“Should I bother to go to the store?” she asked. “Is everything gone?”
Mariska stood straight to catch her breath. “All of it. Paper towels, milk, eggs, meat—”
“Isn’t that meat?” asked Charlotte, nodding at the square peg refusing to enter a tiny round hole of space in the freezer drawer.
Mariska glanced down and spoke with a heavy heart. “It’s corned beef.”
“Oh. Yikes. Things are desperate.” Charlotte leaned to the side to survey Mariska’s chances of getting the corned beef in the freezer. “You might want to put that stuff in the regular refrigerator,” she suggested.
Mariska kicked closed her drawer freezer and opened the refrigerator. A solid wall of food stuffs stared back.
“Or not,” murmured Charlotte. “Well, I think I have a new twelve-pack of paper towels if you need to borrow any. That could last me the rest of the year.”
Bob held a Christmas-themed cloth napkin to his lips and dabbed. “We’ll be fine. Mariska has enough linens to last us until twenty-sixty-eight.”
Charlotte huffed. “This is crazy. Why do people over-shop?”
“They’re afraid,” said Mariska.
“But if everyone shopped normally it wouldn’t be a problem.”
“Kids,” suggested Bob.
Mariska slid a bag of shredded cheddar cheese into her refrigerator’s lunchmeat drawer as if she were threading a needle. “You think it’s kids buying everything?”
Bob shook his head. “No, using everything. The last time Darla brought her granddaughter over, that little terror slapped the toilet paper roll until it looked like a miniature Kilimanjaro piling up underneath it. Parents need to buy forty-eight rolls of toilet paper a day.”
As if invoked by her mention, Mariska’s front door flung open and Darla appeared, looking flush and triumphant.
“Wow, that was an entrance,” said Charlotte.
Darla closed the door behind her with another flourish. “Guess who’s coming to sit out the hurricane at my house?”
Charlotte scowled. “Who comes to a modular home development for a hurricane? That’s like hearing a tornado is coming and running for the nearest trailer park.”
“Who?” asked Mariska, who’d given up trying to find a spot for the corned beef and instead threw it into the sink.
Charlotte leaned down to elbow Bob in the shoulder. “I think you’re having corned beef tonight.”
“Yummy,” said Bob, deadpan.
Darla moved into the kitchen. “I’ll give you a hint. What was the first thing you thought when you saw all those snowbirds buying all our food?”
“That they should go back home where they belong,” said Mariska.
Darla pointed at her. “Right. And what could make them go back home?”
“An early hurricane, you’d think,” said Charlotte.
“No.” Darla tilted her head, reconsidering. “I mean yes, if there’s an evacuation order I guess, but no, that’s not where I’m going with this.”
“End of season?” said Mariska.
Darla shook her head. “No, I mean what would make them go home early.”
Mariska blinked at her friend. “If they blew all their money on toilet paper and didn’t have any left for vacation?”
“Nooo...”
“Broken beach chair?” Charlotte sensed Mariska and Darla might play their guessing game all night and decided to jump in with stupid ideas to move things along.
Clearly exasperated, Darla waved her hands in the air to silence the room. “Okay, okay, okay. One last hint. The answer is bat-crap crazy.”
Charlotte’s mind flashed the image of Stephanie, her boyfriend Declan’s crazy ex, who she was ninety-nine-percent sure was also a serial killer.
But, no, don’t go there.
Darla didn’t know about Stephanie’s most nefarious exploits. Plus, why would Stephanie stay at Darla’s house?
Cross out Stephanie.
If this mystery person was staying at Darla’s, it had to be someone who didn’t already live in Pineapple Port. Someone Darla knew... Someone who wanted to leave where they lived and stay somewhere a little...farther inland, maybe? Someone who could make even the most pleasant, mid-western snowbird want to pack up and head back to the sand-less, ocean-less world they—
Charlotte felt her eyes grow wide.
“Oh no.”
Darla clocked her expression shift and yipped with excitement. “You have it, don’t you?”
“Who? Who?” asked Mariska. She looked as if she’d won the lottery and was waiting to hear how much the ticket was worth.
Charlotte raised her hand to her forehead. “Tell me you didn’t call Gloria.”
Darla whooped. “We have a winner.”
Mariska grinned. “Gloria’ll teach those snowbirds a lesson.”
Darla wrung her hands together like a mad scientist. “Oh yes, she will.”
Chapter Six
Stephanie walked out of her “bedroom” scratching at her head and roaring an exaggerated yawn, the muscles in her back feeling a little off. The makeshift cot she used as a bed in her empty back office needed to be replaced with a real bed, but putting a real bed in her office instead of making a decision and renting a new apartment felt like admitting defeat. Buying a real bed for her office meant she was actually living in her office, which felt sad on so many levels. She had to make a decision about staying in Charity—
“Good morning, sunshine.”
Stephanie yelped and jumped back, hands up and fists balled. It took her a moment to focus on the backlit figure standing in the waiting room of her office.
“Mom?”
Jamie Moriarty shifted her weight to her opposite leg and, in doing so, blocked the ray of sun blinding her daughter.
“You’re sleeping in your office now?”
Stephanie squinted as her eyes adjusted. “I get more done this way. Shouldn’t you be in jail?”
Her mother ignored the question and stood, arms crossed against her chest, staring at her.
Stephanie’s fear shifted to annoyance. “What?”
“You can put down your dukes now.”
Stephanie blinked at her still-raised fists and lowered one. She used the other to rub her eye. “Why are you here?”
“I checked your apartment. There are other
