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“They’re Pepperidge Farm!” said Mariska in a huff. She turned and disappeared to the back of the house.

  Darla walked by and took one of everything on the plate.

  “Darla,” said Charlotte. “You’re just encouraging her.”

  “Why wouldn’t I encourage people to feed me?”

  “Sorry,” she said to Declan. “She means well.”

  Declan laughed. “Oh gosh, don’t apologize,” he said, taking a cracker and a slice of pepperoni. “I talk to old—er…”

  Declan glanced at Darla, who arched an eyebrow.

  “Tread lightly, mister.”

  Declan cleared his throat. “I mean, I talk to mature ladies all day long. They invite me to their houses to look at their antiques and they’re always trying to feed me. I’m used to it.”

  “I bet they do,” mumbled Charlotte.

  “Well, you’re so skinny. Both of you need to eat.”

  “I eat plenty. Don’t you worry,” said Declan.

  “And I live across the street from Mariska, so you know I’m not going to starve any time soon.”

  Charlotte saw Declan’s five o’clock shadow already showing. His hair was dark but his skin was pale for a Florida boy.

  “Black Irish?” she asked.

  “What’s that?”

  “Your name, your hair…I’m guessing you’re Irish?”

  “My father was from Dublin. Right off the boat.”

  “Was your mother from Ireland as well?”

  “My mother was just a plain old American. But Irish and German, I think. I got my height from her side.”

  “You are tall,” said Charlotte. Declan looked at her and she looked away, embarrassed.

  You are tall. What a stupid thing to say.

  “I mean, I’m tall so I notice when other people are,” she added.

  “What was her name, your mother?” asked Darla.

  “Erin.”

  “That’s a pretty name.”

  The room fell silent, but for the sound of Darla crunching on crackers.

  “I should probably go,” said Declan after a minute.

  He tried to stand, but it took several rocks back and forth to dislodge himself from the deep cushions of the chair.

  “Are you sure?” asked Charlotte, standing with him. “Do you feel okay to drive?”

  “I’m fine. Thank you. I appreciate you taking care of me. This just isn’t what I expected to find when I came to your house.”

  “No, you expected to find me dead,” said Charlotte.

  “No—well, yes, I guess I did,” he said, the left side of his mouth hooking into a tiny smile.

  He looked at her and she noticed his eyes were a brilliant green with brown edges around the iris.

  How did I not see those gems earlier?

  She suddenly felt very aware of herself and rushed to squash the uncomfortable silence.

  “So, for me, the day turned out better than expected. I’m alive.”

  Charlotte raised her hand to cover her mouth, realizing how tactless her statement had been.

  “That didn’t come out the way I meant it. I meant—”

  “I know what you meant,” said Declan with a chuckle, letting her off the hook. He put out his hand and she shook it, eyes locked on her toes.

  “Nice to meet you. Hope to see you again soon,” he said.

  “You, too.”

  “Nice to meet you, Darla.”

  “Nice to meet you,” said Darla, popping another cracker in her mouth. As he headed for the door she met eyes with Charlotte and smiled, waggling her eyebrows suggestively.

  Charlotte wrinkled her nose and waved her away.

  As Declan passed the hallway that led to the back of the house he called out to Mariska.

  “I’m leaving!” he said. “Thank you for everything!”

  Mariska burst out of the bedroom with the dogs exploding forward on either side of her. They raced down the hall and Declan jumped to his right to avoid being trampled.

  “Oh, my pleasure dear. You take care of yourself. Do you want a muffin to take home with you?”

  “No, thank you.”

  Declan offered a last wave to everyone before leaving.

  From the door, Charlotte watched him walk down the street to his car.

  “He has nice posture,” she said. “I mean, for a tall guy.”

  “He has nice a lot of things,” said Darla. “I can tell you his posture wasn’t the first thing I noticed.”

  “Darla!”

  “What? I meant his face. Now who has the dirty mind? Didn’t you think he was handsome?”

  “I guess. Why didn’t any of you ever tell me about him?”

  Darla and Mariska exchanged a look.

  “Oh, honey. We all thought he was gay.”

  Chapter Five

  Charlotte grabbed her towel and headed to water aerobics at the Pineapple Port pool. It wasn’t so much aerobics as it was swinging limbs back and forth, but it served as the epicenter of some of the best community gossip. She stopped in front of her chalkboard wall and picked up the chalk she’d purchased the day before. It had taken the police until eight p.m. to finish removing Erin Bingham’s bones from her yard, and she’d gone shopping to kill time. She didn’t buy seedlings. It would be a while before she’d consider gardening again. She could officially remove gardener and archeologist from her potential career list.

  Charlotte wrote find Erin’s killer on her wall. It seemed dramatic, so she erased it and replaced it with solve mystery. The statement was vague enough that if someone saw it, they wouldn’t jump to the conclusion that she was nuts. She could say the mystery was the location of a missing earring, or the clicking noise her dishwasher made.

  Speaking of which…

  She added fix clicking to the board.

  It had been twenty-four hours since she’d found a skeleton in her backyard, and while life went on as usual, she felt strange in her own home. She fought a persistent urge to peek out her back window. A tingling feeling on the back of her neck made her suspect that at any moment, she’d find Erin Bingham standing in her lanai.

  But in what state? Would she look like she did when she was alive? Or a zombie? Or would she find a skeleton with a broken mandible tapping on her door?

  She couldn’t stop thinking about the poor woman or her handsome son. She felt terrible for Declan. She’d lost her own mother at a young age, so she empathized. To relive his loss through such a gruesome discovery; she could only imagine what impact that might have on the enterprising pawnbroker.

  Maybe the body wasn’t his mother’s? It would be a while before the officials identified the remains, but the appearance of the necklace didn’t bode well. Maybe, the necklace wasn’t unique. He’d only been a child when he bought it for her, surely, it wasn’t very expensive. Maybe a local store had sold hundreds of them.

  Her mind was still racing through the possibilities of both necklace sales and hauntings when she found Mariska and Darla waiting outside in their swimsuits and floral cover-ups. Mariska sat behind the wheel of her light blue golf cart, Darla in the passenger seat, her nose slathered in bright yellow sun block. Charlotte hopped on the rear seat and set her towel beside her.

  “Any news on your bones?” asked Darla.

  “No. Any details from Frank?”

  “Oh, you know that man. Getting him to talk is like pulling teeth. I told him about Declan’s mother and he just grunted at me and asked what was for dinner.”

  “He’s our only hope,” said Charlotte. “I don’t think the police are required to share information with the person who found the body. That would be Katie, anyway.”

  “It’s just so awful,” said Mariska. “You never think this sort of thing is going to happen in your neighborhood. The next thing you know we’ll have the Dateline people lurking around.”

  “Ooh, I hope so,” said Darla. “I like that Keith Morrison. He’s like sexy old saddle leather.”

  Charlotte turned to look at
Darla, “I don’t even know what that means, but I do not want an explanation.”

  “Do you think this will lower our property values?” asked Mariska as she stomped on the pedal.

  “Yes,” said Charlotte, grabbing the cart to keep from flying off the back. “I think our homes will plunge tens of dollars.”

  She closed her eyes and enjoyed the artificial breeze created by the moving golf cart until they reached the community center. The pool sat to the right of the large multi-purpose building. The pool was always clean and warm. Retirees possessed ample time to lodge complaints, so it was easier to do things right the first time.

  Mariska stopped the cart in front of the community bulletin board to look for news. A notice hanging from a thumbtack, printed on neon pink paper, announced a new committee.

  “Another club,” said Darla. “This place has more clubs than a deck of cards.”

  Charlotte read the note, her eyes growing wider with every word.

  “The Corpse Committee! Committee to get to the bottom of the mystery behind the body found in the backyard of Miss Charlotte Morgan.”

  Darla looked at Mariska.

  “I guess we’ll have to join that one.”

  “I did this morning. I saw it when I walked Miss Izzy. I wasn’t sure how you’d feel about it, though, Charlotte.”

  “Well, I don’t feel great being named as the benefactor of the Corpse Committee, but what can I do? I assume this is Penny’s handiwork?”

  Darla wrinkled her nose at the name of the community founder’s wife.

  “You know she has to get to the bottom of everything,” said Mariska. “Gossip, trouble…”

  “Glasses of scotch, her husband’s bank account…” mumbled Darla.

  Mariska giggled and slapped her friend’s arm. “You’re terrible.”

  The cart lurched forward and Charlotte clutched the sidebar.

  Charlotte walked to the pool and threw her towel and bag on her usual chair. For the most part, she loved being semi-retired at twenty-six. When her grandmother died, Charlotte had inherited her prefab community home. Estelle had purchased the house for fifteen thousand dollars in full, so she had no mortgage.

  Charlotte’s father had died shortly after her birth, killed in a fall while working construction. Her mother died of cancer when she was eleven. Though her family wasn’t rich, they had insurance, and with her modest needs, she knew she could live most of her life on her inheritance.

  She had a small land lease fee to pay every month, and easily made that amount doing work for an embroidery web site, DoodleSport.com, owned by Mariska’s son, Sebastian. On DoodleSport, people ordered different products with any one of thousands of animal and hobby designs embroidered on them. Sebastian and his wife Emily lived in Maryland, and had named the site after their Labradoodle, Gordon. When business increased, Emily and Sebastian offered to buy Charlotte an embroidery machine of her own and make her home their southeastern division. The giant machine sat in Charlotte’s shed and she spent two to ten hours a week stitching various critters on blankets and polos.

  Charlotte spotted her handiwork on every towel and bag at the pool. The local ladies weren’t shy about requesting items for themselves at the Pineapple Port discount of thirty percent off. At Christmas, Charlotte received so many orders from the locals that she barely had time to do her own shopping. She’d added a t-shirt heat press to her collection of hardware and spent weeks afterwards stamping pictures of grandkids.

  Only recently, the urge to find a calling had begun creeping into her subconscious. She couldn’t complain about her stitching work. With the industrial-sized embroidery machine tucked in her shed, there was no beating her commute to work. To ensure she never lost this gem of a job, she endeavored to find local sales as well. Being in Florida, she couldn’t count how many anchors, shells and boat names she’d stitched. In addition, everyone in Pineapple Port had a pet or knew someone with a pet, so she cranked out beach towels featuring West Highland terriers and cat-faced kitchen towels. She attended farmers’ markets and community yard sales to supplement the website orders.

  Still, she’d never actually dreamed of becoming an embroiderer. She felt like there had to be something better, something more meaningful. She wanted to feel passionate about her work. At twenty-six, she felt too old to live so aimlessly.

  She’d hopped from teenager to retiree in the blink of an eye.

  Charlotte stepped into the pool and waded to the center. Jackie Blankenship, the water aerobics leader, set down her boom box and popped in the instruction tape. The tape was superfluous; all the ladies, and a smattering of men, had the routine memorized. Jackie once tried to introduce a new tape, but the ensuing mutiny ended her dreams of novelty. She grumbled bitterly about it. It was no secret she regretted offering to run the program, and the fact that no one would let her break the monotony of the routine added insult to injury.

  “I was hoping it would rain,” said Jackie to Charlotte as she walked by. “I don’t know why I ever offered to run this stupid club.”

  “I know, Jackie,” said Charlotte. “I know.”

  “The water is warmer again,” said Mariska. “They turned off the heat last week and people nearly lost their minds. It dropped to 79.”

  “It might be more refreshing it if wasn’t body temperature,” said Charlotte.

  “Oh, don’t you even try and suggest that,” said Darla. “Blasphemy.”

  Penny half-walked and half-swam to the group, her dark bob wet and slicked back across her scalp.

  “I’d love for you to be a guest speaker at the new committee,” Penny said to Charlotte as she arrived, her leathery skin crinkling as her mouth formed something like a smile. Charlotte wasn’t sure if Penny was being friendly or had just successfully lured children into her gingerbread house.

  “I saw the flyer. I’m guessing you’ll have less to talk about if I don’t show up.”

  Penny thrust out her chin with a level eight sniff (How Dare You!) “Is that a threat?”

  “What? No! It’s an observation. I’ll come. I can’t imagine the rumors if I don’t.”

  “Yes, you have to come. This is very serious. We need to find out who this person is and what happened to them!”

  “I think I know who she is, but I would like to know what happened to her.”

  “You know who she is? It’s a she?”

  “It’s that pawnshop fellow’s mother,” said Susan Hecht from the back of the pool. Half the ladies claimed to be deaf, but they always heard juicy gossip from several miles away.

  “I thought it was his girlfriend,” said another woman, new to the neighborhood. Charlotte had forgotten her name, but she knew she lived alone. She’d heard the woman kept twenty-five bowls of dog food scattered around her house, so if she dropped dead, her Pug wouldn’t starve to death.

  “He killed her for cheating,” the woman added.

  “I thought he was gay?” said Katherine O’Malley, tilting her head so the decorative flaps on her swimming cap flopped to one side like dominoes.

  Charlotte rolled her eyes. “It might be Declan’s mother, not his girlfriend.”

  “But he is gay, right?”

  “No. I mean, I don’t know. What does that matter? Either way, he didn’t kill anyone.”

  “How do you know?” asked Susan.

  “He’s barely older than the bones. I doubt he killed his mother when he was eleven and buried her in my backyard.”

  “Declan is a funny name,” said the new lady. “Maybe he killed her as a boy, like in that movie…”

  “Oh! What was the name of that movie?” asked Penny. “I know what you mean. The little boy killed everyone.”

  “The Omen,” said Charlotte, mentally thanking the neighborhood for her vast knowledge of old movies. “And no. Don’t be ridiculous. Declan isn’t Damien.”

  “Ah right! Damien!” said Penny. “That’s like Declan…”

  “If he isn’t gay, let me know?” asked Katherine
. “My granddaughter is coming next week. I could set them up.”

  Katherine’s granddaughter was an ex-beauty pageant winner. Charlotte felt an odd pang of anxiety and dread.

  What was that?

  She swallowed and vowed to drink less coffee in the mornings.

  Katherine continued musing to herself, mumbling just loud enough for Charlotte to hear.

  “Come to think of it…I think I set them up years ago and she’s the one who told me he was gay…hm…”

  “I’m sure I don’t know,” said Charlotte, her tone sharper than she intended it to be.

  “Are you talking about the dead woman in your yard? The one Declan killed?” asked Andie Davis, wading into the pool in her bikini. Andie was only fifty, but her husband met the age requirement by a good ten years. The other ladies eyeballed her outfit and exchanged disapproving glances. Charlotte always wore a one-piece to avoid such scrutiny.

  “Declan didn’t kill her!” said Charlotte, her voice growing shrill. “It’s probably his mother, who went missing fifteen years ago.”

  “Sometimes kids kill their mothers,” said Andie.

  “Like Damien Omen Two!” said Penny. “You can’t close your mind to any possibility.”

  “Damien is a devil child from the movies. Declan is a real person,” Charlotte said as steadily as possible to anyone who would listen.

  “All the people on Dateline are real people, too,” said Penny. “And now they’re in jail!”

  Charlotte closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and counted to ten. It was a technique important to maintaining sanity in Pineapple Port.

  “Please play the tape, Jackie,” she said.

  There was a commotion at the other end of the pool and Charlotte turned in time to see several ladies scolding a man who had swum into their lane. She looked at Mariska.

  “I’m starting to think I need to hang out with people closer to my age more often. Y’all are driving me bonkers.”

  “I’m always telling you that,” said Mariska as the water aerobics music blared, the recorded instructor’s cheery voice offering words of encouragement.

  Charlotte lifted her leg out to the side and then put it down again as the others fell silent. It was the most strenuous movement in the entire routine. She wasn’t deluded enough to consider water aerobics real exercise, but it was easy on her creaky knees and it was nice to zone out and meditate when people weren’t claiming the local pawnshop owner was a demon child.