Murder in Mystic Cove

by Daryl Anderson

  “And Anita?”

  For the first time Fairley’s face clouded. “Anita Dick wasn’t as stupid as people thought. You should always watch out for the quiet ones, Addie—they’re the dangerous ones.”

  “Anita was on to you?”

  “I didn’t let it get that far. After Mel’s death I didn’t like the way she looked at me when she thought I didn’t see. But the fact is Anita should have been more careful with her insulin regimen.”

  “So it was like Asa.”

  “Not at all,” Fairley said. “Asa’s problem was too much insulin, while Anita’s was too little.”

  I wanted to strike her, to wipe that self-satisfied smile off of her lips, but Fairley Sable’s smile died of its own accord when she saw my own grin. “I’ve enjoyed this bull session, Fairley, but I think we’ve heard enough.”

  “What? What’s that?”

  “Did you get all of that, Sheriff?” I said.

  It was a stupid thing to say, but I had to see that look on Fairley’s face when she knew the game was over for her. That was my payment, the due she owed me.

  Fairley’s eyes flashed with rage and her face turned the color of puke, realizing what she had just done. Unlike the rattler, she gave no warning. Her right hand struck with lightening speed, grabbing a butcher’s knife from the block on the counter and plunging it into my gut.

  An explosion of pain as I collapsed on the floor. Fairley glowered over me, knife in hand, face contorted with rage. Her arm reared back, prepared for another strike.

  As darkness took me, I was aware of two things. Brad Spooner was going to be pissed and those chocolate chip cookies smelled delicious.

  * * *

  But darkness did not last forever, at least not on that day. When I opened my eyes, two balloons floated in the warm ether above. Oddly, the balloons had faces.

  “Papa?” I said.

  “I’m here, Adelajda.”

  “How’s our girl?” the other balloon asked.

  “Brad?”

  “Don’t try to talk,” the Brad balloon said. “The doc says you’re gonna be fine.”

  I tried to move, but the pain stopped me. “Fairley?”

  “Fairley Sable has been charged with two counts of homicide. Feeding Mel the poison tea directly contributed to his fatal heart attack. A bottle of insulin with Fairley’s prints all over it was recovered from the Dicks’ refrigerator. The insulin had been replaced with distilled water. The little lady ought to consider herself lucky it’s only two counts.”

  “You found the whole kielbasa,” Pop said, kissing my cheek. “I’m going to tell the nurse you’re awake.”

  After Pop glided from the room, an icy hand covered mine. I flinched a little and mouthed, “Cold.”

  “And you’re too damn hot,” Brad said, squeezing lightly. Still, neither hand stirred. Why had I thought the sheriff looked like a vulture? No, he was an ibis or a crane.

  “It’s over,” I said.

  “Fairley Sable’s gonna fight it and she’s got the resources to put up a good fight, but the confession you got out of her is ironclad.” Brad added that Rand had finally come clean. As Fairley surmised, he had found Dick’s body in the early morning and assumed Tally was the killer. To protect his wife Rand grabbed the murder weapon. Later he deleted the files from Mel’s office computer and dropped the handgun in Anita’s trash can.

  “I can’t believe you fooled Fairley into confessing,” Brad said.

  I could. With the background Angie had dug up I knew I could rattle her, but first she had to believe I was no danger to her. The little play the sheriff and I had acted out for her benefit had convinced her. I had bet on her need to turn the knife in my back—bad choice of words. I must have winced for Brad asked if I was all right.

  “I am.”

  “Well, I hope you learned not to taunt the perp, at least not until she’s in cuffs—you could have died back there.”

  “I’m a scorpion—can’t help it.”

  Brad gave me a funny look, then sighed. “You feel like eating something? Not this hospital slop—I’ll run out and get you whatever you like.”

  “Some chocolate chip cookies would be great.”

  * * *

  A few days later I was back home with Pop. Somehow the knife hadn’t struck any vital organs—a few centimeters to the left and it would have been a different story. I had been lucky. I had crossed Fairley Sable’s path and survived. How many others could make that claim?

  I had been home a week when Brad called. He had something he wanted to discuss, only not on the phone. I told him to stop by anytime. Crazy Jinks greeted my friend with the unbounded joy of a puppy, dancing around Brad as if he were a maypole. How was it dogs always knew?

  “Have a seat on the sofa. You want something to drink? I got beer.” I wasn’t quite sure why I was babbling like a teenybopper on a date with Justin Bieber, but there it was.

  “Just sit your ass down. You shouldn’t be jumping around like that.”

  I joined Brad on the sofa. “I’m not an invalid.”

  Brad looked around the small apartment. “Where’s your dad?”

  “Visiting a neighbor.” After I told Pop about Brad’s visit, Pop had decided he wanted to visit Frankie.

  “According to the papers, the case against Fairley Sable is pretty tight,” I said, assuming Brad wanted to discuss some aspect of the case. Media coverage of Fairley’s arrest had been intense, bouncing Katherine Henderson off the news cycle. Until yesterday that was, when yet another Mystic Cove scandal had blasted on the scene, pushing murderous Fairley to the back pages.

  “I’m not here about the case. I’m here about you.”

  “Me?” Habit had me wondering what I’d done wrong now. Since being on medical house arrest my ability to cause trouble had been curtailed but not entirely extinguished.

  “What are your career plans, Addie?”

  “I’ve...uh...been kicking around a few ideas. Why?”

  “Why not apply to GCSO? We could use you.”

  “I’m speechless,” I said.

  “I hear a but coming,” Brad said.

  “But I’ll have to say no.”

  “Think it over for a couple days and get back to me.”

  “There’s no point, I’ve made up my mind. I’ve made my share of mistakes in my life, but not the same one twice. The uniform isn’t for me. It never has been.”

  “That’s too bad,” Brad said. “It’d be a goddamn waste of talent for you to work some dead-end security job.”

  “I’m not going to do that either. I’ve applied for my private investigator’s license. Initially I’ll start with an online presence but I hope to have a brick-and-mortar office someday.”

  “You sound pretty sure about all this.”

  “I am. I have the skills to do the job, and as a PI I’ll have the freedom to do it my way.”

  “I can see how that setup would suit your...particular personality,” Brad said, giving me the once-over.

  “And it’s not just that. I just...”

  “You don’t have to explain if you don’t want to.”

  “I know, but I want to.” I took a deep breath and felt the familiar twinge in my side. “I’ll never forget the look on Julie Breyer’s face when I was able to tell her the truth of her parents’ deaths. I’m not pretending that she doesn’t hurt any less, but she was grateful for the truth. Maybe now she can pick up the pieces of her life. It’ll never be the same, but now she can go on.”

  “Gonna set up shop in Grubber County?” Brad asked.

  “Sure,” I said, “it’s where I live.”

  Brad groaned. “Why do I get the feeling that my life just got a lot more complicated?”

  “Let’s celebrate with
a beer—it’s okay, I’m off my meds.”

  Brad insisted on getting the beers, and I told him to grab a treat for Jinks while he was at it. Brad and I clinked bottlenecks and drank.

  “I heard from Jesse Potts this morning,” Brad said. “The Cove’s new security chief offered our boy his old job back.”

  “Good.”

  “You don’t seem so surprised.”

  “I’m not. It’s smart damage control. Jud Richt understands public relations and, once it got out that Jesse had unfairly lost his job because of Fairley Sable’s machinations, it made sense that Richt would bring him back into the fold. Besides, Jesse is a good employee.”

  “You got a point, and I guess in the immediate future Richt will be busy keeping his own ass covered.”

  “So you read this morning’s Ledger,” I said.

  “I missed the Ledger article, but the story’s everywhere. Eyewitness News, the Newnansville Sun, even the alternative paper with the funny name is covering it.”

  Just a partial list of the news organizations to which I’d anonymously forwarded copies of the soil report I’d found in Tyler’s office.

  My first order of business after getting sprung from Dexter General had been digging out the purloined soil report. A little research and I discovered it was a five-year-old geologic survey that documented sinkhole conditions on the land slated to become Captain’s Castle. Construction was well underway on the property, in direct violation of Florida law. I didn’t know why or how Tyler had gotten possession of the report—my best guess was that he had been blackmailing Richt, though it was also possible that Andrews and Richt were working on some nefarious scheme together.

  “What are you grinning about?” Brad asked.

  “Maybe I’m just happy—it has been a while.”

  Brad drank his beer. “You know, it is kind of strange how all those different news organizations got their hands on that report.”

  “Obviously it was the work of a whistleblower, probably a disgruntled Mystic Cove employee who came across the report and did the right thing. There’s no lack of disgruntled employees at the Cove.”

  “Or disgruntled former employees,” Brad added. “There’s speculation that Tyler Andrews is the culprit. The thinking is that Richt fired Andrews after he spilled the beans to the press.”

  “I can see that.” In fact Tyler Andrews had complained of this very misperception when he’d called me right after the story exploded. I’d told him—once he’d calmed down enough to listen—that I didn’t care how he handled things, but that he better leave me out of it. Tyler even had the nerve to cry foul, whining that I’d broken my promise to him to keep the report secret. I reminded him that I’d only promised not to tell Richt of the report. Telling anybody else was fair game.

  But my final words to Tyler had been hard and unequivocal—if he dared mention my name in any of this, he’d be sorry. I meant it too. I’d had enough of Mystic Cove to last a lifetime. I didn’t know if Tyler would keep his mouth shut about me or not, but I didn’t care. I had my full share of regrets, but making that survey public was not one of them. It was the right thing to do and as a bonus I got a little of my own back.

  “However the story came out,” Brad said, “Jud Richt is in a shitload of trouble if it can be proven that he knew about the sinkhole conditions. It burns me that Richt put people in danger like that. There was a sinkhole in Okpulo County last year that ate a whole house with a man in it.”

  Suddenly my first beer in days didn’t taste so good. “Richt will weasel out of it. People like him don’t get punished.”

  “Fairley thought she was above the law,” Brad said, his voice low but intense, “but she’s in jail facing murder charges, thanks to you. Maybe someday it’ll be Richt’s turn to pay the piper. Sometimes justice happens.”

  “Not often enough.”

  “We have to take it when it comes.”

  We talked for some more and finished our beers. Before Brad left, he took my hand in his and said, “You did good work, Addie—enjoy it.”

  “We did good work,” I said.

  “Maybe we can do it again sometime.”

  “Count on it.”

  I should have fetched Pop, but I needed to be alone with my thoughts. I called Jinks—we could both use a walk.

  I stepped into the clear, cold night. Above the stars glittered, a flying carpet of glass. I took a deep breath and felt the pang in my side, but it was a shadow of what it had been. I was on the mend, and soon the pain would be a memory, though the scar would remain.

  I kept thinking about what Brad had said about Richt and Fairley and justice. Fairley was a murderous force of nature and now she would spend the rest of life in prison. And Richt? He was the poster boy for the well-fed and satisfied, people so full of themselves that they had time for nothing else—as if they weren’t flesh, blood and bone like the rest of us. But I had not hurt Richt, merely inconvenienced him. A spark of anger clenched my guts—more proof that the enmity between us was personal. It would always be personal.

  But Brad had a point. No one knew the future. I wasn’t going anywhere and neither was Jud Richt. Maybe someday I could bring him to justice. Maybe someday I’d extract my full pound of flesh.

  Stranger things had happened, just ask Fairley Sable.

  “Come on, Jinks, let’s go home.”

  * * * * *

  About the Author

  Daryl Anderson is a mystery novelist living in Gainesville, Florida, with her husband and two geriatric dogs. Her debut novel is Murder in Mystic Cove.

  Daryl was born in Baltimore, Maryland, and might have lived out her days in Charm City, but life threw a curveball. To her surprise, shortly after high school she found herself in the steamy wonderland of Miami.

  At the time, Daryl took a stab at college, but it didn’t stick. She worked a succession of mostly low-paying, high-stress jobs. Life wasn’t bad, but neither was it good. As a single mother, Daryl returned to school, eventually earning a Master of Arts in English from the University of Florida. She spent many happy years teaching English, until discontent again crept in. This time around, she thought nursing might be fun.

  After nursing school, Daryl worked in a Crisis Stabilization Unit. Initially, psych nursing was a good fit, but when it started to get too crazy, it was time for another change. At her husband’s suggestion, she tried writing, and that changed everything.

  Nowadays, she spends most of her time writing about and thinking about murder. When not contemplating homicide, she enjoys urban farming, vegetarian cooking and cycling.

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  ISBN-13: 9781426897665

  MURDER IN MYSTIC COVE

  Copyright © 2013 by Daryl Anderson

  Edited by Deborah Nemeth

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  All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author
and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.

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