Marvels, Mochas, and Murder Read online

  Their broke friends who tagged along for rides and handouts drank our water for free. They were all just loud enough to drive the morning regulars back to their homes. Even Allan with his ginormous headphones wasn’t immune.

  At around 2:00 one of Kapow Koffee’s few employees, Sarah, came in and relieved me of my barista duties. This allowed me to do the “fun” managerial work required of the cafe. Making the schedule, ordering pastries, paying bills, all these things so easily fell to the wayside if I didn’t stay on top of it myself.

  Customers, of course, always took precedence. But the first month we were open, I let a lot of little things take priority over bigger ones. Things like deficient mopping—streaks on the tile (it’s a thing)—got me sidetracked from the hour designated for payroll.

  I suffered the consequences that month, mostly in lack of sleep. I’d startle awake in the middle of the night remembering some task I’d forgotten.

  Luckily, my studio apartment was above the shop. And doubly lucky, there was always coffee around to get me through the remainder of the day.

  I sidestepped past Ryan between the cash register and the espresso machine on my way toward the office.

  Sarah was a tall, blonde girl two years out of high school. A theater major at the University of Central Florida, she was home for the summer. I could smell the sunscreen from her morning at the beach. She greeted me with a shy smile, donning a black apron. I couldn’t help noticing her name tag now had more than just her name. Below it in permanent ink it read, “Ask me about Captain Marvel.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Did Ryan put you up to that? You know he’s barely your boss. You don’t have to wear that.”

  She looked down, confused. “Oh, this? No. He sent me home with a few graphic novels the other night. And he’s right. She’s a badass.”

  “She is? I thought she was a he—Shazam or something.”

  “That’s the DC version, though I think Marvel had a couple of dudes before Carole Danvers. But Carole’s the badass.”

  “I’m sure she is.” I chuckled.

  The next couple of hours were a blur. I went through my chores without paying much attention to the storefront, though I tended to smile when the bell on the door jingled. The sound of customers was always a welcome one.

  Every so often I heard Ryan drone on with one of his customers, picking up their file of comics the shop held by request. This was one of my points of contention with Ryan. We stored these books out of sight, and some customers let their file grow to several hundred dollars’ worth of merchandise before picking them up. Even then, they might not buy the whole stack—putting us in the hole.

  But it was Ryan’s element. I let him manage it.

  His long-winded chats about the new Marvel or DC movies, Star Wars, or anything else Sci-Fi and Fantasy were a fixture this time of the afternoon. The shop wouldn’t sound the same without them.

  So, I wasn’t surprised to hear his voice. I was, however, surprised at the tone echoing through the store. Gambit wasn’t used to it either. The dog joined in, growling low—telling me something was definitely off.

  The dachshund hardly ever barked—except at thunder. His guttural growl sounded like that of a bigger dog, and it had never found its way to my office before.

  I paused, resting my fingers on my laptop’s keyboard, listening.

  “It’s not for sale,” I heard Ryan say loudly. It was like he was trying to call me out there.

  The response to his words I couldn’t make out.

  I stood and poked my head out of the office doorway, but Ryan and Sarah were all I could see.

  “I said it’s not for sale,” Ryan repeated himself.

  Sighing, I walked back into the store front. “What’s not for sale?”

  As far I was concerned everything in the shop was for sale. Well, almost everything. My only quibble would be if someone was trying to buy Gambit.

  “Kirby,” the customer sighed with relief, “tell him to stop being a jerk and just sell it.” I recognized the customer instantly. Then I understood why Ryan was acting the way he was.

  Corey Ottley was our age. He was a bit more muscular than I remembered him from high school. He had sandy blonde hair which he gelled into a wave above his wide forehead. A thin nose, a square jaw, earrings in both ears.

  Corey gave me a relieved smile, then he pointed up to the top shelf behind me—the place Ryan kept the more valuable action figures and toys. I turned back to look at it.

  There, on the shelf, was a large figure, statue or bust—whatever it’s called, of Captain America. And not the one from the movies, although we had one of those, too. No, this one was based on the comic books.

  “It’s not for sale.” Ryan shrugged.

  It was for sale. I could see the price sticker on the bottom, magnified by the glass shelf it sat atop. Two hundred dollars—I nearly choked.

  “I’m offering more than asking price,” Corey said to me. “Kirby, please tell Ryan to see reason.”

  He turned back to Ryan. “And dude, it was ten years ago. Move on.”

  “Over ten years ago,” I corrected.

  Sarah was smart enough to inch back out of the way as Ryan spun toward Corey with fire in his eyes. “No, dude,” he said. “You beat me up. I’m not forgiving you.”

  “Beat you up?” Corey protested. “I threw one punch! And if I recall correctly, it was justified. You said I was a Trekkie nerd who’d never move out of his mother’s basement. And speaking of, don’t you live in your mother’s basement?”

  “We live in Florida,” Ryan argued. “There are no basements. Besides, I live in the whole house.”

  “And actually,” I interrupted, cringing as I told the truth for the first time in over ten years, “it was me who said those things.”

  It felt good to finally come clean. Ryan had taken the punch, one I’d truly deserved.

  “Really?” Corey’s face fell.

  I instinctively backed away.

  “Kirby,” Corey put a hand up in protest, “I’m not going to sucker punch you. Like you said, that was over ten years ago. But you could, however, sell me that figure.”

  Ryan stepped between us. “It’s still not for sale.”

  “All right. Final offer. Two fifty.”

  “All right. Final refusal,” Ryan said. “No.”

  “Kirby?” Corey pleaded.

  Of course, I knew this was about more than one punch. Corey was in our circle of friends throughout high school—well, up until that day. The fight had honestly been brewing for years. Both Ryan and Corey had pined after the same girl, Jill Thompson. And one lucky day, Corey scored a date with her.

  My offhand comment was a lousy attempt to console Ryan—one overheard by our mutual friend Marc. Then high school did what it did best. It created drama over what amounted to nothing. Corey’s date with Jill was singular, and Ryan had found his first long-term girlfriend less than a week later, a girl named Gertrude if I recalled correctly.

  I put my hands up. “Sorry, man,” I told Corey, “but this is Ryan’s side of the store. I’m happy to sell you a coffee or something. In fact, you can have a cup on the house.”

  “Ow!” Ryan elbowed my ribs.

  “You know what. Eff it,” Corey barked. He shook his head and stormed out of the shop. Before the door closed behind him, he yelled something like, “You’ll be seeing my review online.”

  It was my turn to fix Ryan with a cold stare.

  “Really?”

  “Really,” he replied snidely. “Corey knows he can get one on eBay for half this price. He just wanted to come in and taunt me.”

  “Taunt you?” I scoffed. “It seemed like he wanted to come in and give you money in exchange for that POS figure.”

  “Hey! Don’t talk about Cap that way… But no. He wanted to come in and show us just how much money he’s worth these days. You saw the hair, the clothes,” Ryan pointed outside, “the Corvette.”

  A yellow Corvette slid back out
of the angled parking in front of the store. It jetted off, its engine humming aggressively.

  I bit my lip.

  I hadn’t really noticed any of it. But now that I did, I wondered exactly where all Corey’s money had come from.

  3

  My grandmother—that is, Memaw—lived only a few miles north of the downtown strip. With no view of the shore, she barely got an ocean breeze in the summer. Tall pines surrounded her secluded double lot. The house was a white coastal cottage—again, not really by the coast but miles from the bay. My grandfather had built it with his own hands.

  Memaw loved the house, though the house didn’t seem to love Memaw. Since my Pawpaw’s death, it was constantly giving her fits. If the air conditioning wasn’t out, it was a plumbing leak, or a faulty light switch. In the last two months I had fixed or mended or replaced something every week.

  So, I wasn’t all that surprised to find something amiss when I got there that evening.

  “Memaw?” I drawled. It was a Southern thing. Niilhaasi might claim Florida on the map, but I’d always thought of this place as lower Georgia. And the door was open—it always was. This wasn’t the type of town where anyone needed to lock their doors at night.

  “I’m in the kitchen, sweetie,” Memaw called out.

  I found her on the floor beside the sink, peering under it with a head lamp strapped on her head.

  “Oh, no. What’s up?” I asked.

  “The garbage disposal,” she said, matter-of-factly. “It’s on the fritz.”

  “Define fritz… Did you drop a fork down there?”

  “Kirby Jackson! Do I look that dumb to you?”

  “Well,” I grinned, “define dumb. What are you doing down there with the flashlight? Are you going to beam it back into good repair?”

  “I was—I was going to... Just help me up,” she huffed.

  I did.

  After I unclogged the garbage disposal with the end of a wooden spoon, I poured some baking soda, then some vinegar, and finally some boiling water down the sink to clean it out.

  “I don’t know what I’d do without you,” she said after, hugging me tight around the shoulder.

  “You’d probably just have Handy Hank on speed dial.” I surveyed the kitchen. There were no signs of pots or pans on the stove. “So, uh, what’s for dinner?”

  “Oh, Kirb, I’m sorry. I lost track of time. What would you say to The Fish Camp? My treat.”

  “Your treat?” I waved my hand with a flourish. “After you, Madame.”

  My grandfather’s death had played a big part in my move back. Two years before his passing, my parents had decided to up and move to Costa Rica, which according to my dad, was my mother’s dream. I’d never heard her mention it before.

  When Pawpaw died, it left Memaw all alone. But that wasn’t the only thing he’d left. He’d also left a significant sum of money in my bank account for me.

  So, rather than squander that money, I decided to open my dream business: a coffee shop.

  The Fish Camp was a local eatery down on the harbor. An institution, it not only had the best seafood in town but was probably in contention for best in the state. We pulled into the parking lot. It wasn’t made of gravel. Instead, it was mostly sand and thousands of oyster shells.

  In addition to the local catches of the day, there was plenty of creole fare like crawfish pie and gumbo. When Pawpaw was alive, we’d come down every Wednesday night for the special: half off the Slurpin’ Oyster Platter—twenty-four oysters, served in up to four styles with choice of raw, garlic and lemon butter, or my favorite, the cheddar jalapeño. Pawpaw had liked them champagne broiled.

  Per usual, it was a packed house, but we found a seat outside on the patio where the smell of saltwater stung my nostrils. Memaw decided on the fried grouper sandwich. I couldn’t say no to cobia, a fish so fine all it needed was a little salt, pepper, and butter to drive my taste buds wild. It wasn’t often on the menu this late in the year—cobia season being only a few months in the spring.

  Several other locals were out enjoying the night, some on dates. I recognized Karen Beecher from my high school graduating class. She had two little ones running amok, ducking under her table, and climbing the wood railing before her husband swooped over to keep them from falling.

  Behind them, a woman who was seated at a table with a man kept giving me a cold stare. Her eyes bored into me so hard I could feel them. Each time I glanced over, she looked away as if it was nothing.

  It took a while for me to finally get a good look. Then I realized who she was—Robin, Ryan’s new ex-girlfriend. And I decided the man across from her must be her husband. I didn’t recognize him. But he, too, turned and side-eyed me from time to time. Had she come clean about the affair?

  Leaving, they had to pass our table. The whole way across the wooden deck her eyes were fixed on me, her lips in a sneer. What did I do wrong? Well, besides maintain a friendship with the town playboy. But even that was on the rocks.

  “Kirby?” Memaw waved her hand in front of my face. “You all right?”

  “Yeah, sorry. I was just thinking of something.”

  She smiled, something she hadn’t done as often since my Pawpaw passed. I let her twist my arm into sharing a slice of peanut butter pie. And by the time we left, I was so stuffed I was sure not to wake up on my first alarm the next morning.

  “Five a.m. comes early,” I told her as I dropped her off back at her house.

  “Do you really have customers come in at six?” she asked.

  “No,” I said honestly. “But one day we will.”

  4

  Ryan and his crew of minions were the last people I wanted to see before bed. I snuck in through the back entrance but peeked around into the storefront at the sound of their laughter, grunting, and farting. The tabletop dungeon was in full swing. They huddled together in one of the booths.

  I smiled, despite myself. Even if we did shutter the comic side of the shop, I thought I’d still let him have his game nights.

  The crew was made up of Ryan, our high school buddy Marc Drake, this kid Damian who might still be in high school—I wasn’t sure—and Tim Grayson, a middle aged man with graying hair and a mustache. He wore the same faded blue t-shirt I’d seen him wear every time he came in the shop.

  “I’m going to need a strength check,” Ryan announced.

  I watched as Tim rolled the twenty-sided die, and then he did a fist-pump—it must’ve been a good roll.

  “Nice,” Ryan said. “You’re able to chop the tree down with two swings of your ax and provide enough firewood to get the party through the night. And you guys are sure you want to build a fire, right?”

  Ryan looked up and found me.

  “Kirb, what’s up? You ready to join us?”

  Gambit, alerted to my presence, bolted over. He wasn’t looking as sluggish as he did in the afternoon. I guess with all the excitement of Dungeons and Dragons, he was ready to play, too. A faded yellow tennis ball jutted halfway out of his mouth. I tugged it free and bounced it down the length of the store. It only took three bounces before the dog yanked it from the air.

  “Nice catch,” I told him, thinking Ryan wasn’t the only one to talk to the dog.

  “So, what’d’ya say?” Ryan asked again.

  “We’ve already started,” Damian remarked. When I looked at the kid, he wouldn’t make eye contact.

  “That’s all right,” Ryan said, grinning, “he can come across your campfire in the middle of the night. I think I have another character sheet written up around here somewhere… And a miniature.” Ryan held up a miniature figurine of what looked like a wizard with a staff.

  Gambit came back to me with the ball. I threw it again.

  “Hold up. We haven’t decided on the fire yet,” Marc interrupted. But he nodded to me and gave a smirk. He was only saying it for Damian’s benefit. The young kid was already flustered for some reason, pouty even.

  “Come on, Damian,” insisted Ryan. “N
ow you won’t be the only one playing a new character tonight.”

  “Fine.” Damian sighed, his face flushed. He crumpled the edge of his character sheet. “And I guess I’m fine with the fire if you guys are.”

  “A fire works for me,” Tim agreed.

  Ryan looked at me expectantly.

  “No, that’s all right. Maybe next time.” I waved and gave Gambit a little pat before throwing the ball one last time. “Y’all have a good night.”

  Before Ryan could mount a protest, I went up the stairs to my apartment, turned on the TV, and fell asleep to my favorite show.

  I woke to the brightly lit television screen. It wasn’t unusual for me—my problem with the sleep timer is when I know it’s on, I tend to stay up for it.

  While the TV was on, something else was definitely off. I heard a dog bark. Had it only been an hour or so since I fell asleep? I checked my phone. It was 4 a.m. What’s Gambit still doing in the shop at 4 a.m.? I’m going to kill Ryan, I thought.

  The dog barked again, urgently, or so it sounded. And if I wasn’t mistaken, I heard the faint jingle of the front door’s bell.

  Maybe Ryan left, I thought—I hoped. I wanted to get back to sleep.

  But Gambit barked again.

  Groaning, I wiped the sleep from my eyes. I was going to have to get up a whole hour before my alarm. This day wasn’t off to a good start. I’m definitely going to kill Ryan, I thought again.

  At least living above a coffee shop had benefits. Wake up and there was the earthy scent of coffee wafting heavenly about in the air. We roasted our own beans. Not a heavy dark roast like most people are used to these days, but a precisely timed and delicately controlled burn of medium roast coffee. The lighter the roast, the more acidic. The darker, the more bitter. I wanted our coffee that perfect in-between flavor.

  I drank in the aroma while pulling on a shirt and shorts to go downstairs.

  Out in the hallway, the aroma grew stronger. The very best thing about living above the shop—I was only a flight of stairs away from a $6,000 espresso machine. I don’t care how good you can make a latte at home, you’re never going to do $6,000 machine good. It’s a whole other level. And believe it or not, ours was a base model—they only get better. It was one of the few things in the shop I bought brand new—a worthwhile investment, unlike the massive comic book display case.