I’m not sure who spotted it first. We both stopped walking at the same time. Several hundred yards away in the line where the ocean caressed the sand was a creature bathed in shadows. It wasn’t moving.
“What do you think that is?” I asked.
Harley squinted. “A sea turtle?”
“If it is, she didn’t make it,” I said. Occasionally a sea turtle would wash up onto the beach. Collisions with fishing boats and even larger ships often proved fatal for those gentle giants. “Maybe it’s a log,” I said. In the dark, logs often mimicked all kinds of dire shapes. Like dead bodies.
“Yes,” Harley whispered. “That must be what we’re looking at.”
“I think we should go take a closer look.”
He squeezed my hand before releasing it. “I’ll do it.”
“No way. We’ll go together.”
We walked over to the shadowy not-quite-log-like figure being washed by the gentle waves as they brushed against the beach. I sighed.
“Not a log,” Harley said.
“Never thought it was,” I said.
“I didn’t either.”
It was Fletcher.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Harley reached down, hooked his hands under the man’s armpits, and pulled Fletcher higher on the beach where the waves couldn’t reach him. Even in the darkness, I could see his neck had turned several shades of blue. Someone had strangled him.
My phone was already out. I punched in the number for Detective Gibbons, wondering why I hadn’t added him to my speed dial list.
Detective Gibbons answered the phone with a long yawn. “Penn, why are you calling me at this hour of the night?” I could hear his wife, Connie, talking in the background.
“He’s dead,” I said. “Murdered.”
“What? Who?” Gibbons barked.
“He’s breathing,” Harley called over to me. “Barely.”
I nearly dropped the phone as I ran over to where Harley was kneeling next to Fletcher. I fell to my knees beside him.
“He’s alive?” I couldn’t believe it. He didn’t look alive.
“Barely,” Harley answered.
“Who!” Gibbons screamed.
“Fletcher!” I shouted back.
My star employee reacted as if he thought I was calling out to him. He moaned. His eyelids fluttered. He looked at me and moaned again. I dropped the phone.
“Who did this to you?” I leaned over Fletcher and demanded. “Why?”
“Let’s stick with who?” Harley said. “Who did this to you?”
“T-tried to chase after him,” I think he said. I could barely make out his whispery, raspy voice. “Then s-searched for h-h-hours for him.”
“Who?” both Harley and I shouted.
“Melty,” Fletcher rasped, then coughed. His eyelids fluttered closed again.
“Did he say ‘melty’?” I asked. “Like melty chocolate?”
Harley didn’t answer right away. He was busy working to save Fletcher’s life. He seemed to know exactly what to do with a drowning victim. He’d already turned his head to the side and had worked on getting all the water out of his mouth and throat. He was now doing it again.
“I’m a surfer and certified lifeguard,” he said as his hands worked quickly and surely. “This isn’t the first near-drowning I’ve seen.”
“Is he going to live?” If he’d seen these before, surely he’d know.
Harley shook his head. “I don’t know. Hope so. We need EMS out here now.”
I found where I’d dropped the phone. I picked it up. Gibbons was still on the line. “Help is already on its way,” he told me. Sirens blared in the distance.
Soon help did arrive. An ambulance came first, followed closely by one of Camellia Beach’s police officers. The two EMTs took charge of the situation. Only a few minutes had passed before they had Fletcher on a stretcher and was rushing him back to their ambulance.
“Did he say ‘melty’?” I asked Harley again after the EMTs had driven away.
He shook his head. “I don’t know. That’s kind of what it sounded like.”
“But that doesn’t make sense,” I said.
The police officer busily wrote everything we said down in a notebook.
“He’s been oxygen deprived for who knows how long,” Harley said. “He might not know what he’s saying ever again.”
That was a depressing thought. “Gibbons will find out what he said. He’ll find out who attacked Fletcher. He told me he’s going straight to the hospital to be there when Fletcher wakes up,” I said.
Harley nodded toward the round figure plodding through the sand toward us. “And we’ll be giving our statement to Hank.”
I groaned. “This is going to ruin our chances to catch our killer tonight, isn’t it?”
“Your thief would have to be awfully stupid to show up to steal turtle eggs tonight,” Harley said.
“Or awfully desperate,” I added. “And for all we know he very well might be a she.”
* * *
We arrived at the nest much later than I’d planned. My heart beat in my throat as we approached the orange warning tape surrounding the turtle nest. I worried we were too late and that the nest would be empty.
Using our phones as flashlights, we walked around the cordoned off nest several times. There wasn’t any sign of disturbance. The sand was smooth. The only footprints were ours.
Harley spread the beach blanket several hundred feet away from the nest and as far away from the approaching tide as the narrow beach allowed. That’s where we sat in the shadow of the dune’s sharp cliff, side by side, not saying a word. Not touching the wine and cheese. Not touching each other. After finding Fletcher half dead, my thoughts of romance had dried up. I suspected Harley felt the same way.
With each hour that passed, my hopes that I’d be able to keep my promise to Gavin dimmed. I was about to give up and call the night a waste of our time when someone approached from the east. The figure wasn’t very tall. Dressed in clothes that were solid black and loose, I couldn’t tell if our villain was a man or a woman. But I could make out the metal tool cradled in the person’s arms. It was a shovel.
The shoulder Harley had pressed to mine tensed as we watched the thief go straight to the turtle nest and pause. The thief’s head swung from side-to-side, as if searching for witnesses. For a moment the villain seemed to be staring straight at me. I held my breath, waiting. But then the person’s gaze moved on. After a few moments the digging started.
This was it! I reached into my beach bag and, after a little fumbling around, pulled out my camera. I double-checked that the flash was turned off before taking several shots. I also snapped several pictures with my phone and texted them to Detective Gibbons. Harley was doing the same, only he was texting his pictures to Hank.
These pictures were no good though. It was too dark for the photos to show the thief’s face. I needed to see the thief’s face. While sitting in the dark for hours waiting for something to happen, I’d spent the time thinking about Cassidy’s killer. I’d managed to eliminate Ethel from my suspect list. With her arthritis, there was no way she could have strangled Fletcher nor could she handle digging up a turtle nest. I still considered Luella Marie and even Florence suspects. If I had to be honest, spite had me adding Florence to my list of suspects. But there were others in that list too. One person who hadn’t landed on my suspect list before tonight was Bailey Grassi. He was a newcomer to town. And he was the only one who’d appeared genuinely distressed by Cassidy’s death.
Ethel had told me that only two people on the island had the necessary skills to shoot Cassidy from across the beach: herself and Jody. But if Ethel wasn’t strong enough to strangle Fletcher and Jody was in jail that would mean someone else on the island was also skilled when it came to handguns. It would have to be someone Ethel didn’t know very well.
Ethel barely knew Bailey. She’d never seen him at a turkey shoot. After all, he was new to town. And Baile
y had acted so very interested in the rare Amar chocolates. He wanted to visit the shop. He wanted to see all of my equipment. He wanted to taste the chocolate. He wanted to sell the chocolate to his elite clientele. He’s said it himself—His elite clientele wanted to buy only the rarest delicacies. Besides chocolate sweets, rare delicacies could also include illegal sea turtle eggs that were highly sought after in the black market.
I had to refrain from shouting “Oh my goodness!” I did, however, jump. Harley, brows raised, looked at me in alarm. But really, all of my excited energy had to go somewhere, because the pieces had finally snapped into place.
Bailey had told me himself that he sold only the rarest delicacies to a select online clientele. Sea turtle eggs are considered rare delicacies in some parts of the world. This was the first year that turtle eggs had been stolen. And it had only happened at the end of the season. It had only happened since Bailey had moved to the island.
Bailey’s biggest mistake had been to steal sea turtle eggs from a nest so close to Cassidy’s house. Cassidy must have seen Bailey take the eggs. When Cassidy threatened to expose the newcomer’s crime, Bailey probably panicked. And that was why he started planning Cassidy’s murder.
It seemed so clear now. Bailey was the one who’d left his porch lights on. With an island this gossipy, he could have easily learned of Jody’s past habit of shooting out porch lights to keep the lights from disorienting baby sea turtles. He would have also easily heard about Jody’s delusional affair with a man who didn’t know how to be true to any woman.
Bailey was obviously the turtle thief. And he was the one who’d framed Jody for Cassidy’s murder. He’d even returned to the scene of the crime, acting all upset about what had happened while feigning complete stupidity over the nesting habits of sea turtles.
I wanted to tell Harley all of this. But I couldn’t say a word without alerting Bailey that we were there watching him. And then I remembered I had my phone in my hand. I texted Harley, NOT MELTY. BAILEY.
Harley read the text and turned to me with a look of confusion. I nodded to the dark figure digging carefully deeper and deeper into the nest. If we didn’t act soon, he’d reach the eggs.
I dug around in my beach bag until my hand touched the cold steel of Mabel’s old handgun. Without much of a plan beyond: point gun at Bailey until the cops arrived, I jumped up from the beach blanket. Harley jumped to his feet too. But instead of rushing toward our thief like I was trying to do, he lurched at me.
“What are you going to do with that?” he whispered.
“Stop him,” I hissed.
Harley grabbed my arm. “Swinging a gun around is a good way to go and get yourself killed.”
“What do you suggest we do? Wait for the police to get here while he destroys the nest? I can’t do that.”
“Who’s there?” Bailey turned toward us. It was definitely Bailey. I easily recognized that east-coast accent of his.
“Bailey Grassi,” I called out to him as I stepped forward with Bertie’s gun held level with his chest. “You’re not going to get away with this. We’ve already called the police. I have a gun. So you’d better drop that shovel and put your hands in the air.”
“Penn, no,” Harley whispered. “You put him in a corner. His only escape now is violence.”
“Harley is here with me,” I shouted. I then broke my personal rule and told a whopper of a lie. “He also has a gun. So do as I say and drop that shovel.”
Bailey snorted and kept digging. “If Harley had a gun, he’d be the one standing out front. He’d be the one shouting the orders. He wouldn’t be the one tugging at you, trying to get you to stop whatever mad scheme you’ve hatched to stop me.”
“You sexist pig,” I shouted and batted Harley’s insistent hands away. “That’s not true.”
“Isn’t it?” Bailey laughed.
“Hey mister, I’m the one with the gun.” I shook it at him. “You’d better start doing what I’m telling you to do. Or I’ll start shooting.”
“You’d shoot an unarmed man?” Bailey shouted across the expanse. He sounded a little worried that I might be crazy enough to do it.
“We’re passionate about our sea turtles around here,” I pointed out, hoping I did sound a little crazy. Harley had let go of my arm. I heard him moving things around in the picnic basket. I wondered what he was doing. “The banners and signs hanging all over town celebrating the sea turtles not to mention the long waiting list to join the sea turtle team should have told you that.”
“Okay. Okay.” He tossed down the shovel. “You win.”
“That’s better. Now keep those hands where I can see them. Harley, do we have some rope?”
I don’t know how I could have forgotten to bring rope. And I never realized how heavy handguns were. My arm was starting to dip.
Before Harley could answer, before I could shift the gun from one hand to the other, Bailey had pulled a gun out from somewhere in his pants.
“It’s like an old Western standoff, Penn. Just you and me. But my gun is loaded,” Bailey said with a laugh.
“Don’t forget about Harley,” I said. “He’s got my back.”
“He’s run off like a whipped dog. I already have the perfect story too. I came across you digging up the eggs. You pulled a gun on me. In self-defense, I was forced to shoot you.”
I glanced around. Bailey was right. Harley was gone. But I didn’t think he’d run away, not for even a second. And yet I was glad he was out of shooting range. This was how things needed to be. While he had a son to raise, no one needed me to return home alive.
“Another clever ploy to get away with murder?” I said. “I know how you set up Jody. I know you killed Cassidy.”
“You think you know, but you don’t have proof. If you did, you wouldn’t be here right now. Heck, I wouldn’t be here right now. Now do you want to pull the trigger, or should I just shoot you and get it all over with.”
“You’re crazy,” I said. “No one will believe that I attacked you.”
“It was so upsetting. There was so much blood. But what was I to do?” He made weeping noises. “She said no one could know that she was stealing the turtle eggs, just like no one could know about how she’d lied to Mabel, no one could know how she’d told Mabel she was her granddaughter.”
Oh, fudge. He was right. Half of the island would probably believe that. “Why did you attack Fletcher? Was he working with you? Or did he know something that proved your guilt?” I asked because I wanted to buy myself time, time for Harley to do whatever he planned to do, time for the police to arrive.
I didn’t expect my ploy to work. I expected him to shoot me.
He surprised me by answering, “Fletcher was there the night Cassidy died. I don’t know what he saw. I actually don’t think the sneaky jerk saw anything. I was careful. But ever since that night, he’s been following me around, watching me. It’s creepy.”
“Why kill Cassidy anyhow?” I asked. “Was it because he threatened to tell everyone that you’ve been stealing the island’s turtle eggs?”
Bailey grunted. “I didn’t realize Cassidy would sit out on that porch of his and watch. If I’d known…”
“Cassidy would still be alive.” I finished for him. “And Jody wouldn’t be in jail. How did you know she’d pick up your gun?”
“I didn’t. It was simply a stroke of good luck that she did. I waited until she came to shoot out my porch lights. And then I made my move. I figured just finding the gun in her vicinity would be enough to implicate her for his murder. She had the motive, the opportunity, and gun residue all over her hands from firing her own gun.” He sounded proud of his accomplishment.
“You would have gotten away with it if I hadn’t meddled,” I said speaking quickly in an attempt to keep him talking for as long as possible. Harley must have called the police by now. “Is that why you started to steal my chocolate turtles, to try and distract me from asking too many questions about Cassidy’s murder? Or were you
stealing them to sell on that gourmet website of yours?”
“You’d think I’d sell a diluted version of the Amar chocolates? I should shoot you right now for even thinking that. I have a reputation to maintain. I stole them hoping I could keep you busy. I had to keep you from spending too much time helping that weird friend of yours figure out what happened to the sea turtle eggs.”
“Weird friend?” Sure, I thought she was weird, but it rankled to hear him say it. “She’s the best thing that could have happened to your life. She’s a treasure. But you didn’t take the time to see that, did you? You didn’t want to date her. You were only interested in keeping tabs on what she was doing.” And I’d stupidly helped him. “Am I right?”
“A treasure? That weirdo?” He snorted. “She’s so not my type.”
A terrifying sound ripped through the air. I nearly dropped Bertie’s gun as a woman dressed all in black, yelling like an Amazon warrior, jumped off the sandy cliff, sailed over my head, and sent a spray of sand in the air as her feet hit the ground a few feet to my left. She’d landed in a crouched position, which made her look like a comic book heroine. She had a gun in one hand and her phone in the other. And she looked angry enough to rip Bailey’s head off his shoulders with her bare hands.
“Althea?” My eyes must have been playing tricks on me. Because my former best friend wore long silky skirts, she invited ghosts to tea, she didn’t leap around like she was freaking Avenging Althea.
“Drop your gun or I will shoot!” she shouted not more than a heartbeat after she’d landed in the sand.
Harley used Althea’s distraction to grab Bailey from behind. He grabbed the killer’s gun arm and pushed it into the air just as it fired. With a shout—I don’t know which man shouted—Harley tossed Bailey to the ground. Bailey might have been small, but he was by no means a weakling. The two men wrestled in the sand. The gun went off. Twice.
I screamed. Twice.
And then silence.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
In Cold Chocolate Page 26
