Dune to Death

by Mary Daheim

Wearing a light jacket and carrying the flashlight, Judith walked carefully down the long staircase. The rain and wind buffeted her so she clung to the handrail. Below, the storm had swept the beach clear of other human beings. The ocean was obscured from her vision, but she could hear the waves crashing against the shore.

  Judith approached the boathouse warily. As she had hoped, the door opened at a touch. Perhaps the lock had been broken in the aftermath of Titus Teacher’s murder. She crept inside, shining the flashlight around the small, disordered living room. Obviously, no one had made any attempt to straighten up after the police and sheriff had finished their official business. With a grimace, she passed the bloodstained couch with its grotesque outline of Titus Teacher’s sprawled body. On the threshold of the kitchen, she pried up the starfish-patterned linoleum. Sure enough, newspaper lined the floor: the Bugler, dated a week after the issue she and Renie had found under the rug in the beach cottage. Judith nodded to herself.

  The sound of the wind and the surf muffled the newcomer’s approach, but the blinding flash tore a scream from Judith’s throat. Kneeling on the floor, she froze in place, not daring to move a muscle. Another flash lit up the boathouse. With her heart pounding, Judith risked raising her head just enough to peek over the top of the couch. With her vision still blurred, she tried to make out the form that stood just inside the doorway.

  “Terrence!” she cried. “What are you doing here?” Judith staggered to her feet.

  “Taking pictures,” said Terrence, a bit sulkily. “My editor told me to get an interior. All the power went out at the morgue, so I decided to come over here and do it now. Are you okay?”

  Still shaken, Judith leaned against the doorjamb. “Yes, but you scared the wits out of me. Gosh, Terrence, you must be the only person who works weekends on Buccaneer Beach.”

  “You’re right,” he replied in a put-upon voice. “No overtime, either.”

  “Cheer up,” said Judith, going into the kitchen. “Maybe I can help you get a real scoop.” She played the flashlight around the room, noting that a chair had been overturned, a portable mixer lay on the floor, and a saucer had been smashed in the sink. No doubt this damage, as well as the chaos in the living room, had been caused by the people who had charged the boathouse after Titus Teacher’s body had been discovered.

  “I’ve got a theory,” Judith explained, knocking on the wall behind the stove. “For a long time, there has been a story about secret passages supposedly made by pirates in the Buccaneer Beach area. But that’s probably not true. At least about the pirates. I suspect any underground tunnels were dug by bootleggers during Prohibition. If so, one of them might have led up to an old speakeasy called Pirate’s Lair.”

  “The beach cottage?” said Terrence, who was watching Judith’s flashlight roam over the nautical charts on the far wall. “But that’s the house you rented.”

  “It was once the site of a tavern,” Judith went on. “An old guy named Jake Beezle told me how the smugglers used to bring liquor down from Canada and unload it on the beach. My guess is that they took it up through a secret passage. But,” Judith asked, puzzled, “where?”

  “Wowee!” cried Terrence. “I need to know more about this town. I’m really going to spend a lot of time at the morgue doing research.” In the semidarkness, he bumped into the little refrigerator and fell against the nautical charts. “Ooops!” cried Terrence. “What a klutz!”

  His elbow had gone right through one of the charts. There was a space immediately behind it. Judith and Terrence stared. “Bless you, Terrence!” exulted Judith, giving the startled young man a hug. “You’re no ordinary klutz—you’ve found the passage!” Ripping away the charts, they discovered a door set about three inches into the framework. There was no lock. The hinges opened without a squeak. “Those have been oiled recently,” said Judith. “Come on, Terrence, are you game?”

  Terrence was. Carefully, they entered the narrow opening in the ground. Both Judith and Terrence had to crouch and walk single file. The air smelled stale and damp. With the flashlight beam wavering before them, they began to make their ascent through the hill that rose above the beach. Judith worried about bats. She feared getting trapped. She was certain Terrence would fall down. She realized there was danger of a cave-in, especially in the wake of the storm.

  “It shouldn’t be far,” she said, as much to reassure herself as Terrence.

  “It’s spooky in here,” said Terrence in a nervous voice.

  “Very spooky,” Judith agreed, feeling the earth shift under her feet. She felt as if they’d been walking for miles. Yet if her guess was accurate, they had only about two hundred feet to cover.

  The silence was overwhelming, like being in a tomb. Judith tried not to shiver. At last they came to the end of the passage. Shining the flashlight directly overhead, Judith saw the trapdoor that was set in the ground above them. She gave the splintered wood an experimental nudge. Nothing happened.

  “Let me,” offered Terrence.

  Judith stepped aside, her back flat against the hard, damp wall of earth. With a mighty heave, Terrence opened the trapdoor. Gallantly, he gave Judith a boost. With a sigh of relief, she climbed out into the cool, fresh air.

  “Where are we?” called Terrence, still in the nether world.

  Judith grinned. “In front of my MG. We’re in the carport, Terrence.”

  The telephones, if not the lights, had been put back in service. With a hasty explanation for Renie, Judith left Terrence in the beach cottage to call the sheriff and the police. But not before she had made a phone call of her own. Judith had a message for a murderer.

  “I still say you’re nuts,” Renie shouted from the bedroom. “When you get yourself killed, don’t come bitching to me.”

  Arming herself with a clamgun as well as the flashlight, Judith returned to the boathouse by the conventional route of the staircase. Terrence was having trouble getting through. It appeared that most of Buccaneer Beach was trying to call one or the other of the law enforcement agencies to report some sort of problem.

  Judith did not go inside the boathouse. Rather, she ducked behind a log on the far side of the little building and crouched low to wait. The rain had dwindled to a heavy mist, though the wind was still brisk. Judith rested the clamgun against the log, wishing it were a real firearm instead of just a fancy shovel made for chasing clams through the sand. She held onto the flashlight, but kept it turned off to save the batteries.

  Five minutes passed. Then ten. Judith heard no sign of anyone approaching. Perhaps she wouldn’t. She’d told Terrence to ask the police and the sheriff not to use their sirens. Surprise was an important element in the trap she’d set.

  She clicked the flashlight on to check the time. Her watch showed 10:14. Judith turned the flashlight off. The town was still wrapped in darkness, though farther up, where the highway curved close to the beach, she could see the occasional amber glow of headlights. Clooney, maybe. Or Eldritch. It could even be the killer, moving inexorably into Judith’s snare. She couldn’t resist a little smile of satisfaction.

  Somehow, it hadn’t occurred to her that her prey would arrive via the road that led to the beach. Judith had assumed that the killer would march boldly through the yard of Pirate’s Lair and straight down the long flight of steps. Thus, she was startled when she heard not soft footsteps in the sand, but the flapping of fabric as Alice Hoke approached, wearing a raincoat and carrying a gun.

  Judith was on the wrong side of the log. Trying to make herself invisible, she melted into the rough, weather-beaten, decaying wood. Alice kept right on walking, purposeful, composed. She went past the log; Judith slumped in relief. The clamgun tipped over. Alice whirled, the gun pointed in Judith’s direction.

  “Who’s there?” she called, her voice floating on the wind. Getting no response, Alice moved slowly toward the log.

  Judith had no illusions about Alice Hoke’s attitude toward virtues such as mercy. Frantically, she gazed up at the bluff, tryi
ng to see if the law enforcement vehicles had arrived. But of course, it dawned on her, they, too, would come down the road by the handsome house on the point. The clamgun was out of reach. The flashlight was worthless. Judith had no choice but to get to her feet and run for her life.

  “Stop!” shouted Alice. “Wait!”

  Judith’s heels dug into the mud. She realized it was foolish to engage Alice Hoke in conversation. But if Judith were going to get shot, she’d prefer it wouldn’t be in the back. Besides, the sheriff and the police should be roaring onto the beach at any moment. Perhaps it was wise to play for time.

  Alice’s sensible shoes made squelching noises in the wet sand. She lowered the gun which looked to Judith like a standard U.S. Army .45. Her father-in-law’s, Judith thought fleetingly, a souvenir from World War I.

  “Now what’s all this nonsense about a safety-deposit box key?” Alice demanded. Up close, her long face looked impassive. Only the eyes, cold as the sea itself, betrayed her anxiety.

  “My cousin and I found it,” replied Judith, surprised that she could speak in a relatively normal voice. “Along with the sheepskin seat covers from your husband’s car. The one he drove Race Doyle’s body away in after he ran him down in the cheese factory parking lot.”

  Alice emitted a sharp little laugh. “How absurd! My late husband hit Race, but he didn’t kill him. Or if he did, he never told me about it. Race ran away with the money. The man was a common criminal.”

  “I don’t think so,” said Judith. “Oh, Race had a bad reputation. But just because he sold used cars doesn’t make him a crook. I think you and Bernie set Race up. You knew the business was going under—not because of Race’s mismanagement, but because of a lot of things. Maybe your father lost his grip as he got older. Certainly Bernie couldn’t run the cheese factory—he wasn’t a manager, he was a builder, and a good one. Times had gotten tough in this part of the world. You were facing bankruptcy. Rather than go through that, the two of you made Race the patsy. Bernie killed Race and got rid of the body. You kept the money for yourselves, though eventually you had to use some of the factory site profits to pay off your more obstinate creditors. But three million dollars is a lot of money. Enough to kill for.”

  Even as she spoke, Judith had been inching up the beach. It would take some time to reach the road that led up to the highway. Hopefully, Clooney and—or—Eldritch would arrive any minute.

  Alice was showing some interest, but no real emotion. “It’s possible that Bernie was involved, I suppose.” She made it sound as if her husband had dabbled in unsound municipal bonds. “But that was a long time ago. And he’s dead.”

  “Yes, he is,” agreed Judith. “He’s been dead for over twenty-four hours.” She watched Alice closely. Through the mist, she could see those cold eyes flicker. “Bernie Hoke didn’t commit suicide seven years ago. That was rigged, so that the two of you could disappear and live in Liechtenstein until the statute of limitations ran out on defrauding your creditors or whatever sort of legal liability had expired. That way, if any suspicion was attached to either of you, it wouldn’t matter. The trouble is, there is no limitation on murder.”

  Alice started to throw back her head and hoot with laughter, but thought better of the diversion and raised the gun a notch. “That’s preposterous. I never left Buccaneer Beach.”

  Judith took another backward step. “Yes, you did. Somehow, you convinced Leona—who must have returned from Brazil about that time—to stand in for you. Maybe you played up to her, told her you were overcome with grief because of Bernie’s alleged suicide. Whatever else Leona was, she was kindhearted. She’d spent over twenty years in the jungle. Perhaps the idea of being back home in seclusion appealed to her, like a monk meditating or some other religious type embracing the solitary, contemplative life. At any rate, she managed to keep away from anyone who would really know who was Leona and who was Alice. She could put your children off without arousing a lot of suspicion because you’d never been a very warm sort of mother. Everything worked out just fine until Darren Fleetwood showed up.”

  Consciously, or otherwise, Alice Hoke was keeping pace with Judith. They were directly below the motel now, though the establishment was shrouded in darkness. The tram rested on its platform atop the bluff. At least no one had been trapped in it when the power went out. Or, thought Judith with a pang, perhaps it would have been better if someone was caught halfway down to the beach. At least she’d have a witness if Alice tried to shoot her.

  “Darren Fleetwood?” Alice spoke the name with contempt. “What has he got to do with all this tiresome speculation?”

  Judith realized that her jacket and the rest of her clothes were soaked through to the skin. She wasn’t exactly cold, but she was certainly uncomfortable. And terrified. For a brief moment, her brain seemed to stop working. Then she forced herself to concentrate and answered Alice’s disdainful question.

  “Some thirty years ago, Leona had a child out of wedlock. That’s why she went away, even before she became a missionary in Brazil. She gave the baby up for adoption, but I suspect she never stopped wondering what had happened to him. It must have preyed on her mind all those years she spent hiding out in the old farmhouse. She must have made a search and found out that her son was Darren Fleetwood, living in Malibu. She contacted him—or the adoption agency did—and he agreed to meet her in Buccaneer Beach. She was so thrilled that she changed her will, leaving her only real asset—the beach cottage—to Darren.”

  “Perhaps.” Alice gave a slight shrug. “What does that have to do with me? I never met the fellow.”

  Judith kept moving backwards, slowly, almost imperceptibly, shifting one foot at a time. “Darren’s arrival on the scene gave Leona a whole new outlook on life. She wanted to do things for him, to be with him, to be herself. When you finally ran out of money and had to leave Liechtenstein, Leona insisted on ending the impersonation. She was basically very honest, I think. She had an intense desire to start life over. She even applied for a driver’s license. But you didn’t want her to stop playing your part. You planned on taking the money and leaving, probably for another foreign country. Leona refused to cooperate this time. Especially when she discovered that Bernie Hoke was alive.”

  Alice scoffed. “This is ridiculous!”

  “No, it’s not. When Bernie ran down Race Doyle, he probably got injured, too. Mrs. Doyle—Brent’s mother—said something very interesting this afternoon. She mentioned that after the cheese factory folded, Bernie was a wreck—mentally and physically. Now Bernie was a hard worker who actually did some of the construction himself. I might be able to understand how his mental condition would deteriorate, but not how it would affect him physically. Unless he was suddenly going around town with some obvious impairment—like a bad limp.” Judith paused for a breath as well as to steel her nerve. “For a long time, I thought Titus Teacher was Race Doyle. Then I realized he wasn’t. Titus Teacher was your husband, Bernard Hoke, the man who supposedly committed suicide seven years ago. There were no pictures of him up at the farm house, so I don’t know what he looked like seven years ago. But the beard and time itself would have changed him enough so that casual acquaintances wouldn’t recognize the long-dead Bernie Hoke. And he stayed down at the boathouse, away from his children. The only time they saw him was at the funeral, when their attention was diverted elsewhere. Even so, Larissa and Augie thought there was something familiar about the man they knew as Titus Teacher. By the time they figured it out—if they ever did—you and Bernie would have been far away from Buccaneer Beach.”

  “Really, Mrs. Flynn,” Alice scoffed, “you’ve manufactured a fairy tale!”

  It occurred to Judith that, in her long flapping raincoat and with her graying hair blowing around her narrow shoulders, Alice Hoke could have passed for the witch from “Hansel and Gretel.” Judith forced herself to keep talking, to stall for more precious minutes. “For all of Race’s seamier side, I have the feeling he wasn’t as basically dishonest a
s Bernie Hoke. A very shrewd old lady I talked to the other day said something enlightening—your parents didn’t think much better of Bernie than they did of Race. But because Bernie wasn’t lazy and Race apparently was, when trouble came along, public opinion was swayed to your husband’s side. That’s why everybody assumed that if Leona had been seduced, the cad was Race Doyle. But when Leona dragged Race out of your parents’ house that New Year’s Eve in 1960, it was Bernie who brought her home.”

  Alice’s eyes narrowed. “That’s true. So what?” She used her free hand to make an impatient gesture. “Let’s cut this short, Mrs. Flynn. It’s late, it’s wet, and I want that safety-deposit box key.”

  Judith expelled a scornful breath. “You don’t think I’d be stupid enough to bring it with me, do you?”

  “Where is it?” The words were sharp, demanding.

  “Back at Pirate’s Lair,” Judith lied. She stopped edging backwards, sensing a shred of hope.

  “Where?”

  “You’ll find out when we get there.” Judith was feeling a bit light-headed.

  “I can find it without your help,” snapped Alice. “I know every inch of that house.”

  Feeling a rush of failure engulf her, Judith again began to move, not just backward, but to the side. The waves were coming closer as the tide washed up on the shore. Alice, of course, was also forced to avoid the relentless surf.

  “Darren really blew the lid off the whole thing,” Judith said more rapidly. “Not only did Leona want out of the charade, but her basic integrity may have caused her to threaten both you and Bernie with exposure. I think she told you who the father of her child really was—your husband. You must have pitched a four-star fit. You may even have been afraid that Bernie really cared for Leona. Or that the existence of a son he’d never known would change all your carefully-laid plans. So you came down to the beach cottage to find Leona, but she wasn’t around just then. You used the first piece of paper you could find, which happened to be the receipt Leona had given me, and you asked her to meet you at a specified time. Then you killed her and destroyed the note.”