Murder in Tropical Breeze (Tropical Breeze Cozy Mystery Book 1)

by Mary Bowers

  “Well, aren’t you something?” I murmured.

  I followed her in, did the minimum of bed prep, then fell into the sack.

  I heard the music again, the same music I had heard at Girlfriend’s in the presence of the black cat. It was just out of reach, soothing and beautiful, so that I strained to hear it. I felt the breeze pass over me, and it was warm and scented and soothing. I tried to open my eyes but it would have taken too much effort, so I lay back within myself and drifted. The music grew louder, then receded, until finally everything was quiet.

  “Open your eyes,” she said.

  I did.

  “Here,” she said.

  And I turned my head and she came forward on silent feet, drifting through tendrils of fog, graceful and slow.

  Her eyes were green. The light from them tinted the room. Her hair was black. Her face was sharp and angular, and her tall, womanly body was sheathed in shimmering black that drifted about her like the waves of a quiet river.

  I wasn’t surprised. I wasn’t afraid. But I wanted to know –

  “Why have you come?”

  “I was called.”

  “Not by me.”

  “No.”

  “By Vesta.”

  “She was surrounded by evil, and I failed her. I have come for vengeance.”

  “Yes. She told me.” In my dream state, I found myself accepting what I had resisted since the moment I had first seen her. Since I had first seen Bastet in her cat form. “What do you want me to do?”

  She lifted her emerald gaze to a space behind me, and I knew I couldn’t turn my head and look. I was not allowed.

  “Your hands will be my hands. Your feet will be my feet. Your thoughts I will see in your mind, and the sights around you will come to me through your eyes. Vesta my servant called to me, but the evil struck quickly. It is long since I have been called; it is bitter to fail. I protect. I have always protected. Once I was needed. Once I was worshipped. That was long ago.”

  Her voice faded and I heard the music again, distantly, and the rattle of some kind of instrument which sounded like the patter of falling rain. I tried to speak, but couldn’t. I looked, and saw that she had held up a hand to quiet me. Instead, she filled my mind with images, chanting, incense and a flood of the strange green light from her eyes. I saw the people calling to her for protection, for food, for healthy children, for love. And I saw Bastet in her living form, a woman, feline and sleek, the angles of her face as sharp as carved rock, her eyes lighting the temple with an ethereal glow.

  “I had power, because power was given to me by my people. They called me to reign over a great city. Powerful was the name of Bastet. I guided them to Nekhbet, and to Anubis, and when it was time for them to walk to the land of the dead, I set their feet upon the path and made them not afraid. All were in my power. And now,” she said, moving her unblinking eyes to gaze at me, “I am here. I am called. Where is my icon?”

  I couldn’t move my arms; I didn’t try. But I felt the pressure and warmth of the cat pendant upon my chest, as if it were much heavier than it actually was. As if it were a living thing. Drifting, I could feel a pulse within it and wasn’t surprised or curious.

  “Here,” I said. “I am wearing it.”

  I wondered hazily if I hadn’t taken it off when I’d undressed for bed. I thought I had, but I couldn’t remember. No matter; I was wearing it.

  “Wear it always. It connects us. I see through your eyes, and when I must, I will speak through your lips.”

  In the softness of my sleep, it all made sense, and I asked no more questions because all questions had been answered. When she turned away, I didn’t call her back. I was satisfied, and I closed my eyes.

  “Sleep,” she said. “You will remember. Look into yourself. You will know.”

  And I did remember.

  When I woke the next day, the cat was awake next to me, gazing, waiting.

  “You failed to protect Vesta,” I whispered. “Will you protect me?”

  She stared at me, then slowly blinked once.

  Chapter 10

  As I said back in the beginning, I don’t have many dreams. The ones I do have are usually endless drones about going somewhere and never getting there, and follow heavy dinners and too much wine. This one was different. It hadn’t seemed like a dream. It clung to me, as if I’d walked through a wall of cotton candy and couldn’t shake it off. I remember putting my hands on the steering wheel to drive away from my house. I remember deciding I’d have to leave Basket at home. I even remember deciding to wear a green pair of earrings that were the same color as the cat pendant. But things weren’t lodged in my mind sequentially, and halfway to downtown Tropical Breeze I looked down at myself and was relieved to see that I was wearing clothes and hadn’t left the house naked.

  I knew where to go. I had meant to go there right after seeing Vesta at Orphans of the Storm, but one thing after another had thrown me off track. I parked in my usual space behind Girlfriend’s. The Bookery was right next door.

  When you want information, go to a book store. When you want information and the fountainhead of town gossip, go to a used book store. I needed to talk to Barnabas Elgin, one of Vesta’s oldest – and oddest – friends.

  The Bookery had the look of having been established sometime in the Middle Ages. Barnabas Elgin was from at least the third generation of Elgins running the store, and like any house you’ve lived in too long, stuff has collected in the corners, lost, forgotten, but still there.

  In The Bookery’s case, even the front counter has been lost. It’s still there somewhere, behind a wall of books in too poor a condition to be saleable, but it is no longer visible. To complete a sale, you select books from the shelves that form a maze back in the shop. One book might be marked $2.50 and another $8. You’d hand them to Barnabas and he would say, “Seven dollars.” You’d hand him a ten and he’d disappear behind the wall of books and reappear with your change. I never heard a cha-ching! but he has to be using his grandfather’s cash register still.

  The architecture of the shop is basically – books. The building can’t fall down. The stacks would hold it up. Burning down? We try not to think about it.

  I walked in the door and was greeted by a rush of air heavily perfumed with the old-paper-and-glue, leather-and-dust smell of the staggering cache of books inside.

  Ishmael was with him that day. The cat had originally been named Starbuck, but Barnabas felt that the literary reference had been lost.

  Ishmael gave me the once-over, rubbing himself on my legs and then levitating onto a pile of books.

  “Ah,” Barnabas said, coming out of a space between the stacks and recognizing me. He could be any age, but I’m guessing 60-ish, with a dignified if not completely tamed crop of long salt-and-pepper hair and a matching beard. His eyes are dark and his gaze profound, though rarely directed at the people around him. His wardrobe tended mostly to black.

  He’s a man of few words, words that sometimes need interpretation. But he’s a man who knows much.

  We have a running joke, and I did my part. “Finished with that inventory yet?”

  “Oh, yes,” he said. (The honest answer would have been “No, and I’m not trying.”)

  “Me too,” I said. “Everything at Girlfriend’s is in apple pie order,” which it never has been and never will be.

  “Ah,” he said wisely. “And now you have Miss Vesta’s treasures.”

  “Yes,” I said quietly. “None of it worth one hair on the good lady’s head.”

  He bowed his head. “A great loss.”

  I gave a quick look down the aisle in front of me, but only for form’s sake. Ten people could’ve been hiding in the shop and you wouldn’t know it. “Are we alone?” I asked.

  “We are.”

  “Barnabas, who killed her? Do you know?”

  “Ah,” he said after a lengthy pause. “So you also believe it was murder.”

  “Perhaps.”

  He g
ave me a look, and I was ashamed.

  “Yes. You’re right,” I said. “In fact, she told me so herself.” I waited. I knew Barnabas was not a man to laugh at such things, but still I waited for the laughter, for the doubt, for the slightest look of cynicism.

  Of course, there was none.

  “A great honor,” he said.

  “Yes. And you?”

  “I have not seen her since she passed over. I shall hope.”

  “She didn’t tell me who killed her, but I reason that it must’ve been somebody who was in the house that night. Her grandson was there. And of course her son and daughter-in-law. Any one of them –“

  I stopped because I’d lost him. He gazed at the spines of the books in the shelves behind me, and in a few moments, began to speak in a distant voice, almost in a sing-song.

  “In the house, or perhaps not in the house. She was killed kindly, Miss Taylor. There were no hands around the neck or knife in the heart. It was done so that her soul would drift away as she slept and never reenter her body, and no one would wonder why she had died.”

  “Or how.”

  “It would be so easy to tell a sleepy woman that she hadn’t taken all of her pills, that she needed to take one more. The old – they have so much pain, and the pills that dull the pain are so powerful.”

  I considered it. “Huh. So you think she was deliberately overmedicated?”

  “It would be so easy,” he crooned.

  “Yes. I suppose so. Even if she thought she’d taken all her pills for the night, she might not be sure. She’d think someone younger would know better.”

  “More’s the folly. Younger people are not wise. If one forgets a pill, one may not be much worse off, and should not take another, for if one takes two pills when it should be one, it could be harmful.”

  “And if one takes three pills when it should be one, it could be fatal.”

  He gazed at the stack of books beside me with a mournful expression, and Ishmael moved to comfort him, sensing unusual emotion in a man who was normally serene. Barnabas bent to pick up the cat and held it. The seal point Siamese gazed at me with nearly transparent blue eyes, and Barnabas cradled him for a moment, then said, “Ah. You have the goddess with you.”

  Startled, I brushed against a pile of old books and tipped it over. Bits and pieces of dust and old paper rose from the mess and I began to cough. “Oh! I’m so sorry!”

  Barnabas set Ishmael down, slowly and gently, and came forward to restack the books. Of course, I got down and helped him. They were in no particular order, and in such bad condition he could never sell them, but he would never throw them away. Never.

  “You didn’t know about the goddess?” he said.

  “How did you know?”

  He nodded toward the cat pendant.

  I guess that was the first moment I let myself believe in Bastet. My dream hadn’t been a dream; it had been a vision. Bastet had come to me, judged me, then decided that I would do. The pendant coming to me was no accident. It had been Vesta’s, and Carlene had brought it right to me instead of packing it, and I had put it on as if I’d been expecting to receive it. And I’d worn it ever since.

  “She will help you,” Barnabas said, watching the pendant as it swung forward over the tumbled books.

  “Had you seen Vesta wearing it?”

  “Many times. Especially lately,” he added, nearly looking into my eyes, but not quite. “She was keeping Bastet close to her heart, but it was of no avail.”

  I sat back on my heels, two books in one hand and one in the other. “What must I do?”

  “As the goddess tells you.”

  “Can you help me? I think she sent me to you,” I added plaintively.

  He set the book he was holding onto the floor beside him instead of stacking it. He paused, framing his thoughts, choosing his words.

  “Vesta came here the Friday before her death. She was afraid.”

  “Afraid? Of whom?”

  “She was not afraid of someone. She was afraid for someone. And not for herself, as she should have been. For someone she loved. She sensed something, and wasn’t quite sure what it was. Her grandson was coming to visit over the weekend; he would again want access to his trust fund, and Miss Vesta always found that unpleasant. She was one of his trustees and knew he wouldn’t spend the money wisely. He had a generous allowance from the trust, but it was never enough: there was a woman he wished to impress. He wanted clothes, toys, meaningless things, but expensive things. More and more things.” His gaze wandered and his voice thinned. “Miss Vesta talked of people who could never be satisfied.”

  “Her grandson, Jordan?”

  “Not just him.”

  “Diana.” It wasn’t a question.

  He looked puzzled for a moment. “I don’t know who she was talking about. She never said a name. She seemed ashamed. I don’t even know if it was a woman or a man. She talked about someone taking things that were not theirs.”

  “Maybe if her grandson couldn’t get his hands on his money, he was stealing things?”

  “Possibly.” He seemed confused, doubtful.

  “I don’t think Diana would’ve been pilfering any of Vesta’s things,” I said, thinking aloud. “She gave them all away to us without even looking through them.”

  “Perhaps what was valuable had already been taken.”

  “Is that what she said?” Barnabas can be so vague; he sometimes suggests things instead of saying them directly.

  “No.” Then he gazed ahead vacantly and his eyes grew shiny. “She brought chocolates. Nonpareils. They were my favorite as a boy, and she remembered. She always brought something for me, and sometimes for Ishmael as well. She was good,” he said with a note of defiance, staring at me as I’d never seen him stare before. I realized suddenly how black his eyes were.

  “She was very good,” I said.

  “The goddess is seeking revenge.”

  “Or justice.”

  “Or justice. You are her instrument. If she tells you to do something, do it. If she tells you to watch, then watch. If she tells you to accuse, then accuse. If she tells you to kill, then kill.”

  At that moment, gentle as he usually is, he looked like a biblical figure, terrible and grand.

  I was taken aback, and wondered suddenly if this was why Bastet had chosen me as her instrument, rather than the more open Barnabas. Looking at him, a secretive, eccentric man, I suddenly knew he could kill, given the right motivation, and not think of the consequences. He was a man of true, pure righteousness.

  It frightened me.

  As I stood next to my SUV behind Girlfriend’s, trying to shake off the feeling that was creeping over me again, my cell phone rang and I nearly screamed. I looked at the Caller I.D. and saw that it was my doctor’s office.

  I answered, feeling fuzzy again, as I had when I’d gotten into my car that morning. Yes, I said, this was a good time for me, and I could come right over and fill a cancellation at Doc Fleming’s office. I’d been due for my annual check-up for weeks now, the scheduler reminded me, and I agreed that I might as well come in and get it over with.

  I’d been his patient since moving to Tropical Breeze from Chicago, some thirty years before. He had been recommended to me by another of his patients: Vesta Cadbury Huntington.

  As I got behind the wheel I had the firm conviction that the hole I was filling in Dr. Fleming’s schedule had originally belonged to Vesta, and that eyes as green as my own were watching me.

  Chapter 11

  Doc Fleming’s office was just at the end of Locust Street, next to his quietly well-bred brick house, and he’d been talking for years about selling his practice and retiring, but he never seemed to do it.

  He has the tall, bespectacled, white-haired look of the mad scientist, only his hair is always nicely combed and he’s not in the least mad.

  After all the usual compressing, thumping, ah hah-ing and note-taking, he sat back comfortably and looked at me as I sat there on
the exam table dangling my bare feet like a child.

  “Anything else you wanted to talk about?”

  “No, I don’t think so. Knock on wood,” (my head), “I’ve been feeling pretty good. The shelter’s doing well. We just got a huge donation. You know -- Vesta’s things. Everybody’s excited to see them.”

  “Yes, Vesta,” he said, saddening. “She was my oldest patient, but you never get used to losing them.”

  “Was it her heart?” I hazarded, picking something out of the air, because I didn’t know Vesta’s true cause of death. Barnabas had only been guessing.

  “Not directly.” He gazed off blankly for a moment.

  He seemed to have more to say, and I waited, holding my breath.

  “I’d been watching her carefully, of course. She’d always had her little eccentricities. Quite frankly, when she was younger I think she liked startling people with her talk of the supernatural and the ancient gods. And Waffles, of course,” he added with a smile. “She was very proud of her family; loved talking about them. Physically she was fairly sound, but I had begun to see changes. Naturally.”

  “Diana mentioned she was getting forgetful. I’d seen Vesta from time to time, of course. She seemed fine to me. I guess I didn’t know her well enough to see that she was having memory problems.”

  “Nothing is worse,” he said, relaxing against the back of the chair and crossing his legs. “Believe me, I’ve seen it happen both ways: either the body breaks down first or the mind does. By far it’s easier on everybody if the body weakens first, and not the mind. You can do physical things for people: laundry, shopping, cooking. But you can’t think for somebody. You can’t remember.”

  “No. Still, she seemed cogent enough when I saw her last.”

  “When was that?”

  I took a breath. “The week before she died. She had a meeting with Michael Utley, and she wanted me there. I guess it doesn’t matter now who knows, but she wanted to leave Orphans a bequest, and of course, as it happened there was no time to put it in writing. Our loss,” I added with a rueful smile. “But she was happy. She talked like . . . anybody else.”