Wild Tropics: Christmas Key Book Two Page 10

  “I don’t think parrots and turkeys are natural bedfellows,” Holly says, her brow creasing. “But my bigger concern is how we’re going to turn ten live turkeys into Thanksgiving dinner by Thursday.”

  “Oh, honey, you got me there.” Bonnie shakes her head. “The manager at the store said their organic farm specializes in shipping live birds, so the mistake has to be ours.”

  “Who would ever want live fowl showing up on their doorstep?” Holly walks to the window and stares out at the street. “Okay, we have to think.” She rubs her forehead. “The boat gets here this evening, and we need to be prepared to take the shipment. So where should we put these birds while we figure out what to do?”

  “I think you ought to go down and see Carrie-Anne and Ellen.”

  “Because I’m in the middle of a caffeine shortage?”

  “No—I mean, a coffee wouldn’t hurt at this point, but I was thinking about the pen they’ve been building for that damn donkey. I’m pretty sure it’s done, and they might let you store your gobblers back there until we work something out.”

  Holly is already in the doorway by the time Bonnie stops talking. “You’re right! Madonkey won’t be here for a few more weeks. I’m on my way over. Want me to grab you a latte while I’m there?” She plucks her denim jacket from the hook by the door.

  “Definitely. And pick up a couple of donuts, will you? I need some carbs and sugar, and it might be a good idea to run up a bill there before you ask them to be foster moms to ten turkeys.”

  “Good thinking.”

  Holly is out the door and down the street in under a minute, but she comes to a halt outside of Mistletoe Morning Brew when she spots Cap and Wyatt at a table under the awning.

  “Top o’ the mornin’ to ya.” Cap lifts his chin in her direction. He’s sitting hunched over an iPad with Wyatt at his elbow. There are two cups of coffee on the small bistro table, and Marco is perched on Cap’s left shoulder. “You ever seen one of these, Mayor?” He holds up the device for her inspection.

  “Yeah, it’s an iPad, Cap. I’ve got one at home.” Holly breezes past the two men without further comment. She doesn’t mean to sound so abrupt, but the live, un-plucked, un-gutted turkeys currently bobbing across the Gulf of Mexico are pecking away at the back of her brain, and she needs to work out their accommodations—immediately.

  “Holly! Good to see you,” Carrie-Anne says. She’s picking up plates from around the coffee shop, holding a stack of crumb-covered dishes in one hand as she wipes down tables with the other.

  “Hi, Carrie-Anne.” Holly shoves her hands into the pockets of her jean jacket. “Can I get two iced lattes to go, please? And two chocolate donuts.” She pauses, remembering Bonnie’s advice to butter up the women before trying to dump her livestock on them. “And one blueberry muffin…two biscotti, and three almond croissants.”

  “You got it.” Carrie-Anne sets the dishes in the sink behind the counter and wipes her hands on her apron.

  “Nice shirt,” Holly says. Edgar Allan Poe is stretched across Carrie-Anne’s chest, and he’s holding a mug of coffee to his lips with the words “Go ahead and Poe me another” scrawled beneath the picture.

  “Thanks. Ellen designed them.”

  “Does that woman ever sleep?”

  “Not much.”

  “Listen, Carrie-Anne…I have a favor to ask.” Holly takes her wallet out of her purse.

  “Hence the giant pastry order?” Carrie-Anne looks at Holly over her shoulder as she fixes the coffee drinks. “Okay, lay it on me.”

  “You know how we’re doing a full turkey dinner in the B&B’s dining room for pretty much everyone on the island? And another separate dinner to be cooked and delivered to the Wild Tropics set?”

  “You want me to bring the stuffing?”

  “Actually, it’s a slightly bigger favor than that.” She pauses for a second before plunging ahead. “I want to know if you and Ellen would be willing to hang onto the turkeys until—well, probably until Wednesday.”

  Carrie-Anne snaps lids onto the two iced coffees. “I don’t think our fridge is nearly big enough to help you out there, kiddo.”

  “Okay, well, this is where it gets funny.”

  Carrie-Anne is using a pair of tongs to pick up the muffins, donuts, and biscotti. She sets each item gently into a pastry box before giving a simple “Oh?”

  “Okay, so the place we ordered the birds from in Tampa is sort of a…well, it ships live turkeys from an organic farm.”

  “Live turkeys?” Carrie-Anne’s smile fades. “You have live turkeys being shipped to the island?”

  “Yeah,” Holly confirms, peeling bills off the pile in her hand. “Ten of them.”

  “Fully-feathered, gobbling, strutting-around turkeys.”

  “Right. But that’s not even the worst part.”

  Carrie-Anne folds the lid of the box and tucks the tabs into the sides. “Let me guess: no one knows how to wring their necks and pluck them?”

  “Someone might.” Holly’s eyes are wide. She shoves a wad of cash across the counter at Carrie-Anne. “But I don’t.”

  “So what you’re asking me is if you can store them in Madonkey’s pen, right?” Carrie-Anne blinks a few times as she processes the situation. She’s endlessly amused by Holly’s nickname for their soon-to-be pet, and insisted on calling the donkey by her new name the whole time she and Ellen worked to clear an area in their grass and construct a fenced-in pen. She’d even goaded Ellen into ordering her a t-shirt with “Madonkey’s Mom” on the front when Ellen was designing the Poe shirts.

  “Yep. That’s pretty much what I’m asking.” Holly slides the pastry box across the counter and sets her two coffee drinks on top of it so she can carry it all.

  “Huh.” Carrie-Anne puts both hands on her hips. “I guess that would be fine. But I do need to warn you about Ellen: you know she’s an animal-lover of the first order, and she’ll have those damn turkeys named by sundown. Trying to get them out of her hands so you can chop their heads off isn’t going to be an easy task.”

  Holly’s face goes white at the mention of chopping off turkey heads. “Got it.”

  Carrie-Anne tips her head from side-to-side. “Okay. As long as you know what we’re in for, then I think it’s fine.”

  Holly lifts the box and the coffees carefully, holding them to her chest. “Carrie-Anne, I never know what I’m in for. But I promise I won’t ask for a favor like this again.” She backs up to the front door, stepping aside to let Joe Sacamano into the coffee shop.

  “‘Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken!’” Carrie-Anne says dramatically, flinging her towel around as she speaks. Her lined face breaks into an amused grin. “Pretty good, huh?”

  “Not bad. Poe would be impressed.” The pastry box and the coffees shift precariously in Holly’s hands. “I’ll see you later on at your place after I pick up my shipment at the dock.”

  “You got it, Mayor.”

  The usual Christmas decorations that festoon houses, golf carts, front lawns, and all of Main Street are enough to thrill even the most casual Christmas-lover, but as soon as Thanksgiving rolls around, the real decorations come out. Garlands are pulled from closets to drape over the doorways all up and down Main, and wreaths are fluffed and hung from nearly every front door. The palm trees on all of the busy streets are wound with strings of solar-powered holiday lights, and everyone pitches in to cart the five-foot-tall wooden Nutcrackers and elves from the storage space in Poinsettia Plaza so they can hold court on the sidewalks until after the New Year.

  The decorating has begun in earnest as Holly drives around the island with her cell phone tucked between her ear and her shoulder. She slows to wave at Ray and Millie as they twist red and white strings of tinsel together like long candy canes to wrap around the lampposts, and beeps her cart’s horn at Jimmy Cafferkey as he tests a string of lights outside Poinsettia Plaza. Holly’s got the turkeys arriving in just a couple of hours, and she has
a call from her mother to return. All thoughts of ducking over to the Wild Tropics set for a visit have flown the coop.

  To get the call out of the way, she picks up her cell phone and dials Coco as she drives.

  “Mom,” Holly says. “What can I do for you?” She turns the wheel of her cart and passes under a thick bough of fake pine needles studded with colorful glass ornaments. Buckhunter is standing on a tall ladder, tugging on one end of the bough to make sure it’s fastened tightly to the lamppost.

  “You know my parents ran fiber-optic cable out to that island, right? The phones should be working just fine.” Holly can imagine her mother simmering while she waited for a return call from her only child. “Or maybe that receptionist of yours wrote my message on a bubble gum wrapper and then lost it.”

  “Bonnie gave me your message,” Holly says, gritting her teeth. “But it’s been one thing after another around here all day.”

  “Well, I’m glad you could squeeze me in somewhere,” Coco says coolly. “I’m coming down for Thanksgiving and I’m not bringing Alan, so I can just stay at your house instead of at the B&B.”

  Holly jams on the brake and pulls over to the side of the sandy road. She’s not far from the Jingle Bell Bistro, but the thought of her mother sleeping just feet from her own bedroom makes her feel lightheaded.

  “Uh, I’m remodeling,” she says, blurting out the first thing that comes to mind.

  “Remodeling what?” Coco demands. “Didn’t you just remodel when you moved in a couple of years ago?”

  “The guest room is a wreck. I’m re-painting, and I had to take the bed frame apart to get it out of the room,” Holly lies easily. The guest room is, in fact, lovely and untouched, painted a soft gray with white crown molding. Its perfectly-made bed is piled high with decorative throw pillows.

  “Oh, okay.” Coco sounds dubious. “Then book me a room at the B&B, I guess. I’ll be there on Wednesday afternoon, and I’ll stay until Sunday.”

  “Sure, Mom,” Holly says. “But why are you coming?”

  “Other than the fact that it’s Thanksgiving and I want to spend it with my daughter?”

  “Right. Other than that.” The breeze coming from the water nearby blows through the tinsel that’s wrapped around Holly’s golf cart and sends small drifts of sand skittering across the makeshift road.

  Coco sighs loudly. “You know, it would be nice if we could have one holiday together where everyone gets along, Holly. Will we be having turkey with the whole island as usual?”

  It’s amusing to Holly to hear her mother refer to something on the island happening “as usual.” For the entirety of her life, Coco has come and gone from Christmas Key like the seasons, and it’s hard to believe she has any idea how things normally run on the island.

  “Yes, we’ll have dinner at the B&B like we always do,” she says carefully, “and then we have to make a separate dinner for the Wild Tropics crew.”

  “And this would be the television show that I didn’t have any say about welcoming to our island?”

  “This would be the one.” Holly closes her eyes and prays for patience.

  “I see. And is this show still dividing the island?”

  Holly isn’t sure how to answer that. “Dividing” is a strong word—surely Cap is opposed, Wyatt has decided to amuse himself by supporting Cap’s displeasure, and several islanders are wondering when they’ll get to make their star turn, but…dividing the island seems extreme. “Not at all,” Holly says, blowing off her mother’s concerns. “We’re really enjoying having them here. But they have a closed set on the north side of the island, so we don’t run into them much.”

  “I’ll be curious to see the set for myself,” Coco says. “Please arrange a visit for me. And don’t forget to put me in a room at the B&B so I don’t interrupt your remodeling,” she says pointedly. “I’ll see you on Wednesday.”

  Holly ends the call and sits there for another minute, listening to the waves. She needs to head over to the bistro and ask Jimmy and Iris Cafferkey if they’ll help her prep the turkeys for dinner (and by “prep,” she means “take them from alive and gobbling to buttered and ready for the oven”). She’s not looking forward to yet another retelling of the story about the ten turkeys set to arrive on the island with all of their feathers intact, but she really needs Iris and Jimmy’s help.

  For the time being, Holly has to forget that Coco is coming down for Thanksgiving. Getting food on the table for Thursday’s dinner is top priority, and making sure Ellen doesn’t fall in love with her turkeys and stage a PETA-worthy protest on Main Street to keep them alive is her most pressing issue. Everything else—including Coco—will just have to wait.

  Chapter 14

  “I’m pretty sure this counts as a hostage situation,” Holly laments over the phone to River. “Carrie-Anne did warn me that this could happen, but I honestly thought—for once—that everything might go smoothly.” She’s standing on the pool deck at the B&B, peering between the layer of foliage that separates her from Main Street where Cap and Wyatt are holding up signs on sticks that say: ‘Our Mayor is Boggled—She Wants These Gobblers Gobbled!’ They’ve attached pictures of the ten turkeys strutting around in the pen at Carrie-Anne and Ellen’s house, and now Wyatt and Cap are standing on the sidewalk, shouting at anyone who will listen.

  People are stopping by to admire Cap’s handiwork in front of North Star Cigars, shaking their heads and moving on after they’ve seen the photos. Holly can’t tell if the head shakes are for her callousness towards the turkeys, or for Cap’s ridiculous protest.

  “It honestly sounds kind of funny,” River admits, chuckling on the other end of the line.

  “Did I mention that my mother is coming tonight?” Holly snaps.

  “A couple of times. Listen, Hol—I think you need to march out there and remind them that a Thanksgiving dinner made up of just potatoes and stuffing isn’t really a Thanksgiving dinner at all—it’s a vegetarian snack. And hold your ground. These people have eaten turkey every year of their lives on Thanksgiving, and they need to be reminded that all those birds started out as live, feathered fowl before landing on their plates under a pile of gravy.”

  “It feels like everyone is turning on me all of a sudden, and I don’t know why.” Holly chews on her lower lip, watching Wyatt Bender as he stops Fiona on the sidewalk and tries to chat her up. She waves him off and keeps walking. “Except Fiona, and Buckhunter, and Bonnie,” she amends.

  “Come on—there are more people on Team Baxter than you know. Give yourself some credit.”

  “It’s still pretty tempting to put on a wig, pack a bag, and jump onto the ferry tonight as my mother climbs off. I could be in Key West by nightfall, in Miami four or five hours later, and then on a flight across country in time to have Thanksgiving dinner in Oregon tomorrow.”

  “But you won’t,” he says gently.

  “But I won’t,” Holly agrees. Responsibility, commitment, and loyalty will always keep her tethered to the island in the middle of a storm, though her mind easily plays out the fantasy. And she has to admit: the picture in her head is a nice one. She’s never been to Oregon, but she imagines a snowy Thanksgiving in a log cabin with a roaring fire, River’s family watching football together in matching knit sweaters, and hot toddies for all the grown-ups as they bundle up to make snow angels in the moonlight after dinner. She sighs. “I have to stay here.”

  “I know you do—I’d expect nothing less.” He pauses on the other end of the line. “So here’s my hang-up with getting down there,” River says. “I’m fishing next week in that competition I told you about, and then we’ve got a tournament with the foster kids the next weekend. So right now I’m looking at about December twelfth. Approximately.”

  “To come here?” Holly lets go of the leaves she’s been peering through and they fall closed. She plops down on a chair next to the pool.

  “I can fly down for a couple of days, or stay through the holidays—whatever you want. Th
ere’s a fishing tournament in Bimini on December tenth and eleventh. I figured that would get me down there and then I could write off the trip, but other than that, I’m all yours.”

  “You have no idea how good that sounds right now.” Holly puts her feet up on the lounge chair and examines her tangerine-colored toenails.

  “Catching fish in Bimini?” River jokes.

  “No, having you here for most of December. Can you stay until New Year’s?”

  “Let me map it out, but I think it’s a real possibility,” he promises. “But now you need to get out there and face the music. Go face Cap head-on. You’ve got turkeys to pluck, young lady.”

  Holly makes a choking-vomiting sound before hanging up. She flexes her toes in her sandals, wiggling them and listening to the Calypso music coming from the speakers on the pool deck. River is right, and she knows it. Even if she won’t be plucking the turkeys herself, she needs to get her butt in gear and get out there. Cap can’t win this race by bullying her into hiding, but he can certainly make her life miserable in the weeks leading up to the vote.

  Holly stands up and slips her phone into the back pocket of her white denim shorts. She leaves the pool deck through the side gate, ready to hit Main Street with dignity and grace.

  But just to make sure the dignity and grace are evident to all, she spits her gum into the trash can by the gate on her way out.

  “I don’t know about everyone else, but I’ll have an extra serving of that delicious turkey, Mayor!” Joe Sacamano calls out, slowing his golf cart to a crawl as Holly walks down the sidewalk to Mistletoe Morning Brew. “Don’t let Cap fool you: he wants a slice of that bird like he wants a glass of scotch,” Joe says, throwing Cap and Wyatt a sidelong glance as they wave their handmade signs at him.

  “Thanks, Joe," Holly says. She smiles weakly. “I’m working on Thanksgiving dinner, and I’m waiting for Coco to get here this evening.”

  Joe grimaces. “Oh, jeez, kid. All this and your mother too?”