The Gift of Grift Read online

  Ray shook his head sadly. “I’m sure you’d be long gone, but I don’t think the rest of that’s true. I think you came to town following somebody else, maybe somebody you’ve been trying to catch up to for a long time.”

  “Oh, is this a tall tale contest now? Am I supposed to respond by making some outlandish claim about your life?” Gail smiled as if she were trying to get in on an inside joke.

  “’Fraid not, ma’am. I’m saying what I’m pretty sure is the truth. You came into my shop on Monday and asked if anyone had dropped anything, right?”

  Gail regarded him in silence, her mouth set in stone.

  “I think you asked that because you knew that someone had. You knew Brian and probably Judy had come in already. You knew what scam they were pulling — because you’d pulled that scam many times yourself. With Brian.”

  She shook her head, turning back toward her door. “This is crazy talk.”

  “Judy saw you,” Ray hurried to add. “She told me she saw the woman Brian used to be involved with, here, arguing with him. There’s a witness.”

  Gail froze but didn’t turn back to him.

  He pressed on. “Maybe you didn’t intend to do it. Maybe you were just hoping you could reconcile. Or maybe the whole thing was premeditated. I don’t know. But I’m pretty sure you got Brian to agree to meet you on the beach, or maybe just figured out where he’d be. Maybe you just knew him that well. I’m guessing you probably argued there, maybe on the beach. I don’t know, perhaps you came by my shop and saw that eighty-dollar larceny lure on your way to the beach, or maybe you picked it up after you’d argued with Brian. Either way, you made your way down to Brian on that beach, and you conked him on the head with a buoy.”

  Gail slowly turned back around, her face impassive. “Is that what you think?”

  “Oh, yes, ma’am.”

  “Hm.” Gail looked down for a moment. “That’s certainly a fanciful story.”

  “It’s more than that, and I’m pretty sure the police are going to be able to link your fingerprints to the buoys, since you put them under my porch last night when you said you were chasing a squirrel.”

  “Oh, did I?”

  “Yes, ma’am, and then you headed over to the library, which you just admitted you visited, and you called in the tip to make it look as if I were the one who’d killed Brian.”

  “That’s funny.” Gail took one step toward him, but Ray stood his ground even as she poked him in the chest. “Because I’m pretty sure you just lost over two hundred dollars to a man who you knew when he was a child, and the buoys belong to you and are going to have your fingerprints on them, not mine.”

  Not hers?

  Wait, was she admitting he’d guessed everything else right?

  And there was another flaw in her reasoning. “Well, Miss Gail, you might be right that the buoys have my fingerprints on them, but you have to know: you can’t con an honest man.”

  She cocked an eyebrow. “Oh, can’t you?”

  “I didn’t pay him for that ‘diabetes monitor.’”

  Gail pulled back a little.

  “So he did steal money from me, but it was more on the order of thirty bucks.”

  She blinked at him in silence.

  “So, you admit that you did know Brian, and that you and he did use to run con jobs together like that little diabetes monitor scam.”

  “I — I didn’t say that.”

  Ray gave her a sympathetic look. She really had just admitted it.

  “You don’t have any proof.”

  “Except your confession. And I’m guessing we’ll find some gloves around here somewhere that will tie you to the crime, then? The murder?”

  She seemed to blanch for a second but collected herself quickly. “Maybe they will. But you won’t, you old coot.”

  Before Ray could even take offense at the insult, Gail lunged at him, shoving him backwards. Ray stumbled back two steps, and then his foot found nothing.

  He was falling.

  He only had time to register the look of triumph on Gail’s face before the impact. But it was far too soon for him to have hit the ground.

  “You all right there, Ray?” asked a familiar voice. A man’s voice.

  Ray realized he was being held up and turned around to see who’d caught him, because it obviously wasn’t Judy, his designated backup. “Chip. I didn’t think you were coming.”

  “I would’ve been here sooner if Miss Katie hadn’t been so busy chewing me out.”

  “Well, thank you, thank you so much.”

  Chip nodded and looked up to where Gail still stood in shock. “No need to try to run, Miss Santaquin. We’re going to have a nice, long talk about what I just heard.”

  Defeat seeped into Gail’s features, sapping her strength. Chip righted Ray and climbed the rest of the stairs to place Gail in handcuffs.

  Ray would have appreciated a thank you or something from Chip, but he’d definitely take the whole saving-his-life thing instead. He stood on the landing while Chip marched Gail down the stairs, past a gloating Judy, reading Gail her rights the whole way.

  And then the first words Chip had said to her registered in Ray’s mind: you’re under arrest for the murder of Brian McMurray and the attempted murder of Ray Watson.

  Ray stood there for a long time after Judy left and Chip drove away with Gail in the backseat of his car.

  This sleuthing business definitely wasn’t for him.

  Ray took a deep breath as he stepped out of Rayburn Pharmacy. He felt as though he had a new lease on life after his brush with death — even though after two weeks he still hadn’t told Katie quite how close he’d come to real danger.

  He strolled past Clark’s shop, the Blue Crab, and peered through the windows. Inside, a short woman with a blonde pixie cut dusted the shelves. Clark bustled over to lecture her about how she was doing it wrong.

  “Sorry, Mr. Dutch,” Judy said, her high voice carrying through the glass. Or maybe it was just Ray’s imagination filling in the blanks. Her community service sentence was probably a lot harsher than the judge realized when she had accepted Judy’s plea deal. But it was good to see the girl learning honest work.

  Ray was almost to his car when another voice called his name. He turned around to find everyone’s favorite Realtor. “Pammy,” he said warmly.

  “Hi, Ray. How’s Katie?”

  “Chipper.” Ever since they’d solved this murder, the word had never been more apt. He hadn’t seen his wife sparkle like that in years. It was the one good thing to come out of all this for them.

  “Give her these for me, will you?” Pammy held out a pot of paperwhites in bloom. “Oh, and Happy New Year!”

  “Happy New Year to you, too.” Pam had always been kind to them, but obviously getting her off for murder had only endeared them to her more.

  Ray drove the short way home and arrived to unlock his shop at the same time as one of his favorite people approached the door from the other side. “Hello, there, Miss Lori,” he greeted her.

  “Hi, Ray. I brought y’all some biscuits, leftovers from breakfast.”

  “Thank you very kindly. Katie sure loves your biscuits.”

  Lori beamed at him. “The Christmas rush certainly hit hard this year. How did y’all fare over the holidays? I feel like I’ve hardly seen you these last couple weeks!”

  “We kept on keeping on, thank you.”

  “That’s good to hear. Anything exciting happen while Mitch and I were away?”

  Ray bit back a smile. “Oh, no, Miss Lori. Just a quiet week in Dusky Cove.”

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Dusky Cove Gift Shop Cozy Mystery Series!

  Read The Gift of Lift, coming soon!

  Gift shop owner Ray must clear two friends of murder — unless one of them really did it.

  Gift shop owner Ray Watson is getting too old to face another busy tourist season up in the resort town of Dusky Cove, take care of his ailing wife, and try to respond to his grandson in jail. The one thing he needs is a break — and he finds the lift he needs in the form of a home health nurse.

  Just when things are looking up for him, Ray once again has to help solve a crime when a souvenir he sold was used as a murder weapon. But Ray can’t imagine that a woman he’s known for years could have killed anyone. Is their new home health nurse a likelier suspect?

  With two people Ray cares about as the only suspects, can he clear their names? Or did one of them really commit murder?

  Read The Gift of Lift!

  Read the first chapter of The Gift of Lift now!

  Ray Watson poked at his toast. Why had humanity developed such an affinity for lightly-recooked-to-slightly-burnt bread? It definitely wasn’t a filling breakfast, and it definitely wasn’t going to give him the energy he needed to get through today.

  Not that the day was anything special. It was off season, but Valentine’s day, nearly a week away, might bring in some locals searching for something special for their special someone. Dusky Card and Gift was an open secret for major gift-giving holidays in town. Back in the days when his Katie was healthy, she was practically every Dusky Covite’s personal shopper.

  That had been a long time ago. Now it had been nearly eleven years since she was confined to her bed virtually all the time. Ray still loved his wife, of course, but he’d never counted on how taxing it could be to be a full-time caregiver.

  Ray crunched down the rest of his dry toast and finally hauled himself up from the kitchen table. He needed to open up the shop. He needed to be up and doing.

  He needed a break.

  But that would never happen. Their only daughter was gone, and her son was in prison for her murder. No one in town had ever seriously considered taking over the gift shop, and their siblings and nieces and nephews were all consumed with caring for their own families — or themselves.

  Ray couldn’t blame them. He almost envied them. Life would be much simpler if he only had one major worry. He just wasn’t ready to give up on either one of his greatest loves: the shop and his wife — not in that order.

  He flipped the Open sign around and unlocked the deadbolt. A few minutes late for opening, but who really kept time in a beach town in February?

  He hovered at the door for a long moment, his eyes on Sally, the mail carrier headed up Front Street toward his shop. Maybe he’d opened a little later than he’d thought if she was already making her rounds.

  She spotted him at the door and waved cheerily. Ray lifted a hand in greeting, and Sally bounded up the stairs. He opened the door to her, the bell clanging. “Morning,” he greeted her, hoping he didn’t sound quite as morose as his thoughts today.

  “Hi, Ray.” Her voice was as warm as her smile. “How’s Miss Katie today?”

  “Tired,” he confessed. She’d been exhausted since Christmastime, and that might really be what was weighing so heavily on him.

  “Sorry to hear that.” She held out a thin sheaf of envelopes. “Maybe there will be something in here to brighten her day.”

  “Wouldn’t that be nice?” Ray accepted the letters, probably bills and junk mail.

  “Anything I can do for you?”

  Ray merely waved away the concern, although it did seem genuine. He’d known Sally since she was knee high to a grasshopper, and though she was an adult with children of her own these days, it was hard for him to picture anything someone so young might be able to help him with.

  Though he did need the help.

  “Hope your day gets better.” Sally seemed to make a point to make eye contact with him, and this time her smile carried an encouraging note.

  He hadn’t meant to mope, especially not in front of people. He thanked her and took the mail inside.

  He’d barely made it across the shop floor when the cowbell on the door clanged again. Ray turned back to find an old friend gracing his shop: George Mendez.

  “Well, hey, George,” he called, tucking the mail under the sales counter. “In to buy something —” Ray stopped short. George’s wife Betty had passed away not two months ago. No, he definitely wasn’t here for a gift for her.

  “What’s that?” George called.

  “Hey,” Ray said again, louder. “How are you keeping?”

  “Just fine.” The two words could have been casual, but something about his tone carried a bit of a bite. “How’s that wife of yours?”

  Ray merely nodded. Betty had had a slow decline, so George had been a caregiver himself for many years. He was probably one of the few people in town who understood the weight that carried for Ray.

  George scanned the shop for a moment, leaning heavily on his cane. “What’s new here?”

  Ray picked up the newest gift set in the shop to show him: a cheese board with a set of utensils, all packaged in a fancy wooden box. “Just got these in last week.”

  George harrumphed. “Who needs fancy forks?”

  “They’re for serving cheeses.” Ray prepared to launch into the memorized product description, the use of each of the different knives, but George shook his head.

  “Who can eat cheese these days?”

  Ray understood that a little too well. He laughed and set the cheese set aside. “Are you shopping for anyone in particular? Grandkids?” Seemed like a safer suggestion.

  George narrowed his eyes for a moment. Why would that be confusing? “No, no,” he said. “Just browsing.”

  “All right. You know where to find me.” Ray retreated back toward the counter, but didn’t take his customary seat. Instead, he watched his old friend.

  Very old. They both were these days.

  George shuffled over to the pet toys, then back to the mugs, then to the clothing. Most people tended to wander around the shop, but George had always been pretty decisive. And considering he’d been in the shop dozens, if not hundreds, of times, he was usually pretty sure about where he wanted to go and what he wanted to get.

  Of course, he might just be lonely today. Ray could hardly blame him for that. George didn’t even have siblings to talk to anymore, not after he’d feuded with his brother years ago.

  George picked up a greeting card from the rack and frowned at it, moving it closer and further away as he squinted at the cover. He flipped it over and scoffed. “Four dollars for a greeting card? Highway robbery.”

  That was one of the cheaper ones, but Ray kept his mouth shut. George didn’t seem to be addressing him anyway.

  George shook the card and shoved it back in the rack, giving it a violent spin. Ray debated saying something, but hopefully his friend would calm down. George wandered back to the mugs, picking up one to carry with him as he headed to the T-shirts that read “SomeNana in North Carolina loves me!” and “Sun & Surf / Dusky Cove.” Ray couldn’t imagine why George would need a souvenir when all of his kids lived in Brunswick County still.

  George shuffled over with the mug. Did he want to buy it?

  “Is that everything for you today?” Ray asked.

  George scowled again. “I’m just fine.”

  “Of course you are, George. Do you like the mug?”

  He glanced down at the mug in his hand, emblazoned with a classic “I [heart] NC.” For a split second, George almost seemed surprised to find it there. He quickly set it down on the nearest horizontal surface, although that display held model ships and wooden toys.

  “I’m just fine,” George said again.

  This time, Ray didn’t respond. Because the longer George was in the shop, the less sure Ray was that he agreed with his friend’s self-assessment.

  “Everything all
right?” Ray asked.

  George looked up from the mug. “Of course. Of course.” He turned away and picked up the cheese serving set Ray had shown him a few moments before. “I should get one of these.”

  “That’s a great idea.”

  George nodded, but it was clearly more for his own sake than Ray’s. George set down the cheese board and shuffled toward the door.

  “Nothing for you today?” Ray called. George usually purchased something when he came in — he usually came in for that express purpose — but not every time.

  “No, thank you,” George said. He sounded a bit more like himself, so Ray let him go, bidding him goodbye. Ray did, however, move to watch his old friend get into his car and drive away.

  That had been . . . strange. Ray made a mental note to check in on his friend as soon as he could.

  As if he needed something more to do.

  No, what he needed was less.

  A dull thud sounded above his head and Ray looked up. Katie. He hurried up the stairs as fast as he could — maybe that wasn’t much faster than George’s shuffle, but Ray was still trying. He reached Katie’s room at the end of the hall, ready to — pick her up from the floor? Fix something? Clean up a mess?

  Ready to rescue her, no matter what it took.

  Katie was still safely in bed, thank Heaven. Ray’s back still remembered the last time he’d had to pick her up, and it was not a happy memory. His wife offered him a weak smile. “How is your morning going? Did I hear someone in the shop?”

  “George Mendez.” Ray waved a hand as if to push away the irrelevant topic. “I heard something fall?”

  Katie’s smile turned to more of a cringe. She pointed at the floor where a thick hardback novel lay. “My book slipped.”

  Ray stooped, bracing himself on the edge of Katie’s hospital bed. This was the second time this month. Was it time to have another nerve conductivity study on her hands?

  He managed to get the book without having to bend down too much, and he set the book gently on Katie’s table, filling her hands with his own instead. “Junebug,” he said, pulling out his oldest and dearest nickname for her, “do we need to call the doctor?”