Murder Beach

by Rena Leith

  What Mia and Ricardo had presented to us was realistic and practical. They’d done their research to determine how feasible creating a web design business was in the current market, how much competition there was locally and in the broader community, and the talent they’d need to pull it off.

  I hoped I could muster the gravitas needed to sell their service to established business customers. We’d start with the two shops who’d already agreed to let them create web sites for them. Ricardo and Mia had given them a substantial discount, so we’d have to bring in more business soon. I’d need to take a salary before long although it could be small at first. It wasn’t a sexy enough proposal to get funding as a start up, so we were facing three to eight years of lean times just to get it off the ground. Or was I being old-fashioned? Mia and Ricardo seemed to think that costs would be low with little overhead. But they were college kids with parents supporting them. Scratch that, I thought, remembering Mia’s story. She was a scholarship kid, supporting herself. With Alan’s death, she had no parental support at all.

  I shivered. The chill made me glad I’d worn my old green sweater. Where was everyone? I perked up a bit when Marcy and Angela arrived together. Marcy was in earth-tone practical gear: boots, heavy socks, jeans, sweatshirt, fleece vest. Angela, on the other hand, a vision in shades of red and black, wore heels, leggings, an over-sized sweater, and truly amazing crystal chandelier earrings that glittered against her long, straight, black hair. If she could do inventory in those heels, I’d be stunned.

  “Cold morning.” I stamped my feet.

  Angela nodded. “The June gloom.”

  Sara arrived a few minutes later, but she wore a friendly smile, bore a pile of paperwork, and brought Starbucks so we all forgave her for being late.

  “Do you mind holding these?” She handed Marcy a stack of paperwork and me a cardboard drinks holder with what looked like four coffees and a large pastry bag. She unlocked the glass-paneled door and pushed it open.

  “I smell breakfast,” Marcy said.

  I smelled dust and wondered how soon I could duck out.

  Once inside, Sara straightened the ‘Closed’ sign so that it was clearly visible from the sidewalk. “I bought you a mocha, Cass, because you seemed to like that yesterday.”

  “Great choice,” I said, taking it and finding that it was still hot. A sip warmed my chilled innards.

  “And cheese danish?” she queried.

  “That would be lovely.” It was thoughtful that she remembered what I’d had with everything that was going on in her life.

  “Is this the will?” Marcy asked, holding up the pile of papers.

  “Good guess,” Sara said. “Set it on the desk, will you?”

  Angela took her coffee from Sara. “So how did the reading go?”

  Sara took a moment to answer, seemingly fighting a battle inside. “It went pretty much as expected. I inherited the bulk of the estate: the house, the store, his investments in both our names, and a few in his only. I’m doing the inventory because my lawyer needs it to settle everything.” She hesitated. “But there were other things I didn’t know about that he left to some of his friends and family, most of whom I don’t know.” Her eyes looked haunted.

  This was a change. I had been puzzled by her nearly flat affect despite what I would consider great loss—her husband’s death. Although I barely knew her, she smiled and seemed polite all the time. Her face was like a placid lake into which the occasional seedpod or leaf fell. The surface only disturbed minutely. This change puzzled me. What was she really feeling under that still façade? Pain hid beneath that placid surface. Thinking of Phil, I wondered if everyone wore a mask.

  “Did they inherit anything important?” Marcy asked.

  Odd question, I thought. Why would Marcy care? But perhaps she was just concerned for her friend.

  “Thanks for asking, Marcy, but not that I can tell.” Sara shrugged, and her face was back to its placid surface. “I have to say that there were things and people I didn’t know about named in the will.”

  “Seriously?” Angela asked eagerly. “Like what?”

  “He left a sailboat up in Tiburon to his cousin Al. I didn’t know he had a sailboat or a cousin Al or a slip in Tiburon.” Sara’s expression didn’t change.

  Angela nearly choked. “A sailboat? Sara, do you know how much those things cost? That’s huge!”

  “He always said he wanted one; I just didn’t know he already had one.”

  “Are you going to fight his bequests?” Marcy crumpled up the bag that had held her morning bun and pitched it with the accuracy of an athlete into the wicker basket near the counter.

  I realized I was leaning forward, waiting for her answer, my own fight response triggered.

  “No, I wouldn’t go against his final wishes.”

  In spite of my desire to watch and learn and not intrude, I blurted, “But why? He’s dead.” I hadn’t intended to be so blunt.

  She turned huge blue eyes on me. “We have to respect the wishes of the dead.”

  My mind flashed on Doris. Not sure why. But there she was, forbidding me to read her diary, telling me I was in her house. I was the first to turn away. Instead, I looked around the store. Books were piled haphazardly on the floor. Large literary posters and signed pictures of authors leaned against the walls under their hangers.

  Sara must have followed my gaze because she said, “Alan had started to make some changes. He took the pictures off the walls and was looking for studs. I think he wanted to remodel in here.” She looked me straight in the eye again. “But he didn’t share those plans with me.”

  Must have been a very interesting marriage. “Sara, I have Marcy’s cell in my phone. Can I get yours?”

  “Sure, and I’d like yours.” We exchanged numbers and addresses although she laughed when I gave her mine. I realized that everyone in this small town would know my address. Now I was infamous.

  “Where would you like us to start?” Marcy asked.

  “I have forms.” Sara attached them to clipboards and handed each of us a clipboard and a pencil.

  I had a passing thought, wondering if there were inventory forms you could use on an iPad and just upload. “Sara, aren’t inventories taken electronically? Seems like it would be easier for you.”

  “We’re reconciling with the running electronic inventory. Bigger stores do it electronically. We’re too small, and we have too many specialty items that don’t have barcodes or ISBNs on them.” She raised her voice slightly and said, “You’ll see at the top of each page the location and book type you’re inventorying. These are the forms Alan used.”

  I looked over the pages on my clipboard. I was doing mystery, horror, and romance. I glanced around the store. While the categories seemed huge, I saw signs for many more categories. I located my areas toward the back left of the store near a huge walnut desk. It looked simple but time consuming.

  Sara handed out all the clipboards, and we moved around, looking for our areas.

  I set my mocha and clipboard on the desk as I passed, deciding to have a look around first. I’d read recently that independent bookstores were coming back after a near extinction. This was the sort of business that required startup funding and had some serious overhead and a small profit margin. Ricardo’s expense calculations made a bit more sense to me now, as I realized that all three of us would be absorbing some of the business expenses of our new venture by working from home.

  Opening the door to the right of the desk, I walked into a large storage room with a red metal door on the far side that had a lit exit sign above it and two smaller, wooden doors to the right. I assumed the red door exited onto the alley that ran down the middle of the block to give ingress to shop owners.

  Opening the first door, I stepped into a primitive “studio” with glass-fronted bookcases, an unmade cot, and a plain table littered with plastic book covers and dust jackets on one side of the room and an easel, canvases, paints, and drapes on the oth
er. Alan the artist. Who knew? Somehow, it was not how I’d pictured him from the little I’d heard or seen on the news. That would teach me not to jump to conclusions. I backed out and looked around.

  The second door was marked ‘Employees Only’. My hand was on the doorknob when I heard a toilet inside flush. I moved quickly back to my post by the desk and picked up my clipboard.

  Three hours later, I finished my three sections, set my clipboard down, stretched, and looked around. Sara stood by the large picture window in the front by the door. I walked up behind her to see how she was doing when I noticed that she was watching someone across the street. The June gloom hung in the streets. Mist still curled in low-hanging wisps although it was nearly noon. The figure looked almost Victorian under the iron streetlight. I assumed it was a woman because she wore a long, hooded cape that swept the sidewalk, but this was California, so who knew? While I watched, the woman turned and walked away. As she did so, she walked through a clear patch, and I could see quite plainly that it was Mia.

  I started to say something to Sara, but Marcy beat me to it. “Isn’t that the girl who was hanging around Alan?”

  Sara’s body jerked next to me. I was glad I hadn’t spoken. Apparently, they didn’t know Mia’s story. Alan must have kept most of his life to himself.

  “I wonder what she wants?” There was a nasty tone in Marcy’s voice.

  I turned to look at Marcy. “What do you mean?” While I regarded Marcy as the most normal person I’d yet met, I thought her comments were crass under the circumstances, and my own challenge slipped out without conscious thought.

  Marcy shrugged. “Nothing really. It just came out. Sara doesn’t need any more grief right now, but I can’t imagine why that girl would be hanging out across the street now that Alan is dead.”

  I wanted to find out what Marcy knew about Mia. I needed to do due diligence before signing on with my potential new partners, but this was neither the time nor place, so I turned away.

  On the way back to the desk at the rear to get my clipboard, I noticed a section labeled in blood-red letters at the end of one bookcase: Vampires. A drop of blood hung off the bottom of the V. This is part of horror, I thought, and I missed it. I picked up the clipboard again. I’d been doodling on the form. Bad habit when it was someone else’s paperwork.

  Pulling out some of the books, I noticed that many had lurid covers although some had geometric patterns, indicating that the writer was so well known that no money had to be spent on the cover to entice people to buy them. Alan also had carried paraphernalia, such as a few braids of garlic, a bottle of holy water, and some wooden stakes. Interesting. How deep was he into this stuff? I remembered the reporter talking about a vampire attack because of the two holes on his neck. Surely the police had ruled the death as accidental if they weren’t here going over things with a fine-toothed comb.

  I finished up with the vampire books and called out, “Hey, Sara, I assume we’re inventorying everything, not just books, if it’s for the estate. There’re no entries on these sheets for garlic and stakes.”

  Angela burst into giggles. I thought I saw a flicker of annoyance wash over Sara’s face as she walked over to hand me an inventory sheet with no categories.

  “Just enter the junk on this sheet.” She sighed. “He has a lot of odds and ends. Now I have to make a decision about whether to sell this shop as a business, sell the stock and the building separately, or run the place myself. I have no head for business. I don’t even know who the accountant is. I hope I find it on Alan’s computer. His cell is missing, and he had everything on that. I have to find insurance papers, file final taxes, request an audit—”

  Marcy interrupted her. “Who in their right mind requests an audit?”

  Sara shrugged. “The lawyer says it’s normal to request an audit just to close things out when someone dies and a business is involved.”

  “I’d rethink that,” Marcy warned. “Can I have a sheet for the posters and furniture in my section?”

  Sara handed her another sheet.

  Angela asked, “Do I have to finish the entire storeroom? There’s a lot back there.”

  “No, I don’t think this is a one-day job. I appreciate your help, though. Speaking of which, I owe you guys lunch. I can run over to Soupçon and get something, and we can eat back in Alan’s reading area. Comfy chairs and tables. It’s afternoon.”

  “Sounds good to me,” Marcy said. “Just get me whatever the soup of the day is and a half turkey and provolone on sourdough with mayo.”

  I pulled a twenty out of my jeans pocket and tried to hand it to Sara, but she refused.

  “You’re helping me, so I’m getting lunch. What would you like?”

  “I haven’t been to Soupçon yet, so I’ll get what Marcy’s having. Can you bring a take-out menu back for me if they have one? I’m just getting to know the area.”

  “Sure. And you, Angela?”

  “Nothing for me. Andy’s picking me up here, and we’re going out.”

  Now her outfit made sense. “Is he a student at Clouston?”

  She nodded.

  “Be right back.” Sara picked up her purse and left.

  Angela looked over her shoulder until Sara entered the shop across the way. Then she perched on the edge of the desk, instead of returning to taking inventory. “What do you think of Sara?”

  “What do I think?” I touched my chest with my fingertips, wondering how I was going to answer her, not knowing her motivation for asking.

  Angela nodded.

  “Uh, she seems very nice.”

  She leaned toward me, swinging her leg, the back of her shoe slipping off her heel. “Not the brightest bulb in the chandelier, if you ask me.”

  I hadn’t, and I struggled to find a response.

  Marcy joined us, sitting in the desk chair. “Angela, Cass doesn’t know about Alan’s affairs.”

  I repeated, “Affairs?” like an idiot. What do you say to a comment like that?

  “I told you a little bit about Sara and her, ah, mental processes when I stopped by your house,” Marcy continued. “For whatever reason, she turned a blind eye to his affairs.”

  “Sometimes she talked like she really loved him,” Angela said.

  “But then she’d say the marriage was arranged,” Marcy added.

  I opened my mouth and shut it again.

  Marcy opened the laptop on the desk. She turned it on. “Damn. Password protected.”

  “Sara may know the password,” I said, thinking a lot of lines were being crossed rapidly.

  Marcy continued to snoop around while Angela called her boyfriend. I went back to inventorying garlic braids and wooden stakes.

  “Goofing off the minute my back is turned?” Sara came in a little while later, carrying our lunch.

  I jumped, startled. “That was fast. No one in line?”

  “Had the place to myself. Several people worked on the order.” She set the packages on the desk.

  “You wouldn’t happen to know the password, would you?” Marcy pointed to the computer.

  Sara frowned, pausing with her hand on a sandwich. “The password for the old computer was my name: Sara. He was still setting that laptop up when he…he…” A tear rolled down her cheek.

  “Oh, Sara. I’m so sorry,” Marcy said.

  She shook her head, sniffling. “No, it’s me. This keeps happening. Not your fault.” She waved toward the laptop. “Give ‘Sara’ a try. See if it works.” She carried the bags to the back of the store and began setting out our lunch.

  I watched as Marcy typed in Sara. Nothing. Then Marcy typed in ‘Mia’. She was in. She gave me a significant look.

  I knew why Alan would use Mia’s name as a password; he’d only recently found his daughter. But why would Marcy think he would use it? I thought back to her snarky remarks about Mia. Did she think Alan was having an affair with her? I looked at Sara.

  Sara was looking at Marcy. “I heard the ping. Did that work?”
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  “We’re in,” Marcy said with a smile. She continued to type, and I wondered if she would change the password. “Do you mind if I poke around a bit? I realize Alan probably has business records on it, so I’ll understand if—”

  “Don’t be silly. Go ahead. Let me know if you find anything interesting. If he’s got business stuff on it, I’ll probably have to hire someone to help me with it, anyway.” Sara pulled sandwiches out of the bag. “I have an iMac at home that I use.”

  As Marcy typed, she said, “Sara, you know I’ll help you any way I can.”

  Then a thought occurred to me. “You mentioned Alan’s phone. Is it missing? Don’t you have a smart phone, too? Family plan maybe?” I added. “He might have a backup in the cloud.”

  “Family plan: yes. Smart phone: no. My little flip phone is all I need. But Alan loved his. He was always checking out the latest app. Played some game about throwing birds around. Seemed barbaric to me.”

  “I used to play Angry Birds. Very addictive,” I said.

  A knock at the door sent Angela into paroxysms of giggles.

  An attractive but roguish young man with a lopsided grin was rapping at the glass just below the Closed sign.

  Angela bounced and danced as she headed toward the door, wrapping her scarf around her neck and grabbing her purse as she passed the counter. “Sorry, Sara. I’ve got to go. Andy’s taking me out. Do you mind?” She looked very unrepentant.

  “Of course not.” Sara waved her off. “Have a great time.”

  Released, Angela skipped out the door. “Bye!”

  Andy slipped his arm around her waist, and they moved off down the sidewalk and out of sight.

  “Sorry, Sara,” Marcy said.

  I joined Sara, picked up half a sandwich, and sighed with contentment as I bit into it. I hadn’t realized I was so hungry. Then I looked up and noticed Alan’s wall safe, now visible after I’d moved things around on the bookshelves.