CHAPTER THREE
Spencer
Rosa Salcedo lived in a small blue house two blocks up from the harbor.
There were window boxes with yellow and purple pansies in them and a welcome mat that said “Bless This Mess.” The side door was open when I arrived, and I could see women moving around inside the kitchen.
Casserole dishes and foil-covered plates lined the counter.
That was how small towns handled death. They fed it.
I almost didn’t knock on the door. I’d sat with plenty of grieving people in my career, and it never got easier.
There was a side to this job that I hated, the part where you showed up at someone’s worst moment with a notebook and asked them to talk.
But I reminded myself that Rosa had agreed to see me when I’d called.
She’d wanted to share her stories about Eddie. So I knocked.
One of the women in the kitchen, a heavyset redhead, answered the door. She looked me up and down, like I was selling vacuum cleaners. “We don’t want any.”
I laughed. “Good, because I’m not selling any. I’m Spencer Cross. From the Beacon.”
She looked even less impressed at that news. “We especially don’t need any reporters sniffing around asking questions.”
“I didn’t just show up. Rosa’s expecting me.”
She arched one brow. “You sure about that?”
“Yes. I’m writing a piece about Eddie.” I pulled out my small notepad and waved it in front of her. “I promise, Rosa invited me.”
“Hmm.” She squinted at me suspiciously, but she let me in. “You’d better not make her cry.”
I winced, tucking my pad back in my pocket. “That’s certainly not my intention.”
She sighed wearily and then led me through the kitchen to a small living room where Rosa was sitting on the couch with a mug of something. She was a small woman, mid-fifties, with dark hair pulled back and the hollowed-out look of someone who hadn’t slept.
There were flowers everywhere, and the room smelled of gardenias and roses.
On the mantel, there were framed photos of happier days.
Eddie on his boat. Eddie and Rosa much younger on their wedding day.
Eddie and Rosa holding babies, and at birthday parties.
The photos painted the picture of a happy, loving family.
I got a lump in my throat just looking at them.
“Mrs. Salcedo,” I said. “Thank you for seeing me. I’m so sorry about Eddie.”
She nodded. Her eyes were red but dry. She’d done her crying already, or she was saving it for when she was alone. Either way, I felt awful for her.
“Please, sit.” She gestured to a chair across from her. “And call me Rosa.”
I sat in the armchair, tugging out my pen and notepad. “How are you holding up, Rosa?”
She grimaced. “It still doesn’t feel real.”
“I’m sure it doesn’t.” I wished I had words of comfort for her, but I was drawing a blank.
“As we talked about on the phone, I’m going to write a piece about Eddie for the Beacon.
I wanted to hear anything you feel like sharing.
It helps me paint a picture of who Eddie truly was.
I’ve already spoken to some people in town who knew Eddie, but your stories will be the heart of the piece. ”
She nodded. “I’ve read a few other things you’ve written. You’re very good. The piece you wrote about Joe Chance when he passed a few months back, it was beautiful. It was so well written, and it felt like you’d spent time with Joe. Like you really knew who he was.”
“Thanks,” I said softly. “I talked to a lot of people. Honestly, I felt like I knew him by the time I wrote the piece. He seemed like a wonderful person.”
“He was.” She smiled. “And so was Eddie. Hopefully you’ll write about Eddie the same way.”
“I’ll definitely do my best.”
“I still can’t believe he’s gone,” she said in a tight little voice. She swallowed hard, struggling to contain her emotions. “I don’t know what I’m going to do without him.”
“Again, I’m so sorry.”
She nodded, still clutching the mug. She hadn’t sipped from it once. It seemed to be more of a life preserver than a beverage.
I cleared my throat. “If it’s not too difficult, can you tell me some of your favorite stories about Eddie?”
“I’ll try.” She sniffed, looking worried. “If I cry, I’m sorry. I don’t know if I can talk about Eddie without crying.”
“Don’t even worry about that,” I said softly. “You can cry all you want, Rosa. Hell, I might cry along with you.”
She gave a tearful laugh, and she set her mug on the side table.
“Do you mind if I record our conversation?” I tugged my phone from my pocket. “It makes the small details easier to remember.”
“That’s fine.” She got up and grabbed some photo albums from a bookcase nearby. Then she set them on the footstool, and the old leather creaked as she opened one of them. She pointed at a photo that showed Eddie holding their daughter Maria the day she was born.
“He was terrified,” Rosa said, laughing through the tears. “He’d faced winter storms, equipment failures, rogue waves, but a seven-pound baby had him shaking in his boots. He was so afraid he was going to hurt her.”
“Babies are terrifying.” I grimaced.
“Our son David came two years later, and by then Eddie was an old pro.” Rosa showed me a photo of Eddie asleep on the couch with both kids on his chest, all three of them out cold. “He always fell asleep watching football,” she said softly.
Rosa turned the pages and laughed at many of the photos. She’d tell little stories about Eddie, and then move on. At one point, she paused on one of the photos, her expression soft. “God, I remember this day so clearly.”
I leaned forward and peered at the photo of Rosa and Eddie on the deck of a newer-looking Pacific Lady. “What happened that day?”
Her smile was sad. “On our twentieth anniversary, Eddie decided he was going to take me out on the Pacific Lady to watch the sunset off the headland. He was trying to be romantic, which wasn’t really his thing.
But he packed a cooler with wine and sandwiches.
The good wine, too, not the box stuff. He even put a tablecloth on the bait bench. ”
“Sounds like he put in a lot of effort.”
“He did.” She laughed. “But then about a mile offshore, the engine died. He’d forgotten to check the fuel gauge.
My husband, who checked his equipment every single day of his life for work, forgot to check the fuel gauge on the one night he was trying to impress me.
” Tears slid down her cheeks, but she kept talking.
“We were drifting. No engine, barely any phone signal. Eddie was mortified. I mean, his face was the color of a tomato. He kept saying, ‘I’ll fix it, Rosie, just give me a minute.’ He thought I was mad, but really all I was doing was thinking how much I loved him and how sweet he was to try and make the day special. ”
“Did he get the boat going? Maybe he had spare gas on board?”
“No, we ended up having to be towed in.” She sniffed, wiping at her eyes. “But first we had our little celebration. I told him I wasn’t mad and that we should just enjoy being together without the kids crying and holding onto our legs for attention.”
I laughed gruffly. It was impossible not to be moved.
“So we ate the sandwiches. Drank the wine. Watched the sunset, which was gorgeous, by the way. We just sat there in the dark for hours. Then we called Ray when we got some signal, and he came out and towed us in.” Her eyes glistened.
“That was the best anniversary we ever had. Just the two of us, floating out on the ocean. Nothing to do but sit there and be together.”
I nodded, feeling a little embarrassed that her story had made me feel emotional.
But it was obvious how much she’d loved him, and he was gone now.
That was just the most awful truth to have to bear.
It had hurt when Marcus dumped me, but I hadn’t felt the level of pain she was feeling.
Not even close. How did people move on from that sort of grief? Eddie had been her whole world.
She touched the edge of a photo in her lap. “I’d give anything to be stuck on that boat with him one more time.”
“God, Rosa,” I said huskily. “Again, I’m so sorry about Eddie.”
She just shrugged and kept staring at the photo.
“Everyone seemed to love him,” I added lamely.
“Most people did.” She winced. “Poor Gil. He came by earlier, and he looked gutted. They were friends forever, not just business partners.”
I hesitated. “Can I ask you something?”
She glanced up. “Sure.”
“Some people in town have said that Gil and Eddie were fighting recently. Was that true?”
She grimaced and set the photo album on the footstool. “There was something going on with them. That probably makes the fact that Eddie died even more painful for Gil. They didn’t get closure.”
I held her gaze, almost surprised she’d confirmed what I’d heard. “Was it unusual for them to argue?”
“Over big things, yes.” She gave a rueful smile. “They used to bicker like an old married couple over the little things, but not usually anything that would make either of them hold a grudge.”
“But this time was different?”
“Yeah, it really was.” Rosa pressed her lips together. “This time Eddie was real upset. I don’t know what about exactly, and Eddie wouldn’t say. I think he thought he was protecting me by not telling me stuff like that. But I heard him on the phone with Gil one night, and it shocked me.”
“They were fighting?”
She frowned. “Eddie wasn’t yelling or anything, but his voice was cold.
That wasn’t him at all. Whatever Gil did, it was bad enough to change how Eddie talked to him.
Thought of him.” She glanced up, and her confusion was genuine.
“It bothered Eddie enough that he wasn’t sleeping well.
He’d get up in the middle of the night and sit in the kitchen in the dark. ”
“Was there anything else going on that might have been bothering Eddie? Anything outside the fishing?”