The Haunted Beach (Tropical Breeze Cozy Mystery Book 4)

by Mary Bowers

  “I’m sure. I can hear her voice.”

  Shocked, Ed asked, “Literally?”

  “In my head.”

  He waited. With a jerk he remembered the EMF meter and turned it on. The readout was astonishing, and he nearly dropped it.

  Taylor never looked away from the portrait. In a dreamy voice, she crooned, “She hated parties, you know. They didn’t interest her. She hated dressing up for this portrait – thought the whole thing was stupid. You can see it in her eyes. She was fuming. Her brother, now, he was a playboy, a delicious cad, and a wonderful dancer. He loved all the trappings of wealth. He must have known his life would be short. He lived faster than anybody else so he could get his full share in the time he had. Winnie. Such a short time.”

  “Who’s Winnie?” Ed asked quietly.

  “Such a short time. But I was the one who was serious. I could have taken over the business from Father. I should have been a man. Not that I didn’t do things well. I could dance. I just didn’t like to.”

  Ed held his breath. Waiting felt like torture, but he was afraid to break the spell. She was silent for a long time, occasionally humming, closing her eyes and swaying. Coming to his senses, he set the EMF meter down and began recording the phenomenon: Taylor was possessed, he was sure of it. He silently cursed himself for missing the first few things she’d said, but he would write them down quickly as soon as the spell was broken. He must remember the name Winnie, he thought desperately.

  As soon as he began to record, she began to move, slowly tracing the steps of a waltz, swaying gently and humming to herself.

  “What are you seeing?” he asked almost inaudibly.

  She giggled. “The blond one. What is his name, Carrie?” She giggled again. “He’s paying too much attention to Jeanette. His mother will be furious. She wants a better match for him than that one. She must not know I’m a Strawbridge,” she added with a touch of disdain.

  Ed followed her as she traced steps across the carpet in front of the portrait. From time to time, he glanced desperately at Bastet, wishing she would give him a sign. The cat was watching, but motionless.

  Suddenly Taylor turned, as if she’d heard something. She held her hands in front of her and tilted her head.

  “Stop them,” she said urgently, turning to Ed and looking him full in the eyes.

  He nearly dropped the camera. He checked the counter and saw that he had been recording for half an hour, and the sudden change caught him off guard.

  “Frieda?” he asked tersely.

  “What? What are you talking about, Ed? What about Frieda?” She noticed the camera for the first time. “What are you doing with that? Is she here?”

  “Taylor, I think you’ve had an experience –“

  She shushed him harshly. She looked at the cat on the bed, looked back to the portrait, then ran to the main balcony doors, flinging them open and going outside. The ocean breeze caught her short blond hair and made it move as if it were alive.

  Ed followed her, still recording. “What is it?”

  She pointed down silently.

  After a moment of shock, Ed tilted the camera down and continued to record as he fumbled to refocus.

  Two white figures were moving along the beach – no, dancing along the beach – at the edge of the water. They were moving away to the south, one figure running ahead and making graceful leaps, the other one trying to keep up.

  “We have to stop them!” Taylor said. She looked back at the portrait. “Go!” she added in another voice.

  Trying to keep the camera steady, Ed ran after Taylor, who was tearing down the stairs like a maniac, making sobbing noises.

  “It’s the same code as the front gate,” he said as he came up to her at the gate of the walkover. It was locked, and a keypad glowed softly, activated by Taylor’s fumbling fingers. “Hash-tag 1-2-3-4. Here, let me do it.”

  He set the still-running camera down by the gatepost, but before he could operate the keypad, she vaulted the gate and ran. He stood there blinking and looking around, tentatively lifting his foot, setting a hand down for leverage, making a little bounce, but in the end he just couldn’t do it. Making a guttural noise, he tapped in the code and got the gate open. Forgetting the camera, he ran.

  She’d run away to the south, but the sand at the bottom of the dune was loose and draggy, and as he watched her, she fell. Immediately she got up and started running again.

  “Taylor, wait!”

  By the time he caught up with her, she was on the hard-packed sand of the beach, which was a good surface for running, but by then she wasn’t running anymore.

  “They’re gone,” she said desperately. She turned and stared at him. “Do you see them?”

  “No. You’re right. They’re gone. Taylor,” he said, taking her cold arm. “Let’s get you back inside.”

  She threw his hand off and began to run down the beach again.

  “Taylor!”

  He ran after her, but he couldn’t catch her. He clutched his head for a few seconds, had another thought, then fished in his cargo pants for his cell phone and called Ben.

  “Is she there?” he asked distractedly. “No? Well she may well be out here on the beach. We saw two white figures just now when we looked down from the bedroom balcony, but by the time we got out here, they were gone. I hoped somehow she got around us and went home, but if she’s not there . . . you’d better get out here.”

  He ended the call, slipped the phone back in his pocket and turned around, doing a full 360-degrees. Nothing. Taylor was now so far away he would never catch up to her and besides, he was exhausted. He trudged back through the sand and sat down on the top step of the walkover to wait for Ben, scanning the beach constantly.

  When Taylor came back, she was virtually in shock.

  “Bring her over to my house,” Ben said. “I’ll put her to bed.”

  Ed looked at him strangely, then said, “She’ll stay with me. I’ll put her in my spare room. I don’t think she can drive home in the state she’s in.”

  Taylor didn’t resist. She seemed completely spent, and wasn’t even talking.

  Suddenly Ed regretted calling Ben. Trying to hide his suspicions, he told him, “You may as well go home now. I need to collect my camera and my stuff from Frieda’s house and get Taylor settled.”

  “Not a chance,” Ben said. “I want to see what you guys have been doing in that house, and I want that cat out of there.”

  “Fine,” Ed said.

  When Ben put his arm around Taylor and started walking her toward the houses, Ed gave him a look of outrage and took her other side.

  Once Taylor and Bastet were settled in the guest bedroom, Ed came out and found Ben looking into the refrigerator.

  “Mind if I grab a beer?” he asked.

  “You can if you don’t mind drinking alone. I really should transcribe my notes while it’s all still fresh in my mind,” he said, hinting that Ben should go home.

  “Go ahead. I just thought you might want somebody to talk to after all that. Listen, why don’t you come down to my house and wait with me for Dolores to come back?” Then, looking a little sheepish, he added, “Look, it’s been a bad night. I don’t know where my wife is, and I just don’t want to go back to an empty house and sit there alone, waiting. I’ll go crazy. Will you come on down and sit with me awhile? If my wife is there, you can just come back; no harm done.”

  “All right,” Ed said. “But we need to talk about how you’re handling this. I know you want to keep all this from becoming common gossip . . . .”

  “Are you kidding? A story like this? A woman being haunted by her own mother? The Strawbridge heiress? The local TV stations will be all over it, and they’d make all our lives a living hell. We have to keep it quiet.”

  “Ben, if Dolores doesn’t come back by sunrise, we have to call the police.”

  The older man stared across the room stubbornly, looked away, then finally said, “I guess you’re right. Are you co
ming?”

  Ed looked down the hall to his office longingly. “Sure.”

  “Beer?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Well, I’m going to have one.”

  “You’ve had more than enough already, Ben. Why don’t you make some coffee instead? I don’t think we’re going to be getting any sleep tonight.”

  They hadn’t really expected to find Dolores at home, and they didn’t. They were becoming morose.

  Ben glanced at the refrigerator, glared at Ed, then trudged over to the coffeemaker and began filling it.

  But caffeine wasn’t going to be enough to keep them awake after the night they’d had. They fell asleep in recliners in the living room and didn’t wake up until they heard voices down on Santorini Drive. Something was wrong. Flashing lights from outside were going around the ceiling. Both men came awake at the same moment, and before they could gather their wits, the doorbell rang.

  “Oh, no,” Ben moaned.

  Suddenly Ed was glad he had come down to his neighbor’s house. No one should have to face something like this alone.

  Chapter 11

  Two men who were obviously detectives stood at the door and one of them said, “Benjamin Brinker?”

  “That’s me,” Ben said. “My wife –“ He stopped and looked toward Santorini Drive, where Dan Ryder was holding Claire Ford in his arms. She seemed to be in a state of collapse, and without his arms around her, it looked as if she would simply slide to the ground.

  “She found her,” Ben said wearily. “Claire found my wife, didn’t she? On the beach. She’s dead, isn’t she?”

  “I’m very sorry.”

  Ed took Ben by the arm and the detective looked at him with mild interest.

  “I’m a friend. My name is Edson Darby-Deaver. I live at the other end of the block.”

  “I’m Detective Bruno,” said the older one. He was tall, but slightly stooped, and from his hair to his shoes, he seemed to be brown all over. He had an easy manner. The other detective was a blond, younger, sharper-looking and more edgy. “This is my partner, Detective Carver. Were you waiting up with Mr. Brinker for his wife to come home, Mr. Deaver?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you didn’t call us?” The detective seemed vaguely hurt, but he looked from one to the other of them with opaque brown eyes.

  Ben sagged, and Ed put his arm around him. “Why don’t you come inside?” Ed said to the detectives.

  As they came in, Ben said, “She’s been losing her mind. I didn’t want anybody to know. I wanted to protect her, to handle it myself. Now she’s dead, and maybe it’s for the best.”

  Horrified, Ed quickly got him into the elevator, if only to shut him up. Since the elevator was small, Ed suggested that the policemen take the stairs, but they silently followed him in and closed the gate with an unnecessary clang.

  The floor plan of Ben’s house was the reverse image of Frieda’s. They went into the living room, and Detective Carver took an appreciative look at the view, but said nothing before getting a small notebook out of a pocket and sitting down.

  The interview that followed seemed like a bad dream to Ed, with everything being twisted in a way that made it look suspicious. Either that, or it was suspicious.

  Dolores had been wandering off at night for weeks. How many weeks, he didn’t know. Could it have been a month or more? Ben shrugged. He didn’t know.

  Ben had never reported her missing, though this wasn’t the first time she’d been out all night. How many times exactly? Again, Ben didn’t know.

  He stood to inherit Dolores’s share of the Strawbridge fortune, along with the mansion he lived in.

  He hadn’t taken his wife to a doctor.

  He hadn’t changed the code on the security system so she couldn’t get out of the house at night without setting off the alarm (he claimed he didn’t know how).

  He had tried to keep everyone in the dark about her new obsession, thus keeping the people living around them from watching out for her.

  And, Ed thought (but didn’t say), Ben’s flirtatious behavior with Taylor last night had been . . . odd. At least under the circumstances.

  Ed had found Ben alone on the beach the night before, and nobody had seen Dolores alive after that, unless she had been one of the dancing figures they had seen from Frieda’s bedroom balcony.

  “She was probably caught in a rip current,” Ben said.

  “In that case, she wouldn’t have been found lying on the beach. She would have been pulled out to sea. But wasn’t that all the more reason to keep an eye on her?” the cop asked mildly. “The red flags have been out on the beach for over a week now. Everybody who lives here knows about the rip currents. And that’s another funny thing. How could she drown, then be found lying on the beach, above the water line? Any thoughts on that?”

  Ben looked completely blank. “What should I think about that? The tide went out, and she was left there on the beach.”

  Both detectives shook their heads. “Doesn’t happen that way. But it’s a good thing for you, I guess,” Detective Bruno said, standing up. “No need to wait years to have her declared dead. You inherit right away.”

  Ben came out of his chair in a fury, and Ed grabbed him and held him back.

  Bruno looked Ed in the eye. “I want that footage you have of those figures on the beach.”

  “I don’t think you’re going to get much out of it. I had trouble focusing.”

  “Still. Can we go to your house and get it now?”

  “Sure. Okay.”

  Carver put a business card on the coffee table, then looked at Ben. “We’ll be in touch.”

  Once inside Ed’s house, the detectives were in no hurry to get Ed’s camera.

  “Could we sit down and have a talk first?” Bruno said with a tired smile.

  “Oh, sure, sure, fine.” Ed babbled. “Would you like some coffee? I have one of those things that make it by the cup so it’d be no trouble please come into the kitchen and have a seat there in the breakfast nook won’t take me but a minute.”

  “A cup of coffee would be great,” Bruno said.

  “Sure,” said Detective Carver. “Thanks.”

  “No trouble. No trouble at all.”

  Ed managed to work the coffeemaker, only spilling a little as he brought their cups to the table. When they were all settled, Detective Bruno gave Ed a friendly look.

  “You and Mr. Brinker are good friends?”

  “Not especially.”

  When both detectives looked at him strangely, he started babbling again. “Well, you know, we’re neighbors, and what with his wife being haunted and all – you knew about that? Yes. She believed her mother was haunting her, luring her out to the beach. I happen to be a paranormal investigator, you know. You’ve seen my show? Haunt or Hoax? It’s new, but it’s very popular; you may have seen it. I investigate such things. All the time. My card.”

  He scampered into the kitchen, opened the nearest drawer and came back with a business card for each of them. They looked at them with studiously expressionless faces. Then Detective Bruno blinked, put the card in his inner jacket pocket, and took a sip of coffee.

  “Well, well,” he said.

  “So,” Ed went on, “naturally I wanted to investigate.”

  “So many things occur to me about that,” Bruno said almost dreamily. “Let’s start with the fact that Mr. Brinker says he didn’t want anybody to know about his wife’s . . . problem.”

  “Oh, everybody knew,” Ed said expansively. “At least, I’m guessing they did. The same way I did.”

  “How is that?”

  “The twins. They tell everybody everything.”

  “The twins.”

  “Oh, sorry! I mean The Double-Quick Maids. They’re twins. Awful nuisances, but everybody else seems to like them, so I haven’t fired them. Anyway, they told me. Swore me to secrecy. Gossips always do. But now that I’ve had time to think about it, I think they must have been going up and down the
whole street telling everybody. They’re like that.”

  Detective Carver was writing madly, as if trying to get it down verbatim and sort it all out later.

  Bruno just sat impassively, regarding Ed and occasionally nodding.

  After an uncomfortably long pause, Detective Bruno said, “I’ve seen your show.”

  “Oh, how nice! I mean, it’s trash, but anyway, it’s nice of you to say you’ve seen it, because, you know, I don’t watch it myself. I can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “Oh, lord, it’s too painful. Let me get you copies of some of my books,” he said, shooting out of his chair again. “I’m a serious investigator. The show is just something on the side because, frankly, there’s money in it, and there isn’t so much money in investigations like those,” he said, gesturing at the three books he’d plucked from a nearby cabinet and slapped down on the table.

  Bruno picked up the top one, turned it over, turned it back, studied the cover and read, “The Blue Demon – Exploded!” then set the book back down.

  “I’m a skeptical investigator,” Ed said with dignity, straightening his glasses, scratching his chin, putting his hands on the table and finally dropping them into his lap. “If the phenomenon turns out to be a hoax, I report it as it happens. Cold, hard facts. That’s me. That particular case was quite a cause célèbre until I –“

  “I’ll be interested in reading it. Thanks,” Bruno said.

  Carver never touched the books, but he did glance at them with lifted eyebrows.

  “Yes,” Ed said. “Thank you. If you like them, please write reviews on Amazon. I never seem to get any reviews. These are print-on-demand editions, but I also uploaded them. E-books, you know.”

  “Uh huh. Back to Mrs. Brinker. You say you heard about her troubles from some twins? Can I have their names?”

  “Poppy Tays and Rosie Carter. The Double Quick Maids. “

  Carver wrote.

  “What else did they tell you about Mrs. Brinker?”

  Ed ran quickly through his talk with them two days before. “So you see,” he said at last, “since there was a ghost involved, they naturally thought of me.”