Killer Crab Cakes (2 page)

“I don’t know,” Phyllis said. “Can you imagine living here and going somewhere else for your vacation?”

“You mean like to Weatherford?” Sam shook his head. “That’s pretty hard to picture.”

“But I’m sure it happens. People would get tired of being anywhere, even paradise, and want a change of scenery.”

Paradise was a pretty good word to describe this area along the Texas Gulf Coast. There wasn’t nearly as much traffic and pollution as people in the Dallas/Fort Worth area had to put up with, and life moved at a slower, friendlier pace. At this time of year, early autumn, the weather was still summerlike along the coast, with warm days and comfortable nights. Every now and then, there would be a hint of the coolness to come in the breeze. You really couldn’t ask for better weather, though.

Tall, lean Sam rasped fingers along his jaw and laughed. “Things are so laid-back down here, it’s hard for a fella to even remember to shave. Reckon if I stay here very long I’ll look like an old beachcomber.”

Phyllis looked over at him. He wore sneakers with no socks, cut-off blue jeans, and a T-shirt with a picture of a pelican on it that had come from a nearby bar and grill. His salt-and-pepper hair was tousled, and he had white stubble on his cheeks and chin to go with the mustache on his upper lip. Phyllis laughed, too.

“Too late,” she told him. “You already look like a beachcomber. Or a fisherman. Although you’ll need a fishing hat for that. You can’t go fishing without the proper hat.”

“Is that a law in these parts?”

“Evidently, from what I’ve seen.”

“Actually, I thought I might try the fishin’ pretty soon.” Sam nodded toward the pier that jutted several hundred yards out into the water, starting just across the road from the big house. It was a private pier, belonging to the Oak Knoll Bed’n’-Breakfast. The little hill that gave the place its name was just inland from the house and was covered with the gnarled, bizarrely leaning oak trees that were common around here.

The house itself was painted a beautiful sky blue, with white trim. It was nearly a hundred years old and had been cared for with diligence and love so that it was still in excellent shape. Phyllis’s cousin Dorothy and Dorothy’s husband, Ben, had owned it for more than thirty years. It was originally just their residence, but when their kids had grown up and moved out, they had turned it into a bed-and-breakfast . . . much like Phyllis had taken in other retired schoolteachers as boarders after her husband, Kenny, passed away. The big house in Weatherford had been too much for her; she hadn’t wanted to rattle around in it by herself. The same feelings had caused Dorothy and Ben to make that change in their lives. A house
needed
plenty of people in it in order to give it personality and vitality. Otherwise it was just a heartless pile of lumber.

Phyllis had been a little unsure of what to do when Dorothy asked her to come down. She didn’t have any experience running a bed-and-breakfast. Dorothy had assured her that she had a highly competent staff who would continue doing all the actual work. She had also had a couple of cancellations, so there would be plenty of room for her and her friends. She just wanted someone she could trust, like Phyllis, to keep an eye on the place while she and Ben were gone.

When Dorothy had told Phyllis about the SeaFair and its Just Desserts competition, that had clinched the deal.

The beachfront town of Fulton was nestled side by side with a larger neighbor, the city of Rockport. Both had been in existence and served as Gulf Coast ports for well over a hundred years. Each fall, during the first weekend in October, Rockport had held its annual SeaFair, a huge celebration featuring dozens of vendors, artists, craftsmen, local bands and musicians, a gumbo cook-off, games and crab races and a carnival for the kids, and, for the past few years, the Just Desserts competition. Cooks from all over the area—and beyond—entered their best dessert recipes, and the judging and awarding of prizes was the highlight of the final day of the SeaFair.

As soon as Phyllis heard about that, she had known that she had to accept Dorothy’s invitation. And, of course, there was no way to keep Carolyn from finding out about it, and she had jumped at the chance to enter another baking contest. She and Phyllis had been friendly rivals at such competitions for years now. In fact, just a few months earlier they had gone head-to-head again at Weatherford’s annual Peach Festival.

Phyllis had been a little nervous when that time came around, because there had been a murder at the previous year’s Peach Festival, a murder that had involved Phyllis and her friends. Luckily, this year nobody had died. Carolyn had won the baking contest with her Sweet Peach Rolls, and Phyllis had placed third with her creation, Peachy Bread Pudding. The competition had been spirited, as usual.

Phyllis didn’t think the Just Desserts contest would be quite that intense. Folks in Rockport and Fulton were just too friendly and easygoing for that.

Sam perched a hip on the railing that ran around the porch and drank some more of his coffee. “Care to try your luck?” he asked Phyllis.

“You mean at fishing?” She hesitated. Ever since the previous Christmas, she and Sam had been involved in an informal, low-key romantic relationship. They had their passionate moments, but mostly it was dining out, going to movies, taking walks together, things like that. Fishing certainly fell into that same category, but . . .

“I’m afraid I’m not very good at fishing,” she said. “I don’t even have a license.”

“Well, you can’t fish, then. Game warden’d come along and get you, sure as anything.”

“I could walk out on the pier with you, though, if you don’t mind the company.”

A slow grin spread across Sam’s rugged face. “I don’t mind the company at all. Fact is, I sort of like it.”

Phyllis felt herself flush with pleasure at the tone of his voice. Some people thought certain feelings were over and done with once you got to a certain age . . . but some people just didn’t know.

The door opened again, and Phyllis glanced over her shoulder to see a thin, gray-haired man come out of the house. He wore a khaki shirt and trousers and an old-fashioned brown fedora. In one hand he carried an expensive rod and reel, in the other a tackle box and bait box. A net with a long aluminum handle was tucked under his arm. The sun had started to peek above the horizon now, and its rays glittered on the steel-rimmed glasses he wore.

“Good morning, Mr. McKenna,” Phyllis greeted him pleasantly. “Going to try your luck again this morning?”

Ed McKenna nodded, a somewhat sour expression on his face. “Yeah, even though I don’t know why. Haven’t caught anything worth keeping all week. Don’t feel too good, either. Maybe some sun will perk me up a little.”

McKenna had been staying at the bed-and-breakfast when Phyllis and her friends arrived, and he was booked for another week’s stay. Phyllis didn’t know anything about him except that he was from San Antonio. And that while he was polite enough, he wasn’t overly friendly. He had been out on the pier every morning with his fishing gear, but he wasn’t in the habit of striking up conversations with the other anglers. Of course, Phyllis had heard that a lot of talking sometimes scared off the fish, so she guessed that might be the reason McKenna seemed a little antisocial.

“I’ll be out there in a while,” Sam told McKenna. “What’s the best sort of bait? Live shrimp?”

“That’s as good as any,” McKenna answered. He went down the steps from the porch and headed across the road to the pier.

“Not the friendliest cuss in the world,” Sam commented when McKenna was out of earshot.

“Not everyone is as amiable as you, Sam,” Phyllis pointed out.

“I just try to be myself. I’m too old to be anybody else.”

They went back inside, and sure enough, Carolyn was trying to convince Consuela to do things differently in the kitchen. She wasn’t getting very far. Consuela Anselmo had been the cook and head housekeeper at Oak Knoll for more than five years and liked to do things her own way, which Phyllis understood. Her daughters, Bianca and Theresa, worked part-time in the mornings as the maids, and Consuela’s husband, Tom, worked part-time handling maintenance chores around the place, in addition to his regular job on one of the offshore oil rigs.

As soon as Phyllis came into the kitchen, Carolyn turned toward her and said, “Phyllis,” just as Consuela was saying, “Señora Newsom.”

Phyllis held up the hand that wasn’t holding her coffee cup to ward off both of them. “Whatever this is, you’ll have to settle it among yourselves,” she told them.

“But Señora Gadsden left you in charge, Señora Newsom,” Consuela protested. “It is up to you to decide how things are done.”

“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.