Dune to Death

by Mary Daheim

  “Right,” agreed Judith, wrinkling her nose. The dampness which had permeated the sheepskin gave off an unpleasant odor. “But they might have belonged to twentieth century pirates. Look, coz,” she said, pointing to the rust-colored smears, “doesn’t that look a lot like dried blood?”

  Fair was fair. Having two items in their possession, the cousins decided to divvy them up between Josh Eldritch and Neil Clooney. The battered strongbox had been stored in the guest bedroom before Judith and Renie took off in the MG. They stopped first at police headquarters, handing over the sheepskin car seat covers to the police chief, who, amazingly, was in his office.

  “A policeman’s job is never done,” he said sententiously. “Besides, I left a dozen doughnuts here from Holesome’s Sugar Shop.”

  Clooney seemed mildly interested in the cousins’ discovery. However, he could see no tie-in between a buried strongbox and the recent murders. Somewhat reluctantly, Judith showed him the scrap of treasure map.

  “Don’t you see,” she tried to explain, wondering why Clooney’s office wasn’t air-conditioned at city expense, “it wasn’t an accident that the map was put under the carpet at Pirate’s Lair. It was left there so that someone would be able to come along later and dig up the strongbox.”

  “So?” Clooney’s small eyes were skeptical. “Why would anyone want to ditch a couple of seat covers in the first place?” Clooney eyed the smelly sheepskin with distaste. “I suppose they were kind of nice looking when they were new.”

  Judith felt as if she were ramming her head into a brick wall. Or at least Clooney’s formidable stomach. “Please—the least you could do is have your lab find out if that’s blood on the seat covers.”

  Clooney started to frown at Judith, then burst into laughter. “Sure! Why not? It was probably from the sheep!”

  “Never mind,” said Judith, reaching for the covers, “we’ll take them over to the sheriff. He’ll know what to do.”

  The threat worked. Clooney pounced on the sheepskin and promised to put the lab to work. Come Monday. Naturally, they were off for the weekend. Renie emitted a little snort.

  “Then,” said Judith, somewhat appeased, “your ballistics people haven’t been able to determine what kind of gun or bullet killed Titus Teacher?”

  Clooney shot Judith a wary look. “We found the bullet. Went right through the body and lodged in the wall between the front room and the kitchen. Full metal jacket, fired from a standard .45 automatic. No big mystery there.”

  Except, Judith thought, as they left police headquarters, who had pulled the trigger. She was convinced that the same person who had strangled Leona Ogilvie had also shot the man known as Titus Teacher. And for the first time since the cousins had found Leona’s body, Judith was almost certain she knew the answer.

  Josh Eldritch was also in his office, having been called in to sort out a six-car pileup just south of town. The murder investigations seemed to have slipped a notch in the sheriff’s priorities. Automobile crashes were more common, and thus, more in his area of expertise.

  Compared with Clooney’s reaction to the seat covers, the sheriff was impressed by the finding of the safety-deposit box key. “You think this will lead to the stolen money from the cheese factory?” he asked somewhat dubiously.

  Judith inclined her head. “It’ll lead to something,” she asserted. “Nobody buries a key in a strongbox two feet below the ground.”

  Eldritch made a gesture of assent. “I can’t check until Monday.”

  “Naturally,” breathed Renie.

  “It could be anywhere,” he noted.

  “True,” said Judith.

  “It might not even be around here,” Eldritch pointed out.

  “I have a feeling it is—at least within a fifty-mile radius,” said Judith. Why else, she figured, had Alice Hoke returned to Buccaneer Beach? “How many banks are there in town?”

  “Three,” the sheriff answered promptly. “But there are about ten times that many in Juniper County.”

  Judith was satisfied. She and Renie had done all they could, as far as working through channels was concerned. Feeling virtuous, the cousins headed for Buccaneer Beach Community Hospital.

  Joe was not in his room. Yet another nurse Judith had never seen before informed her that Mr. Flynn was in therapy, learning how to use crutches. Did that mean, Judith inquired with mixed emotions, that he would be discharged the following day? The nurse couldn’t say; that would be up to Doctor. Noting that nurses often referred to the MD in charge by the generic title, she mused to Renie that she wondered if it were an exalted soubriquet like “Majesty” or merely a sign of poor memory.

  Renie couldn’t enlighten her cousin. “All I know is that when you get your teeth fixed, the hygienists never call their boss ‘Dentist.’” She cocked her head at Judith as they pulled out of the hospital parking lot. “You’ve got more on your mind than medical profession relationships. What gives, coz? Are you playing clam again?”

  “Not intentionally,” replied Judith, pulling out onto Highway 101. “This whole thing is starting to come together for me, but I’ve got a serious problem.”

  Renie gazed at Judith with a mixture of admiration and curiosity. “You mean you know who did it?”

  “I’m close,” replied Judith.

  “Who?”

  “Let me make one more phone call when we get back to Pirate’s Lair,” said Judith, stopping at a red light. “If my guess is on target, I’ll tell you. Otherwise, you’re going to think I’m nuts.”

  Renie gave a little shrug. “It wouldn’t be the first time. Didn’t I stand up for you when you married Dan McMonigle?”

  Judith turned to look at Renie. “You also stood up for me with Joe Flynn.”

  “You heard me the first time,” said Renie.

  Judith and Renie had decided to attend the six o’clock Saturday evening mass at St. Ethelburga of Barking Catholic Church instead of the Sunday service which was scheduled for ten. They couldn’t make it to Salem in time to catch Renie’s noon train if they went to the morning liturgy. As strangers in town, they hadn’t expected to see anyone they knew, but three rows up, they spotted Terrence O’Toole. He spotted them coming back from Holy Communion.

  After mass, he waylaid them in the parking lot. A faint breeze stirred the heavy air as Judith and Renie waited for Terrence to leapfrog between cars.

  “Wowee!” he exclaimed under his breath so as not to attract the attention of the other parishioners. “Have I got news for our next edition! Two murders, the treasure hunt, a big wreck out on the highway, and tomorrow, the parade! Want to go with me to the morgue?”

  Judith made a grim face. “No thanks, Terrence. We’ve seen enough dead bodies.”

  “No, no,” said Terrence, moving closer to the cousins and taking on an air of intrigue. “I mean the newspaper morgue, on microfilm. You’ve been very good to me, giving out that interview and all. And you act interested in the investigation. I thought you might want to be in on it when I crack the case.”

  “What?” Judith was startled as much by his pronouncement as his self-confidence. “Gee, Terrence, do you have some…ah, leads?”

  “You bet,” Terrence replied promptly. He steered the cousins behind the church’s wooden sign proclaiming the daily and Sunday mass times. “Leona Ogilvie inherited the beach cottage. Alice Hoke got everything else, including a lot of debts. The two women looked a lot alike, and I figure the people who were never paid the money that was owed them got fed up and came looking for revenge. But they didn’t know the difference between the two sisters’ physical appearance, so they killed the wrong woman.” He hooked his thumbs in his suspenders, flashed his gap-toothed grin in self-satisfaction, and awaited the cousins’ reaction.

  “That’s…remarkable,” Judith said at last. “However did you come to such a conclusion?”

  “Well…” Terrence simpered a bit. “I do my homework. I read up about the cheese factory. I need to read more. That’s why I thought
you might want to go to the morgue with me.”

  “How,” Judith asked, “do you explain Titus Teacher’s death?”

  “Simple,” said Terrence. “Bernard Hoke owed a lot of people money.” He ticked them off on his fingers—employees, suppliers, lenders. Some, Terrence said, had been paid off by Alice Hoke after she sold the factory site to the outlet mall developers. But others had not. That, explained Terrence, was where Titus Teacher came in. “They owed him money, so Alice had to kill him after he killed Leona by mistake.”

  “No,” asserted Renie. “Alice couldn’t have killed Titus Teacher. She was in our carport at the time.”

  Terrence was unfazed by the argument. “Then one of her children did it. It had to be an Ogilvie or a Hoke.”

  “I tell you what, Terrence,” said Judith, “you go ahead without us. It sounds as if you’re doing good work. If you find out anything new, give us a call, okay?”

  Terrence’s freckled face was wreathed with disappointment, but he gave in. The cousins headed out for their last dinner together in Buccaneer Beach. As it was well after seven o’clock and the town was jammed with tourists, they realized after their first three stops that they should have made reservations. None of the restaurants they tried had less than an hour’s wait. Discouraged, they scouted a couple of the more modest eateries, but even those were doing a land-office holiday business.

  “I’m afraid,” Judith said to a downcast Renie, “we may have to go back to the cottage and clean out the refrigerator.”

  Since it was now after eight o’clock, Renie was too famished to argue. The cousins drove back to Pirate’s Lair. While Renie prepared open-faced crab and cheddar sandwiches to put under the broiler, Judith made the phone call she’d planned for that evening. To her relief, the voice at the other end in Malibu was not a recording.

  “Mr. Fleetwood,” said Judith, at her most effusive. “I’m so glad you got home safely. I wanted to apologize for acting like a pest yesterday outside of Brent Doyle’s law office.” Darren Fleetwood did not sound pleased to hear from Judith. It was clear he was anxious to get her off the line. “I won’t keep you,” Judith promised, “but since you now own Pirate’s Lair, something has happened that I think you should know about.”

  “Yes?” Darren’s voice was tense.

  Judith glanced at Renie who was cutting up cucumbers. “There’s been another murder. Titus Teacher was shot last night down at the boat…”

  “Who?” Darren sounded uncertain.

  Judith repeated the name. “You sat next to him at the funeral.”

  There was a slight pause. “I did? Oh—that’s too bad. That he got killed, I mean.” Another pause. “I sure hope everything gets…straightened out up there. This has been the weirdest experience in my entire life.”

  “I’m sure it has,” said Judith, not without sympathy. “I felt you ought to know. We’re very sorry about your father’s death.” She exchanged meaningful looks with Renie.

  “What?” Darren Fleetwood made an odd noise into the phone. “Well, yes, it was a tragedy, I suppose. But that happened a long time ago.”

  It was Judith’s turn to pause. She held out the receiver, staring at the earpiece. Renie stared at Judith. “Excuse me,” said Judith at last, putting the phone back in place. “I was referring to your natural father. Race Doyle.”

  A faint chuckle came across the line. “I never heard of him. My real father’s been dead for years. Actually, I never met the man, but his name was Bernard Hoke.”

  A sudden flash of lightning, followed by the crash of thunder, broke the connection.

  SIXTEEN

  WHAT IRONY, THOUGHT Judith, that her wrongheaded permise and Terrence O’Toole’s misguided deductions had finally put all the pieces into place. The storm had ended the hot spell, and with it had come the solution. As rain pelted Pirate’s Lair and wind whipped through the pines, Judith and Renie sat in the dark and rehashed the Ogilvie-Hoke murder case.

  “You may know who and why, but you still don’t know how,” Renie argued. “Really, it’s not impossible.”

  “Logically, no,” agreed Judith as more lightning flashed and thunder rolled. “Or, yes—it has to be logical. We just can’t see it yet.”

  “We can’t see anything until the power goes back on,” said Renie. Outside, virtually the entire town was dark, with only an occasional glimmer of light from an auxiliary system. “It’s a good thing I’d already put the sandwiches under the broiler.”

  “As soon as this storm lets up, we’re going to see the sheriff. Or the police chief,” said Judith. She cocked an ear, noting that the lightning and thunder were growing farther apart. The storm was beginning to pass, though the jagged bursts of lightning that filled the sky over the water were still spectacular. The sea had grown choppy, rough whitecaps tossed high on murky gray waves.

  “You’ll have to go to their houses,” said Renie. “They sure won’t be at work.”

  “They might be at the rodeo,” allowed Judith. “Unless it got rained out.”

  “Delayed, I’ll bet. It was probably already under way.” Renie made a couple of attempts to find her can of Pepsi. “Dark or not, I’ve got to go pack, coz. Bill has trained me not to wait until morning.”

  Judith watched Renie’s dim outline move cautiously from the living room. “I still can’t believe you’re deserting me,” she called after her cousin.

  “The monks and the symphony cannot go on without me,” Renie shouted back. “And Bill cannot go on without clean laundry.”

  “I wish I could call Joe,” said Judith, more to herself than to Renie. “I suppose the phone company and the power people around here don’t consider this an emergency.”

  Outside, the wind blew over what sounded like a garbage can. Judith could see branches swaying in front of the picture window. The rain was coming down so hard that it spattered the bricks inside the fireplace. Getting up, Judith picked her way to the kitchen.

  “I wish I had Jake Beezle’s big flashlight. There’s got to be one around here someplace,” she said, again mostly to herself. “I thought I saw it a couple of days ago.”

  “What?” Renie’s voice emanated from the guest bedroom. “What about San Diego?”

  Toward the back of the second drawer next to the sink, Judith found the flashlight. Its batteries worked, if not quite at full force. “San Diego?” said Judith in a louder voice, clicking off the flashlight to conserve its power. “I didn’t say anything.” She headed for the hallway.

  Renie’s shadowy form was dancing around the bedroom. “San Diego—it made me think of something I learned from the background on that Franciscan calendar.” Her voice was excited as she moved toward Judith. “Those Spaniards—Junipero Serra and Company—they were Franciscans!” Renie tripped over the strongbox. Judith could have sworn her cousin was airborne for at least ten seconds. She came down with a crash, right at Judith’s feet.

  “Coz!” Judith bent down. Renie was groaning. “Speak to me! Are you okay?”

  There was an ominous silence, except for Renie’s gasps and moans. Frantic, Judith switched on the flashlight. Renie’s eyes rolled up at her. “I think I broke my stupid ankle.”

  Judith couldn’t believe her ears. She couldn’t call for help; the phone was still out. She couldn’t risk hauling Renie out to the car and driving to the hospital. The most she could do was get her cousin onto the bed. Gingerly, Judith tried to hoist Renie, who seemed to have become a deadweight. At last, Renie regained her breath and volunteered to crawl to the bed. With Judith’s help, she climbed on top of the down comforter and gave her cousin a weak smile.

  “What a clumsy ox! I didn’t see that wretched strongbox.”

  “That’s okay, coz.” Judith was smiling, too, but also feebly. “I’ll call somebody as soon as the phone service is restored.”

  Renie was cautiously testing her right ankle. “I don’t really think it’s broken. But it sure as hell is sprained.” She gave an annoyed shake of her head. “L
et me finish what I was saying before I did my imitation of a 747 crash landing. About the missionaries. They didn’t come to California until the last half of the eighteenth century. There were no missions on the West Coast until the 1760s.”

  “So?” Judith stared at Renie as if the fall had made her delirious.

  “So that tourist brochure stuff about English pirates chasing Spanish ships back to safety at the missions is pure myth—or Chamber of Commerce ballyhoo.” Renie shifted about on the bed, trying to arrange herself more comfortably. “Can I have an ice pack, or has everything melted in the freezer?”

  “Not this soon,” replied Judith, a bit vaguely. “Sorry, coz, I still don’t get it. What’s your point?”

  “I’m not sure,” said Renie, a bit fretfully. “But all the hoopla about the pirates and buried treasure and secret passages and such is just a lot of promotional baloney. Lord knows I’ve designed enough of those pieces to realize how little store you can set by the copy.” She stopped to flex her ankle again and winced. “How about some aspirin?”

  Judith went to fetch both ice and aspirin. “There must have been pirates around here somewhere or else they wouldn’t have named it Buccaneer Beach,” she pointed out to Renie.

  “Maybe.” Renie allowed Judith to minister to her, then lay back against the pillows. “I don’t know—it was just a thought. You’re the one who always sees the light at the end of the tunnel.” Renie closed her eyes.

  The wind was dying down a bit, but the rain had not let up. Judith sat very still. Renie was right. She had seen the light at the end of the tunnel. Almost literally.

  Judith jumped up. “I’m going down to the boathouse,” she announced. “Will you be all right?”

  Renie’s eyes flew open. “I’ll be fine. Coz, don’t be a sap! You’re asking for trouble! What would Joe think?”

  “I don’t know,” said Judith blithely. “Why don’t you ask him when you get to the hospital?”