Then a split ran down the wall, right between my feet. It raced between Robert’s legs and he braced himself in the doorframe in a pose like Jesus himself.
“Hold onto your tushies!”
“Where the hell is my mother?” I shouted.
“Your mother? She’s below deck, workin the pump, if you know what I mean, yuh salty lemon!”
Robert didn’t have an accent like that.
What was going on?
I blinked awake, my heart pounding. I wasn’t in my foster father’s house on Pine street. His lawn hadn’t been so overwatered that the soil had turned into boiling surf.
I was on a boat.
The Moaning Lisa.
I was lying on my side on the bench near the stern where Captain Herrick stored the life jackets. Across from me, half a dozen tourists were sitting on the coaming. They all wore their loaner orange vests, their fingers gripping the gunwale hard enough to make their knuckles match their white hair.
An hour ago, they had climbed aboard The Moaning Lisa in downtown Dark Haven, first for a tour of the harbor, and then for a glimpse of the entrance to the cave below Taylor’s Bluff before heading back to my inn for an evening of ghost stories by the fire.
Past the tourists, the pink light from the lighthouse on the cliff cut through the foggy night. Since going electric, the lamp looked more like a cheesy Christmas tree than a beacon that warned people of imminent danger.
A large wave exploded against the side of the boat and sprayed the tourists’ hair.
Captain Herrick turned from the wheel. “We got some weather comin in! It’s best we cut this tour short and dock for some cocoa. What do you say, Miss Casket? Time to take her in?”
I rubbed my cheeks. The salty spray had beaded on my glasses. I had been so tired, I hadn’t even realized I how wet I had gotten.
“That’s fine with me,” I said.
There were a few grumbles among the tourists. “I thought we’d get to see inside the cave tonight,” one said.
“I heard there are more cages in there than Alcatraz,” another one said.
“Sorry folks,” Captain Herrick said. “By order of the mayor, this is the closest we’re allowed to get to the bluff. In lousy weather, that means no peek inside. Ain’t that right, Miss Casket?”
Why did he always have to make me the bad guy? “Captain Herrick is right. With no one manning the lighthouse, they made it illegal to sail within a hundred yards of Taylor’s Bluff.”
“Lousy bureaucrats,” one of the tourists said.
“They’re protecting you from the severity of the tide, but the best—and only—way to learn about the history of Taylor’s Bluff and the secret cave is to hear it from the lighthouse keeper himself.”
One of the little old ladies fanned her face and turned to the woman sitting next to her. “She’s talking about Stanley Eldritch.”
“I heard he saved seventeen people during one nor’easter,” another tourist said.
“I heard he climbed that cliff with a woman strapped to his back,” another one said. “Is that true?”
“You’re looking at her,” I said.
Their eyes widened.
“But my lips are sealed,” I said with a yawn. “If you want more details, you’ll have to hear it directly from Eldritch.”
Captain Herrick pointed over their heads. “If you turn port, you can get a good view of the old inn.”
They all turned. Indeed, about a hundred yards away, the Queen Anne Victorian I had inherited from my mother stood tall and crooked between two forests.
“Please, put away your cameras,” I said. “The surf is too rough tonight for a good selfie, but you can pick up a postcard at the inn if you’d like.”
They groaned and put away their cameras.
I lay back down, shut my eyes, and tried to get another five minutes of rest before docking. This afternoon, I had gone downtown to visit my foster father’s law firm to finalize the language in our liability waiver, but instead of driving back to the house, I had decided to hitch a ride across the harbor. That way, I figured I could grab a few minutes of shut-eye before we docked. After the feature in Marie Claire had put my inn on the map, I had gotten so busy that every waking minute had been spent trying to keep my business afloat.
I was right on the verge of another cat nap and more nightmares about the past when another hard wave rocked the boat. A glass bottle escaped the standing shelter from between Captain Herrick’s galoshes, rolled across the deck, and slammed into the bench under me.
I opened my eyes. It was an empty bottle of liquor. The label was a skull and crossbones, the skull sporting a long red beard, a deep scar in the forehead.
Red Rum.
My face caught fire. I had told that stupid Herrick a billion times that drinking on the clock was not acceptable. I grabbed the bottle and marched wide-legged across the deck.
“What the heck is this?” I demanded. “Are you on the bottle again?”
Captain Herrick didn’t flinch. “I ain’t a baby.”
“And this isn’t a baby bottle.”
Herrick kept his hands on the wheel, grinned at the tourists, and spoke out the side of his mouth. “That is an empty bottle, Miss Casket. They’re collector’s items now.”
My foster father and I had cleared Peter Hardgrave of murder charges, but since his liquor license had been seized by the town, he wasn’t producing any more Red Rum in the tavern basement.
“You promised me you’d stop drinking on the job,” I whispered. “Believe it or not, I know a thing or two about self-medication, and it causes problems. I can’t continue to be in business with someone who’s sloshed all the time.”
“Pull your panties out of your teeth,” he said. “It’s just a bottle. Ain’t no one sloshed tonight.”
“I can smell the hooch on your breath.”
“That ain’t no hooch. That’s the finest rum in New England.”
I adjusted my feet to keep my balance. “We talked about this.”
“No, you talked
