The Haunted Beach (Tropical Breeze Cozy Mystery Book 4) (8 page)

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.”

“Naturally. So is it your belief, Mr. Darby-Deaver,” he said, reading Edson’s last name from the book cover, “that the ghost of Frieda Strawbridge enticed Mrs. Brinker to her death?”

“I didn’t say that. No. I don’t know.”

“Who are these guys?” Taylor said, straggling into the room still wearing the rumpled clothing she’d had on the night before.

The detectives stood up and Edson popped out of his chair.

“Oh, Taylor, something awful has happened,” Ed said, crossing the living room to her.

“Dolores is dead,” she guessed, but with a sad conviction.

“I’m afraid so. These men are police detectives. Detectives, this is Ms. Taylor Verone.”

Taylor came forward and shook their hands, searching their faces.

“And are you a paranormal investigator too?” Bruno asked.

Taylor turned and gave Ed a scathing look. Then she looked back to the detectives, opened her mouth, shrugged her shoulders, closed her mouth and gave up. Bastet came in and walked majestically by, then waited by the back door, staring at Taylor.

“Will you excuse me for a moment?” she said, “I have to walk my cat. Ed, could you get me some coffee? I’ll be right back. Maybe you could find a water bowl for Bastet, too. Maybe a can of tuna?”

When the door slammed behind her, Bruno turned to Ed. “Friend of yours? Does she live with you?”

“No, she lives in Cadbury House, down in Tropical Breeze. She’s just visiting. She’s a friend. Not a
girl
friend, you understand. She runs an animal shelter on the old Cadbury estate on the river.”

“Oh,
that
one,” Bruno said. “I thought she looked familiar. She has adoption events around town. So what’s she doing in the middle of all this?”

“She’s just here with her cat.”

Suddenly it seemed to strike Ed that there was nowhere to go with this that wouldn’t make things worse. He stopped himself with a visible effort. “I’ll just go get Taylor and let her speak for herself, shall I?” He disappeared like a rabbit going down a hole.

Left alone, the detectives looked at one another. Then Carver looked down at his notes.

“Well, what do you think? Harmless crank?”

Bruno sat back and thought it over. “Maybe. Let’s see what the pretty lady has to say. If she tries to tell us she has a magic cat, I think we can put them down as local color and concentrate on the husband. These two – and their cat – are probably just fluffer-nutters who stumbled into something and made a fairy tale out of it.”

At that moment Ed came bursting through the back door again. “Detective Bruno – Detective Bruno!” He stopped and stared at Carver. “I’m sorry, I’ve forgotten your name.”

The way Ed had exploded into the house had brought both detectives up out of their chairs.

“Is something wrong, Mr. Deaver?” Bruno asked.

“Yes! There’s another one! Mrs. Peavey is missing.”

“Who’s Mrs. Peavey?”

“Another neighbor. Another lady of Santorini. Her husband Parker is out back, and he says when he got up this morning, Peggy wasn’t there. Her car is still in the garage, but he can’t find her.”

“Did you tell him about Mrs. Brinker?”

“No. He was so upset already I . . . I couldn’t. He’d have thought . . . .”

The detectives collected themselves, their notes and Ed’s books, and started for the front door when Ed stopped them.

“No, go out the back here. Everybody in the whole neighborhood is out in the front driveway. Parker came out when he saw Taylor in the back yard, and he’s still there with her.”

Just before leaving, Bruno turned and said, “We’ll be back for the camera later. You’ll be here?”

Ed assured them that he would. Consumed as he was by curiosity about this new mystery, Ed decided to go out his front door, not the back, and see what his other neighbors were saying.

As he was stepping outside, it occurred to him that he’d forgotten to autograph the books he’d given the detectives, but he decided this wasn’t the time to mention it.