A Timely Vision

No surprise, we decided not to eat in the dining room. The area in the bar was smaller but also less drafty and devoid of strange feelings. All the food was great—I was especially impressed by Kevin’s lasagna. I complimented him on it, and he accepted with a grin. “It’s the only dinner food I know how to make. Breakfast, I have covered. I make the best French toast in the world. I haven’t worked on lunch yet, but I’m thinking I need more than grilled cheese sandwiches.”

“I’m sure you can find someone to work here in the summer,” I told him. “Winter help is a little harder to get. Only people who have been here awhile stay when it gets cold.”

“But I’m sure Kevin will be able to find lots of year-round help once he opens.” Trudy smiled and crinkled her pretty eyes at him. She didn’t cause those frown lines for just anyone.

“Thanks,” he said. “I hope all of you are suitably impressed enough to recommend me to the locals. I plan to pay a good salary too. With benefits.”

Shayla leaned against him (she’d managed to sit between Kevin and Tim again). “Don’t make it sound too appealing, sugar. I might give up my shop and come to work for you.”

Tim leaned his elbows on the table beside his empty lasagna plate. “Just how is it an ex-FBI agent came up with enough money to buy the Blue Whale and do all these renovations and still have enough to hire help?”

If Kevin noticed Tim’s irritated tone, he didn’t let on. “Not everyone in the FBI comes from poor families. My parents were very well-off. They left me a nice nest egg. It was one of the reasons I decided to get out.”

“But wasn’t it exciting?” Shayla asked. “All that cloak-and-dagger, spy rings and late night meetings in smoky nightclubs. It sounds sexy to me, baby.”

Kevin laughed. “As I was telling Dae, it gets old. I didn’t want to spend my whole life chasing bad guys. It’s a good game for someone right out of college. I like being an innkeeper. Bad paint and rotten wood are about as exciting as I want nowadays.”

“Not to mention dead men in your upstairs,” Nancy quipped. “Maybe you can leave the job, but it never really leaves you.”

“You might be right,” Kevin conceded. “I hope the dead man upstairs was the only thing left over from the previous owner. By the way, does anyone know anything about him? The previous owner, I mean. Bunk something, wasn’t it?”

Tim laughed. “Of course. That’s like asking if you can find your way from Corolla to Duck! Old Bunk Whitley is a legend in these parts. People say he bought the Blue Whale with smuggling money, like so many other people in this part of the world.”

“But people also say the pirate gold he claimed to have found is what did him in too,” I added. “Gramps swears the ghosts of the pirates came to get old Bunk. That’s why they never found his body.”

Kevin finished his wine and glanced around the room. “I hope we’re not about to find another surprise. If old Bunk Whitley is stuck in some closet, I don’t want to know about it. But it’s a nice ghost story. Maybe I can use that in my brochure.”

Trudy shuddered. “Isn’t one dead body enough? And talk about legends! Everyone around here knows about Wild Johnny Simpson. How he broke Miss Elizabeth’s heart. How he courted both sisters who were equally beautiful, but he only wanted Miss Elizabeth. How Miss Mildred never forgave her sister for taking him from her. Now that’s the stuff of legends. Real legends, not some stupid pirate ghost.”

At that moment, there was a loud thump that rattled the windows in the bar. Kevin got to his feet and raced outside. We followed him and stood in the courtyard with the mermaid fountain, staring up at the roof, silhouetted against the dark sky.

“What is it?” Nancy whispered. “I don’t see anything.”

“Is it a pirate ghost come to get Trudy for being so ignorant?” Shayla demanded, nudging Trudy with her elbow.

“I wish it was something that interesting.” Kevin ran his hand through his dark brown hair. “It’s the roof. I was worried about some soft spots yesterday. See that hole up there? Unless we find Bunk Whitley’s body in it, I’m going to have to put a new roof on over there.”

Chapter 12

I went into work early the next morning. It was one of those cooler mornings when the fog swirls around the houses and lays across the sound like a blanket. Gramps offered to drive me to Missing Pieces on the golf cart, but I wanted to walk.

I had thought I’d be up all night thinking about everything that happened at the Blue Whale, but I fell asleep two minutes after I climbed into bed. That meant I needed some time to think before I opened the shop. I had promised Kevin I’d come back this afternoon to start painting, if the morning was dry. He planned to continue with his painting on the ground floor despite the new hole in the roof that needed patching.