Sunshine Beach

by Wendy Wax

  “But . . .” Annelise’s face began to deflate.

  Joe remained silent, allowing the young law enforcement officer to take the lead.

  “But that doesn’t mean we don’t have anything to go on,” Officer Jackson said. “My team went through the apartment thoroughly this morning. Plus there are articles of clothing and household items in evidence that we can test in ways we couldn’t then. We can also take another, better look at the fingerprints that were lifted at the time, then run them through computer databases that didn’t exist in the early fifties. And I’ve got all of the original detective’s notes and records of all the interviews that were conducted.”

  “Detective Anderson?” Annelise sniffed. “He never even looked for another suspect besides my mother.” Her voice had taken on the childish tone that came on when she was agitated.

  “In fairness, there were no other leads,” Officer Jackson said. “And the man was thorough. He canvassed and did a large number of interviews. There are reams of handwritten notes I’m still working through and lots of follow-up. But the reality is that then, the same as now, a random killer is far less likely than a close family member.”

  “No!” Annelise stomped her foot, once again retreating into childish anger.

  “The fact that she was never found . . .” Jackson said.

  “. . . only proves that something happened to her,” Annelise insisted, her voice growing shriller. “She never would have left me. And she didn’t even take anything with her.”

  Renée put an arm around her sister’s shoulders.

  Joe Giraldi, who had stood silent until now, stepped forward. “I have complete confidence that Officer Jackson will do everything possible to try to put this to rest. He’s going to keep me in the loop and I will keep my promise to contribute whatever I can. But most cold cases are solved through new witnesses who step forward or old witnesses remembering something new.”

  “That’s right,” the young officer said. “Agent Giraldi told me that you saw someone that night. And I did see a mention of that in the notes. I thought we might go in together and have you share what you remember.”

  Annelise’s face shone with eagerness. Renée felt only dread. Neither of them had set foot inside since their grandmother had taken them in to pack their things. At that time the door to the bedroom where her father had died had been closed.

  She tightened her arm around her sister’s shoulders but was not sure for whose benefit, Annelise’s or hers. Renée’s legs wobbled as they walked into the cottage together.

  The windows had been opened but the closed-up smell had not yet dissipated. A slight chemical tang from whatever tests might have been done that morning mingled unpleasantly with the predominant smells of age and mildew. Underneath it all, long-forgotten scents teased at her memory. Her eyes went to the small dinette where the four of them had eaten, and her nostrils quivered with the remembered smells of Ilse’s Himmel und Erde, which her father had said translated into “heaven and earth,” and was a concoction of potatoes and apples with onion and bacon. On special Sunday mornings her stepmother had served apple pancakes, called Apfelpfannkuchen. After the scarcity of food in Germany during the war, Ilse had sometimes been reduced to tears by the plenty that existed in her new home.

  Ilse had been shy and skittish, prone to jumping at sudden movements and loud noises. Her English had been broken and sometimes hard to follow, but cooking even in the cottage’s tiny kitchenette had set her to humming and smiling.

  Annelise reached for Renée’s hand and she grasped it. Renée had been only three when her mother died, even younger than Annelise had been when she’d lost hers. Her memories of her own mother were sparse but Ilse had been young, more like a much older sister than a mother. She’d been standoffish in the beginning, very timid and almost childlike. Her father had treated Ilse as gently as he’d treated Renée and Annelise. He said it was her sweetness that had first drawn him, but he’d also said that Ilse was far braver and stronger than she appeared. Or else she and her mother would not have survived the war.

  There had been some who had muttered at David Handleman bringing home a German gentile when so many Jewish girls had suffered so much greater privation and the extermination of their entire families. Nana had been the first to warm to her new daughter-in-law and to say that the heart wants what it wants not what it’s supposed to want.

  Jackson and Giraldi talked quietly in the corner, leaving them to walk about on their own. The living area was dusty and grimy. Cushions were shredded. Curtains were limp and tattered. Cobwebs hung from the corners and not much air made it through the window screens, which were plugged with sand and grit.

  Hands clasped, Renée and Annelise walked into the bedroom they’d shared. The twin beds had been stripped, and the mattresses sagged yellow with age. The nightstand between them was covered in dust; the lamp by which they’d read looked stark without its shade. They’d each had a dresser and a desk on the opposite wall. The closet they’d shared was empty but for a few ancient wire hangers. The Frank Sinatra poster Renée had tacked to the wall above her desk hung in shreds.

  Today, children eight years apart would never have shared a bedroom. But spaces had been different then, and so were expectations. The day Annelise was born, Ilse had placed the little pink bundle in Renée’s arms and told her that Annelise belonged to her, too. She had taken the words to heart.

  She drew a finger over a dusty bookshelf. Annelise opened the nightstand drawer between their beds and pulled out an impossibly small pink Alice in Wonderland watch. “I always wondered what happened to this.” Her voice caught as she slipped it into her pocket.

  “Are you okay?” Renée asked Annelise.

  “Are you?” her sister asked, and despite the sheen of tears there was a rare clarity in her eyes.

  She’d gone to such lengths to blot out her memories of the Sunshine Hotel and everything that had happened there. She had never wanted to set foot in this cottage again. But now that she was here . . . murmurs of the past reached her. She cocked her head, listening.

  “They’re not here,” Annelise whispered. “I thought they might be, but they’re not.”

  Renée shivered. Because she felt her father and stepmother everywhere. Felt as if they were both calling out to her. Trying to tell her something.

  Back in the living area, Officer Jackson and Joe stood waiting for them.

  “Right there,” Annelise said, pointing to the bookcase behind them. “That’s where the man was standing.” Her brow furrowed. “But his clothes . . . they were all wrong. Nobody at the beach in the summer would have worn what he was wearing.”

  Officer Jackson scribbled something on a folder. “Did you hear him speak? Did he say anything to you?”

  Annelise closed her eyes in concentration. When she opened them she shook her head. “No.”

  “Officer Jackson agrees that a session with a sketch artist might produce something,” Joe said to Annelise. “Would you be willing to try?”

  “Oh, yes,” Annelise breathed.

  Joe raised an eyebrow at Renée. “Would you?”

  “Oh, but I don’t . . . I didn’t . . .” She stopped mid-protest. What reason could there be now not to try to find out whatever they could?

  Slowly, she and Annelise moved toward the other bedroom. It was Annelise who led her through the doorway. Renée’s eyes went immediately to the place where she’d found their father lying in a pool of blood that had seeped out of the back of his head. His eyes open and lifeless. The bedroom a mess. She closed her eyes against the image and heard muffled voices. Her father and Ilse.

  “What is it?” Joe asked her quietly when they’d rejoined them in the living area.

  “Nothing,” Renée said, suppressing another shiver. But even she could hear how uncertain she sounded. “I . . .” She shook her head. “It’s not easy coming back.�
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  John was waiting for her outside, his eyes worried. Dropping Annelise’s hand, Renée waited for her husband to reach her and take her in his arms. But even as his warm solidness wrapped around her, she was thinking about the night her father died. She’d always said she hadn’t heard anything. That she’d slept soundly and only known something was wrong when she’d found her father’s body. She looked up to see Annelise watching her and another shiver of apprehension crept up her spine. What if that wasn’t really the way it had happened? What if she and not Annelise was the one who’d been hiding from the truth all these years?

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Until that day at the Sunshine Hotel, Nikki hadn’t fully realized just how polite Joe Giraldi could be. Or how hurtful she might find it. In the time she’d known him, he’d tracked her, angered her, and even used her to capture her brother, but he had never before ignored her.

  She watched from the patio of a nearby cottage where she was supposed to be assessing whether anything that had been pulled out of the unit might be worth saving, as he left the young officer talking with Renée and John Franklin and Annelise outside the family apartment and turned onto the concrete path that led off the property. Sunlight glinted off his dark hair and spotlit his rugged features. She resisted the urge to fall back or duck behind the nearest rattan chair as he approached. When he came to a stop a few feet from her, she was careful not to fidget.

  His nod was friendly. His smile was perfectly correct. Or would have been if he’d never held her in his arms, told her he loved her and wanted to marry her. Or, and for some reason most importantly, never seen her naked. “How is everything?”

  “Great,” she replied through tight lips, which she arranged into a painful smile. “It’s nice to see you.” Even as she spoke her mind was flooded with contradictory impulses. Stay or flee? Laugh or cry? Truth or consequences?

  “It’s a beautiful day,” he said, beating her to the only safe topic.

  “It is, isn’t it?” she agreed, drawing in a deep breath of air as if a demonstration were somehow required. She looked up. “There’s barely a cloud in the sky.”

  With the weather covered, they contemplated each other. The silence stretched between them as she once again searched for an impersonal topic. Just as he seemed to be gathering himself to depart, she managed, “Did you find anything of interest in the apartment?”

  “I’m not sure,” he replied. “But the cold case unit has taken it on, and I think both Renée and Annelise remember more than they realize.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “There’s nothing concrete. But I was watching Renée’s face in the apartment and something surprised her. Sometimes you can feel that sort of thing. In the gut, you know?” For a brief moment Joe was back, caught up in the explanation. “I’ve learned the hard way to pay attention when your gut is talking to you. In fact, one time . . .”

  She was watching his face when he caught himself and stopped. She waited, hoping for more, but that was it. She searched for some sign, some small “tell” that would indicate he was feeling the same surge of confused emotions that she was. That standing this close and being this far apart was as difficult for him as it was for her. But all he gave her was the polite, slightly friendly face of a stranger. And a smile that didn’t reach his eyes.

  For a perilous moment she considered telling him that Malcolm had contacted her, that something was up, that she was considering going to Butner to talk to him. It would be such a relief to discuss it with him, to get his far saner reaction to her brother, and at the moment, to life in general. But Joe’s normally warm brown eyes were cool; any sign of love or concern for her had been banked if not completely extinguished. While she felt as if her heart was on fire.

  No. She swallowed the heat and the emotion along with the words that simmered inside her like a geyser. Joe might be the professional but she’d spent a lifetime hiding her true thoughts and feelings.

  She’d made her decision. Joe had obviously made his. There was no reason to prolong the agony. Not that he looked particularly agonized.

  She smiled again. “That’s great that the case has been reopened. I’m sure it will be a relief to both Renée and Annelise to get some answers. So that they can move on.” Which was apparently what Joe had already found a way to do.

  Once again they stared at each other. Frozen smile to frozen smile. Mask to mask. Until he finally said, “Well, I guess I should be going.” He gave her another nod. Another impersonal smile. “You take care.”

  And then he was walking away from her, his arms loose at his sides, his stride unhurried. As if he didn’t have a care in the world. Or the least bit of difficulty in leaving her behind.

  Kyra was alone at Bella Flora the next day when she heard a vehicle pull into the drive. Her mother had taken Dustin out in the jogging stroller with her father tagging after her. Nikki and Avery were in Tampa meeting with a potential sponsor that Ray had lined up. Setting her laptop aside, she walked through the center hallway to the formal living room and peered out a floor-to-ceiling window where she saw Nigel Bracken, their lone remaining paparazzo, approaching the pool company truck.

  She bit back a smile as the photographer glanced furtively over his shoulder before addressing the pool guy who wore flip-flops, a ratty pair of board shorts, and a pool company T-shirt. A baseball cap had been pulled low over his forehead. A pair of dark glasses completed Daniel’s disguise. Unable to resist, she snapped a photo of Daniel and the photographer talking, their heads bent close in conversation.

  Her smile turned into a grin as she imagined one day informing Nigel that he had in fact had a conversation with the celebrity he’d been so disappointed to never see. She snorted slightly when Daniel pulled the skimmer out of the back of the truck and handed it to Nigel. Who then followed Daniel around the house to the pool on a circuitous route that came nowhere near the back windows. For a good fifteen minutes after Nigel departed, Daniel did a convincing job of cleaning and testing the pool. Then he came to the back door and knocked lightly.

  She opened it a crack. “Yes?” she asked. “Is there a problem?”

  “Your pH seems a little off,” he replied quite seriously. “And you do have an incredibly unobservant paparazzo hanging around, though he did pay me twenty bucks to let him walk onto the property with me.” He grinned, then looked her up and down taking in her bare feet, the cutoff shorts, and her crop top. “Other than that I’d say everything’s looking pretty great.”

  He removed the sunglasses and shot her a wink. “I think the coast is clear. Can I come in?”

  “Dustin’s out with my mom. I’m not expecting them back for a while.”

  “Understood. Do you happen to have a cold drink to spare?”

  Against her better judgment, she opened the door and stepped back to allow him to enter.

  “Thanks.” He removed his cap and ran a hand through his dark hair. “That’s thirsty work out there.”

  “Right.” She led him into the kitchen. “I’m surprised Nigel hasn’t noticed how often we’re having pool service.”

  “He probably thinks you’re having an affair with the pool boy.” He accepted the Coke and set his hat and sunglasses on the counter. “Which is, I believe, a time-honored tradition.”

  She rolled her eyes at him and told herself to be strong. She could not fall in bed with him every time the opportunity presented itself. She had promised herself she wouldn’t. If only it were as easily done as said.

  “He’s about to give up and go away,” Daniel said. “The British one.”

  “Good.” To give herself something to do with her hands, she turned to the refrigerator and retrieved a Coke for herself, then took her time opening it.

  “Not good,” Daniel countered. “I explained this to you last time.” He took a long pull on the Coke and she watched his Adam’s apple, the graceful neck, t
he fine stubble that covered his face.

  “Right. Symbiosis. Got it.” She took a sip of her Coke, then held it in both hands as he leaned back against the counter. “Just not interested.”

  “No?” Somehow without moving he seemed so . . . close. His eyes found and held hers.

  “No,” she managed. “I’m not interested. Not at all.” But her racing pulse and the way her body seemed to be leaning toward his said otherwise. She wished fervently for a vaccine that would boost her immunity to this man. Or that he’d do something atrocious enough to finally set her free.

  “Kyra?”

  “Hmmmm?” She blinked, realizing she’d missed something.

  “I said I’m leaving for location in Montana next week. I’ll be there for a good part of the summer. I’d really love for you and Dustin to come out. You could even assist the director of photography or work with the documentary people. Or, I don’t know, anything you wanted.”

  She blinked again trying not to imagine how incredible it would feel to be on a big-budget film set again. It was what she’d studied, what she’d trained for, what she’d dreamed of. Until she’d fallen for Daniel on her first job, and his movie star wife had insisted she be fired.

  “Is there a position kept open for naïve production assistants who screw the star because they’re stupid enough to believe the star is in love with them?”

  “Kyra. You know that’s not . . .”

  “I’m not that girl anymore, Daniel. I’m twenty-six. I’m a mother. And I’m already committed to Do Over.” It wasn’t easy, but she managed to keep her voice even. “And where exactly would Tonja be while we were frolicking on set?”

  He had the grace to blush. “Europe,” he said. “She’s shooting a film in the south of France. She’s taking the kids for the summer.”

  He reached for her hand. “I really want you both with me in Montana. But even if you can’t come, I’d like to have the time with Dustin.”