Murder Beach

by Rena Leith

  I picked up a paper-clipped sheaf of typed pages of notes I hadn’t looked at before because I had the handwritten notes and thought they were redundant. I unclipped them, turning each over slowly.

  And there it was: a Xerox of a marriage certificate for Mary Ann and Donald Pierpont, Doris’ father. The tumblers fell into place, and the key to both murders turned in the lock.

  ****

  I was waiting for Jack and Gillian when they came down the next morning. I’d made fresh coffee. I had Alan’s book notes in a pile in front of me on the table.

  “You’re up early.” Jack yawned.

  “And dressed,” Gillian said.

  “There were still a few things that bothered me. I had a nagging feeling about Alan’s book. Why was he writing about Doris? Just seemed odd. Reading over his notes again, I realized that it was his relationship with Marcy that put him on his fatal path. He became obsessed with the stories she told him—from her grandmother’s point of view—of the murders and the bungalow. As he researched, he realized that the story was cockeyed.”

  Jack poured some coffee and sat down.

  “It’s really the Snow White story. We had Mary Ann pegged as a mistress, but Alan had a copy of a marriage certificate in his file, showing that she actually married Doris’ father, becoming Doris’ stepmother. Wicked stepmother. She was jealous of Doris and also coveted the estate, which meant, if she was to inherit, Doris would have to go.”

  Gillian, who’d been leaning over Jack’s shoulder, jumped when Doris popped in.

  “Doris!” I said. “You nearly gave me a heart attack.”

  “Mary Ann was married to my father?”

  I nodded. “Once married, she seduced Big Al and cajoled him into murdering you to get you out of the line of inheritance.”

  “Wait,” Jack said. “We shouldn’t tell her everything yet.”

  “Why not?” Doris asked.

  “What if you go into the light?” Gillian asked.

  “Isn’t that what we want? For Doris to be happy? To move on?” I said.

  “All I’m saying,” Gillian said, “Is, are you both sure that’s what you want?”

  I thought for a moment. “We should get dressed and invite everyone Doris wants over. Then we can say goodbye, and I’ll finish telling the story.”

  ****

  Mina, Dave, Ricardo, Mia, Jack, Gillian, and I were all gathered in my living room, sitting on the couch, various chairs and ottomans, and in the case of Ricardo and Mia, on the floor.

  I called out, “Doris? Are you here?”

  The air in the doorway to the kitchen shimmered.

  I saw it out of the corner of my eye. “C’mon, Doris. Everyone you wanted is here. We want the opportunity to make sure we’ve solved this to your satisfaction and to say goodbye because we will all miss you when you go into the light.”

  Doris materialized, but she wasn’t her usual spunky self. Opalescent tears rolled down her pale cheeks. “I don’t want to go.”

  “Oh, I know. I don’t want you to go,” I said. “I wish I could hug you, Doris.”

  Doris vanished and Thoris jumped into my lap. I squeezed her until she squeaked. Then everyone else hugged, petted, and fussed over her. When Doris rematerialized, Thor indignantly stalked off to the kitchen to give himself a bath.

  Doris stood straight in the middle of the group and looked at everyone. Then she said, “All right. I’m ready now.”

  “Okay,” I said. “We have Alan’s book notes here. We looked through them before, but now I think we have the pieces of the puzzle we need. Alan seems to have first gotten interested in Doris’ story when Marcy told him her version of her grandmother Mary Ann Deluria’s history. He figured out that the story was skewed in Mary Ann’s favor, so when he started writing his book, he tried to correct the record. Marcy’s motivation for murdering him wasn’t entirely her love for Sara. It was less altruistic. She was very interested in suppressing the story of her grandmother’s murder of Doris, which Alan was going to reveal in his book.”

  Mina nodded, and Ricardo put his arm around Mia.

  “We had Mary Ann pegged as Doris’ father’s mistress, but they were married.” I passed around the copy of the marriage certificate. “Doris stood in Mary Ann’s way to inherit. She had to go. Mary Ann seduced Big Al and convinced him to get rid of his boss’ daughter. No one realized that Lem had proposed to Doris, and they were shocked when Lem attacked Big Al, trying to save Doris.”

  Doris sobbed but stifled it quickly.

  “After they bribed the police to find Doris and Lem and officially declare them dead, they called her father and made his murder look like suicide in grief over his daughter. Mary Ann inherited everything. Then Big Al found out she was pregnant, and he wasn’t sure if it was his or his former boss’. He exploded in a jealous rage, frightening Mary Ann, who didn’t really need him anymore, anyway.”

  “What happened to Big Al?” Jack asked.

  “He seems to have faded into obscurity. I couldn’t find anything more on him in Alan’s notes or in any Internet search. I don’t have enough information on him to go into a genealogy site to go through census info or death records. If he moved, he may be harder to find.”

  Jack shrugged. “I suppose it doesn’t matter, but I’d like to know if the law ever caught up to him.”

  “Alan clearly felt the police had been bribed, so my guess is no. Mary Ann coveted this bungalow even though Doris’ mother Shelagh owned it outright. If she thought Doris’ death on the beach in front of the cottage would drive Shelagh away, she was mistaken. Shelagh was pregnant with Doris’ sister Francie, who would inherit the cottage. Francie couldn’t inherit Don Pierpont’s estate. Shelagh put the car in the garage and kept Doris’ engagement ring. We found it where she left it. Mary Ann must have talked to a lawyer about settling the estate before leaving town. But leave it she did to escape Big Al. She raised her daughter on the story told from her point of view about how she’d been done out of much she should have had, including Shelagh’s bungalow, which she was sure Shelagh had finagled away from Don, which explains why Marcy was so interested in it. Mary Ann always intended to come back.”

  “Do we know whether Marcy is Doris’ niece or the granddaughter of Big Al Hanrahan?” Gillian asked.

  “No idea,” I said.

  Dave broke his silence. “I know Shelagh’s daughter Francie. I’m sure she knows the whole story, but she has dementia. It’s part of why I paid the taxes on the place. I always hoped she’d come back. Her memories were pretty untrustworthy in general, so I didn’t believe a lot of what she said until you moved in, Cass, and people started dying again. Her published stories were pretty wild, and she had a vivid imagination.”

  “We’ll probably never know everything, but I’m changing the locks now that I know how many keys might still be out there. Every member of the writing group had a key.”

  The group lapsed into silence.

  “I think that’s it. It’s all I have. Is that everything you wanted to know, Doris? Are you satisfied?”

  Doris tensed, nodded, and squeezed her eyes shut, bracing for the unknown. Everyone held their breath.

  Nothing happened.

  Doris opened one eye. “I’m still here.”

  “Maybe you were expecting more information?” I ventured.

  “I know how I died and now I know who did it and why.” She stamped her foot. “I should be going to my reward!”

  Leave it to Doris to be annoyed when she got her wish but not what she expected.

  “Maybe it’s because you didn’t hang around as a ghost but were conjured up in a séance.”

  As Doris vanished, I yelled, “I’m glad you’re still my roommate!”

  “Hmph!” echoed around the living room.

  ****

  I walked along the beach at twilight, a furry shadow at my heels. The air was already sharpening with the loss of the sun’s light.

  Jack and Gillian were safely at home. Sara
and her daughter had found each other although neither had spoken to Sara’s parents after their confession. Forgiveness would take a while. Dave’s place was dark as deep space, and I suspected he’d forgotten all the excitement on the beach and was partying in the City as he’d said. Brendan had his books, Althea’s collection, a new web site, and his father despite their relationship. And George… I’d just have to wait and see how that played out.

  What, in the end, did Sara’s parents gain from all their machinations? Everything they’d done was now undone, and they’d lost, perhaps forever, the opportunity to be part of their granddaughter’s life. Perhaps that was too harsh. A judgment. You could never tell where forgiveness might lead.

  And then there was Marcy. Her cold-bloodedness still shocked me. I’d trusted her. If it hadn’t been for Doris…

  As I approached the house, the shadow of a woman flickered at the window. I smiled. Doris was still watching out for me.

  A word from the author…

  I currently live in Cape May County in New Jersey after spending years in the San Francisco Bay Area with my Maine Coon cats Sierra and Ginger.

  I attended Clarion Writers Workshop for Science Fiction and Fantasy at Michigan State University and sold a story I wrote there to Damon Knight for The Clarion Awards anthology.

  I wrote technical manuals in Silicon Valley and also published several poems and science articles as well as a couple of chapters in Research & Professional Resources in Children’s Literature: Piecing a Patchwork Quilt. I’ve also taught English in high school and community colleges.

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