Death By Blue Water (A Hayden Kent Mystery Book 1)

by Kait Carson

  “Your turn. What was in the report? Do they think I had something to do with the death of someone I don’t know? And why would I dive on the wreck and pretend to find the body if I had done it?” She ticked off each question on her fingers as she spoke.

  “They don’t. Not really. And nothing in the file connects you to anything. It’s a bluff as far as I can tell. They have no ID on the person you found. You’ve found other bodies. I think they’re more concerned with eliminating you than with convicting you. They have nothing to tie you to an unknown decedent. They were taking your temperature.”

  “So what was in the file? Why harp on my knowing the guy on the boat?”

  “There were some notes from the Coast Guard lieutenant. He said he watched you at the body and thought it looked like you recognized the decedent.”

  Hayden jerked her head out of her hands so fast a pain shot up the back of her neck. Paul thought she knew the guy. Paul saw recognition in her face. What was that supposed to mean? Why would he write that in a report? Why did he think that? She put the questions away to consider them later. Pulling herself back to the present, she realized Grant was still speaking. She tried to focus on his words. Something about Cappy.

  “He was point for point with you. Total agreement in his statement with what you told them today. They have no reason to doubt you. Hopefully, this should be it. Going forward, you’ll only know what you read in the papers.”

  She tried to draw comfort from his words and failed. Grant was treating her like a client, not a friend, not a co-worker. For the first time in their relationship, she couldn’t read him. Hayden looked past Grant trying to think of something to say. She noticed a couple sitting on the outside dock dining area tossing food over the side for the schooling fish. A sailboat sailed the bay and a motorboat with an aqua blue cover on its cuddy cabin glided past through the channel markers. The moment was unnaturally sharp. Hayden had been here before. Migraine was on the way. This one had all the hallmarks of being as bad as the one she had on Friday. A rumble of nausea rolled through her stomach and she regretted the tortilla chips and salsa she’d consumed with such gusto.

  “Grant,” she reached blindly for his arm, “can we go? And can you drive me home?”

  Eight

  Classic aura lights danced in her vision. She’d half expected Friday’s migraine. Today’s was no surprise either. Emotional turmoil triggered them. She’d told Cappy she had no recollection of Friday night. The cops and then Grant’s questions forced her to dig deeper before someone started asking more questions.

  The throbbing increased as Hayden drove her memory back to Friday night. Through the pain, she knew it was important to reconstruct where she’d been and why. She felt as if her thoughts were running into walls. Did the cops have information linking her to the dead man? Why would she kill a stranger? Why would she kill anyone? Why did the cops think it was a murder and not an accident? She’d done some strange things when she had migraines. The memory blackouts were frightening enough. To compound them, she had no choice but to believe what other people told her about her actions. She had no recollection of Friday after she went to bed. This could be the worst migraine blackout yet.

  She lay on her bed and reached for the phone. Tiger Cat jumped up next to her and snuggled under her chin. Her hand detoured from reaching for the phone to pet the cat’s smooth coat.

  “Okay, Tiger. You were here. What did I do? When did I leave? Did I leave with anyone?” A crescendo of ever-increasing purrs, painful to Hayden’s brain, responded to her questions. The pain of today’s migraine swallowed her whole and spit her out on Friday night.

  Every time she’d thought of Richard’s visit to pick up Kevin’s stuff, she’d felt a familiar constriction in her head. Besides his electronic gear, Kevin mostly left his dive gear in her hall closet. Diving was the one constant in their relationship. She’d been thrilled when she realized he loved the underwater world as intensely as she did. Best of all, he had a boat. They’d fallen into the habit of taking his boat to the slip at the end of her street every Saturday and Sunday morning. Since they launched their trips from her house, some of his clothes—really just a couple of changes— had found their way to her closet. She berated herself for not realizing how small a commitment the meager wardrobe revealed. Once Richard took what little she had, the Kevin chapter of her life would close. Despite her brave words to Grant, Hayden knew if Kevin came through the door, she’d take him back in a heartbeat. Up until Kevin’s phone call, she’d thought his feelings were the same as hers.

  She saw herself again as she picked up her phone and scrolled through the stored numbers. Richard’s early morning call arranging to pick up his brother’s stuff was still in memory. She pushed the call button and bit her lip. His voicemail answered, and she left a message to cancel the meeting. No way could she consider having Richard in the house. Her emotions were too unstable. Marry that instability to the migraine, she knew her emotions would rule.

  She’d thought about canceling the dive trip too, but the effort was too much right then. Her migraines often went on for two days. Even if they didn’t, she’d feel beat up the next day. Hayden decided to wait on calling Cappy. They’d been friends long enough she could cancel at the last minute if she had to. The last thing she remembered about Friday night was filling a plastic bag with ice cubes and going to bed.

  But Saturday morning Hayden woke up in a lounge chair at Faulkner Marina. She wore a wet bathing suit, the sun was just beginning to lighten the sky, and her car sat in its regular space. The marina catered to dive boats of all sizes and she had a couple of friends who kept boats there too. She had no recall of how, when, or why she was there. Her wet bathing suit indicated she’d been in water. The salt crust on her skin meant little. It could have been the marina pool, the ocean, or the bay.

  Hayden had looked around, trying to get her bearings. Two sets of keys sat on the table beside her. Hayden picked her set up and made her way to the parking lot. There was no recollection of anything between going to bed and waking in the marina.

  Hayden tried to get out of bed, but the movement brought waves of nausea and she lay back down. She gripped the side of the mattress so hard she heard the fabric rip. The room spun. Please God, don’t let me have another blackout. I couldn’t stand it if I woke up somewhere else again.

  Managing to get herself out of bed, Hayden stumbled to the bathroom. She tried to choke down some painkillers but promptly brought them back up. Uncertain of what else to do, she double locked her front door, dropped the key in her junk drawer, mixed the contents with her hand, snugged the drapes closed to keep out even a hint of light, grabbed an icepack from the freezer, and went back to bed. The actions felt all too familiar. Except for hiding the key, she’d done them on Friday.

  She set the house burglar alarm on instant, hoping the alarm would wake her if the house caught fire. She figured she’d toss Tiger from the window and go out that way herself. It would mean breaking the jalousies, but she knew she’d never find the key in her junk drawer. Experience had taught her finding anything in there took a good fifteen minutes. She hoped this would be enough to keep her in the house until the pain passed. Then she hoped she’d be able to remember where she put the key.

  The ringing of her phone and a pounding on her door woke her from what seemed a drugged sleep. Slowly swimming to consciousness, she answered the phone first.

  “What...” Taking a deep breath, she tried again. “Hello?”

  “Hayden, you sound awful. Did you hear the news? That guy you found, they identified him. You knew him.” Cappy practically screamed in her ear.

  “What do you mean I knew him? I never saw him in my life,” Hayden said, while the pounding at the door continued. “What the hell is going on here?” she mumbled half under her breath. “Who the heck is banging on my door? Cappy, are you here?”

 
“No, I’m only trying to…”

  “Oh God.” She clamped a hand over her mouth. “I have a migraine, I…” Hayden dropped the phone and bolted for the bathroom, overcome with nausea.

  Running a cold washcloth over her face and wiping her mouth she prayed for relief. She returned to the kitchen and rummaged through the junk drawer, looking for the key. The pounding had stopped. Maybe whoever it was had left. Remembering she had a phone call, she found and picked up the receiver. “Cappy?”

  “Yeah, I’m here. You trying to get my license taken away? I’m not at your damn door.” Cappy was obviously angry about something.

  Hayden finally found the key and headed toward her door. “Cappy, I have no idea who that guy was or why you think I know him.” She turned the double locks and opened the door to her boss.

  “Richard Anderson. Remember Richard Anderson? Kevin’s brother?” Cappy continued in her ear. “You said Kevin told you he was interested in selling his boat and Kevin didn’t want it. You were supposed to go see it Friday night. Now are bells ringing? You had me standing by.”

  Hayden’s head pounded. She looked down at herself and was relieved to find she was dressed in running shorts and a tank top. She motioned for Grant to come in. Too many things were happening at the same time. Hayden couldn’t track them all, not now when all she wanted to do was go back to bed and her ice pack.

  “Grant, Cappy is on the phone. The guy’s been identified. He says I knew him.”

  Grant took the phone from Hayden’s hand. “Cappy, she’ll get back with you. I need to speak with her right now.” He clicked the off button and put the phone on the counter top.

  While he talked, Hayden walked to her junk drawer and tossed in the key.

  “I told you, Grant, I never met the guy. I called and canceled. I had a migraine on Friday. A bad one. They come in cycles and I guess I’m in a cycle. Anyway, I was supposed to follow him to Faulkner’s Marina. I forgot that I’d called Cappy, asked him to be available to meet me when I called. That must have been what he meant yesterday when he asked about calling. I don’t know anything about boats. My headache was so bad that I called Richard and canceled. Ask him. Bring his number up on the handset, push talk and ask him. I called and canceled.” Hayden put a hand to her mouth. “Oh, God.”

  She moaned. A wave of nausea hit her and she bolted for the bathroom again. Grant couldn’t call Richard. He was dead. She had no alibi.

  In her rush, she hadn’t closed the bathroom door behind her. She looked up from where she knelt over the commode and saw Grant’s feet and legs in the doorway. “I swear. I don’t know who that guy is, the one on the Humboldt. I have no idea who he is.”

  “There were witnesses, Hayden.”

  Nine

  Grant came into the small bathroom and helped Hayden struggle to her feet. He led her out to the living room and sat her down on the navy leather couch. The throbbing in her head was getting worse by the second. She thought she was going to vomit again. The harder she tried to get past the pain and into her memory, the worse the pounding got. Maybe she had gone there. She knew she woke up dripping wet at Faulkner. Maybe she had killed him. But why? And how?

  Tears rolled down her cheeks. Grant touched her hand with gentle fingers.

  “Maybe some tea will help?” he asked, his voice thick with kindness.

  More than anything, she wanted someone to care about her right now. Hayden slumped down on the couch and buried her face in her hands. Bits and pieces of memory were returning and falling into place like an Internet puzzle game.

  “I did cancel Richard,” she said, her voice muffled by her hands, “but now I remember, Kevin called. The call woke me. He wanted me to bring his stuff to Richard at the marina Saturday morning. His gear was too heavy for me to want to lift it into my Tahoe, and some of it was his desktop computer. Besides, I figured, why should I make it easy for him? I refused. Told him he could come himself.”

  Hayden looked at the middle distance as she replayed the conversation in her mind, then she continued. “Kevin was angry. Said he wanted to dive on Saturday and I was messing him up as usual.” She omitted Kevin’s foul-mouthed yelling and accusations but his words still rang in her ears. “He said Richard was going to come Saturday sometime since I was being such a...” She winced. “You know what he called me. I waited for Richard all day Saturday after I got home. He never came.”

  “Got home from where?”

  Startled, Hayden realized she hadn’t told Grant about waking up at the marina, but he had to know. Where else could there be witnesses? Taking as deep a breath as the pain allowed, she blurted out the story in one sentence ending with, “But you already knew this.” Grant’s face remained professionally blank. His cop face she called it.

  He nodded. “Hayden, your facts don’t add up. You canceled Richard, Kevin called you and said bring his effects to the marina, then he said Richard was coming on Saturday. You’re contradicting yourself. Think, Hayden, think. I need to know the sequence. And how your trip to the marina figures in.”

  Taking a deep gulping breath, Hayden struggled to put herself back into Friday again. She saw Grant’s point. Still, that’s how she remembered it. She turned her face to her boss. “Okay, in bullet points then.” She smiled a painful smile. “Kevin called me at work and told me Richard would pick up his stuff.” Hayden put her index finger in the air. “Richard called to tell me he’d be over about seven at night.” She raised a second finger. “I got the migraine. I called Richard’s cell and canceled the meeting.” A third finger went into the air.

  “How did you know it was a cell?” Grant interrupted.

  Her three fingers still raised, Hayden said, “I didn’t, not really, but I thought it was because it sounded scratchy. Should I continue?”

  At Grant’s nod she said, “Kevin called. He told me to bring the stuff to the marina on Saturday morning.” She raised her pinky finger. “I told him I had a migraine, and I wasn’t going, and his stuff was too cumbersome and heavy.” She raised her thumb making five points, leaving her right hand in the air. “He said Richard would come by on Saturday, pick up his stuff and take me to see the boat since I was such a weak flower.” She lifted another finger. “Six points. I don’t know about the how I got to the marina part, but my Tahoe was there. Make sense now or did I leave something out?”

  “But you are sure your truck was there?”

  “Yeah. And parked in my usual spot, under the gumbo limbo tree. Who saw me? Maybe they can help.”

  Grant ignored her questions. “Where’s Kevin’s stuff?”

  “Here, in the corner near the door. Most of the stuff is dive gear and electronics. That’s why I didn’t want to take it anywhere. He didn’t live here but he liked having a computer and some music things here. It’s too unwieldy for me to deal with. And God forbid I break something. Unplugging it and moving it to one pile was as much involvement as I wanted.”

  Grant seemed to be studying Hayden. Weighing her words and trying to get to the truth. Hayden had seen that look before. It was his client look.

  “It’s true, Grant,” she whispered.

  “Richard Anderson did not live in North Florida, not since 1996 when he was in college. He lived on Big Pine.”

  “Are you sure? I don’t get it. Why lie? Why did Kevin make up a story?”

  “He says he didn’t, he says he never told you his brother lived in North Florida. He doesn’t know why you would say that. He thinks you may be having some kind of breakdown. That you may be blaming his brother for your breakup. He agrees you never met him. But says that was your fault, because you never wanted to go to Big Pine when Kevin went.”

  “You talked to Kevin.” Her mind reeled with the implications. She didn’t know whether to be angry with Grant or thank him for caring enough to take her side.

  Grant’s
nod answered her. “I wanted to know what he had to say. He also told me you told him you would ‘throw his stuff out on in the road’ if he came to get it. Kevin says you agreed Richard could come to pick his stuff up but that you weren’t happy about it.”

  “What about buying the boat? What about that? Did I make that up too?”

  “No, he says his brother was selling his boat. That Kevin had made an offer on it and you knew about it from when the two of you were together. Kevin had decided he didn’t want it and you decided you did. You wanted Cappy to look it over for you because you didn’t trust Kevin’s word that it was in good shape. According to Kevin, you arranged for Richard to come here to pick up his stuff, and then take you to look at the boat but you canceled the pick-up and told Richard you would meet him at the marina.”

  Hayden’s head swum with the pain of the migraine and the story Grant recited. She tried to make sense of it all and failed. Maybe when the pain abated. Tiger Cat rubbed against Hayden’s legs. She stared over Grant’s head and looked at the Butcher photo on the wall behind him. It showed the everglades with a heavy mist covering the sawgrass waterway. The mist nearly obscured the slash pines. Hayden loved the photo; Kevin gave it to her for her birthday soon after they met. When he ordered her to collect his stuff, he told her not to forget the Butcher. Hayden balked, and they’d had a huge fight. Seeing it now, Hayden felt like the picture pointed an accusing finger in her direction.

  “You have to tell all of this to the police, Hayden. You can’t hold it back. This has to come from you.”

  She shook her head, reached to pick Tiger up, and immediately felt sick. “How do I do that? Pick up the phone and say, ‘Oh, by the way.’”

  “I’ll go with you.” Grant rose and pulled the drapes open. He peered out onto the street.

  “Looking for someone?” Hayden felt her heart clench. Maybe he was looking for the police. Maybe the next step was they were coming for her. “Grant, do they know?”