Drawn and Buttered Read online

  “‘Mrs. Kathleen Parish said her husband, local lawyer Royal Parish’s, home office had been ransacked,’” Aunt Gully read over her pink-rimmed glasses.

  “Wait, this guy’s name is Royal? Really?”

  “Name’s been in their family for generations. They don’t want people forgetting that they’re descendants of British royalty. Well, pretty minor royalty, way back when.”

  Our family, the Larkins, had been lobstering in Mystic Bay since way back when. “What did the burglar take?”

  “Kathleen Parish said nothing of value. Her husband was away and will make an inventory when he returns.” Aunt Gully folded the paper and tucked it in her bag as we left the kitchen. “Maybe she scared away the burglar before he could get anything.”

  “You’d think they’d have security in that big house.”

  Aunt Gully shrugged as we got in her van and headed to the Mermaid. She was Mystic Bay born and bred and though she locked doors now that Uncle Rocco had passed, it was only when I bugged her about it. Our doors were solid oak, but the locks were old and I was pretty sure I could kick them down, even when my broken ankle had been in the boot. It dawned on me that Aunt Gully only locked the doors when my sister, Lorel, and I were home. I guess we were her things of value.

  I parked the van in the Mermaid parking lot. Aunt Gully and Hilda had decorated the shack for Halloween. Orange tinsel hung from the roofline, along with lights and miniature skulls that I was certain would not just light up, but strobe. Over-the-top was how Aunt Gully decorated. Hilda had planted orange and purple mums in huge half barrels to which Aunt Gully had added spinning purple and orange pinwheels and miniature headstones. Scarecrows and skeletons in pirate vests sprawled on hay bales, and tiny white tissue-paper ghosts dangled from the roof.

  A wooden mermaid figurehead, which had once graced the prow of a ship, had stood by the front door of the shack ever since the Mermaid opened in the spring, a gift from one of Aunt Gully’s friends who’d found her at a barn sale. Aunt Gully had dressed the mermaid in an orange bikini top and she’d gone on to star in hundreds of vacation photos.

  Since September, well before Aunt Gully started decorating for Halloween, someone had started looping colorful plastic leis around our mermaid’s neck. Today, she was covered with so many her head was completely hidden. Several other leis were scattered at her feet along with a dozen empty whiskey and beer bottles.

  “God bless America!” Aunt Gully huffed. That was her catchall phrase, as close as she came to swearing. “They’ve gone overboard this time.”

  “Not cool.” At first it had been cute—mystifying but cute. One day a customer or a neighbor, we had no idea who, had left a single lei around the mermaid’s neck. Then a few days later, there was another and then, somehow, it exploded, and every weekend since September we’d cleared a pile of leis off the Mermaid’s front porch. Aunt Gully collected the leis and gave them to squirmy or bored kids. But now, with all the liquor bottles, the prank crossed a line.

  “Probably kids from the college,” I said. Graystone College, just fifteen minutes away, had a gorgeous campus situated on a hill overlooking the river, its buildings constructed of the granite that gave the college its name.

  Aunt Gully surveyed the scene, hands on her hips. “With all this liquor, I hope it’s not high school kids.”

  “I’ll get the flag and a trash bag.”

  Every morning Aunt Gully put an American flag outside the front door of the shack. It was her tribute to her deceased husband, Uncle Rocco, a lobsterman who had proudly served in the Marines.

  Aunt Gully raised the flag and blew a kiss. I swallowed a lump in my throat as she made sure the flag hung straight. Then we gathered up the leis, cans, and bottles. We looped the leis on our arms. She caught my eye and we both flapped our wings. “Polly wants a cracker!” she said, laughing.

  My smile faded as I picked up a beer-soaked lei and stuffed it in the trash bag.

  We tossed the bags in the recycling bin behind the shack, then went into the kitchen to start prep work. I dropped the clean leis into a carton that was close to full already.

  “Good morning.” Hilda stood at a wooden chopping block, her knife flying as she prepped cabbage for coleslaw. “With Lobzilla on the front page of the paper, we’ll have more customers today.”

  “I hope Fred gets him to his forever home soon.” Aunt Gully slipped an apron over her head. Like our T-shirts, the apron was also pink with strategically placed red clamshells on the front and the Mermaid’s motto, NO FUSS FINE FOOD, on the back. The only staffer who didn’t wear the T-shirt uniform was Hilda, who always wore a fresh white blouse that somehow never got a spot on it, plus matching necklace and earrings.

  “Hector’s been dying to see Lobzilla. It’s all he’s talked about since yesterday.” Hilda shook her head. “I swear he’d turn our bathtub into a home for that giant.”

  A muffled cry came from outside, then a loud bang.

  “My stars!” Aunt Gully said.

  “Was that the door of the shed?” I hurried toward the kitchen door.

  “What on earth?” Hilda laid down her knife.

  Footsteps pounded across the gravel. Hector banged through the kitchen’s screen door. “Lobzilla’s gone!” he shouted.

  Chapter 3

  “Gone? Well, Fred Nickerson did say he’d come back to get him.” Aunt Gully frowned. “Wait a minute, he didn’t call here first?”

  Hector wiped sweat from the top of his bald head. “Nobody called. He’s been kidnapped. Er, stolen. The lock on the shed door was broken. Fred loves his lobster, but he wouldn’t break into the shed.”

  We all pushed through the kitchen door. Aunt Gully, Hector, and Hilda ran into the shed. I paused to look at the shed’s door frame. I ran my finger along splintered wood where there had been a sturdy Yale padlock. Someone had pried off the lock and hasp. It would have taken some strength and a crowbar to do the job. I walked around the shed, scanning the ground, but didn’t see anything in the gravel and patchy grass. The lobsternapper had taken the lock with him or more likely had thrown it off our dock into the dark waters of the Micasset River.

  I stepped inside the shed and let my eyes adjust to the dim light. The only sound was salt water pouring from plastic hoses into the tubs. Hector, Hilda, and Aunt Gully had gathered by the empty tank, their heads bowed. Lobzilla was gone.

  * * *

  Ten minutes later, police cars screeched into the parking lot. Johnny Sabino from the Mystic Bay Mariner was already at the shed, coffee cup in hand, examining the splintered door frame while he talked on a phone cradled between his shoulder and chin. Aunt Gully told me she’d tried to reach Fred, but his phone had gone to voice mail.

  Back in the Mermaid’s kitchen, I tied an apron behind my back and went to the counter to take orders. For once, I had nothing to share with the police. I had no idea who would have wanted to steal a giant lobster.

  A tall woman dressed entirely in black approached the counter, smoothing her stick-straight, almost waist-length black hair. She wore a black velvet jacket nipped at the waist with a studded metal belt. Her pasty white face was devoid of makeup except for heavy kohl eyeliner and black lipstick. She craned to look past me into the kitchen.

  I steeled myself. Beltane Kowalski managed the Mystic Bay Historical Society. She’d asked Aunt Gully to do a cooking demonstration there a month ago and now came into the Mermaid at least once a week. She gave me the creeps. I took a deep breath and pasted on a smile.

  “May I help you?” She pulled her gaze to me. Her eyes, black and glittery like a crow’s, traced around my head and shoulders. What is she looking at? Something beyond my wavy, copper-red hair, something only she could see. My smile faltered and I suppressed a shudder.

  “Blue,” she muttered.

  Blue? Beltane always said something weird and cryptic, in a low, deadpan voice.

  “Curiosity, creativity, power,” she intoned.

  “I’m sorry?”

/>   She blinked, pulling herself back from whatever spiritual plane she’d gone to. “Is Gina here?” She used Aunt Gully’s given name, Gina Fontana, which no one did.

  “She’s a bit busy now.” What does Beltane Kowalski want with Aunt Gully? I made my voice firm. “May I help you?”

  She sighed theatrically and smoothed her hair. Even the polish on her dagger-sharp nails was black.

  “This time of year. It makes one melancholy. Death is in the air. Literally. The mold, the corpses of dead things. Nothing you can do, it is a dark time. I’ll have a cup of chowder, please.”

  “Here or to go?” God, this woman is unreal.

  She cast her eyes on the other diners and sighed again, Marie Antoinette forced to eat with the farmhands. “Here.”

  “That will be $3.50.” I clipped the order on the wheel, then spun the wheel into the kitchen.

  A gray-haired man in a blue Mystic Bay VFW ball cap eyed Beltane. “Hey, sister, you’re early. Halloween’s not till tomorrow!” He nudged the man sitting next to him at the counter and chuckled.

  Beltane’s control was impressive. She didn’t just ignore him, he was simply Not There. The man’s laughter trailed off. He cleared his throat, hunched his shoulders, and turned back to his lobster roll.

  Beltane paid me and I handed her the chowder. She sat at a counter by the window, not far from our ceiling-mounted TV.

  Past her out the front window, I saw Fred get out of his station wagon, a lanyard with keys swinging around his neck. He was smiling. My heart dropped. Oh, no. He doesn’t know about Lobzilla yet. Then he pulled up short, his forehead furrowed. He must have seen the police cars.

  I ran into the kitchen. “Fred’s here. Hilda, would you cover for me?” I rushed outside, right behind Aunt Gully.

  Fred’s head swiveled from the police cars, to the reporter, to us. “Good morning, Gully. What’s going on?”

  Aunt Gully laid a gentle hand on his arm. “Fred, I’m sorry to tell you, but someone’s stolen Lobzilla.”

  “What!” Fred shouted. He dashed to the shed, shouldering Johnny aside.

  Aunt Gully tsked. “What a blow for Fred. I’ll bring him a cup of tea.”

  Aunt Gully and her tea. To her a cup of hot tea was a cure-all.

  “I’ll get it for you.”

  Poor Fred. He’d been so happy. What had he said? Finding Lobzilla was the highlight of his career.

  As I returned to the kitchen to make the tea, I noticed a beer bottle shoved behind one of the bright orange mums Hilda had planted in a half barrel by the back door. I tossed it in the recycling bin where it crashed against all the others.

  The leis. The bottles. My mind churned as I went back into the kitchen.

  Through the pass-through window between the kitchen and the dining room, I watched the scroll across the bottom of the TV screen: CELEBRITY LOBSTER ON THE LAM—LOBNAPPED? UPDATE AT NOON. News traveled fast.

  I remembered letters we’d once received from a Lobster Liberation group. Could someone have liberated Lobzilla? I made a cup of tea and brought it out to Fred. He, Aunt Gully, and Johnny Sabino sat at a picnic table. Fred held his head in his hands, mussing his already messy hair.

  I set the cup down on the table in front of Fred.

  “Thanks, Allie.” Fred’s voice was a whisper. I hated to see him like this.

  “Aunt Gully, Beltane Kowalski asked to speak to you,” I said.

  Aunt Gully waved me away. “She knows my answer. I’ll talk to her next time I’m at the historical society.”

  My answer? What did Beltane want from Aunt Gully?

  Johnny Sabino stood and focused his camera on the shed’s splintered door frame. Aunt Gully’d never even wanted a lock on the shed but was convinced by Lorel to get one earlier in the summer. Aunt Gully said if someone was desperate enough to steal a lobster it meant that they were hungry and really needed one. Not a born businesswoman. That was Lorel’s job.

  As if summoned by my thoughts, my cell phone rang. Lorel.

  I stepped away and told her what happened.

  “You still have photos of Lobzilla,” she said. “I know. Make a Wanted poster and put it on the Mermaid’s Instagram.”

  I rolled my eyes—Lorel and her crazy publicity stunts.

  “I’ll let you know what happens.” I hung up and went back inside.

  Cars flowed into the parking lot at a steady pace—probably folks who hadn’t heard about the theft, lobster lovers who wanted a photo taken with Lobzilla.

  Reluctantly, I returned to Beltane. “Sorry, Aunt Gully’s still busy. She said she’d talk to you at the historical society.”

  Beltane stared at something over my left shoulder. I whirled but saw nothing but a crowd of contented diners. “One must wait for the opportune time,” she said, and turned back to her chowder.

  I rolled my eyes and went back to the counter. Lobzilla’s fans streamed in. Their disappointment didn’t seem to affect their appetites.

  Three guys in Graystone College sweatshirts pressed up to the counter. “We’re bummed about Lobzilla. Any word?”

  I shook my head. They ordered two lobster rolls each.

  The whole situation was so odd. People came here to eat Lobzilla’s smaller relatives. Maybe even Lobzilla’s own kids. But Lobzilla’s size and age made him something special.

  Who would want to steal a giant lobster? As I served the guys their lobster rolls, I saw Hilda drape a little boy with one of the leis we’d collected from the mermaid figurehead. A thought began to take shape.

  I went outside and greeted an officer standing by a Mystic Bay police cruiser. His eyes were hidden by black aviator glasses; his bristling mustache made me think of a walrus. Officer Petrie was a regular at the shack.

  “Allie, I see you got both your legs back.” He jutted his chin at my ankles. I’d been wearing a boot or a high-tech polymer wrap on my healing ankle all summer.

  I flexed my foot. “Feels good to get back to normal. I’ve even been helping teach a dance class at the college. Just can’t dance on pointe yet.”

  Almost normal. I’d be seeing the doctor who worked for New England Ballet Theater for a consultation in the afternoon. He had the answer to the question that had burned inside me since my fall in the spring: was my ankle sufficiently healed for me to return to my job, full-time, dancing with the company?

  I pulled my thoughts back. “This morning Aunt Gully and I cleaned up a dozen empty booze bottles and leis from around the mermaid statue.” I walked him to the front of the shack and then back to the recycling bin. I lifted the lid. Officer Petrie’s eyebrows flew up over his sunglasses. “I mean it’s pretty harmless with the leis, that we don’t mind, but the bottles and drinking…”

  Officer Petrie stroked his mustache. “We’ll increase patrols. We did have a complaint from a neighbor last night about noise. Maybe your aunt should get security cameras. Lotta businesses are getting them. May be a deterrent. You know, some folks just put up signs that say there are cameras and sometimes that’s enough. Your aunt could try that. Too bad she didn’t have them last night.”

  I was thinking the same thing. “This lei thing started early in September. I’m wondering if it isn’t kids from the college.”

  He nodded. “Timing’s right. And there’s a fraternity there. Seems like a fraternity prank.”

  A thought struck me. “Wouldn’t stealing a lobster, a giant lobster, make a great fraternity prank?”

  Officer Petrie stopped stroking his mustache. “I think you’re on to something, Allie. I’ll give the Graystone College security team a call.”

  Chapter 4

  I’m so good at making lobster rolls that many are surprised to learn that underneath this pink Lazy Mermaid Lobster Shack T-shirt I’m actually a ballerina. After years of study at the conservatory, hours in studios, and several dream-come-true seasons with New England Ballet Theater, I managed to trip and fall down the stairs of the home I shared with dancer friends in Boston this spring. My ankle b
roke in two places. I still don’t know how that fall happened.

  After months of rehab and physical therapy, this afternoon I had an appointment with the company doctor to see if he’d sign off on letting me return to dancing. Aunt Gully, Hilda, and Hector hugged me as I left the shack to get the news.

  Hilda embraced me, her big brown eyes shining with tears and her lower lip trembling. I could feel her heart throb through her pink Lazy Mermaid apron. Aye, caramba.

  “Call me first thing.” Aunt Gully smiled and squeezed my arms, her brown eyes warm behind her pink-framed glasses, her red sequined lobster earrings swinging. “Back on your toes,” Aunt Gully murmured as she hugged me. “Where you belong.” I could practically feel her strength and positivity flow into me.

  Hector swatted me on the bottom with a towel. “Go get ’em, Allie!”

  I headed to Boston, Aunt Gully’s van complaining like a built-in backseat driver every time I tried to go over the speed limit. The old purple van had started with its usual shudder and cloud of smoke. We’d catered a huge fancy party on the Fourth of July and made a ton of money, but Aunt Gully was allergic to spending it. Part of me prayed that I’d get to Boston and back without breaking down. The other half wished I wouldn’t, because if Aunt Gully thought I was in danger, that would prod her into car shopping.

  At the medical center, I met with our company doctor in his office, where the walls were covered with signed photos of dancers and athletes, a Who’s Who of Boston sports and theater.

  After he greeted me, my doctor’s eyes flicked away from mine a little too quickly.

  My heart dropped.

  He had been very happy with the condition of my ankle but said I had to start back slowly. My disappointment turned his words and the MRI images into a blur … jumping and pointe work, dancing on the toes … especially brutal to a healing body … healing is a process that can take a while. Patience.

  He’d been gentle giving me the news, but it still stung. I could dance, but not full-out, and definitely not on pointe. Not yet.