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

by Mary Bowers

  It didn’t feel right, Part Two: Nobody was home. By the time I was three years old, I knew better than to walk into somebody’s house when there was nobody home. Early training immobilizes you even when you know it’s all right to go ahead.

  Nobody answered the doorbell at the front door, there were no cars around, and when we walked behind the house to the mudroom door, we knocked and there was no answer there either. Looking back across the yard, I saw that the little poolside table was well stocked: ice bucket, pitcher of water, frosted bottle of booze, and a drinking glass. There was also a towel carelessly thrown over a deck chair.

  “Looks like Diana’s had her swim,” I said.

  Myrtle sniffed. “She always leaves a mess. Dirty glasses, towel thrown down, vodka bottles everywhere.”

  I could see her restraining herself; her natural instinct was to tidy up, but that wasn’t her job any more.

  As if she were reading my mind, she muttered, “She’ll have to clean it up herself today. Or more likely Graeme will.”

  It didn’t feel right, Part Three: Even though nobody was home, the back door was unlocked. Myrtle knocked and got no answer, saw through the crack between the door and the frame that the deadbolt wasn’t thrown, tried the door, and it opened. As the door swung wide we hesitated. Then Myrtle put the key back in her purse and we stepped inside. I called a feeble, “Hello,” but you know when nobody is in a house. I don’t know how; you just do.

  Graeme had not yet brought Myrtle’s things down, so we’d have to go upstairs and get her stuff ourselves.

  Feeling like a couple of sneak thieves, we went silently across the back hall to the servants’ stairs and climbed the tiny risers of the bare, wooden stairs.

  Myrtle had been given a nice room on the west side of the house overlooking the Intracoastal, and she went to her window one last time to gaze at the river. I stood in the middle of the small, square room, not knowing what furniture belonged to her and what belonged to the house. So I waited until she’d had her good-bye moment and tried to get things moving.

  “You said the writing desk? And that little round table with the lamp on it?”

  “Yes, the table’s mine, but not the lamp on it. Mine is the one by the bed. My reading lamp. The one on the piecrust table belongs to the family.”

  And so we began, unloading her things from the writing desk and getting that down first, since it was the only thing that would require both of us. We had to use the main staircase, which had generous risers and was wide and airy without any bends. Then we went back up to get the rest of the things organized.

  She had more stuff than she’d said. Winter clothes – okay, not parkas and snow boots, but quilted jackets and pullovers – books, the writing materials from the desk, and her quilt and pillows. We were going to need moving boxes, and of course, she hadn’t mentioned that.

  “I’ll go get some,” she said, and disappeared.

  I worked at folding and piling up for a while, then wandered around, waiting. Finally, I decided she’d been gone too long and went looking for her. I still felt uneasy about being there at all when the family wasn’t home, and I had to force myself to call her name out loud. Every moment, I was waiting for the slam of the front door and Diana’s angry voice demanding to know what the hell was going on.

  Where had Myrtle gotten to? I looked all over, first upstairs where a box room would logically be, then down the main staircase, calling her name more loudly as I went. I was getting exasperated. I wanted to get out of there.

  I finally found her in a bedroom overlooking the Intracoastal in a back corner of the house approximately underneath Myrtle’s old room.

  “Here you are,” I said, walking up beside her. “What are you doing?”

  She had her back to me, and without turning around she said, “This was her room. Miss Vesta’s. She died here.”

  I stopped in my tracks.

  It was a small, cheerful room, with eggshell-colored walls and a small fireplace framed with yellow-patterned, antique tiles. The fireplace looked as if it hadn’t been used in decades, and in the floor I noticed a vent for central heating. The floor was venerable heart pine, dark in color. It was a corner room, and the two outside walls had French doors that led out to the veranda. The bed, stripped of linens, was still there, placed so that sleepy eyes would open and see the river in the morning. I could see a space on the opposite wall where her little vanity and chair would have been, just beside the open door to a tiny bathroom. Against the west wall of the bedroom, next to a set of French doors, was an old-fashioned armoire. There was no closet.

  As the bedroom of the lady of the house, it was rather small, unpretentious and altogether charming. It seemed to take the outside view and bring it into itself, as if it were more a part of the riverbank than the house.

  I gazed at the bed, knowing that that was where Vesta had died, calling to Bastet for protection and not getting it. But in the cheerful little room, there were no morbid vibes. Well. There was a morbid vibe, but it was coming from Myrtle.

  I tried to get her attention. “Hey, Myrtle? It’s time we got going. I know you have permission to be here, but it doesn’t feel right, and I think we should get out of here as soon as we can.”

  She turned to me with a sigh, and I felt lousy about rushing her, but I wanted to GO.

  “So many memories,” she said. “I would come in every morning and bring her tea, and always tuck her in at night and give her her pills.”

  “She had prescriptions to take at night?” I was no child, but I hadn’t yet reached the age where I had to take prescriptions at night. An allergy pill in the morning and I was good to go.

  “Oh, yes. For pain, and also some cholesterol thing. And she also had a few herbal remedies she felt were doing her good. But without the pain pills, she couldn’t sleep, and Doc Fleming said she could take them every night before bed. She had a complicated schedule of things to take. Of course, Graeme sorted the pills for her. Miss Vesta and I tried doing it together, but we couldn’t get it right. It was always changing: one pill to take every other day, one to take three times a day, another to take at night and two to take in the morning . . . some she took on an empty stomach, but mostly she had to eat first, and that was another thing – she didn’t have much of an appetite. We could never keep it all straight. So Mr. Graeme would sort them into this big pill box, and I was in charge of giving them to her when it was time. I kept very close watch, always looking at the clock to see if it was time for another pill.”

  “I’m sure you took very good care of her,” I said warmly.

  She was tearing up. Then suddenly, she said, “I bet they’re still in the medicine cabinet, where we kept them.”

  She walked into the little bathroom and pulled the mirrored door open. Then she showed me a box big enough for two pounds of assorted chocolates. It had the days of the week on the little compartment covers, and every space was filled except for Sunday and Monday.

  “He refilled it on Saturday evening, after Vesta took her last pills and went to bed. She’ll never take the rest,” she whispered, looking down at the useless palliatives, all neatly sorted into their little chambers.

  I looked into the medicine chest and didn’t see any prescription bottles. “Did you throw the old scrips out?”

  She gazed at me blankly. “I don’t know if they’ve been thrown out or not. Graeme kept them in the kitchen. He’d sort them out on the breakfast table, where he had some room and good light.”

  “Let’s go see,” I said.

  It was one way of getting her out of the bedroom, and suddenly I wanted to know what Vesta had been taking.

  Myrtle led me out of the bedroom, across the great room and into the kitchen. Of course, the old kitchen was in the servants’ block, outside. The family had added an inside kitchen at some point. Looking around at the stainless steel and granite, it was either brand spanking new or had recently been remodeled. Myrtle led me to a back corner where there was an ap
pliance garage with a sliding lift door. She opened it and pulled out a white plastic basket.

  “Here they are,” she said, showing it to me.

  It was a startling collection of brown plastic bottles, small, large and enormous, all mixed up together. Stuck down the side was a folded piece of paper with Vesta’s pill schedule printed out on it in a professional way. Jammed in among the bottles were a little plastic pill cutter and extra pill cases, smaller than the one in Vesta’s medicine cabinet. Apparently she’d outgrown them. Also inside the appliance garage were the usual can opener, small blender and electric teakettle. I glanced through the pharmacist’s list, but it got me dizzy – this pill for blood pressure, this one for pain, another one for cholesterol, and one to be taken in case of sudden chest pain.

  On impulse, I opened the cabinet below the appliance garage, but it was just full of spice jars neatly lined up on custom racks made to fit inside a pull-out shelf. Below it, on another sliding shelf, were measuring cups, mixing bowls, a dusty old mortar and pestle and a spanking new high-end food processor. No drugs.

  I slid the shelf back and closed the door, then looked back at the plastic basket full of brown bottles.

  “They should really get rid of these,” I commented.

  “It’s not my job anymore,” she said bitterly. She left the tray of prescriptions sitting on the counter and went toward the back stairs. Then she stopped in her tracks. “I’ve always hated those stairs. I was sure I was going to break my neck on them one day. Well, I don’t work here anymore, and I’m not using the back stairs.”

  She lifted her head and turned toward the front of the house.

  “Atta girl, Myrt,” I said, following with a grin on my face.

  At the top of the stairs, Myrtle paused. “This is the master suite,” she said, gesturing toward a doorway that stood half open.

  I began to realize she was stalling, unwilling to leave the house for the last time. “That’s nice,” I said, turning to go back to Myrtle’s room, but she didn’t come. When I turned back, she was still at the door of the master suite.

  “Vesta used it until she couldn’t climb the stairs any more. Then she gave it up to Graeme and Diana and took the old guest room downstairs. She’d always loved that little guest room, and she didn’t make a fuss about moving. She actually seemed happier there.”

  As she talked, she had been drifting into the bedroom, but I got stuck at the door as if it had a barricade across it. It was hard enough barging into the house when nobody was home. This was an invasion of territory that was beyond taboo. But Myrtle must have been used to making the bed and cleaning the bathroom, and she walked on in with a kind if defiance, probably for the last time.

  While I stood in the doorway listening in terror for the sound of a car arriving, she leaned onto the sill of a large window and shaded her eyes, looking down.

  “Hey, Myrtle,” I said nervously, “I don’t feel right being in here.”

  “Oh, God!”

  Startled, I said, “What is it?”

  “Come here,” she said. Her tone of voice persuaded me, but I still didn’t like it. I edged into the room and went to her. “Down there. In the pool.”

  “Oh, my God, is that Diana?”

  She gave me a look. Of course it was Diana, and we both knew it.

  “Maybe she’s swimming,” I said idiotically.

  “Don’t be a fool. She must have been at the bottom of the pool when we got here. Her towel is still dry on the chair. She always dries off, then throws the wet towel down on the ground. I’m not surprised, you know. She finally went ahead and did it.”

  I stared at her. “Did what?”

  “Passed out drunk in the pool and drowned. She’s dead.”

  Chapter 23

  They acted like we’d behaved suspiciously, doing the things we did next, but not having found anybody dead before, Myrtle and I weren’t exactly up on protocol.

  The cops asked us over and over again why we hadn’t immediately dialed 911. They separated us like a pair of gangbangers who couldn’t be interviewed together because we’d be helping one another with hand signals or something, and when I cooled down later, I realized that they had even done the good-cop, bad-cop thing.

  Not Jack Peterson. He got there right after the ambulance guys and he was very sympathetic and gentle. The other guys – the ones from the Sheriff’s Office – I’m still mad at them now as I write this, after coming to my senses and realizing that they were only doing their jobs and didn’t know us the way the local police did.

  As it was, we ran downstairs (frankly I don’t remember that part), blasted out the back door, and Myrtle stood aside as I leapt into the pool wearing everything but my flip flops, which were the only waterproof things on me.

  I managed to work Diana over to the steps and Myrtle helped me roll her out of the pool and onto the hot pavers around the pool’s edge. I remember the water from the pool constantly running into my eyes as the full force of the sun pressed down on me and my teeth chattered. I gripped Diana’s shoulders and looked down at my shivering arms, glistening wet and erupting in goosebumps.

  “Do we put her on her back and do CPR, or on her face to drain the water out?” I gasped.

  “Do you know CPR?” Myrtle asked. “I don’t.”

  “I had a class about a million years ago – I can’t remember anything.”

  We gazed at one another helplessly, wanting to do something.

  Since she was nearly face-down anyway, we rolled her onto her stomach and pushed, watching water pour from her mouth. Then we flopped her over and I started pushing on her chest (where do the hands go – how do I count – wasn’t there something about a Bee Gees’ song that was just the right tempo for CPR?). Then I looked down into her face and lost heart. She looked so dead. But you didn’t give up, I knew that much, and I pushed and pushed and tried to remember Bee Gees songs. With Myrtle praying out loud beside me, I felt so alone – I needed help.

  Only then did I become aware of the heavy lump in my cargo pocket and realize that I’d gone into the pool with my cell phone in it. It would be useless.

  “Myrtle, do you have a cell phone?” I said.

  “A what? Oh. Yes. I think it’s in my purse somewhere. Unless I left it at home. Where did I leave my purse?”

  Before she could go off on an endless dither I told her, “Go back to the house and call 911 from the house phone.”

  She turned and stumbled right into the poolside table. The ice bucket spewed water and half-melted ice, the vodka bottle hit the pavers and started spilling but didn’t break, and Diana’s plastic drink glass rolled into the swimming pool. I didn’t think anything of it at the time.

  “Leave that alone and go!” I shouted as she righted the vodka bottle on the pavers.

  The cops, being used to emergencies, felt that our first reaction should’ve been to call for help before leaving the house in the first place. They couldn’t understand why we’d run outside and fished her out before calling 911. I could only tell them, “We just wanted to get her out of the pool. She might have still been alive!”

  “Both of you?”

  “I couldn’t have handled her alone. As it was, Myrtle was only good for steadying her while I lifted, and even then it was a struggle.”

  “Seems like one of you could’ve taken the time to grab for the phone on the way out. You could’ve taken it with you.”

  Yeah. We could have. We just didn’t think of it at the time.

  So we’d messed up. First we’d run past the kitchen phone and out to Diana. Then we’d rolled her onto the hot pavers and laid her in direct, hot sun, fresh out of the sun-warmed water of the pool, so body temperature was going to be no help figuring out exactly when she had died. Then Myrtle had managed to dispose of physical evidence by running into the poolside table. They stood around muttering softly about tox screens and medical examiners and time of death, and I couldn’t understand what they were all suspicious about. It was obvious
to me what had happened: Diana had drowned while she was drunk. The cops acted like we’d murdered her instead of trying to save her.

  I didn’t sort things out until much later, but I got it right away that the cops thought it was suspicious that a recently-fired employee and her little helper were in the house with no family members present for almost an hour and a half before noticing a dead woman in the swimming pool.

  Myrtle got all paranoid and wanted to see Michael that very afternoon, saying she needed a lawyer. She demanded that I drive straight to his house after we left Cadbury House. He lives about five of blocks away from Myrtle and Florence, on the high-end side of town, down by Dr. Fleming’s office and home.

  Of course, the police didn’t let us take any of the things we’d come to the house for. Myrtle didn’t like it – in fact she kicked up quite a fuss – but I figured that was just Myrtle being Myrtle.

  I went up to Michael’s house with her and waited while she rang the doorbell. When he opened the door he brightened. Then he saw the state we were in and quickly motioned us inside.

  “You girls sit down here in the dining room while I get us some iced tea, and then you can tell me all about it,” he said, looking at me wide-eyed over the top of Myrtle’s head.

  We obediently sat down, then Myrtle popped up and followed him into the kitchen, babbling, giving him with a confused, out-of-sequence version of what had happened, and getting closer to hysteria by the minute.

  I’d been hovering in the doorway between the butler’s pantry and the kitchen, and when Myrtle stopped to take a breath, he gave me a helpless look. I came into the room to explain, and Myrtle started following me around, constantly interrupting.

  Forgetting to go back to the dining room, we drifted to the kitchen counter and hiked ourselves up at the breakfast bar. By the time I was finished he was staring at us with wide blue eyes.