Anchor Management Read online

  Anchor Management

  A Crab Feast Cozy Mystery

  Ellis Quinn

  Copyright 2020 by Ellis Quinn

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  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

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  www.ellisquinnmysteries.com

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  A Crab Feast Cozy Mystery Novel

  Anchor Management

  by Ellis Quinn

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  Cover Design by Ellis Quinn

  Created with Vellum

  About the Author

  Ellis Quinn lives on a haunted goat farm in the woods surrounded by animals.

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  www.ellisquinnmysteries.com

  Also by Ellis Quinn

  THE CRAB FEAST MYSTERIES

  Crab Outta Luck

  Anchor Management

  Muddy Waters

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Afterword

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  They held the 64th Annual Chesapeake Cove Community Crab Feast as usual at the Isaac Crockett Foundation building, which also served as the Cove’s community center. After a fun and sunny day of fundraising events held in the adjacent Crockett Park, now it was evening and time for dinner. With almost three hundred people in attendance, they held the dinner outdoors next to the historic white clapboard Foundation Building; diners, tables and seating, and kitchen serving, all underneath huge white cross-cable canopy tents with high pointed roofs. Strung up in the tents’ framework were old crab pots fitted with gas lanterns inside. The seatings all faced to focus on the white-painted octagonal pavilion which served tonight as a stage for the festivities and ceremony, complete with Jonas Seabolt working as emcee, and the spot where a country band was playing, little Becky Hanes from The Cracked Crab up there doing a wonderful job of singing and playing the fiddle in her jean shorts and cowboy boots.

  Cherry was awestruck. “That girl can sing.”

  Bette said, “I remember her mother singing in the choir. Must run in the family.”

  There were six at their table: Pris, Cherry, Joy Kim, Chunky Glasses Margaret Whelan, Bette, and next to her, her son, Vance. Between Bette and Vance there was a three-foot tall metal chicken, and Bette snagged the elbow of her cardigan on it for the fourteenth time.

  She said to Vance, “I don’t know why on earth you wanted this thing so bad.”

  “I just like it,” Vance said, admiring and caressing the jagged metal comb of his chicken.

  “Where are you going to put it?”

  “In my apartment.”

  “Where in your apartment?” His apartment was tiny.

  “You let me figure that out,” he said and winked, then tapped the point of his index finger on her nose.

  She pinched at her ticklish nose, saying, “All right, all right—but don’t expect me to house sit this thing next time you go to sea. Ripken’s enough for me.”

  Vance said, “This is a very self-reliant chicken,” which made Cherry laugh. Vance smiled and patted his chicken again.

  “You should go put it in the Bronco before I get a pull in my cardigan,” Bette said.

  “The chicken stays with me,” he said, comically defiant and moving the chicken to sit between his knees under the table.

  Cherry chuckled.

  Bette said, “Honestly—you played that outdoor skee-ball for an hour, Vance. Look at your cheeks, you should have worn sunscreen.” She pressed a finger to her handsome redheaded son’s cheek and watched it go white.

  “Stop, Mom,” he said, raising a shoulder to keep her from touching him.

  “Or worn a ball cap or something. Are you careful when you’re out at sea?”

  “Yes, Mom,” he said, exasperated, batting away her persistent hand before fixing his hair because she’d mussed it ever-so-slightly.

  Pris said, “Would you two stop fussing. The boy likes skee-ball, and he wanted that chicken; he should have worn a cap, but he didn’t, now he might need some aloe vera in the morning, but it doesn’t matter right now cause I see our platters coming.”

  Weaving through the crowded tables in their direction were two servers from the Ladies of The Crockett Foundation with their dirtied white aprons and hair tucked into hairnets.

  They all cleared room on their table which had been triple-layered with newsprint and craft paper, making way for two stainless platters heaped with steamed Maryland blue crab and corn on the cob. Their table was supplied with mallets and crab knives, rolls of paper towel, a galvanized pail for the carcasses, bowls of water and cut lemons for finger-rinsing, pots of Old Bay, saltines, melted butter—plus bowls with pickle spears, and a plate of cheddar cubes. Jonas Seabolt’s Blackwater Brewery was helping with the fundraiser and launching tonight their brand new brew: a pale dry pilsner served in clear bottles and named Blackwater Crab Feast.; It reminded her of the old National Bohemian her mother would drink at crab feasts when she was little. Later she’d sampled it at high school parties and then they’d all called it Natty Bo. Vance was drinking a tall iced tea because he was on driving duty.

  Cherry asked him if he’d ever studied crabs at school, wafting the steam toward her pretty face, eyes closed, mouth smiling.

  Vance swished his mouth to one side, studied the hillock of bright red crabs, then in a professorial tone said, “Callinectes sapidus.”

  Cherry said, “Calli-nexus what’s-it-now?”

  “Sapidus. Callinectes sapidus,” Vance said. “It means savory beautiful swimmers.”

  “They got the name right,” Cherry said. “And why do they go from blue to red when you cook them?”

  Vance said, “Heat-activated pigment—astaxanthin—it’s in a membrane of the shell, the crustacyanin. The pigment comes apart from the membrane when you add heat. It brings the red out.”

  Pris said, “Stop asking him questions or he’ll never stop, start telling us which ones are female, which ones are male, which ones go to bed early, studied hard in school—”

  “Yeech,” Margaret said, grimacing. “I don’t like knowing too much about the habits of what I’m about to eat.”

  Joy Kim said, “I hope mine stayed up late, talked back to their mother, and didn’t study,” her expression turning glum.

  They all tucked huge white napkins into their collars that fell to their laps, and began pulling over crabs to their eating areas, hammering and knifing right on the paper. This was her first real down-home Chesapeake Cove crab feast in years; her and Roman and Vance had gone to crab feasts near Bethesda before, but none had the charm of a proper home-grown community feast.

  First, she pulled at the sweet and tender backfin, ate it, then dipped the jumbo lump meat in the butter. When Joy’s arthritis gave her trouble cracking the claws on her own, Bette did it for her.

  They did their best to keep clean, wiping their mouths and fingers multiple times, laughing though at the mess they were making of themselves. The whole while Becky and her band played along for them, keeping the evening lively, every table around them uproarious with good humor.

  A
s the eating dwindled, everyone stuffed, the band performed a fiddle stomper as a finale, then wished everyone a Good night, waving and coming down off the pavilion to huge applause.

  Jonas mounted the pavilion’s steps and went to the microphone out front of the drum set, clearing it from the stand and saying, “Let’s hear it again for Becky and The Skipjacks, everyone.” The applause returned, and someone at the table behind them finger-whistled a piercing blast that jangled Margaret’s nerves and made her shoulders jump. She shot a dirty look but kept clapping.

  Emcee Jonas thanked everyone again for showing up and making the community proud. He said it was early yet, and the final tally wasn’t in, but what with the raffles, the auctions, the quilt sale, the amusement games, and of course, the crab feast, it looked like they were going to have a record year for their fundraiser.

  “I don’t want to jinx it,” he said, voice low coming through the sound system, “but I think we’re over twenty thousand this year.” He had to pause a moment as the cheering returned, but when it quieted he said, “I just love this community, and I love how you all came out to support the Foundation. They put every one of those dollars to use for the children of Chesapeake Cove.”

  More cheering. Another wolf whistle. Then Jonas went through the day’s big prize winners; who won what, who outbid who for something, even giving Vance a turn, saying, “And winner of the big metal chicken is”—he read from a sheet of paper—“Vance Whaley-Waters.”

  Vance raised his big dumb chicken over his head while everyone clapped. Jonas squinted against the light, saying now, “Vance Whaley?—that your handsome boy, Bette?”

  “He sure is,” she hollered, then kissed Vance’s cheek, holding his face steady by his chin while everyone laughed. Vance complained and lowered his chicken back under the table.

  Jonas announced more winners, then he set the mic back in the stand. “Coming up next is the annual handover of Isaac Crockett’s Anchor . . .” He hustled back behind the drums and re-emerged at the front of the pavilion with a foot-and-a-half tall brass anchor. “Now, the Blackwater Brewery won this last year, and I proudly displayed the award in my business, but it’s October and time for me to happily pass this on to the next deserving business.”

  Pris patted Cherry’s shoulder, and she looked back to smile.

  Jonas said, “I’m going to ask Charlotte Dawson from the Business Association to come up and announce the winner.”

  Vance leaned closer saying, “Is Cherry’s place going to win?”

  “Most likely,” she said. “New business in town. Doing real well, great reputation, helpful to the community . . . we worked a ton on getting her application perfect.”

  Vance showed he’d crossed his fingers, and she gripped them.

  Charlotte Dawson rose from the front-most table where she sat with her husband (the mayor of the Cove) and a few of the men from the town council and their wives. Charlotte mounted the pavilion’s steps now, her high heels clicking on the wood, Jonas reaching out to offer her a hand if she needed it. She didn’t, waving him off.

  Jonas gave her room, standing aside with the anchor at his chest, one hand on top, the other cradling underneath. Charlotte took the microphone with vivacious energy, saying breathily, “How we all doing tonight?” She was a well-groomed woman with belabored makeup, blonde hair perfectly coiffed; she wore a vibrant royal blue pantsuit (which anyone would tell you was risky attire for a crab feast), and her jewelry sparkled under the pavilion’s overhead spotlights.

  Vance said, “Who’s this?”

  Bette leaned close. “Mayor’s wife.”

  “She’s colorful.”

  She batted her son’s thigh, indicating for him to behave himself.

  Charlotte said, “I know so many of you are as excited as I am to hear who will hoist the honor of this brass anchor”—gesturing toward Jonas holding the anchor, her polished red nails glistening in the light—“display it proudly in their wonderful place of business. . . . Now, there were many applications, and we pored over them, I must tell you, some of us stayed up so late we were seeing double . . .” She waggled her head as if stunned, then pretended to thump it with the heel of her hand, gold bracelets clinking near the microphone. Now she laughed at her own joke and sought some of the other ladies of the Business Association, giving them a wink and a finger-wiggle. “But in the end, the answer was pretty clear. We couldn’t ignore the obvious . . . one application stood out above the others and I think you’ll all agree . . .”

  Bette squeezed Vance’s fingers until he made a quiet Ow and pulled them from her.

  Charlotte withdrew from the pocket of her bright blue jacket a small card envelope. She opened it with dramatic flourish.

  Vance whispered, “If she knows who won, why does she need to read it from a card?” Bette batted his thigh again.

  Heads from adjacent tables turned to watch Cherry, who hid her face behind Pris.

  Charlotte held out the card so she could read it, looked over her shoulder at the abandoned drum set, said, “Should have had someone do a drum roll . . .”

  “Come on, already,” Vance exhaled.

  When she faced the crowd again, Charlotte announced at last: “The honored bearer of Isaac Crockett’s Anchor this year will be . . . The Gilded Lily, owned by Hilda Keaton . . .” She applauded with her fingers, still holding the card and envelope, bright red lips peeled back in a mask of joy. “Come on up here, Hilda . . .”

  Bette’s shoulders slumped and her lungs deflated as there was a smattering of applause. She watched as Cherry lay her forehead against Pris’s shoulder. Pris reached up to pat at Cherry’s head.

  “Come on now, Hilda,” Charlotte urged, waving her up. Next to her, Jonas Seabolt’s face pinched to skeptical, his mouth fidgeting inside his dense black beard.

  Hilda sat at the table behind Margaret, Pris, and Cherry, and rose now looking bewildered, adjusting her sweater and tossing away her crab feast napkin. The others at the table congratulated her, but she said, “I already won four years ago, I mean . . .”

  When Hilda pushed back her chair, she looked over to Bette’s table, all of them smiling at her and nodding, Margaret congratulating her. But Hilda looked troubled. She gestured a hand toward Cherry, saying, “Would you come up with me?”

  Cherry shook her head no. “Me? No, oh no, that’s all right. No, I mean—”

  “Please come up with me. There’s been a mistake, I . . . I only submitted my application out of habit, I didn’t even— Would you please come up with me?” She still held her hand out.

  Margaret urged Cherry forward, pushing on her back, and Cherry stood, still protesting. “I don’t . . . I really shouldn’t . . .”

  As Hilda approached the pavilion holding hands with Cherry, Charlotte’s mask of joy receded and her brow lowered. Only a moment—then she manufactured another smile and clapped her hands, saying, “That’s it, Hilda, you come on up here . . .”

  Pris looked over her shoulder at Bette, her expression worried. Bette shrugged.

  Vance asked her: “What’s The Gilded Lily?”

  “Nice little shop,” Bette said. “Souvenirs and gifts and that kind of thing. Might be where your chicken got donated from. Been here since before I left, but . . . Hilda’s already had the anchor . . .”

  Hilda and Cherry approached the pavilion. Charlotte budged only enough room to allow one person to join her at center stage. Hilda crowded Charlotte aside, holding Cherry’s hand and guiding Cherry up next to her in the spotlight. Hilda’s expression showed embarrassment, and Cherry looked nervous, plucking at her shirt and adjusting her skirt. The girl was almost overcome with stage fright in front of the entire town, lips scrunched, mouth pushed to one side like a little kid.

  Hilda leaned nearer the microphone and said, “I think it’s wonderful that The Gilded Lily’s been named recipient of the Crockett Anchor once again. I must be doing something right!”

  The crowd laughed, some clapped. Charlotte looked p
erplexed.

  “Seriously though,” Hilda said. “As bearer of the Crockett Anchor—an honor I take with utmost seriousness—I grant the Anchor to my favorite business in town, one that just opened up and I know y’all go to every morning for your caffeine and your sugar and about the best baking I’ve ever tasted and I’m not what you call a spring chicken.”

  The crowd agreed, hooting and applauding, laughing along and making Hilda bolder. Cherry, however, looked like she wanted to disappear, tuck her head right into the collar of her shirt like a turtle. One hand played with the long beaded plaits of her hanging hair, tucking them across a cheek and doing her best to stop herself from putting them in her mouth.

  Hilda looked aside with admiration to Cherry, said, “This young woman came to town this year and took over Earl’s Restaurant and she made it her own. A fine establishment of the highest quality, a kind and caring owner who cares about this community she’s now a part of. I’m passing the honor of The Crockett Anchor to the most deserving business in town, passing it to Cherry Jambo, owner of The Steaming Bean—”

  While Hilda spoke, Charlotte’s expression twisted through a variety of negative emotions: disgust, anger, bedevilment. But at mention of Cherry’s name, Charlotte had enough, leaning to the microphone to stop the impropriety, saying, “Absolutely not. That’s not the way this works, Hilda—you don’t have the authority to do that.”

  Hilda scoffed. “Authority?”

  Cherry looked stressed; she closed her eyes and put out her hands as if to separate Hilda and Charlotte. She said, “Stop. Please, stop. Charlotte, you’re just doing this because you’re bitter—”