The Haunted Beach (Tropical Breeze Cozy Mystery Book 4) (7 page)

“Settle down, Ed,” Taylor said, putting her hand on his arm. “I know that sound. It’s Bastet. She jumped down from something and ran across the floor.”

“She’s upstairs in the bedroom?” Ed said excitedly. “Well then, we have to go up there.”

“Is she like Lassie?” Ben asked from the living room. “She lets you know when little Timmy is in trouble, and you go running? More likely she’s just chasing a lizard around up there.”

“She may have found your wife asleep in the bed,” Taylor said. “We’re going up. Are you coming?”

Making a big drama out of it, Ben pulled himself up off the sofa and stood. “Okay, you two. I’m coming up, but only to see if she’s there. If not, I’m going home. Odds are she’s already back in our house, sleeping.”

“If she is, will you call us and let us know?” Taylor said. She took out a business card from Orphans of the Storm and handed it to him. “That’s my cell phone number.”

“Well,” Ben said, getting smarmy. “That’s the first time a pretty blond has given me her phone number in thirty years.”

Taylor gave him a flat stare and said, “I’m guessing more like forty. Lead the way, Ed.”

“Do you believe that guy?” Taylor said after Ben had left. Dolores was not in the house. “Hitting on me while his wife is missing!”

“People react to stress in different ways,” Ed said vaguely. He had never been on the third floor of Frieda’s house before, and as downstairs, they had not turned on any lights. The motion-sensor night lights were all around this floor, too. It was disconcerting to have their pathway suddenly lit for them, as if a friendly hand was waving them forward, but it was also very handy.

Now that Ben was gone, Ed asked, “Why did you decide to bring Bastet?”

“I didn’t. Like I said, she insisted.”

“Excellent.” He had brought his equipment bag up with him and now he set it on a small table and got a little box-like device out of it. He did a sweep with it, frowned, gave it a gentle smack, then did another sweep before turning it off and throwing it back into the bag.

“Nothing on the EMF meter,” he commented. “As usual. Damn thing.”

She had walked all around the third floor suite, interested in a nosy way, looking at the wheelchair-accessible master bathroom and small alcove that served as an office.

“Nice,” she said, looking out the glass door to the balcony outside the alcove. In the main room there were sliding doors leading to a main balcony looking east. This little one looked south. “She could sit here at her desk, open that door and feel the sea breeze. If my office had a view like this, I’d never get any work done. I’d just put my feet up and look out the window all day. Well, obviously nothing is out of place,” she said, looking at Frieda’s vanity and the shapely bottles arranged on an oval, mirrored tray.

With a shrug, she gave up the inspection tour, sat down heavily on an upholstered chair and said, “So what do we do now?”

“I’ll continue to take readings,” he told her while writing something into a notebook. “Then we observe. Use all your senses. Do you smell anything?”

She frowned at him. “Like what?”

“Anything. Perfume? Food? Cigarette smoke?”

She sniffed. “No.”

“What’s Bastet doing?”

Taylor looked at the bed. “Washing her face.”

“Well, let me know if she gives you any signs.” He was digging in his bag again, and came out with a strange-looking camera.

Taylor gasped, and he stopped and looked at her. She got up and walked across the room with a dazed look on her face, drawn to the portrait.

“It’s her,” Taylor whispered.

“Yes,” Ed replied, setting his camera down for a moment. “That’s a portrait of Frieda as a debutante. The twins told me about it. It seems to frighten them. It was fashionable back in the day for young ladies to be costumed that way for portraits. I’ve seen quite charming ones of girls posed as the Three Graces. Wearing togas, of course. Not nude, like the sculptures.” He cleared his throat, uncomfortable at where he’d wandered. Then he refocused on the huge portrait. “Her face is so hard, though. Not evocative of grace and beauty.”

Taylor didn’t reply, and Ed walked across the bedroom and stood beside her.

“It’s her,” she repeated, this time with a note of defeat in her voice. “The woman in my dream. Even the gold sandals.”

Ed could barely control himself. “You’re sure?” Quickly, he went back to his bag and got the EMF meter out again.

“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 coming?”

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.