Killer Crab Cakes Read online

  “That’s right, Phyllis,” Carolyn said.

  “I’m sorry. I have more pressing business right now.”

  Carolyn frowned. “What?”

  “I’m going fishing.”

  With that, she set her empty cup on the counter and left the kitchen as quickly as she could.

  She decided that she was dressed all right to go out onto the pier with Sam, in a pair of jeans with the legs rolled up just under her knees, some canvas shoes, and an untucked, light blue, long-sleeved shirt with the sleeves rolled up a couple of turns so she could get some sun on her forearms. She went into Dorothy’s room and rummaged around in her cousin’s closet—which Dorothy had given her permission to do—until she found a cloth hat that she pulled down over her short graying brown hair.

  She went downstairs, figuring that she would avoid the kitchen and wait for Sam out on the porch. As she went through the living room she looked through the arched opening that led into the dining room and saw that several people were already sitting at the long mahogany table. She thought she ought to at least speak to them, so she stepped into the dining room to say good morning.

  Bed-and-breakfasts were popular with couples, and there were three of them at the table this morning. With the ease that came from years and years of learning the names of the children in her classes, Phyllis already knew all of them. Nick and Kate Thompson were the youngest guests, in their mid-twenties and married less than a year. The other two couples, Leo and Jessica Blaine and Sheldon and Raquel Forrest, were in their forties, with an ease around one another that showed they were longtime friends. From what Phyllis had heard, they had been coming here for a couple of weeks every autumn for more than a decade.

  Phyllis chatted briefly with them. Stocky, redheaded Leo Blaine grinned and said, “You look like you’re going fishing, Mrs. Newsom.”

  “That’s right. I’m going to watch my friend Sam fish, anyway. I’m afraid I wouldn’t know what to do if I actually hooked a fish.”

  “You’d figure it out,” Sheldon Forrest said. He was tall and somewhat gawky, unlike Sam, who moved with a certain grace despite his size. “Fishing is an instinct. Mankind has been doing it for thousands of years.”

  “Maybe so,” Phyllis said, “but I haven’t.”

  She went out onto the porch and found that Sam was already there. He had the same sort of equipment that Ed McKenna had been carrying earlier, plus a big plastic bucket. “For that big red drum I’m gonna catch,” he explained.

  “You’re a man with confidence.”

  “Might as well be. Otherwise you’re halfway to being beat before you start.”

  There were a few clouds along the horizon, but the sun was well above them by now. The air was starting to get warm. A slight breeze blew, but not enough to disturb the water much. It rose and fell some, but only with the natural rhythm of the sea.

  “Is this good fishing weather?” Phyllis asked as they started out along the pier. It had a railing on the right side and a shorter wall on the left where people could sit to fish if they wanted to. Phyllis wasn’t crazy about piers, especially the ones where the planks had gaps between them where the water was visible. The Oak Knoll private pier was sturdy and well built, though, so she wasn’t particularly nervous.

  “Any weather is good fishin’ weather if you don’t care that much about catching keepers,” Sam replied.

  “You don’t want to keep what you catch?”

  “Only if it’s something really good, like that red I mentioned. Otherwise I’d rather just reel ’em in, take ’em off the hook, and throw ’em back. As far as I’m concerned, the fun’s in the catchin’, not in the cleanin’ and cookin’. In the eyes of some people, that would disqualify me from bein’ a real fisherman … but I don’t particularly care.”

  Phyllis thought that was a very sensible attitude. She had cleaned fish before. She didn’t care for it.

  “There’s Mr. McKenna,” she said, nodding to the hunched figure of Ed McKenna, who sat on the wall to the left side of the pier about five hundred feet offshore. That was approximately halfway out.

  “We’ll go on past him,” Sam said. “You don’t want to crowd another fisherman.”

  That sounded reasonable to Phyllis. “Should we be as quiet as possible?”

  “No, that’s not necessary. You don’t want to go hollerin’ and scarin’ off the fish, but it’s all right to say howdy and ask how they’re bitin’.”

  “You must’ve fished a lot.” Phyllis had known Sam for more than a year, ever since he had moved into the house as a boarder the summer of the Peach Festival murder, but there was still a lot about him she didn’t know.

  He shook his head. “Nah. Strictly amateur. Mostly lake fishin’. But I’ve done a little saltwater fishin’ like this, too.”

  They were drawing nearer to Ed McKenna, who hadn’t looked around at them even though he must have heard their footsteps on the wooden pier. He was staring out at the water with a fixed expression, obviously intent on his fishing. He wasn’t turning the handle on his reel, Phyllis noticed, which struck her as a little strange, but maybe that was some special fishing technique she didn’t know anything about.

  As they came even with McKenna, Sam paused and reached down to give the man a friendly slap on the shoulder. “Gettin’ any bites?” he asked.

  McKenna didn’t answer.

  Instead, he pitched forward face-first into the water.

  Phyllis was so shocked that for a moment all she could do was stand there staring at the ripples spreading out violently from the place where McKenna had vanished beneath the surface with a giant splash. Then her instincts kicked in and she realized that someone should jump in and help the poor man. She started to kick off her shoes.

  Sam was already in motion, though. He had dropped his fishing equipment and toed the sneakers off his feet. He sat down on the wall, swung his legs over it, and dropped feetfirst into the water, which was about four feet under the pier. He entered the water carefully because he didn’t know how deep it was right here, Phyllis realized.

  Sam took a deep breath and went all the way under as Phyllis leaned over the side, resting her hands on the wall. She watched the surface anxiously as she waited for him to reappear. Fear welled up inside her. She was glad that Sam had gone in to help McKenna, but she didn’t want anything to happen to him. There might be all sorts of things in that water, like jagged rocks or stingrays or even sharks …

  With another big splash, Sam broke the surface. He had one arm around Ed McKenna’s body, looped under his arms to hold him up. Sam waved his other hand toward the shore and called, “I’m takin’ him in!”

  That made sense. He couldn’t lift McKenna to the pier from where he was. Carrying Sam’s sneakers, Phyllis trotted along the pier. She kept pace as Sam swam strongly toward shore, towing McKenna as he went.

  From what Phyllis could see of McKenna’s face, the man didn’t look good. He hadn’t been under the water all that long, probably less than a minute in all. A person couldn’t drown in that short a time, could they?

  Phyllis got to the end of the pier and jumped down to the narrow, reedy beach. She dropped Sam’s sneakers and waded into the water, heedless of her own shoes and blue jeans, and leaned down to grab McKenna and help Sam haul him out of the water. A shudder went through her as she saw the man’s gray, lifeless face.

  “My God, Sam!” she said as he climbed out. Water streamed from his clothes and body. “Mr. McKenna’s dead. He must have drowned right away.”

  Sam pawed his soaked hair back and shook his head. “Nobody drowns that fast. Did you see the way he went in? He was just balanced there on the wall, waiting for somebody like me to come along and knock him in.”

  “You mean … ?”

  Sam nodded. “He was dead when he went into the water.”

  Chapter 2

  A heart attack. That was Phyllis’s first thought. The poor man must have been sitting there fishing when the crushing pain hit him.
That was why he had been sort of hunched over when Sam came along and gave him that friendly slap on the shoulder.

  Ed McKenna had died doing what he loved, she told herself.

  Then she realized immediately that she didn’t know that at all. She had met him only three days earlier and hadn’t exchanged more than a few dozen words with him since then. Even though he spent a lot of time fishing, she had no idea if he loved it or not.

  Sam leaned over and put his hands on his knees as he took several deep breaths. His face was somewhat gray, too, though he didn’t look nearly as bad as Mr. McKenna, of course.

  Phyllis put a hand on his arm and said, “Sam, are you all right? You don’t look very good.”

  “Not as young as I used to be,” he said. “Never was a great swimmer, either. That was a pretty long haul, towin’ him in like that.”

  “You need to sit down and catch your breath,” she told him as she led him toward several wooden benches that were set back a short distance from the water on the grass between the road and the shore. Some people tried to fish from those benches, but mostly they were just for sitting and looking at the Gulf.

  “What about McKenna?”

  Phyllis glanced at the man’s body and tried not to shudder again. “He’s not going anywhere,” she said. “Right now I’m worried about you.”

  It was odd, she thought as she sat on the bench beside Sam, who leaned forward and hung his forearms between his knees as he drew in deep breaths. A half mile or so from shore, a couple of shrimp boats were heading in with their morning’s catch. Most of the shrimpers went out early, well before dawn. Even farther off shore an oil tanker made its stately way. And closer, a small boat with a couple of fishermen in it puttered along. Cars passed by on the road.

  All around them, life went on as if nothing had happened, and yet only a few yards away Mr. McKenna lay, gray-faced and lifeless, his passing unnoticed by everyone except Phyllis and Sam. If they hadn’t come along when they did, he might have sat there on the pier all morning without anyone realizing that he was dead. Odd, Phyllis thought, and more than a little sad.

  After a minute Sam straightened up on the bench. His voice sounded stronger as he asked, “You got your cell phone with you?”

  “No, I left it inside. What about you?”

  “Nope, and even if I did, it probably wouldn’t work after I jumped in the water that way.”

  “I hadn’t thought about that. I’ll go inside and call 911.” She started to get up, then hesitated. “I guess we can’t just leave him here alone… .”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll stay with him,” Sam said. “Let’s face it. He’s not much worse company now than when he was alive.”

  “Sam!”

  “I’m just sayin’, ol’ Ed wasn’t a fella you’d warm up to in a hurry.”

  That was true, but Phyllis didn’t think it really needed to be said, at least not at a time like this.

  “I’ll be back as fast as I can,” she told Sam as she started across the street toward the bed-and-breakfast.

  Nick and Kate Thompson were coming out the front door onto the porch as Phyllis started up the steps. They must have been able to tell from her expression that something was wrong, because a worried frown appeared on Kate’s pretty face and Nick said, “What is it, Mrs. Newsom? Are you all right?”

  They were a nice-looking couple, Nick with a friendly, open face and curly dark brown hair, Kate a brunette, as well, with hair a couple of shades lighter than her husband’s and what some might call sultry, even exotic good looks. She was also a couple of inches taller than Nick, and while Phyllis knew there wasn’t a thing in the world wrong with that, to someone of her generation it still seemed a little odd to see a wife who was taller than her husband.

  She had no idea what they did for a living, but they drove an expensive little sports car so she assumed they were lawyers or something like that. Doctors, maybe. They were certainly solicitous as they moved forward on either side of her. Kate reached out and touched her arm supportively.

  “It’s Mr. McKenna,” Phyllis said.

  “That grumpy old guy who never talks to anybody?” Nick asked. “What about him?”

  There was no easy way to say it. “He’s dead.”

  The eyes of both young people widened with surprise. “Dead?” Kate repeated.

  Without saying anything, Phyllis waved a hand toward the benches and the grassy area across the street, next to the water.

  “Good Lord!” Nick said. “What happened? Did he fall in and drown?”

  Kate asked, “Is that Mr. Fletcher sitting there? Is he okay?”

  “He’s just winded from pulling Mr. McKenna out of the water.” Phyllis turned to Nick. “But he didn’t drown. Sam and I think he must have had a heart attack. I suppose the police and the medical examiner will have to determine that.”

  “Have you called the cops?” Nick asked.

  “No, I was just on my way to do that.”

  Nick took her arm and steered her toward the front door. “Why don’t you let me call them?” he suggested. “Kate, take Mrs. Newsom into the parlor and sit down with her. No offense, Mrs. Newsom, but you look a little green around the gills.”

  “I feel a little green,” Phyllis admitted. “I told Sam I’d be right back, though …”

  “I’ll go over there and wait for the cops with him,” Nick said as he reached into one of the big pockets of his khaki cargo shorts and pulled out a cell phone. He flipped it open, punched in the three-digit emergency number, and as Phyllis went into the house with Kate she heard him saying in a brisk voice, “Yes, we need the police and an ambulance. I believe a man here has died of a heart attack.” He was giving the address as the door closed behind Phyllis and Kate.

  The big parlor/living room was empty. Kate took Phyllis over to one of the comfortably upholstered sofas and sat her down. “Can I get you something?” she asked. “A cup of coffee, maybe?”

  Phyllis nodded. “That would be nice. Thank you, dear.”

  Kate hurried out of the room. Phyllis took Dorothy’s hat off and placed it on the sofa cushion beside her, then closed her eyes and rubbed her temples. You didn’t get to be her age without becoming well acquainted with death. It stalked friends and family and collected its inevitable toll.

  And yet it was still shocking when it happened unexpectedly, even to someone you didn’t know that well, like Ed McKenna. She had seen too much unexpected death in recent years, Phyllis thought.

  Hurried footsteps sounded nearby. Phyllis opened her eyes and looked up as Carolyn and Eve came into the room. “Don’t tell me you’ve stumbled over another dead body, Phyllis!” Carolyn said with her characteristic bluntness.

  “Carolyn!” Eve said. “That’s hardly comforting.” She added to Phyllis, “You do seem to have a way of finding them, though, dear.”

  They sat down on either side of her. Eve patted her hand. Phyllis said, “I suppose Kate told you what happened.”

  Carolyn nodded. “She said you and Sam fished Ed McKenna’s body out of the water. What happened to him?”

  “A heart attack, I suppose,” Phyllis said for what already seemed like the dozenth time, even though she knew it wasn’t, of course. “Or possibly a stroke.”

  “That man looked like a candidate for a heart attack,” Carolyn said. “Always with a sour look on his face and not a good word for anybody. You could tell he was in poor health.”

  Phyllis hadn’t gotten that impression of Ed McKenna. He wasn’t friendly, true, but he had seemed to be healthy enough. You couldn’t always tell by looking at someone, though. She recalled numerous cases over the years of even professional athletes dropping dead unexpectedly from some undiagnosed, unsuspected ailment.

  Kate Thompson came back into the room carrying a cup from which tendrils of steam and an enticing aroma rose. “Here you are,” she said as she handed it to Phyllis. “I’ve seen you fixing your coffee before, so I know you like it with cream and a little sugar.”
/>   “Thank you so much.” Phyllis took a sip of the hot brew and was grateful for the bracing effect of it.

  Consuela and her two daughters followed Kate into the parlor, all of them wearing concerned expressions. Theresa was in her early twenties, Bianca only eighteen. They crowded around the sofa, Consuela asking, “You are all right, Mrs. Newsom?”

  “I’m fine,” Phyllis said. “I’m a lot more worried about Sam than about me.”

  “You should get those wet shoes off,” Carolyn said. “That can’t be good for you, wearing wet shoes.”

  Leo and Jessica Blaine started through the foyer, just outside the arched entrance to the parlor, but they stopped when they saw everyone gathered on and around the sofa. “Something wrong?” Leo called.

  “Mr. McKenna died of a heart attack,” Carolyn said.

  “You’re kidding!” Leo said as he and his wife came into the room. He went on immediately, “No, of course you’re not. Nobody would kid about a thing like that. This is terrible. You’re sure he’s dead?”

  Eve said, “Phyllis and Sam pulled him out of the water. They got a good look at him.”

  “But if he was in the water, couldn’t he have drowned?” Jessica asked.

  “Who drowned?” That question came from Raquel Forrest, who walked into the parlor with her husband, Sheldon, right behind the Blaines. The two couples had probably been on their way to get an early start on some shopping in Rockport. That was how they spent most of their time, prowling through the numerous seashell shops, antiques shops, and art galleries that lined the streets of the picturesque Gulf-side town.

  “He didn’t drown,” Carolyn said. “He died of a heart attack. Or a stroke.”

  “Who?” Raquel asked again.

  “McKenna,” Leo told her. “You know, the old guy who fished all the time.”

  “Really? That’s awful!”

  Phyllis was starting to feel a little claustrophobic with so many people bunched around her. She wished they would back off a little. But they were just concerned and upset about Mr. McKenna’s death, so she couldn’t very well fuss at them.