✔Secrets of Saltwater Bay

🐶Chapter 4

In my defense, that was a terrible place to put their enormous lobster statue.

A dizzy spell hit me as I scrambled to my feet and pushed the bike off my body. The dizziness was brief, so I shook it aside. Dusting particles of concrete and rocks off, a few scratches on my knees and arms stung. Thankfully, nothing seemed broken. I only had some minor cuts and scrapes.

"Are you okay?" Casper hopped off his own bike and hurried to my side.

The sea of red I saw was the bright paint of the giant lobster in front of the restaurant. Well, before I collided into the damn thing. What a horrible place to put the statue, where customers like me could injure themselves with it.

"Perfectly fine." I hefted my bike back up and propped it up against the restaurant exterior.

A droplet trickled down my forehead.

"Silas, you're bleeding."

"I am?" I daubed my fingers against my head and pulled them back, verifying what he said.

"Hold on, I have some band-aids," Casper said as he reached into his pocket for his wallet.

"Why the hell do you carry band-aids with you?"

Casper gently pressed the band-aid to my forehead diagonally. "You never know when you're going to need them."

After doctoring me up with more band-aids, we entered the seafood restaurant. Boisterous banter carried over to us from a front booth table where a family sat together laughing. A flying crayon came barreling toward me, but I dodged it. The couple dining at the table beside me weren't so lucky.

"What the hell?" The man's voice echoed.

The child who seemed to be bored of coloring her cartoon fish paper menu grinned and went back to eating her fishsticks like nothing happened. Her parents apologized, scolding her for throwing crayons. What a mischievous little kid.

The smell of fish wafted in the air, which came as no surprise. We were in the middle of a restaurant that served seafood. The wooden planks beneath my feet reminded me of a pirate ship with each squeak it made from my footsteps. The décor was also designed like an authentic pirate ship. They even handed out paper pirate hats to the children.

"Hi, welcome to the Lobster Shack. Would you boys like a table or booth?"

"Those are the guys I told you would be dropping by," a lanky young woman said as she emerged from the back kitchen. "One of you is Casper?"

"That would be me." My boyfriend spoke up. "I appreciate you taking the time out of your day to talk to us."

"Sure thing. Just follow me and we can talk someplace more privately."

Katherine escorted us to an empty table outside on their patio deck. Only an older couple was dining there, and they barely noticed us. They were too distracted by their conversation, grinning over something they both found hilarious.

Before we started talking, Casper handed the dog collar over to her. Katherine sat there staring at the red collar in her hands on the verge of tears.

"Natalie loved that dog. She found him out by the dumpster of the restaurant she used to work at," Katherine said. "When the police learned Oliver was missing too, they figured she just took her dog and ran away. I started to believe that too. It's better to imagine she's out there somewhere happy with her dog."

"I'm sorry. It must have been hard on you growing up without your sister around," I told her.

"It was. Before she went missing, we got into a huge fight. It was over the most stupid thing. I stole some of her makeup." Katherine forced a laugh. "I was only fourteen and envied how pretty she always looked. You're both guys, so you don't understand that kind of jealousy."