimed to have found is what did him in too,” I added. “Gramps swears the ghosts of the pirates came to get old Bunk. That’s why they never found his body.”

Kevin finished his wine and glanced around the room. “I hope we’re not about to find another surprise. If old Bunk Whitley is stuck in some closet, I don’t want to know about it. But it’s a nice ghost story. Maybe I can use that in my brochure.”

Trudy shuddered. “Isn’t one dead body enough? And talk about legends! Everyone around here knows about Wild Johnny Simpson. How he broke Miss Elizabeth’s heart. How he courted both sisters who were equally beautiful, but he only wanted Miss Elizabeth. How Miss Mildred never forgave her sister for taking him from her. Now that’s the stuff of legends. Real legends, not some stupid pirate ghost.”

At that moment, there was a loud thump that rattled the windows in the bar. Kevin got to his feet and raced outside. We followed him and stood in the courtyard with the mermaid fountain, staring up at the roof, silhouetted against the dark sky.

“What is it?” Nancy whispered. “I don’t see anything.”

“Is it a pirate ghost come to get Trudy for being so ignorant?” Shayla demanded, nudging Trudy with her elbow.

“I wish it was something that interesting.” Kevin ran his hand through his dark brown hair. “It’s the roof. I was worried about some soft spots yesterday. See that hole up there? Unless we find Bunk Whitley’s body in it, I’m going to have to put a new roof on over there.”

Chapter 12

I went into work early the next morning. It was one of those cooler mornings when the fog swirls around the houses and lays across the sound like a blanket. Gramps offered to drive me to Missing Pieces on the golf cart, but I wanted to walk.

I had thought I’d be up all night thinking about everything that happened at the Blue Whale, but I fell asleep two minutes after I climbed into bed. That meant I needed some time to think before I opened the shop. I had promised Kevin I’d come back this afternoon to start painting, if the morning was dry. He planned to continue with his painting on the ground floor despite the new hole in the roof that needed patching.

I walked along Duck Road, glad for the early morning quiet. The bushes and shrubs dripped with the heavy fog. It was like being wrapped in gooey, wet cotton candy. I remember when I was a kid and hid outside under the bushes to keep from being seen. It’s much harder as an adult to hide or even get away for a few minutes to think things through.

But what to think? If there was a ghost at the Blue Whale last night, he or she didn’t give me any answers I could use to help Miss Mildred. We still had no clue who really killed Miss Elizabeth, let alone who killed Wild Johnny thirty years ago. I wondered, as I listened to some birds chirping from inside a thicket, if the two crimes were related. It seemed likely to me. What were the chances that we’d find Wild Johnny’s body right after Miss Elizabeth was killed? On the other hand, no one could guess when Johnny’s body would be found. The whole thing was giving me a headache.

The Duck Shoppes and the boardwalk were hazy in the fog, with seagulls folding their wings beneath the clapboard eaves, waiting for the sun. I headed to town hall first to surprise Nancy before she got there. I thought if I returned the note she’d lost to her desk, she’d think it had been misplaced. She could call the chief and tell him what he needed to know.

I slipped my key in the lock, glancing around now since I’d had my purse stolen. I was trying to be more aware of my surroundings, as Chief Michaels always advised. It appeared to be only the seagulls and me. None of the shops were open. I pushed open the door and closed it quickly, locking it behind me.

The Post-it wasn’t hard to find. Of course it helped that I knew exactly where to look. I reached my fingers along the floor beside the file cabinet and snatched it out along with a few dust bunnies. With a flourish, I spread it out flat on Nancy’s desk. She’d be surprised when she came in.

As I flattened the rounded edges and the part that wouldn’t stick anymore, I read the note. It was brief—“I need to talk to you about Millie. Silas Butler. 252- 411-9750.”

I stopped flattening for a moment and looked at the note in disbelief. Silas Butler? Everyone knew about Silas Butler. He was Elizabeth and Mildred’s younger brother. A ne’er-do-well who was thrown out of the army. He’d come home to Duck in disgrace only to take up gambling and any other illegal activity he could find. He was legendary for stealing a poor box from the Duck Presbyterian Church in 1964.

The unthinkable had happened after that. He was killed in the 1970s running some kind of scheme or selling drugs. I’d seen his grave marker in Duck Cemetery a hundred times. My mother told me once that there was a song written about the Bad Butler.

This couldn’t be the same person. There were probably plenty of Silas Butlers in the world. But how many who wanted to talk to the chief about Millie?

I glanced at the clock on the wall. It was one of those standard round clocks, black and white with hands that crawl from one number to the next when you’re bored. I had at least an hour before Nancy came in. I dialed the number on the Post-it and waited for someone to pick up.

“Sea Oats Senior Care.” The voice at the other end of the line was cheerful for this hour of the morning.

At first I couldn’t think what to say, and she repeated her opening line. I gave myself a hard mental slap and said, “I’m sorry. Where are you located?”

“We’re in Kitty Hawk.” She gave me the address. “Do you need directions?”

“No, thanks. I was thinking about visiting Silas Butler later today. I hope he’s feeling all right.”

“As far as I know. He’s been popular here lately. Lots of visitors. That’s a good thing, though.”

I thanked her again and hung up. Silas Butler. It couldn’t be coincidence. But what could it be?

I went and sat down in my office and considered the possibilities. Silas Butler was dead. Nancy probably wouldn’t have realized the importance of this when she took the message because she had only lived in Duck for a few years. The Bad Butler was mostly forgotten now. Even we can’t recall all our folklore. But Chief Michaels would know.