Coastal Cottage Calamity (A Logan Dickerson Cozy Mystery Book 2) by Abby L. Vandiver Page B

remember what she had said.
    She would hurt
Oliver if he told . . .
    Told what? I
gasped at the thought.
    Maybe he told someone
about the fish and she was the one that killed him.
    Crap!
    Am I staying at
the home of a murderer?
    “You okay? Come
sit down.” Renmar patted the seat again. “I’ll get your coffee.”
    “I’ll get it,” I
said in a voice louder than I intended.
    Wasn’t sure if I
wanted possible murderers, who poisoned people no less, pouring anything for
me.
    “No
bouillabaisse?” I asked in a sweet, tiny voice after I gained my composure.
    “Not today,” Renmar
said. She seemed sad. Maybe even . . . Remorseful?
    Like she was sorry
for killing someone?
    “Just don’t have
it in me today,” she was still talking. “You know after Oliver and everything.”
    I poured my coffee
and remembered how Miss Vivee had put Renmar on her list of suspects she’d
compiled in Gemma Burke’s death. She said that Renmar had a mean streak.
    Is what I
witnessed yesterday – the argument with Oliver – what Miss Vivee meant?
    I walked over
slowly to the table, deep in thought, when Bay came and grabbed my sides making
me almost spill my coffee.
    “Bay!” I said and
smacked him on his arm. “I could’ve gotten burned.”
    “Morning, Miss
Archaeologist,” he said pointing at my shirt. He went and stood behind his
mother’s chair. “How
you doin’, Ma?” Bay put his arm around his mother’s neck and she leaned her
head back into his chest.
    “I don’t know. I
just can’t believe Oliver’s gone,” she said.
    I raised an
eyebrow and slid into a kitchen chair, one leg tucked under me.
    Unless of
course you’re the reason he’s gone.
    “I know,” Bay said,
an exaggerated sad face showing he empathized. He went and leaned over to Hazel
Cobb sitting in the chair and gave her a peck on the cheek. “Aunt Hazel. You
doin’ okay?”
    Hazel wasn’t Bay’s
aunt, she was really a cousin. Best friend to his mother and cousin to his
father, Hazel, Renmar and Oliver were a threesome. Other than at the Island,
when Oliver was around Renmar, so was Hazel. And it seemed that Oliver, per
Miss Vivee, was Hazel’s cousin “by slavery,” as she put it. They shared the
same great, great, great grandfather.
    “I know that the
relations between me and Oliver go back more than a century,” Hazel said dabbing
her eyes. “But he was still family.”
    “I’ll have to
drive up to Atlanta with the body,” Bay made the announcement to the room after
double kissing his Auntie Brie on her cheek. He walked over to the stove,
lifting the lids he looked inside the skillet and pots.
    “No food, Ma?”
    “I have a plate
for you. I put it in the warmer,” she said and got up to get it.
    “And isn’t this
Friday? Where is the bouillabaisse? I was counting on having some,” Bay said
grabbing silverware out the drawer and taking a seat.
    I lifted my eyes
over the rim of the cup and looked surreptitiously at Bay.
    No
bouillabaisse for you, Bay. And I hate to tell you because it just might ruin
our relationship, but I think your mother is a murderer. With a capital “M.”
    “Atlanta? Why?”
Brie asked
    “We’re going to do
the autopsy there. At the Bureau.”
    Cup still up to my
face, I trained my eyes on Renmar, watching her reaction to Bay talking about
the autopsy.
    “Mother told me
that that God awful man was going to get an injunction,” Renmar said as she
poured Bay a glass of orange juice and set it in front of him. “Put a stop to
your autopsy.”
    I bet
you’d like that, Renmar.
    “Ron Anderson
won’t win that argument,” Bay said confidently, forking in a mouthful of
scrambled eggs that he had covered in hot sauce. “Georgia laws states that an
autopsy is legally required if a death is a result of violence or no doctor was
in attendance at the time of death. Or,” he pointed his fork at his mother. “If
the victim had a suspicious death - sudden like a person that appeared to be in
good health.”