The Haunted Beach (Tropical Breeze Cozy Mystery Book 4) (9 page)

At the exact moment Ed set foot into the Florida sunshine and squinted to the east, Teddy Force, that ghost-hunting cavalier, was in a vacation condo in Isle of Palms, South Carolina, snoring. He was not snoring as loudly as the bulldog that lay beside him breathing hot, smelly breath against the back of his neck.

In the dining room of the same condo, Teddy’s fiancé Lily Parsons was nibbling at toast, taking tiny sips of orange juice, and frowning at her laptop computer. She’d set it up on the pass-through to the kitchen, and had perched herself lightly on a tall stool, looking like a pixie on a mushroom cap. She blinked, moved her face closer to the monitor with a catlike motion, then sat back and stared at the mermaid cookie jar in the kitchen. Her shapely eyebrows drew together and she looped her honey-brown hair behind her right ear.

Then she said, “Huh!”

She read the e-mail one more time, then decided to print it out. Teddy needed to see this.

As Teddy Force’s production assistant and significant other, Lily needed all her pluck to put up with the handsome prima donna she loved. But as she approached the bed and saw two of the three stars of
Haunt or Hoax?
artlessly draped across it, her gentle heart melted.

Then she whacked Teddy’s foot, which was sticking out from under the sheet.

“Get up, Tedders,” she said. “Something interesting came in through the website that you need to see.”

Both man and dog awoke with a lot of spluttering, confusion and sloppy noises, and while Porter flopped his tongue out and drooled on the sheets, his master wiped his own drool from his face with the back of his hand and said, “Hmmpfh?”

“You awake now?” Lily said brightly.

Teddy glared at her with gorgeous, misty-green eyes, glazed now with the dew of sleepiness. He sure is a hunk, Lily thought, brushing his tumbled black hair out of his face, but his ego being what it was, she didn’t mention it.

“Fan mail from a viewer,” she said, waving the print-out in front of his face.

He blinked, stared at her with disapproval, scooted himself into a semi-reclining position and said, “Read it to me,” in a husky voice.

“Sure. It’s from two sisters – twins, they say – Rosie and Poppy. They’re from St. Augustine, Florida.”

“Oh. Ed.”

“You’re so bright in the morning,” Lily said, giving him a little kiss on the tip of his nose and making it itch. “Listen to this: ‘Dear Mr. Teddy Force: We are your biggest fan.’ Yadda yadda, you know the drill, the usual fanzilla stuff –“

“Read it.”

“No. Let’s get to the meat of it. Here we are: ‘We are very worried about your friend and co-star, Edson Darby-Deaver. We do his house for him, and here’s the thing: Frieda’s back. As you know, she is dead.’”

“Frieda who?”

“You
know. That one Ed kept interviewing with the cat-lady to find out more about what was going on at Cadbury House last year. She was pretty old, and according to our twins here, she’s dead now, but she’s haunting her own daughter, Dolores. As near as I can figure, this is right down the block from Ed. They’re his neighbors.”

“Seriously? Give me that.” He began to read, but after only a few seconds he looked over the top of the paper and said, “Coffee, woman.”

“You got it. Do not go back to sleep while I’m out of the room.”

Teddy did not go back to sleep. By the time she got back he was standing beside the bed in his underwear, reading the e-mail and scratching his stomach. Porter was sitting on the edge of the bed looking up at him adoringly and panting. Teddy had just finished his second reading of the e-mail.

He took the coffee from her and said, “Get packed. We’re going to St. Augustine.”

“With the crew? Is this a show?”

He hesitated. “Let’s get there first and see if this is something we can use. We can send for Wyatt and Elliott if we need them. You know Ed. He may pitch a hissy and refuse to work with us.”

“Do I let him know we’re coming?”

Teddy thought about it. “No. Let’s just pop in and say hi. See what’s going on.”

“Are we bringing the beast?” she said, looking at Porter, who wiggled his stub of a tail. Teddy didn’t like her nickname for his dog, but Porter did.

“Yes.”

“Then we’d better drive. I’m not trying to get him on an airplane again anytime soon.”

“You know I love a road trip.”

“So does the beast. I’d better give him one of his calm-doggie pills with his breakfast. I may take one myself,” she added, watching Porter’s eyes grow wide, looking from her to Teddy and back again. He was already getting excited. Maybe the dog was psychic after all, Lily mused. He always seems to know what we’re thinking.

“What’s for breakfast?” Teddy said as he wandered around the room looking for clothes. He picked up a tee shirt from the top of the dresser.

“That’s mine,” she told him.

He put it down and rubbed his eyes.

“Breakfast you say? Have whatever you want. I already ate. And showered and dressed, in case you didn’t notice. Now I’m going to take Porter out to potty, and then I’m going to pack.”

“Make sure you pack my
H-or-H
jumpsuit in case we do some filming. The sleeveless one. It’s gonna be hot down there.” He walked out of the room in his underwear.

“And you’ve been working on your biceps,” she mumbled.

She gazed at Porter, who looked back adoringly. “His momma didn’t raise him right,” she said. “One of these days I’m going to go all feminist on his ass, and he’s going to learn how to pack his own suitcase.”

“I heard that,” he called from the kitchen.

“Listen and learn,” she called back.

Porter jumped down, gave Lily’s ankle a lick and trotted out of the room, hoping good things were about to fall off the kitchen counter.

“Does your wife often go for an early morning walk on the beach?” Detective Bruno asked.

Parker Peavey was pop-eyed.
“Never!
When she wasn’t beside me in bed this morning, I figured she was in her office, working, and I just went and got myself some breakfast. She does that. Goes in and works on her books in the middle of the night. She gets ideas, and she has to go write them down or they’re gone. I do the same thing, but she does it more often. I never worry if I wake up in the night and she’s not there.”

“And this morning . . . ?”

“At first I didn’t think anything of it, but after a while I realized I wasn’t hearing her in there. Usually she comes out and says good morning when she gets to a good point to take a break. I went to look and she wasn’t there. She wasn’t anywhere. I don’t know where she is.”

Parker had ushered them into his house through the back door. Once inside, he had drifted to the breakfast bar and since then he had been talking continuously, tightly grasping a coffee cup and staring at the refrigerator. He took a sudden loud slurp from the cup and stared at them with his mustache dripping. The detectives had followed him to the counter and stood beside him, Bruno placidly gazing and Carver writing.

“What kind of work does she do, Mr. Peavey?”

“She’s a writer. Like me. We’re novelists, but in different genres. Her office is the front room on the east side. Want to see?”

“If you don’t mind.”

He led them to the prim little room with rose-colored walls, fresh white plantation shutters and a rose-toned oriental carpet. The furniture was painted white, with an orderly desk bearing stacks of paper arranged around a computer. As Parker went around the room opening the shutters, Detective Bruno went to the desk and gazed down at a paper headed, “Dramatis Personae.” Below it were listed improbable names with titles and extra vowels fore and aft, and minute descriptions of her characters right down to moles and freckles.

“She writes Regency romances,” Philip said.

“Anything unusual been going on in your lives lately?” Bruno asked.

“Unusual how?”

“Any bad news from her family? Kids okay? Have you been getting along?”

“Of course we’ve been getting along,” he said testily. “We always get along. And we don’t have any kids. Our families are just fine.”

“So nothing unusual is happening in your lives. She just walked out in the middle of the night and didn’t come back. Did you happen to notice what time it was when she got out of bed?”

He thought hard, then shook his head. “Some time in middle of the night. I woke up about three o’clock and she was gone, but I didn’t think anything of it. She’s always getting up to write something down, or just go into the office and work. She tries not to wake me.”

“Does she have any friends she confides in, or sometimes goes to stay with?”

“Are you implying that my wife has left me?”

“I’m just trying to work out the possibilities, Mr. Peavey. We have to look at it from every angle.”

“Of course, of course,” he ran his hands through his wild hair and tried to concentrate. “Look, she might have gone down to check on one of the neighbors. She’s very fond of Dolores. Mrs. Dolores Brinker. She lives in the big house at the end of the block. There’s a big age difference, but it never seemed to matter. Dolores is interesting. She’s had a very different life – a very privileged life. She’s a Strawbridge, you know. I never thought about it before, but I suppose Dolores is kind of like my wife’s fictional heroines. The pawn of a domineering mother, who defied her mother and married the man she loved. I suppose if Peggy is with anybody, it’s Dolores. The only other ladies in the neighborhood are Willa Garden and Claire something. Willa doesn’t seem to be particularly close to anybody, and Claire hasn’t lived here long enough for anybody to get to know her. Peggy wouldn’t be with either one of them, especially not in the middle of the night.”

He stopped suddenly, as if he’d just come up against a barrier.

“Anything else?” Bruno prodded gently.

“I’m not sure I should tell you.”

“If it would help us find your wife . . . .”

“I don’t think it will, but I may as well go ahead, or you’ll think I’m hiding something. Dolores Brinker has been having . . . problems lately. She thinks her mother’s ghost is haunting her. If you want the full story, you’ll have to go to Information Central – the cleaning ladies.
That’s it!
Dolores has been going out on the beach at night, thinking her mother is there. Peggy must have gone down there to check on her. I bet she’s at the Brinker house right now, putting Dolores to bed or something.”

He was halfway to the front door, running, when Detective Bruno called him back.

“She’s not there. Please come back and sit down, Mr. Peavey.”

Parker came slowly back and sat in the pretty little white-painted desk chair, looking wary.

“How do you know she’s not there?” he asked. “And how did you get here so fast? Even if Ed called right after I told him –“ He stopped, as it began to dawn on him. “What happened?”

“I’m sorry to have to tell you that Mrs. Brinker drowned last night. Do you think your wife might have been with her?”

With that Parker lost the little composure he had, and wasn’t able to answer any more questions. Unable to restrain him anymore, the detectives gave up and went outside with him, where he ran ahead of them down to his neighbors in front of the walkover.

A St. Augustine Beach patrolman was at the end of the walkover looking as if he didn’t know whether to guard, comfort, separate them or tell them all to go home. His assignment had been to keep the homeowners of Santorini off the beach. He remained silent as the neighbors and the police detectives came together. Since there was only one patrol car and one unmarked car in the drive, the rest of the response team had to be out on the beach.

“Have you seen her?” Parker asked desperately as he ran up to Rod Johnson, Willa Garden and Edson Darby-Deaver.

“Sorry, Parker,” Ed said. “Peggy isn’t here – not in the Brinker house and not in Frieda’s house. Not in anybody’s house. We checked, and the cop here communicated with the guys on the beach. They’re looking now, but there’s still no sign of her.”

Parker began to dissolve in the driveway, and Willa, whose house was closest, said, “Let’s get him inside.”

Rod and Ed took Parker by the arms and guided him up the driveway.

Over his shoulder Ed said, “I haven’t forgotten about that camera, Officer. But as you can see –“

“Just take care of your friend,” Bruno said. “I’ll be around.”

“What camera?” Parker asked.

Ed got a wild look on his face and rolled his eyes. Then he muttered, “It’s complicated.”

Ed had been in Willa Garden’s house before, but not on a regular basis. Like Claire Ford’s house directly across the street, the main floor was the second floor, where there was a view of the ocean over the dune. They went in a side door and came up the stairs into the kitchen.

There was something charmingly old-fashioned about Willa’s house. The kitchen phone was an old wall model. She had a cell phone, Ed knew, but she used it so seldom the battery was always dead.

They sat down at a round table beyond the kitchen, and once the men were seated, Willa went into the kitchen and got her drip coffeemaker going.

Ed noticed her looking their way, then glancing beyond them. When he turned for a look he realized he could see straight through the balcony doors into Claire Ford’s living room.

“Who found Dolores?” Parker asked. “Daniel? He’s always running on the beach.”

“As a matter of fact, it was Claire,” Willa told him, setting up cups and saucers. “She said she couldn’t sleep and decided to go out and watch the sunrise. Dolores was a block south, lying close to the water.”

“When Dan came out for his morning run, he heard Claire screaming,” Rod said, picking up the narrative. “He called 911. Claire hadn’t brought her cell phone.” He looked through the balcony doors and added, “He took her inside her house to settle her down. I think he’s still over there.”

“He is,” Willa said without looking.

“She must have been in a terrible state,” Parker said. He accepted a cup of coffee and thanked Willa.

She set a basket of muffins on the table before she sat down, but nobody wanted to eat.

Nobody seemed to know what to say. Ed glanced uneasily at Willa, and Rod glanced across the street again. With the morning sun shining directly into Claire’s house, the room was plainly visible, but nobody was in it.

Suddenly, Parker stood up and said, “Omigod! What about Ben?”

“He’s okay,” Ed told him. “I was with him all night, looking for Dolores. When we finally gave up, I waited with him, hoping she’d come home on her own.”

“Why didn’t he call the police?” Parker asked.

Ed sipped his coffee, put the cup down in the saucer and stared into it. “Good question.”

Ed had forgotten all about Taylor, and was surprised to see her SUV still in his driveway when he came outside again. The solitary patrolman was still at the walkover, but he was sitting on the third step now. Willa had stopped Ed as he was leaving and given him a cold bottle of water to take down to him. The cop was so appreciative Ed wished he’d thought of it himself. He was careful to say it was from the lady in that house over there.

When Ed got home, Taylor and the two detectives were sitting in the breakfast nook. She threw a desperate look at him, and he said, “Just a minute,” as he dodged into his office and brought out the camera.

“It’s very expensive,” he said, handing it over. “Infrared.”

“Infrared?” Bruno looked at his partner with dismay. Infrared images taken at a distance were going to be useless. “Find a lot of ghosts with heat signatures, do you?”

Ed shrugged. “So much is unknown. We use every tool we have. Ordinary cameras don’t catch anything in the dark at all, and most of our investigations are conducted in the dark.”

“Naturally,” Bruno said without a trace of irony. He set the camera next to himself on the table. “Don’t worry. We’ll take good care of it.”

“When will I get it back?”

“As soon as possible.” Which wasn’t really an answer, but Ed had to be satisfied with it. He accepted a receipt and stared at it dismally before putting it on the kitchen counter.

“Ms. Verone, here, has been telling us all about you,” Carver said with a tiny smile.

“She has?” He stared hard at Taylor, trying to guess what she’d been telling them, but she just looked back at him blandly.

When the detectives stood up and started taking their leave, Ed nearly fainted with relief.

He escorted them to the door, suddenly bubbling over with bonhomie. When he closed the door behind them, he locked it. As he walked back toward Taylor, he said, “Just exactly what did you tell them about me?”

She wasn’t listening. Bastet suddenly appeared on the back of a sofa he was passing, and he shied away in surprise. Taylor gazed at the cat pensively.

“I’ll have to give you some cat lessons,” she said. “She wants to stay.”

Ed stood rigidly in place and slid his eyes from the cat to the woman and back again. “She told you that?”

“I just know.” Taylor stood up. “She’s all right for now. I found some tuna in your pantry. She ate it. I’ll be back later with everything you need. For now, it’ll be all right if we just leave her here.”

“How do you know? Did you have a dream? Will I have dreams? Why does she want to stay? Does she like me?” Suddenly he stopped and blinked. “Are we going somewhere?”

She was already walking past him to the front door.

“We’re going down the block to see how Ben is doing.” She turned suddenly and looked him in the eye. “And I want to see those paintings.”