“Look inside.”
I held the bottle up to the yellow light spilling from my kitchen window. A small tube of paper hid inside, the bottom reddish from whatever dregs of liquor it had soaked up.
With two fingers, Captain Herrick held up a Post-It note that said “CASKET.”
“Someone left the bottle on my deck for you. It’s a message in a bottle.”
The old couple on board shifted to the gunwale for a peek.
“Is it okay to get down now?” the husband asked.
“Yes, I’m very sorry,” I said. “We’re talking shop. I didn’t mean to hold you up.” I set the bottle down on the dock and helped them climb down. “We’ve had a rough day.”
“No worries, Dear. It’s hard to mix love and work.”
Captain Herrick and I glanced at each other.
“Oh, we’re not together,” Herrick said.
“Definitely not,” I added.
The woman swung a leg over the gunwale. They were in their early seventies at best, but enviably spry. “Relax dear, your secret’s safe with us. We’re not married either. Call me Doris and call him Bob.”
“I didn’t see those names on the list tonight.”
“Exactly,” Doris said with a wink.
“I’m Rosie. It’s nice to meet you both. Did you have a good tour of the harbor?”
“Yes, very nice,” Doris said.
“But a little rocky,” Bob added. “Tell me, Rosie, are the rumors true?”
“What rumors?”
“They’re saying you set a convict on fire.”
My eyes bulged. “What? Who’s saying that?”
“Your Facebook page is flooded with comments.”
I whipped out my phone and checked. He was right. My page was getting even more traffic than after the Marie Claire piece. The comments were piling up, many linking to YouTube.
I closed it before I gave into my temptation to click, my cheeks burning.
“But we don’t believe in that hocus-pocus nonsense. You’re no more a witch than I’m a wizard. It actually turned out pretty well for us,” Doris added and nudged Bob in the ribs. “More privacy, right?”
Bob grinned. “Definitely.”
I glanced at Captain Herrick. He shrugged.
I tried my best to act as if the news didn’t bother me. I wanted to believe that controversy was good for business—that any exposure, even negative, would drive more traffic to my inn. After all, some of the rubberneckers who stopped for a peek at a flaming car on the side of the road had money to burn.
But I wasn’t sure the idea that all publicity was good publicity was true.
Still, the rooms were waiting—and the groceries weren’t going to pay for themselves. I faked a smile. “Right this way.” I grabbed the empty bottle of Red Rum and led them up to the inn, inadvertently stomping the deck hard enough to pop a few nails loose.
If only the bottle hadn’t been empty.
While sitting at the kitchen table listening to Eldritch regale Bob and Doris with tales of his heroics, I ignored the warnings of my better self and went back to my Facebook page.
Ever since that smear campaign against me in high school, I tried to stay off social media—except, of course, when I had to dig up dirt on a murderer. Recently, however, I had taken out a Facebook page for Red and Breakfast. I fully believed the social media giant was poisonous for democracy and wished I could avoid it, but I also thought fossil fuels were bad for the environment, yet had few affordable options in the transportation department. All the businesses were doing the Facebook thing, so if I wanted to compete and be responsive to my guests, I needed a presence there too.
The header at the top of my Facebook page was a generic stock photo I had found online of a mug of hot chocolate. I had originally used one of the nice photos from the Marie Claire spread, but the publisher had immediately sent me a takedown notice claiming copyright infringement. In what crazy world did I not have the right to use a photo of my own building?
The comment section on my last post—put up a week ago—was already teeming with vitriol. My gut told me not to read the comments, but I doom-scrolled down the list anyway.
A charming little inn? More like charmed.
Witch room should I stay in?
What’s the difference between Phyllis Martin and Rosie Casket? Nothing. They both have fire crotches.
How the heck had these anonymous posters found out what had happened at the prison so quickly?
And then I realized it.
A link.
To YouTube.
Someone on YouTube was sending them here.
I winced and clicked on the blue text. I feared I would be sent to some crazy fringe propaganda site or to some fake news article about a conspiracy to dethrone the reigning ping-pong champion in Japan or something.
But instead, the link sent me to another Facebook feed where someone had posted a black and white video.
I held the screen up to my face.
In the video, I was sitting in front of a pane of glass. The angle was from behind my shoulder. It was a security video from the prison, this one taken from the opposite side of the room, and it was trending faster than a forest fire.
My stomach sank. How had they gotten their hands on that video?
There was only one explanation.
A leaker. Someone inside the prison must have leaked it.
I remembered God’s quip as I left the guard booth: I’m looking forward to the highlight reel.
Someone far richer than I believed in the power of publicity, but I wasn’t so sure that advice applied to a woman spontaneously combusting in your presence, especially when your business was renting out rooms in an old Victorian cottage with a cozy fireplace.
As I read the rest of the hateful comments, I grew tenser and tenser. I flexed every muscle in my body to resist the urge to fire back and spew some defensive vitriol of my own. In fact, I had fallen so far down the rabbit hole of anonymous hatred that I didn’t even realize when Eldritch called for hot
