Christmas by the Sea (Haunting by the Sea Book 6)

by Kathi Daley

  “There’s a little path that runs along the perimeter of the cutting area. Maybe we should use that to climb up and then figure out where to set up the camera,” Trevor suggested.

  “That’s a good idea.” I called Sunny and Tucker, who’d come along with us on our pilgrimage for the perfect photo. I figured they would enjoy a day out, plus I planned to use them as models at some point during the day. I’d learned you could never go wrong by adding a dog or two to the mix.

  “When we finish here, we should stop off at the farm’s store for hot cocoa,” I suggested. “Farmer Dooley has a special recipe that’s to die for.”

  “They add vanilla ice cream to the mix,” Trevor informed me. “When it melts you can stir into the milk and chocolate mixture, making everything thick and creamy.” I paused when we were halfway up the hill where the Christmas trees grew. “There.” I pointed. “There’s a flat spot where we can set up, and there aren’t a lot of trees in the way. The light is behind us, and quite a few families are searching for the perfect tree just below us. We should be able to get some excellent shots.”

  Once Trevor and I got set up, I attached the camera to the tripod and then focused the lens. The little girl with blond hair and a red knit cap chasing her brother with blond hair and a green cap made fun subjects. There was a family of five drinking hot cocoa, and a short woman with dark hair, standing alone looking toward the mountain. I paused on her face, which seemed familiar, but then, deciding I didn’t know her, continued to scan the crowd, snapping as many photos as I could. Once I got back to the house, I’d sort through them looking for anything that might be special enough to use.

  “Where do you want to go next?” Trevor asked after I’d snapped at least a hundred photos.

  “Santa’s Village and then the ice skating rink in the park. I’d like to photograph the skaters as the sky darkens at dusk. After that, we can walk around town and grab photos of the Christmas windows and people shopping, and then maybe we can have dinner. They do that big lighting display and live nativity on the wharf, so maybe we can eat there.”

  “Sounds good. It’s too bad Mac and Ty are in Portland this weekend. They’re missing out.”

  I shrugged. “They are, but I am enjoying just the two of us spending time together. In fact, I thought that maybe when we’re done for the day, we could head over to your place on the beach and build a fire in your pit. We can share a bottle of wine and maybe cuddle up in your two-person lounge chair and watch the waves roll onto the snow-covered beach.”

  That had Trevor grinning from ear to ear. I’d thought about my talk with my mom last night, and I’d pretty much decided that I’d talk to Trevor about our relationship tonight. Of course, if I was honest with myself, it wasn’t talking that was on my mind.

  “Check out that little boy with the red jacket over to the right.” I focused my camera in for the shot. The boy was probably five or six. He was dragging a red sled up the hill, but the weight of the thing seemed to be almost more than he could handle. I’d noticed him stopping every ten yards or so, and when he did, the golden retriever puppy that was with him, would jump on him and lick his face, which would cause him to fall back in the snow laughing. Each time he fell, he’d let go of the sled which would slide back down the mountain to about the same place where he’d started.

  “He’s never going to make it to the top of the hill that way,” Trevor said.

  I snapped shot after shot. “To be honest, I don’t think he cares. He’s obviously having the time of this life playing with that puppy.”

  “I wonder where his parents are.”

  Good question. I used my telephoto lens to scan the surrounding area. “There,” I said, pointing. “They aren’t too far away, just behind that grove of trees.”

  I scanned back over to the boy who had gotten himself up and had started up the hill once again. I watched as the man I assumed was his father called for him. He called back, sat down on his sled, and slid toward the clearing where the man and woman I thought were his parents were waiting. Once he reached the young couple, the man lifted the boy onto his shoulders, the woman took possession of the sled, and they began to walk toward the parking area.

  “What about the puppy?” I wondered.

  I continued to watch, but the puppy wasn’t with them.

  “Maybe the puppy doesn’t belong to the boy,” Trevor said. “Maybe they just ran into each other and stopped to play.”

  I used my camera to scan the area. “Okay, then where are the puppy’s humans. He couldn’t have been more than four months old.”

  Trevor turned his head slowly. I could see that he was looking for the little dog the same as me. “Maybe we should head over to where we saw the puppy and boy playing, and see if we can find him.”

  I picked up my tripod. “Let’s go.”

  When we arrived at the spot where I’d seen the boy and the puppy playing, I called for him. When he didn’t come, I instructed Tucker to find him. Sunny was not as skilled at finding things as Tucker was, but she ran along behind him anyway.

  “I hope he isn’t lost,” I said as worry set in.

  “We’ll find him,” Trevor assured me. “It looks like there are puppy size prints that go off in that direction.” He pointed. “Let’s follow them.”

  I could hear Tucker and Sunny rustling around in the shrubs in front of us. They seemed to be trying to pick up the scent. After a few minutes, Tucker came running back toward us, with Sunny on his heels. He had something in his mouth. I told him to drop it when he arrived at the spot where I was standing.

  “It’s a shoe,” Trevor said.

  I looked at Tucker. I showed him the shoe. “Find the other one,” I commanded.

  He turned and started back the way he’d just come. Somehow, I knew even before Tucker showed me what he’d found, that the something he wanted to show me, would not only be the other shoe but the someone who’d been wearing it.

  Chapter 3

  “And you didn’t notice anyone else in the area?” Officer Woody Baker asked me after I’d called him.

  “No,” I answered. “Trevor and I are here taking photos for a contest I’ve entered. We noticed a young boy playing with a puppy who was so cute. After a while, a man who I assume was the boy’s father, called to the boy, and he went toward the parking area with his parents. Trevor and I didn’t see the puppy, so we went to look for him and found the body.” I looked toward the remains of the female victim who was covered with a layer of snow. She was dressed in denim jeans, a bright red sweater, and red high-heeled pumps. Or at least one red pump. “Do you know who she is?”

  “Not offhand. What I do know is those shoes are totally impractical for a hike up this mountain, and she would have frozen to death without a jacket. The sweater is pretty but thin. More for indoor wear.”

  “I agree. It looks to me as if she was dumped here.” I looked around the area. It had snowed overnight, so any tracks that might have been left would have been snowed over.

  “It wouldn’t have been easy to hike up the mountain carrying a body,” Woody pointed out.

  “True. But there is that old jeep trail that climbs up the mountain from the backside. It would be tough to navigate with the snow but not impossible with a four-wheel-drive. If a four-wheel-drive did access the mountain from the top, it would be easy enough to just toss the body and let it roll to where it had landed.”

  Woody scanned the area. “I guess it could have happened that way. I’ll be sure to check the jeep trail for tire tracks or any other evidence that someone accessed it recently. It snowed overnight, which will make things tough, but there might be something to find.” He looked around. “You said you were with Trevor. Where is he?”

  “He took Tucker and Sunny and is looking for the puppy. The poor little guy seemed to be lost, and we wanted to find him before we leave. I agreed to wait with the body until you arrived.”

  “I don’t suppose your ghost friend who helps you with these sorts of t
hings is around.”

  I knew he was referring to Alyson, my ghostly counterpart. “No. She hasn’t shown up. I’ll try to contact her. Sometimes she just pops in, and sometimes it takes a while. Do you need me to stay here? If not, I think I’ll join Trevor in his search for the puppy.”

  “I’ll need to process the area. It will take a while. I, of course, want to know if you make contact with the ghost of the victim or if your ghost sidekick shows up.”

  “I’ll let you know,” I promised. “In fact, feel free to call or text me at any time. I can meet you at your office, or wherever you want.”

  He nodded. “Okay. It looks like the units I called for backup are here. I’ll call you later, and we can compare notes.”

  I texted Trevor and asked him where he was. He texted me his GPS location, and I headed in that direction.

  “Any luck?” I asked.

  “Not yet. The puppy seems to have continued up the mountain after he left the boy. Tucker seems to have picked up the trail, so I’m just following him.”

  “Okay. Let’s continue.” I motioned for Tucker to continue his search for the puppy.

  It took us another hour of searching since the puppy seemed to have zig-zagged rather than walking in a straight line, but we eventually found an entrance to a shallow cave where it looked like the puppy had been living. I didn’t see any other dogs or people in the area, so I bribed the puppy to follow us by offering small pieces of the granola bar I had in my pocket. Once he came all the way out of his hiding place, Trevor picked him up, and we headed down the mountain to the lot where we’d left Trevor’s truck.

  “Okay, so what should we do now?” Trevor asked once we had all three dogs loaded into the backseat.

  “Let’s take the dogs home. I can call animal control and see if anyone has reported a missing puppy. If not, I’ll get him settled in my room. I want to see if I can contact Alyson. I called for her when we first found the body, but she didn’t appear.”

  “And you didn’t see a ghost that might have been associated with the body?” Trevor asked.

  “No, I didn’t see a ghost. Either the woman moved on right away, and there isn’t a ghost to find, or she was scared and hiding. It’s also possible the ghost is trapped at the location where she died. It seems unlikely that the woman died up here on this mountain.”

  “Why don’t you think she died here?” Trevor asked.

  “She was dressed totally wrong for a trek up the mountain. I suspect she died elsewhere and was dumped where we found her.”

  “It would take a lot of effort to carry another person up the mountain through the snow,” Trevor pointed out.

  “That’s what Woody said, but we discussed the idea that someone could have brought her up on the old jeep trail that climbs up the mountain from the backside and then tossed the body and let it roll to where we found it.”

  “It did look as if she had been rolled in the snow, and I suppose someone might have brought the body up here from the backside, but it seems there are easier and less public places to dump a body,” Trevor pointed out.

  “I don’t disagree. I guess we won’t know anything for sure until the medical examiner has a chance to take a look.”

  When we arrived at the house, Trevor headed into the kitchen to make a pot of coffee, and I headed upstairs to get the puppy settled and to call animal control to see if anyone had reported a puppy missing. No one had. I set him up with a bed, food and water, and toys in the bathroom. I wasn’t sure if he was housebroken, and I didn’t want to test his bladder control on the hardwood floors, so I set up a child gate to keep him confined. Sunny was fascinated with him and laid down on the other side of the gate. Both dogs fell asleep before I even left the room.

  Once I got the puppy settled, I called for Alyson once again, but she didn’t reply. Deciding to leave the dogs to their nap, I headed back downstairs, where Trevor greeted me with a mug of hot coffee.

  “Your mom isn’t here?” he asked.

  “I guess she must still be at the Christmas Carnival meeting.”

  “And still no word from Alyson?”

  I shook my head.

  “I’ve tried not to be overly nosy about Alyson and the relationship you share, but how exactly does it work? Where does she go when she isn’t here, and how are you able to contact her when you need her?”

  I let out a short breath. “Honestly, I’m not sure I totally understand myself, but she seems to be a detachable part of me. I think when she isn’t needed to help me with whichever ghost I’m meant to help, she exists as part of me on the inside. Then when a ghost appears, poof, she appears as well.”

  “So, maybe she isn’t responding because there’s no ghost in need of help,” Trevor suggested.

  “Maybe. Although she did appear at the hospital when I was trying to help the social worker who’d been shot, and there was no ghost then either.”

  “True, but in that situation, your help was needed. Hers was as well. Maybe in this instance, neither of you are destined to be part of whatever is going on.”

  I shrugged. “Maybe. There isn’t a ghost at this point, so even if Alyson did show up, there wouldn’t be anything for her to do. And Woody hasn’t asked for our help, so she may be waiting until she is needed.”

  “So, what do you want to do now?” he asked.

  I glanced out the window at the gently falling snow. “I guess we should continue with our plans. If a ghost appears, or Woody calls and asks for our help, we’ll drop everything and do what we can. In the meantime, let’s visit Santa and then head to the ice skating rink.”

  “Are you bringing your skates?” Trevor asked.

  “Sure. Why not? I wouldn’t mind taking a spin or two around the rink.”

  “And the dogs?”

  “They’re all sleeping upstairs. The puppy is in the bathroom. I have a child gate across the entrance. I hate to leave him locked up, but I don’t know if he’s housebroken, and I don’t want puppy piddle to ruin the hardwood floor.”

  “You have a big bathroom. I’m sure he’ll be fine. If you want, we can go to the village and take your photos, and then stop back by here and check on the dogs before heading to the skating rink.”

  I picked up my camera bag. “That sounds like a good plan. We can take them out when we get back. If the puppy didn’t piddle in the bathroom, maybe I’ll let him have the run of the house. He is old enough to have been housebroken. I just don’t know if anyone did it.”

  Chapter 4

  Santa’s Village had been set up at the far end of the park and included a structure made to look like a gingerbread house, where children could sit on Santa’s lap, take a photo, and get a candy cane. There was also a section of the building set up to sell ornaments, copies of the photos, candy, and other holiday fare. Based on the long line leading up to the place, it seemed as if the entire town had shown up to tell their wishes to the jolly bearded man in red.

  “My favorite part of Santa’s Village is actually the displays set up outside the house,” Trevor said.

  I lifted my camera and began to capture images of happy kids and enchanting decorations. “I totally agree. The mechanical penguins on the frozen lake, the polar bears sliding down the icy mountain, and the raccoons decorating the trees in the forest are all fantastic. I think I’m going to get some really good shots. Once I get enough out here, we’ll head inside.”

  “Are you going to set up the tripod?”

  “No,” I answered. “I’m just going to take a bunch of photos from random angles and see what I end up with.” I had to admit the festive atmosphere had me smiling. There were happy children, carols playing over the loudspeaker, and mechanical decorations displayed around hundreds of decorated trees.

  I made my rounds and was about to head inside and get photos of children on Santa’s lap while adults shopped for special treats or a handcrafted ornament when my phone buzzed. I looked at the caller ID. It was Woody. I hit answer.

  “Hey, Woody,
did you ID our victim?”

  “Holly Quinn. Holly is twenty-four years old and works part-time at the Bayside Grill. She did a volunteer shift at Santa’s Village yesterday with Owen Anderson, the man who played Santa to her elf. According to Mr. Anderson, Holly completed her shift and then changed into her street clothes. She told Owen that she had a date at The Rusty Nail, which is just across the park from the Santa House. Owen noticed that she had on red heels, so he offered to drop her off. He said he dropped her in front of the bar and continued on.”

  “Do we know who the date was with?”

  “The man she met is a local real estate agent named Christopher Cartwright. Most people call him Chris. I spoke to Mr. Cartwright, and he said that Holly met him at the bar, and the pair shared a couple of drinks. He’d made plans for them to have dinner, but then he got a call from his office about a break-in at one of the properties he had listed, so he had to leave. I’ve been able to verify that there was a break-in at a house being sold by Cartwright, so his alibi seems legit.”

  “What did Holly do after Cartwright left?”

  “It sounds like she finished her drink and then left. No one I’ve spoken to seems to know where she went after she left the bar.”

  “She couldn’t have gone far with the shoes she had on.”

  “I agree. Her shoes were not made for walking, especially not in the snow.”

  “So, it sounds like the first task is going to be to try to determine where Holly went after she left the bar.”

  “That is the challenge at this point. So far, no one I’ve spoken to claims to have seen her. I did speak to one of the cocktail waitresses who worked at The Rusty Nail that evening. She said she ran into Holly in the ladies’ room shortly before she left. Holly told her that she wasn’t feeling well and was going to call one of her roommates for a ride home. I spoke to all four of Holly’s roommates, and they all claim that she never called. They also claim that she never came home. If I had to bet, I’d say she ran into someone who offered her a ride, and that someone is most likely the person who killed her.”