Then I went back downstairs. Captain Herrick was slumped over in his chair, snoring.
I kicked his ankles. “Wake up you slimy rat, I need help with the luggage.”
He groaned and waved me away.
I huffed and went outside, walked down to the dock, and schlepped the luggage upstairs to the rooms myself, the whole time muttering, “lousy no-good stinking Herrick.”
By the time I made it back downstairs, Eldritch was telling the part of the story where Phyllis Martin locked me inside one of the shark cages she had smuggled into the cave.
“When I finally swam through the crevice, Rosie had sucked water through her nose and blacked out,” Eldritch said.
The guests were on the edge of their seats.
By now, Eldritch had told the story enough times that the events of that night no longer felt real to me. Of course, he didn’t tell them the truth about the alternate cave entrance on the other side of the lighthouse. In his heroic telling, he scaled the cliff with me clinging to his back—a superhuman feat I never thought the tourists would believe.
But they did. They always did. And the funny thing was, Eldritch was right: the tourists always questioned when we yelled M.O.M. in a desperate plea for help, when my foster father and I found common ground, and even when William Bearing finally joined the chorus.
But they never questioned the fake parts.
3
Around ten p.m., after knocking on each of my guest’s doors and saying goodnight, I went downstairs to wash the dishes. I stood at the sink, my hands pruned and cracking from months of relentless scrubbing. The chocolate had formed a hardened goop in the bottom of the mugs and was as stubborn as the brown barnacles my guests left in the toilets.
From the window, I could see Herrick stumbling back to The Moaning Lisa where he slept in the cabin each night.
Eldritch sat behind me at the kitchen table and slurped the last of his hot chocolate. He had barely finished when I took the mug out of his hands and tossed it into the sink.
“Let me wash that,” he said.
“I got it,” I mumbled.
“Siddown, Red. Put your feet up. You look wiped out.”
“I’m fine.”
“You can’t keep goin like this. You’re gonna burn out.”
“The wick is already gone. There’s nothing left to burn.”
“You’re talkin crazy talk.”
“Tell me one successful woman who wasn’t half crazy.”
Eldritch glanced at the magazine cover hanging behind him. “I got none.”
“See.”
“What was that business with the truck?”
Eldritch’s chocolate had hardened more than the rest and I had to scrub so hard my triceps burned. “I felt so stupid. I had actually met Peter Hardgrave before. He had been hanging around the hearing.”
“Which hearing?”
“The one when I testified against you. My foster mother never came to pick me up that night, so Peter Hardgrave gave me a ride home. I had completely forgotten.”
Eldritch closed his eyes as if he were replaying that night. I had never asked him what he had done after the hearing.
“What’s worse, Hardgrave knew where I lived. He dropped me off without asking for directions. I thought it strange at the time, but I had gotten distracted by family problems. I must have buried the whole episode.”
Eldritch clicked his tongue back and forth.
“That night, Hardgrave flashed his lights to signal to Chrissy. Then he took her to the cave—the alternate entrance. He led her through the passages and left her alone at the bottom of the bluff. A friend of his was supposed to pick her up and take her someplace safe, but she disappeared.”
“And you’re sure of this?”
I shrugged. “As sure I can be. Hardgrave admitted it to my foster father.”
“What did Robert say?”
“Not much. He seemed okay with it. He didn’t even seem surprised. I mean, he’s upset that Chrissy disappeared, but finding out about Hardgrave’s involvement didn’t really faze him. It was as if Robert knew already.”
“Hmmm,” Eldritch said. He was either stroking his chin in thought, or wiping off chocolate.
“Robert really trusts Peter. I don’t know why. But if he trusts him, then maybe I can too.”
“Hmmm,” Eldritch said again.
“What the heck does ‘hmmmm,’” mean?”
“Nothing. I’m thinking, that’s all.”
“Care to think out loud? I could use some advice here.”
“About what?”
“I think I might ask Peter Hardgrave to go into business with me. His Red Rum could be a huge money-maker, maybe the thing that lets me ease off the gas a bit and breathe again.”
“Hmmmm,” Eldritch said.
“He needs a liquor license. With Robert’s help, I can probably get one.”
“Hmmmm.”
I scrubbed his mug furiously. When I dried it, a crack in the glaze ripped the fibers from the towel. “Never mind. This is none of your business. I’m sorry I ever got you involved. It never had anything to do with you.”
“A business relationship is like a marriage, Red. You and your partner need to be in complete sync. Plus, I ain’t too sure that you and a liquor license are a good fit.”
“Why do you say that?”
“You told me, remember?”
“Oh yeah.”
I thought about Herrick. The last thing I needed was another petulant, drunk, and childish business husband.
But then an image popped to mind.
A wedding dress.
My foster mother’s wedding dress had been hanging in Chrissy’s closet. What in blazes had Chrissy been doing with a wedding dress?
And why had Peter Hardgrave parked outside her window?
I picked the fibers out of the crack in the mug and wiped them on my pants. “You know what bothers me?”
Eldritch made a show of counting endlessly on his fingers. “Do tell.”
“Each time we tell our story, it changes a little.”
“I’ve noticed,” Eldritch said.
I went to put the mug back in the cabinet, but realized I couldn’t use it to serve my guests, not if I wanted a reputation for quality. A dam broke and a torrent of anger suddenly rushed through my veins and
