Red Rum: A Rosie Casket Mystery by R.M. Wild (top 100 novels of all time .TXT) 📕

“You agreed.”

“Ayuh, I agreed to keep my end of the deal. Which is ferryin these folks from the wharf to your dock. I don’t tell you how to make the beds, do I? So don’t tell me how to steer my ship.”

“So what happens when you’re so drunk, you run us aground?”

Captain Herrick gave his forehead a knock. “That ain’t happened yet, knock on rocks. That’s why we got the lighthouse.”

“The past does not predict the future,” I said.

“How about you worry about givin these folks a good cuppa cocoa—“

“It’s chocolate,” I whispered.

“Fine. You worry about your fancy chocolate, and I’ll worry about keepin the boat afloat. Sound good, Miss Casket?”

I flipped my hair and marched back to the stern. No wonder Matt Mettle didn’t like him. If Herrick didn’t stop drinking, I was going to have to find someone else to partner with and Herrick could go back to whatever stinking barrel of skate he slopped out of.

I sat down on the bench and was ready to fling the stupid bottle overboard, when the label caught my eye again and I stared hard at the red beard and the scar. Without my performance at the trial, Peter Hardgrave would have been brewing wine from fruit and bread in the prison cafeteria.

One of the old men sitting on the coaming leaned toward me. He was green with seasickness. “The captain’s right, ma’am. People all over Maine go crazy for that rum. You can’t touch stuff aged that good short of old Caribbean pirate hordes. And with no more in production, it’s dryin up. Bottles are starting to go for two hundred dollars a pop.”

I wiped my glasses on my sleeve and looked at the bottle again. “Two hundred dollars?”

“Sometimes more,” the old man said.

“What do you know about this pirate logo?”

“That ain’t a logo. That’s a self-portrait. Peter Hardgrave ain’t grown that beard out since the late nineties.”

I swallowed hard, remembering fragments of my dream. “Peter Hardgrave had a red beard?”

“Ayuh,” the old man said.

My innards rocked. For some reason, I felt uncharacteristically ill. I had always prided myself on not getting motion sickness.

The old man pointed at the bottle in my lap, the neck extending like a naughty appendage. “As the captain says, I’d hold onto that bottle if I was you. The bottle itself is gonna be worth a lot of coin one day. In fact, are there any drops left?”

I held it up to the pink light of the lighthouse. The thick glass at the bottom refracted the light like a Fresnel lens and distorted the reflection of my fiery red hair. The last thing I wanted to see was this old man trying to stick his tongue down the neck for a few drops like a desperate anteater. “No. All empty.”

“Do you mind if I see it?”

For some reason, I turned away from him and protected the bottle as if it were my own. “Like you said, it’s very valuable.”

Then I got up and moved to the other side of the boat. An idea had hit me, one that was likely terrible, given my past demons.

If this rum was really that popular, what if Peter Hardgrave and I teamed up and went into business? What if I gave him the space to brew it again and applied for a liquor license so he could sell it?

And while we were at it, why not limit supply and drive up the prices?

It was the same thing Phyllis Martin had done with her chowder.

Working with an escaped convict couldn’t be worse than working with Captain Herrick, could it?

2

I sat on the coaming, trying to fit the pieces of my fading dream back together.

Would it be wise to partner up with the man whom had actually taken my sister?

After his trial last year, Peter Hardgrave had told my foster father that he had been trying to help Chrissy, that she had gotten involved with the wrong people and he had taken her to meet with a trusted friend who could help her get out of trouble.

But according to Hardgrave, she had disappeared from the mouth of the cave.

After that, he had never heard from her again.

“If my dream was right, Peter Hardgrave was the one who had picked me up after the hearing. No wonder he knew where to drop me off,” I said. “His truck had flashed its headlights in the ditch. He had been the last to see Chrissy alive. And yet he hadn’t said anything. He had let me believe I was responsible. He could have ended this all that night.”

Captain Herrick turned around. “Are you talking again?”

“No,” I mumbled.

Captain Herrick made a hard turn toward the banks, let the wheel slide through his callused palms, and we drifted toward the dock. Every time we pulled up to the new structure, I thought of the day I walked into the Sunrise County Savings and Loan and begged for the 30k I needed for wood and labor.

With a sharp-toothed scowl, the banker had scrutinized my credit card debt and the fumes in my savings account and left me scrambling to employ every single one of the persuasive techniques I had once taught my students. Even after much pleading, he had turned me down.

Luckily, all I needed to rebuild the hundred-foot dock was help from one of Matt Mettle’s cousins.

He was a good contractor and the dock was a beauty—but more importantly, it made my business look good. It ran from my backyard, over the rocks, and jutted into the harbor like a middle finger at the Savings and Loan. Since most of my business came from the harbor, it was a better investment than a new front door.

Captain Herrick jumped onto the dock and lashed the boat to the cleats. Every time he landed on the dock like that, the impact sent a seismic ripple up to the bank and I winced.

“Will you be more gentle?” I whispered. “This dock