Worse, I feared we might start to forget the original shape. The underwear had stretched large enough to protect the 5o Foot Woman from all those little people getting access to a free upskirt show. Right now, the only thing that preserved some semblance of the truth was our shared experience.
As he spoke, Eldritch paced in front of the fire, his shoulders, quite broad for a man of his age, rimmed with orange. Captain Herrick was sitting on a folding chair by the window, his face blue from his iPad. I hoped he hadn’t tried to snap any covert downblouse shots of any of our guests like he had done with Bella.
“Where’s my mug?” Captain Herrick said when I emerged from the kitchen.
“Get your own,” I said.
“Bah,” Captain Herrick said and drank straight from his hip flask.
I handed Eldritch the last mug. “It was actually a truck.”
“What?”
“You said you came down from the tower to investigate the headlights. I’m telling you it was a truck that had parked in the ditch. A turquoise pickup truck.”
Eldritch stared at me and then took a sip of hot chocolate and smiled for the guests. “We don’t know that, Red. It was a vehicle. That’s all we know.”
“It was Peter Hardgrave’s truck. A fleetside Apache. The same truck I gave you.”
Eldritch looked at me blankly, a mustache of chocolate on his lip. “Where’s this comin from, Red?”
“I’ll tell you later,” I whispered. “Finish your story.”
I sat on the stairs and swiped through my phone while Eldritch continued.
“Anyway, when I got to the ground, I saw this little girl running at me frantically. She bumped into me and fell to the ground. I tried to help her up, but she pointed at the red stain on my smock and screamed and ran away, shouting ‘Old-Man Eldritch killed my sister!’”
The audience gasped.
I smiled. This part always woke them up.
“I didn’t even get to finish my shift before my lawn lit up in red and blue,” Eldritch said. “I got hauled straight down to the police station. Anyhow, that’s the way that me and Red met,” Eldritch said. He pointed to me on the stairs and I waved. “And we’ve been friends ever since. Ladies and gents, I give you your host, and owner of Red and Breakfast, Rosie Casket.”
The tourists clapped. As an opener, it always played well. In no time, Eldritch had transitioned from a lonely keeper, to a top-notch storyteller. Thanks to all that reading up in his tower, he was a natural. The tourists absolutely adored him.
“Before we talk about the night that Rosie ended up in a cage inside Taylor’s cave, let me tell you a little bit about my first rescue,” Eldritch said.
Not wanting to steal his spotlight, I climbed to the top of the stairs and called Matt Mettle. He was still my best, and only, friend at the Maine State Police.
He picked up on the third ring. “What do you want, Casket?”
“What are you doing?”
“I’m at work. A stakeout,” he said.
I checked the time. It was almost 9:00 p.m. “How long are you going to be out?”
“It depends on when the food runs out.”
“You packed food for the car?”
“No, it’s steak-out, you ding a ling. A barbecue. We’re celebrating Malone’s retirement.”
“Who’s Malone?”
“The first female statey in Maine.”
“Never heard of her.”
“That’s because you’re a masculinist,” Mettle said.
“A what?”
“You spend too much time focusing on men’s rights.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I don’t know. I’ve had a few too many beers. You want to hang out later?”
“I can’t,” I said. “We’ve got a full house tonight. I was actually calling about tomorrow.”
“You’ve finally made time for our date?”
I sighed. After Mettle had recovered from Bella’s death, he had finally, officially asked me out. I had said, yes, but instantly had to take a rain check when the issue of Marie Claire hit the stands the next day. I parlayed that into getting his cousin to work on my dock, and, well, he was getting impatient.
“We will soon,” I said. “I promise.”
“Yeah, yeah. Tell me a new one.”
“I was actually thinking about going to the prison some day this week.”
He was quiet for a moment. “That’s a bad idea. They’ll make pom-poms out of your red hair.”
“As a visitor, dummy.”
“Who you gonna visit?”
“Phyllis.”
“Why?”
“I want to know more about Peter Hardgrave.”
He was quiet. I could hear cheering in the background.
“Matt, you there?”
“Why would you want to know more about that scumbag?”
“I’m thinking I might go into business with him.”
“Are you insane, Casket? You can’t trust Hardgrave. The man’s an escaped felon.”
“Then why don’t you arrest him and take him back to Leavenworth?”
“Why don’t you go next door and clean your neighbor’s toilets. It’s not my job.”
“Then he must not be that bad.”
“If a warrant comes across my desk, you better believe I’ll scoop him up before I can finish this…”
He went quiet.
“Matt? You there?”
“Yes. I was making a point. Stay away from him, Casket. I’m warning you.”
“I just want to ask Phyllis a few questions. It’s no big deal.”
There was a long ragged sigh as Mettle blew across the phone. “I got a better idea, Casket. If you’ve got enough time to go visit that pile of rotten underwear, why don’t you meet me for lunch?”
“Because I can’t afford lunch unless I expand my business. Without his liquor license, Peter Hardgrave is sitting on a gold mine.”
“Promise me you won’t go.”
“I promise me you won’t go.”
“See,” he said. “That wasn’t too easy.”
“You mean hard?”
“Yes.”
Thanks to Mettle’s Ferrari-fast metabolism, when he drank, his vocabulary dropped at least two grade levels, all the way down to negative.
“I need to go,” I said. “Eldritch is about to jump off the cliff.”
“Cheers,” he said.
“Are you British now?”
“I wasn’t talking to you,” Mettle said. “Congratulations, officer Malone!”
He was ignoring me, so I hung up without saying goodbye. Before I could talk myself out of it,
