The Haunted Beach (Tropical Breeze Cozy Mystery Book 4) (15 page)

“You’ll do no such thing. You’ve been a big help to me, and now that we’ve got her decently to rest, there’s no reason for you to put this off. Go ahead and be happy, Willa. I’ll stay here and console Ed.”

“Oh, don’t be silly. Ed’s just a friend.”

“He’d have been more if he could have figured out how. I think he’s going to take this hard, but all’s fair in love and war. He was here long before this Rod fella came along. He had his chance. Willa Garden, femme fatale. Who’da thunk it?”

She smiled. It was a genuine, all-over-her-face smile, and it was as strange as it was wonderful. At first she had distrusted this new happiness, but with Ben’s blessing, she got past the last barrier and let herself go.

By Saturday morning, Ed was becoming resigned about his houseguests.

On the one hand, they had been using his house as a bed-and-breakfast for a week and a half now. Porter had trampled through Ed’s butterfly garden after a squirrel and then run into the house full of mud and scattering lantana clusters everywhere. Even worse, it looked like they were about to shoot an episode of the reality show. Purity’s haunted warehouse was shaping up into something they could work with. That meant that they’d be staying with him even longer, and Ed would have to get into his
Haunt or Hoax?
jumpsuit. It made him feel like a Trick-or-Treater, and the thought of having to include Purity on one of their shoots was giving Ed stomach pains.

On the other hand, the twins had gotten into the habit of delivering freshly-baked goodies almost daily, and they turned out to be magnificent pastry chefs. Ed, whose interest in food hadn’t gone beyond the realization that without it, you die, found himself looking forward to their visits. But there was no doubt in his mind that the goodies were for Teddy, and once he left, the twins were going to be showing up with cleaning supplies only, just once a week. Ed got up each morning wondering what they’d baked. In fact, by the weekend, he’d gotten into the habit of watching for them from his office window.

That morning, Lily knocked on his office door early. He recognized her demure little pattern of four knocks, so he called for her to come in.

“We haven’t talked in a while, have we?” she said, taking a seat on the other side of the desk. Ed had opened the windows, and there was a gentle breeze coming in. Outside, the cardinals were whistling to one another and a woodpecker was banging on a tree. Ed hadn’t felt so peaceful since the day the twins had told him about Frieda’s ghost.

“No, our schedules don’t coincide,” he said. “Are you leaving?”

Smiling wryly, she said, “No such luck. And our schedules are only out of sync because you make sure you’re up before us and go to bed before we get back at night. I’m sorry I haven’t been much help to you. I thought I would be, but you turned out to be right about Purity.”

“You have to watch Teddy every second, don’t you?”

“In this case, he’s the table leg in your analogy. I have to make sure
Purity
doesn’t suddenly go after
him
. It hasn’t been easy. She’s a tricky little bit.” At the last second she left the “ch” off.

Ed sighed. “I’m not sure I’m making any progress anyway. I’ve pretty much gotten to the point of putting the file away into my archives in the “Unsolved” section and hoping for something else to come to light in the future. It’s so frustrating! I keep thinking the other shoe is about to drop, but it doesn’t.”

“Well, what I wanted to tell you is, we’re definitely going ahead with the Spuds shoot. Teddy’s already sent for Wyatt and Elliott.”

Wyatt Wayne and Elliott Billington were Teddy’s videographer and soundman for
Haunt or Hoax?
Though the show was successful, they had decided on keeping a skeleton crew. “Lean and mean and ready to rock,” is how Teddy put it. “The cheaper the better,” is how his producer-father put it.

Ed stirred and frowned, but he could hardly say he was too busy. “All right. When are we shooting? And what’s it all about?”

“Don’t worry about it. You can just wing it. We shoot on Monday, so you’ve got two whole days to brace yourself.”

“I am not a ‘wing it’ kind of investigator,” he said. “You know that. I need information.”

She sighed. “It’s the old farmer’s-daughter-and-traveling-salesman soap opera thing. I’m surprised Purity couldn’t come up with something more original, but there it is.”

“You sound skeptical. Is the haunting real?”

She gave him a look. “Porter thinks it’s real. At least, that’s what Teddy says.”

“And Porter is now the brains of the outfit, apparently.”

Lily gave him a wan little smile. Then they both turned at the sound of a car coming through the gate and pulling into Ed’s driveway.

“Right on time, as usual.”

“I wonder what they’ve baked today,” he said, already standing up.

By the time they got out of the office, the twins were coming in the front door with a covered plate, Ed’s copy of
The Record
, and shocking news.

“Mr. D-D, you were just too slow,” Rosie said, setting a plate on the breakfast bar and whipping off a homespun red-and-white checkered cloth to reveal carefully arranged apricot Danish. The perfume of fresh-baked pastry wafted across the kitchen. “She went ahead and ran away with another man. We just saw Mr. Ryder across the street getting his morning paper, and he told us. She finally went and did it.”

Focused on the sweet rolls, Ed said, “Who did what?”

“Willa Garden,” Poppy said. “She eloped! They’re off to Las Vegas. Probably gonna get married by Liberace. Bless her heart, I hope she’ll be happy. He’s kinda dull.”

“So is she,” Rosie pointed out.

“What are you talking about?” Ed said, forgetting the Danish.

“Miss Willa,” Rosie said. “I was just kidding about the too-slow thing. If you’da wanted her, you would have made your move by now, right, Mr. D-D?” She gave him a grin that seemed forced, and the twins glanced at one another sheepishly when he didn’t respond.

Lily came in and asked what was going on, and as the twins told her, Ed stood still, as if he’d seen the basilisk.

“Well,” Lily said, shooting a worried glance at Ed. “Isn’t that nice? I guess it’s never too late.”

Ed turned around and walked slowly back to his office with Bastet at his heels. In the kitchen, the women heard him quietly close the door.

It wasn’t even an hour later when he came out again, looking stricken.

“It’s his own fault,” Rosie whispered as Poppy and Lily shushed her. Teddy wasn’t up yet. “He should have made his move years ago.”

Ed came into the kitchen and gazed at them silently.

“Don’t take it so hard,” Lily said. “Here, have a sweet roll. I’ll get you some coffee.”

He looked at her without comprehension, then said, “The police are next door. I just saw an unmarked car pull up, and Detective Bruno and his partner came out and went up to Parker’s door.”

“You think they’re arresting him?” Poppy blurted.

“No,” he said, removing his glasses to rub his eyes. “I’m no expert in body language, but it didn’t look like it. Also, they would’ve brought uniformed back-up, I think. No. It’s something else, I’m afraid. I think they may have found Peggy.”

It was a couple of tense hours before they knew that Ed had been right. Finally, Detective Bruno came to the door to ask Ed to go stay with Parker a while; he had identified the body, and was shaken.

“Here, bring him something to eat,” Rosie said, looking for something to put a few sweet rolls on.

“I don’t think he’s going to be hungry,” Ed said. Then he paused and gave Rosie a warm little smile. “You’re very kind, you and your sister. Very kind.”

The unexpected show of warmth from a man they had always considered a kind of robot left the twins nearly weeping.

But Lily had been working closely with Edson Darby-Deaver for months now, and she was touched, but not surprised.

The detectives had left their cards on the table in the breakfast nook, and Ed found Parker there, staring at them blankly.

When he noticed Ed, Parker looked up with a distant expression. “Have you heard?” he asked. “Willa and Rod eloped. Hell of a thing.”

Ed was startled, but ready to let Parker talk. “I know.” He sat down.

“Funny,” Parker said. “I always kind of hoped – I mean I kind of thought – you and Willa . . . .”

“Seems like everybody did. Everybody except me and Willa. Everybody except Willa. Parker – what happened? To Peggy?”

“She’s dead,” he said shortly.

Ed waited, but he didn’t go on. Strange that a man who made his living by expressing himself in words couldn’t find words for what was most important right now. Or maybe not strange, Ed thought. Writers immersed themselves in their stories. They lived them. This was a story too painful for immersion; Parker couldn’t handle it, so he wanted to talk about something else.

“Do they think it happened the same night as Dolores?”

Parker silently nodded. “She looked bad,” he said shortly.

“I see. So it was an accident.”

“No. No accident. She was strangled.”

For the next ten minutes, neither man spoke.

They were on again, Detective Bruno thought. Back at the police station, he and his partner gathered their notes on Dolores Brinker’s death, conferred on strategy, and decided to do something they hadn’t bothered to do when the drowning had been ruled an accident: interview the cleaning ladies.

In their condo at The Sand Castle complex, the twins sat the two detectives down, chattered nonstop so neither man could get a word in, gave them coffee and fresh apricot Danish they hadn’t asked for (but appreciated), and sat down across the table from them. Since this was official police business, the twins had put their nametags on.

Rosie proceeded to hijack the investigation. “Well, we all know it was The Mister,” she said levelly. “The problem is how to prove it.”

“’The Mister?’”

“Mr. Brinker,” Rosie said. “I do think he loved her, but with the state she was in, he probably thought she’d be better off. Do you get time off if it was a mercy killing?”

Bruno ignored the question. “What makes you think Mr. Brinker killed his wife? And why would he kill Mrs. Peavey too?”

“Oh, because she was a witness,” Rosie said airily. “That’s obvious. The real question is, why did he kill his wife?”

“I don’t think he did,” Poppy said. “He was so worried, and he was with Mr. D-D all night on the beach, so he couldn’t have done it.”

“Well, that shoots that,” Rosie said. “So let’s see. It wasn’t Mr. Renter – Rod Johnson – he just ran away to get married. He had other fish to fry.”

The detectives looked startled, but Poppy didn’t give them a chance to speak.

“It mighta been,” she said. “Maybe he wanted to marry Miss Willa, and she wasn’t interest, and he went out on the beach and killed Dolores thinking she was Willa. You know, in a rage. Willa and Dolores look pretty much alike, especially in the dark. Then he had to kill Mrs. P too, because she was there. I saw this show on TV the other day where –“

“Why do you think Mrs. Peavey was there?” Bruno asked quickly. “Why would she go to the beach at that time of night?”

That stumped the twins, and before they could start spinning wild theories again, Bruno asked them to describe life as they saw it in the Brinker household in the weeks leading up to Dolores’s death. They got the same story Edson Darby-Deaver had gotten nearly three weeks before.

When Bruno was satisfied, he asked, “Now, what’s this about Rod Johnson getting married?”

“He ran away with Willa Garden this morning,” Rosie said. “They eloped to Las Vegas. Like a couple of kids.”

“Did you know they were involved with one another?”

“Yes, I think we did,” Rosie said, exchanging a glance with Poppy. “We’ve been observing.”

“How long had it been going on?”

“Oh, I think he was always kind of interested. But in the last couple of weeks, they’ve gotten closer. Tragedy does that, you know. You begin to realize that life is short and all that.”

“Can you think of another reason anybody would have wanted to harm either Mrs. Brinker or Mrs. Peavey?”

The twins visualized up and down the block, considering each resident of Santorini. “Well, it wasn’t Mr. Ryder,” Poppy said.

“Why not?”

“He’s not the type. Besides, other than saying hello and good-bye, he doesn’t have much to do with the neighbors. He’s a very private man. It wasn’t like he was having an affair with Mrs. P or anything.”

“You’re sure about that?”

The twins laughed. “Certain sure. If he was looking for romance, he wouldn’t be looking at Mrs. P. Have you seen Claire Ford?” Rosie asked, wiggling her eyebrows suggestively.

“She’s attractive,” Detective Bruno said. “But she’s only been living in the neighborhood a little while. Maybe Ryder got interested in Mrs. Peavey before he ever met Ms. Ford. After all, Ryder seems to be pretty much the type of man her book’s heroes are modeled on – strong, silent, good-looking, sort of macho.”

The twins looked startled. It was obviously a new idea to them. They looked at one another, then simultaneously said, “Nah.”

“Although,” Rosie said. She abruptly stopped.

“What?” Poppy asked her.

“We’ve all been thinking The Missus drowned, and Mrs. P died trying to save her. Or maybe somebody killed The Missus and had to kill Mrs. P too, because she was a witness. But maybe it was the other way around. Maybe somebody killed Mrs. P, and The Missus was a witness. Which one died first?” she asked Bruno.

“There’s no way to tell. The ME thinks they both died the same night, and since they both disappeared the same night, we’re working at it from that angle, but with the time Mrs. Peavey had been in the water, there’s really no way to tell now.”