by Dana Moss
Sweet Taffy & The Marshmallow Murder
Sweet Taffy Cozy Mysteries - Book #2
Dana Moss
| FIRST EDITION |
CHAPTER ONE
Taffy and Ethan crouched behind a log on a ridge in the north section of Castle Rock Park.
“Do we really need all these branches in our faces?”
“Shhhhh, you’ll scare them away.”
The “them” were the two-legged, beaked and winged creatures that Taffy was trying to learn to love in the midst of learning to love Ethan.
He whispered, “See that red-breasted nuthatch? I think it has a clutch of eggs in that tree knot over there.” He pointed in the direction of two o’clock.
The only eggs Taffy was interested in were poached and smothered in hollandaise, which is what she intended to order for brunch later, but she’d agreed to this bird-watching expedition with Ethan first, so she lifted her binoculars and looked where he’d pointed. As she turned her head, a branch she’d stuffed in her Juicy Couture baseball hat as camouflage scratched her behind her ear, and one of the fronds in front of her face tickled up her nose. She sneezed, loudly, causing a bunch of chickadees to explode from the safety of their bush and rise cacophonously to the sky.
“Where?” Taffy said, swinging her binoculars—which felt like massive carbuncles glued to her eyes—in the direction Ethan had pointed.
He sighed. “It’s long gone. A sneeze to a bird is like a grenade going off.”
Taffy mumbled, “Sorry, that branch was trying to smother me.” She pulled herself out of her crouched position and sat back on her heels. The chickadees had settled on the nearby branches. They tilted their feathered heads and gazed down at their bush. Perhaps they were assessing whether it was safe enough to return. Taffy also assessed her situation: Cosmopolitan city girl trying to impress her hunky, outdoorsy boyfriend and failing miserably.
One brave chickadee made a flying dash back to the bush. It was tackled in midair by a squawking Steller’s jay that seemed to come out of nowhere. Taffy stared in horror as it pinned the chickadee to the ground a short distance away and pecked it mercilessly. Ethan threw a pinecone to break up the attack.
“Birds do that to each other?” Taffy couldn’t believe it.
“The jay probably has a nest nearby.”
The injured chickadee scuttled toward the bush, dragging one limp wing. Taffy wondered if it would survive. “That tiny little bird couldn’t have been a threat to the jay.”
“Protective animal instinct is a strange and unpredictable thing.”
“Nature is dangerous!”
“Hey, we’re all a part of nature.”
Taffy grimaced. “Maybe it’s time to go for brunch now.”
Ethan had promised a trip to the Castle Rock Resort brunch buffet if Taffy weathered another bird-watching session. Actually, it was Taffy who had negotiated that bit, because she had already agreed to go bird watching in exchange for last weekend’s trip to Portland to look at furniture. She had refused to follow Ethan’s suggestion to buy secondhand sofas and chairs from various online sites.
“Memorial Day mimosas can wait a bit longer,” Ethan said as he hunkered his hunky self down behind the log once more. Taffy pouted. Last year on Memorial Day, she had been partying on St. Bart’s with her friends. They were probably there right now, bikini clad and sprawled out on loungers by the pool while nursing hangover cocktails and hiding tired eyes behind fat sunglasses.
As Taffy sat on the needle-packed forest floor feeling the morning’s dampness seeping through her second-best designer jeans, she wondered if she and Ethan were truly a match made in heaven or simply a mismatched pair of socks tucked into one of Abandon’s quirky small-town drawers.
A mosquito landed on Taffy’s cheek. She gave herself a slap.
Ethan sighed heavily. “Can you just be still and quiet for a few more minutes?”
Taffy did her best. She sat still and straight and tried to enjoy the view. Ethan had brought her to a different part of the park this morning. The ridge they’d hiked up looked across picturesque Lake Shelby, which bordered the northern boundary of the state park and edged the park’s campground that was somewhere below them. Ethan had been complaining on the ride up that this season was looking like it was going to be very busy for camping, especially with the local teens who liked to party, and he was worried he wouldn’t have enough help with the park oversight and maintenance.
At least he hadn’t asked Taffy to venture on a camping trip yet. Though she was afraid he might one of these days. She didn’t want to let him down, but she couldn’t see the romance in waking up in a smelly tent overrun with ants and spiders.
She put her binoculars to her face again and stared through the lenses at the clear blue sky. Looking through binoculars made her feel dizzy. She found it hard to focus. She swayed her gaze side to side. There wasn’t even a cloud to focus on in the sky. She searched high and low, getting dizzier, until she tipped over, knocking Ethan’s elbow.
“Taffy!” Another sigh of exasperation.
“Sorry.”
“Look, I know this isn’t your favorite pastime, and I appreciate that you were willing to come out with me anyway, but since we’re here, can you just give me a chance to get another look at that nuthatch? I think its nest is just over there.” Ethan trained his gaze toward a stand of trees at around two o’clock.
Taffy stared noon-ward and thought of mimosas and tropical beaches. The lake below glittered through the trees. It really was a spectacular spring day. She could smell wood smoke from morning campfires down below. Chickadees chirped and Steller’s jays squawked. A few Canada geese flew down and landed on the lake. A different kind of bird, rather large, circled high overhead. It was soon joined by another. They dropped closer to the lake. Taffy tried her binoculars again, trying to see what kind of bird it was. If she could identify it, that might impress Ethan. Was it an eagle? It had a smallish, bald head with a hooked beak and wide, dark wings. It took her awhile to locate them through the binocular lenses, and by the time she did, several more had joined the first. They circled over one section of the lake.
She couldn’t see the whole lake through the trees that grew straight and close together along the slope between the ridge and lake shore. Patches of dark-blue water, lit up by the sun, shone through the trunks. Between two trunks, she thought she saw something floating on the lake. High above, the birds continued to circle.
She saw it now: a canoe drifting in the middle of the lake. One of the circling birds dove toward it. It swooped low and then flew up again. Another bird in the group dove down. This time it grabbed hold of something that came loose with it. Taffy tried to catch it in her binocular lenses. It looked like a string. Another bird dove and landed on the edge of the canoe. It got a hold of something else and pulled.
“Ethan?”
“Shhhh.”
This bird had a string now too, only this one wouldn’t come free. It pulled and pulled until it managed to hoist a whole shoe upward before letting it go. A shoe would have been heavy on its own, but this one still had a foot in it. And the foot was still attached to a leg.
“Ethan!!” Taffy screamed.
The birds closest to them fell silent.
CHAPTER TWO
“Vultures??”
Turkey vultures to be exact. Ethan had seen the canoe and identified the birds, but he hadn’t seen the foot or the leg. Now they were scrabbling down an overgrown path toward the campground and the lake.
“Are you sure this isn’t a pl
oy to get us to go to brunch sooner?”
Taffy had wanted to call the police right away, but Ethan said there wasn’t any point in bothering them on the long weekend until they’d checked the canoe themselves.
“It’s probably just an empty canoe come loose from someone’s dock. It happens.”
Taffy stopped in mid-scramble down the path. “Why do you never believe me?”
“I do. I just—”
“You think I overreact and make a mountain out of a molehill or pee on lampposts or whatever.”
He grinned. “You can be dramatic at times.”
“I saw someone’s leg in that canoe, Ethan. Just because you didn’t see it doesn’t mean it’s not there.”
Taffy started walking again, and Ethan followed. “Maybe it’s some fisherman sleeping off his case of beer.”
“I think I’d wake up if a vulture was pulling my leg.”
Then again, that weekend at St. Bart’s, she hadn’t batted an eye when she’d fallen asleep in the suite’s Jacuzzi bathtub with her clothes on and her friends had filled the entire tub with shaving cream. They said she slept like that for two hours.
Ethan and Taffy had reached the back row of campsites. People were stirring in their tents. A couple emerged wearing rumpled clothes and with their hair askew. Clearly the result of a bad night’s sleep rather than a wild, sexy romp. How in the world did they look so ugly-happy? Taffy would take a five-star B and B over that any day. In fact, she’d prefer to sleep in a tub full of Gillette.
They walked past a man filling a bucket from a spigot. Didn’t these people have homes where water poured freely from clean taps? How could this be voluntary?
Ethan led the way to a shed near the lakefront. On one side of the shed was a small swimming beach. On the other side, the campground stretched farther among the trees.
Taffy gazed out toward the middle of the lake, where the canoe floated aimlessly. One end turned slowly in a gentle breeze that rippled the water. No one had seemed to notice it was out there, but it was still pretty early. Campers were just beginning to wake up.
A little ways down the campground path was a group site with half a dozen tents set closely together. A few people hovered around the picnic table tapping ash from cigarette tips as they watched Ethan unlock the shed. They looked much too young to be smoking.
Ethan drew out a rowboat on a wheelbase out of the shed. He dropped the bow of the boat into the shallow water and unhooked the wheels. He rolled those back into the shed and locked it. He pulled oars from under the bench seat spanning the middle of the hull.
“I’ll go out and have a look and row right back.”
“I’m coming with you.”
“This is park ranger business now.”
“It is not. It’s my business. I’m the one who saw it. You wouldn’t even be park rangering for this if I hadn’t kicked up a fuss.” She plopped her tush down on the front bench of the boat, which made it harder for Ethan to push the rest of it into the water.
“Suit yourself.”
A few campers watched them row away from shore.
If it turned out Taffy was wrong and this was just an empty canoe that had come untethered from its moorings from one of the docks jutting out from the handful of private cabins across the lake, she’d feel pretty silly. Even the vultures had flown off.
But what if she wasn’t wrong? She secretly hoped that the most they would find would be a painfully hung-over fisherman.
The lake was peaceful. The dip and scoop of the oars made little lapping, plopping sounds.
Ethan said, “Under different circumstances, this could be romantic.”
“Let’s pack a picnic sometime. We could row to the other side of the lake, spread out a blanket…”
“I like the sound of that.”
Taffy was happy to go along with anything that might keep his mind off of camping.
“Do you have your phone?” Ethan asked. “Just in case.”
Taffy nodded. She didn’t tell him that she’d already sent Maria a text. It was a friend sending a friend a text, not a 9-1-1 call on a holiday Monday. All she said was: maybe something unusual at the lake. Maria knew she was bird watching with Ethan this morning because Taffy had called her the night before to complain all about it.
“Relationships are all about compromise,” Maria had coached. “And about appreciating each other’s different interests and tastes and learning new things you wouldn’t otherwise be exposed to.”
“I bet Finn doesn’t make you read legal briefs.” Maria and new-lawyer-in-town Finn Talbot had been dating for a few months now.
“No, but I do have to sit through every episode of Law and Order. Did you know that show started airing in 1990?”
“You like that show!”
“Okay, well.” There’d been a pause as Maria cast about for another example. “Curling. The man likes watching curling on the sports network. That puts me right to sleep.”
Taffy sighed. “Fine. I’ll deal with the birds.”
Now those birds had lured them out to the middle of the lake.
The canoe had drifted farther away, but they were coming up closer now. Ethan angled the oars to come up alongside of it.
When Taffy heard the low drone of buzzing flies, she felt immediately sick. She got dizzy when she saw the toe of a white Converse shoe sticking up at one end of the boat. A shoelace was missing.
She leaned over, away from the canoe, and tried to catch her breath. She saw her pale reflection wobble in the rippling water. Ethan grabbed hold of the canoe and pulled it alongside the rowboat.
“Aw, darn it,” he said, and turned away slightly. He braced one oar across both boats and moved closer to the center of the rowboat. “Stay still, Taffy. I have to check if there’s a pulse.”
She had never seen a dead body before. The young man could have been asleep except that he was draped awkwardly, unnaturally, across the bottom of the canoe, and his skin looked a bluish white. He had scratches on his face, a split lip, and a couple of bruises. From the vultures?
Taffy, who had been looking forward to brunch all morning, now felt wretchedly ill. Her pre–bird-watching piece of toast was rising on her. She felt sweaty, weak. Reflexively, she bolted upright, turned to the outer side of the boat, and opened her gullet. The blood thrumming in her ears meant she didn’t hear Ethan cry out. She barely noticed the boat tip and wobble, and she had no idea she’d lost her balance until she splashed into the cold lake water and starting sinking like a stone.
CHAPTER THREE
Ethan hauled Taffy up by her collar.
“Your phone,” he barked. “Where’s your phone?”
Taffy sputtered, “In my back pocket.” Which was sewn into her jeans, which were wrapped curvaceously around her bottom, which happened to be bobbing beneath the boat.
Ethan pulled her up over the edge and coaxed her to bring her leg up. She rolled back into the boat, shivering. The phone, like her breakfast, was toast.
“It’s okay. Maria will come.”
And sure enough, a car pulled up by the beach. More people had gathered. They were pointing at Taffy. Some were laughing.
Taffy looked at Ethan. “Who’s in the canoe?”
He shook his head. “A kid. Probably from the local high school. I know a lot of them, but I don’t recognize him.”
“ A John Doe? Poor kid.”
“We’ll find out who he is soon enough.” Ethan waved at Maria, gesturing something to convey the gravity of the situation.
“Thank you for saving me.”
“From yourself?”
“I can’t swim.”
Ethan’s eyes widened. “But you’re a poolside princess.”
“Always stayed in the shallow end.”
“And yet you didn’t blink climbing into this boat with me?” He shook his head in disbelief. “There were life jackets in the shed. You should have told me.”
“A girl’s got to have some secrets.”
“You baffle me at every turn.” He dipped the oars in the water. “We have to row back.”
“What about the boy?”
“Have to leave him. For the police. The whole lake’s a crime scene now.”
A patrol car had pulled up beside Maria’s unmarked car.
Ethan moved away gently from the still-drifting canoe. His face looked drawn and sad.
Taffy thought of the chickadee and the Steller’s jay. And the vultures. Two were watching her from their perch in a tree across the lake.
We’re all a part of nature, huh. It was far from a consoling thought.
~
Despite the warm sun, the May air was still cool, and Taffy was shivering when they pulled up to the beach.
“What did you find, McCoy?” Maria said to Ethan.
“A high school kid, I think.”
“You sure he’s dead?”
He nodded. “No pulse.”
“He was probably camping here last night,” Taffy said, looking over to the group site, where most of the tents had been taken down already. “You could ask those kids over there. They look about the same age.” But half of them were gone, and more were slinking away.
Maria turned to the patrol officer who had just walked up to her. “Malcolm, make sure nobody leaves the campground until we’ve talked to them. Call the chief, and let’s get a team sent down. Tell him we might need state help on this.” She looked across the lake to the canoe. “I’m going to row out there.”
Taffy said, “Want me to come?” Then she sneezed.
“There’s a blanket and a gym bag in the back of my car. You should dry off and warm up.”
Ethan said, “I’ll go with you.”
“Thanks, McCoy.”
Maria, who was now officially Detective Salinas, took the camera Malcolm offered her and climbed in the boat.
Taffy climbed into the back of Maria’s car and worked her way out of her wet jeans. She pulled on a pair of sweats she found in Maria’s gym bag and then examined her waterlogged phone. She’d missed a call from Ellie earlier this morning. The screen was still active, but she couldn’t unlock the keypad. She’d need to dump her phone in a bag of rice for a few days if there was any hope of saving it, and there probably wasn’t.
