Poisoned Prose (A Books by the Bay Mystery)

in a lace-trimmed tank top that was several sizes too small for her generous chest, pointed a cherry-red acrylic nail at a man chalking the end of his pool cue. “Boyd said his pigs have been lying in the mud for weeks.” She cocked her head at Olivia. “Do you know about pigs?”
    “Only that I like bacon.” Olivia smiled. “But I didn’t think it was unusual for them to roll around in the mud. I thought that’s how they kept cool.”
    “Sure is,” a second woman agreed. “But it ain’t normal for them to do it all the time. See, when they carry somethin’ around in their mouths—a stick or a bone or somethin’—then you know it’s gonna rain. When they just lie there in the dirt for days on end, a dry season’s comin’.”
    A man wearing a black NASCAR shirt elbowed his way into the group. “The ants are all scattered too.” He looked at Olivia. “When they walk in a nice, neat line like little soldiers, then we’re gonna have a storm. I got a big nest right outside my front door, and they haven’t lined up in ages. It’s no good.”
    “Woodpeckers aren’t hammerin’ neither,” another man added.
    Someone else mentioned that the robins had left his yard weeks ago and he was certain they’d gone west into the mountains. “The animals know things we don’t.”
    Everyone nodded in agreement, and then one of the women turned to Captain Fergusson. “What’s the sea been tellin’ you?”
    “She keeps her secrets close, but the moon says plenty.” He put his whiskey down. Cupping his left hand, he raised it in the air, palm up. “We got a crescent moon right now, and she’s lying on her back like she’s waiting for her man to come to bed. We won’t see a drop of rain until she gets up again. Mark my words.”
    The women tut-tutted and murmured about summers gone by. Summers of unrelenting heat. Long days of dry wind and parched ground. They talked of how the land had gone thirsty even though the ocean was close enough to touch. The salt had clung to people’s skin, making them sticky, short-tempered, and lethargic.
    Olivia spotted a local farmer, Lou Huckabee, on the fringes of the group. He’d been listening to the exchange closely. “I’ll still get you all your produce, Miss Olivia,” he said above the music. “Don’t you fret.”
    “I know you will, Lou. And every piece of fruit will taste like it was plucked from the richest soil on earth, washed by the freshest rainwater, and delivered straight to my kitchens still tasting of summer sunshine. That’s why I won’t serve my customers anything else. You have a knack for growing things like no one I’ve ever met.”
    Lou dipped his head at the compliment, flushing from neck to forehead. “It’s a callin’, to be sure.”
    “To farmers,” Olivia said and held up her glass.
    “To farmers!” the men and women around her echoed.
    Next, they toasted fishermen, fishermen’s wives, an array of different types of laborers, Millay, Olivia’s mother, and on and on until Olivia was dangerously close to being drunk. Despite the close air and the way the whiskey heated her body, she was too content to leave. And when Captain Fergusson began to tell a tale about a pod of dolphins changing into mermaids, she became as immediately enraptured as the rest of his inebriated audience.
    While the old man spoke in a voice as weathered and worn as his face, Olivia thought about the note Flynn had given her. She glanced around at the people in the bar, reflecting on how each and every one of them had grown up listening to the stories of their parents and grandparents. Their elders passed down folklore on the weather, animal husbandry, treating ailments, courting, raising children, and more. And here they were now, sharing those same stories. Old, well-loved, and oft-repeated stories.
    They are as much a part of us as our DNA
, she thought. She knew that in the small, coastal town of Oyster Bay, the local legends centered on the sea. She’d heard them over and over since she was little, and she was curious to discover new tales, such as the kind Flynn’s storytellers would share with them.
    A burst of laughter erupted as Captain Fergusson reached the end of his story, and then the woman in the tank top took a long pull from her beer and said, “Them mermaids might not be real, but my daddy saw the flaming ghost ship last September. Said it came out of the fog like somethin’ sneakin’ through the gates of hell. He was supposed to