Dune to Death

by Mary Daheim

  Judith stood up and hurried over to Renie. “Poor thing,” she murmured, patting Renie’s shoulder. “I’ll take her in the bedroom and start the procedure. Don’t worry, Terrence, I’ll be back in an hour or so.”

  Alarmed at Renie’s labored breathing, Terrence had scooted to the far end of the sofa. “Wowee, that was sudden! Can I help?”

  “No, no,” Judith asserted, hoisting a now limp Renie to her feet. “I’m used to it. Just make yourself comfortable. As I said, I’ll probably finish up before bedtime.”

  Terrence finally took his cue. “I hate to abandon you two,” he called to the cousins as they disappeared into the hall, “but maybe I ought to run along.”

  “Not on our account,” Judith shouted back. “Feel free to browse through those missionary magazines in the rack there.”

  But Terrence decided it was time to go home. Bidding the cousins farewell and good luck, he left. Judith dropped Renie on the bed in the guest room. Renie opened one eye and squinted up at her cousin.

  “Has he got to his scooter yet?”

  Judith was trying to look out the window. “Not yet. Give him a minute.” They waited in silence. At last, Judith saw the single headlight go on and heard the sound of the motor. “Okay, let’s hit the beach, coz. I feel like Uncle Corky at Anzio.”

  Two of the emergency vehicles were still parked on the sand facing each other, one the property of the sheriff, the other belonging to the police chief. Both still had their lights flashing, as if in competition. There was no sign of an ambulance, so apparently the body had been taken away. Despite the law enforcement personnel’s efforts to clear the area, small clusters of people lingered nearby. At least, Judith thought as she and Renie approached the boathouse, nobody was shooting off fireworks. Indeed, except for a crackling voice on a two-way radio, a sinister calm had settled over the beach.

  Josh Eldritch’s lanky form was easy to spot next to the woodpile outside the boathouse, conferring with one of his deputies. Judith assumed a deferential air and waited for a lull in the conversation.

  “Is it true?” she asked, crossing the last ten feet of sand to Eldritch. “We were just told that Titus Teacher has been murdered.”

  Eldritch gave the cousins a sour look. “News travels too fast in this damned town. Yeah, it’s true. Now be good to yourselves and head on back up the bluff.”

  Judith assumed an affronted expression. “Oh. I thought you’d want to know about us seeing Titus a few minutes before he was shot.” She started to turn, tugging at Renie’s arm to follow her lead. “Never mind, we’ll go talk to Neil Clooney.”

  “Hold it!” shouted the sheriff. “You saw Teacher tonight?”

  Judith and Renie dutifully backtracked. “He was putting some things in the carport. Or taking them away. Did you find his black van?”

  Eldritch looked blank. “What van?”

  At that moment, Neil Clooney strutted out from the boathouse. He saw the cousins talking to Eldritch. “Hey—we’re trying to keep people out of this area, you moron! How come you’re inviting the neighborhood in? Don’t you know how to conduct a homicide investigation?”

  “Better than you do, Clooney,” growled the sheriff. “These two have some vital information which they’re sharing with me. What were you doing in that boathouse, looking for your girlfriend’s buns?”

  Clooney rounded on Eldritch. “Keep Alice out of this, you baboon!” He had gotten quite red in the face and held his clenched fists at his sides. “I was making a thorough search, that’s what I was doing,” he went on in a slightly less heated tone. “All those numskulls who came charging in there after those kids found the body made quite a mess. If there were any clues, we’ll be lucky to find them.”

  “If there were any clues, you’d never find them,” retorted Eldritch. “You’re so out of date, you were probably looking for lipstick-smudged cigarette butts.”

  “The only butt around here is you, Eldritch,” the police chief snarled. Abruptly, he turned to the cousins, who had been watching the exchange with a mixture of impatience and fascination. “Okay, what have you got to tell us? Remember, we’re a team.”

  “They’re a scream, if you ask me,” Renie remarked under her breath.

  “What’d you say?” demanded Clooney.

  “I said this is like a bad dream.” Renie gave him her middle-aged ingenue’s smile.

  Mollified, Clooney waited for a serious answer. Judith repeated her account of seeing Titus Teacher in the carport, adding that it had been about five or ten minutes after eight at the time. He had driven away in a black van. “Alice Hoke saw him, too. She was at Pirate’s Lair. In fact, he was supposed to give her a ride home.”

  “Aha!” Neil Clooney jumped on the idea. “So Teacher was in such a hurry to meet his killer that he ran off without Alice!” He rubbed his hands together and gave the sheriff a sly look out of his porcine eyes. “Now we’re getting somewhere. At least I am.”

  Behind them, a couple of policemen and a pair of deputies were arguing over whose crime scene tape would go up around the boathouse. Obviously, the animosity between Clooney and Eldritch carried down through the ranks. The matter was settled when one of the deputies took a swing at one of the policemen, while the other two exchanged swift kicks. Both sets of tape were applied.

  Ignoring the commotion as if it were the norm, Eldritch fingered his long chin. “Teacher’s killer must have been waiting for him in the boathouse. Of course we’ll assume that whoever killed him, also murdered Leona Ogilvie.”

  “Assume!” cried Clooney. “Real homicide investigators never assume anything! It could be a copycat killing!”

  “Then why wasn’t Teacher strangled with a kite string, you fathead?”

  “Because there was no kite in the boathouse! If you’d move those lazy bones of yours and look around the place, you’d know that, you nincompoop!”

  Judith was beginning to feel that the cousins’ presence was superfluous. However, she decided to make one last attempt in the name of reason. And logic.

  “Wait—let me get something straight.” She had to pause for a moment until the jangling died down and the two law enforcement officials finally turned their attention back to her. “Somebody said they saw Titus Teacher go into the boathouse. But nobody saw anyone else go in. Or, apparently, come out. Is that true?”

  Clooney gave Judith a patronizing look. “Hey, don’t set any store by what all these people say. Half of ’em are tanked up on beer or spaced out on dope. Even if they weren’t, who’d notice much of anything with all the fireworks and bikes and stuff? Hell, there was even a volleyball game going on about twenty yards away.”

  Judith had to admit to herself that Clooney had a point. It was probably remarkable that Terrence O’Toole had found anyone who actually remembered seeing Titus enter the boathouse. Still, the police chief’s glib dismissal of her query bothered Judith a bit.

  “I don’t suppose,” said Judith, taking another tack, “you can fix the time of death exactly?”

  Eldritch took his turn at answering. “That’s always iffy. We won’t hear from the county coroner until some time tomorrow, probably.” He slapped his thigh. “Hey—tomorrow’s a Saturday! The county offices are closed.”

  “Of course,” murmured Renie. “You mean,” she asked in a louder voice, “your county officials aren’t on standby in case of an emergency?”

  Eldritch looked faintly sheepish. “It depends. How do you define ‘emergency’?”

  Renie gave up, swerving on her heel and shaking her head. Clooney interjected his own theory into the discussion. “Who needs a sawbones to figure out the time anyway? He can dig out the bullet and do all that ballistics-forensics stuff, but we—I—got it pinpointed.” He shot Eldritch a self-satisfied look.

  “Oh, yeah?” countered the sheriff. “So do I.” He glanced at Judith. “What did you say? Eight-fifteen? Eight-twenty, you saw Titus Teacher at the beach cottage?”

  Judith suppressed a little sigh.
“Between five and ten after eight. Let’s say Titus drove the van over to the motel. I have a feeling he got permission to park there and use their tram because of his bad leg. Unless, of course, the van is down by the road next to that big modern-looking house on the point. He could have walked from there. Either way, he would have been back to the boathouse in ten minutes, less if he took the tram. If you know what time the teenagers heard the shot, you can easily establish when Titus was killed. My guess is somewhere between eight-ten and eight-twenty.”

  Clooney was consulting his notes. “My God, she’s right! One of those kids said it was eight-sixteen when they saw the body through the window, according to his digital watch. He reads those stupid detective novels, and felt he ought to check the time.”

  Judith nodded in a faintly forbearing manner. “The next step is to find out who the dead man is. He seems to be a bit of a mystery, doesn’t he?”

  Clooney’s snoutlike nose wrinkled. “Mystery? He was Alice’s caretaker. What’s so mysterious about that?”

  Judith pressed the police chief. “For how long?”

  Clooney shrugged. “As long as we’ve been going together. A month or so.”

  “What did he do before that?” asked Judith, who noted that Renie had wandered off toward the incoming tide, apparently fed up with the law enforcement chiefs.

  Clooney and Eldritch exchanged glances, indicative of both men’s reluctance to admit they didn’t know.

  “Millwork, probably,” said Clooney.

  “Commercial fisherman,” said Eldritch.

  Judith decided that Renie was right; there wasn’t any more to be learned from the police chief and the sheriff. “I’d dig a little deeper into his background, if I were you. Titus Teacher seems to have surfaced from nowhere.”

  “A lot of people around here do that,” replied Clooney, on the defensive. “It’s a way of life here on the coast. People keep heading west, and eventually they have to stop. Or they end up out there.” He gestured toward the ocean, where Renie was standing with her sandaled feel halfway in the water.

  “Yes,” said Judith, trying to control her impatience. “I’m a native Pacific Northwesterner. I know all about the frontier and drifters and such. But this is also a part of the world where people who are on the run have nowhere else to go.” She remembered that Woody Price had not found Titus in his data base of perpetrators. “It’s very likely that Titus Teacher isn’t his real name.”

  Clooney threw up his hands. “Oh, bull! Come on, lady, enough’s enough! Where do you get off trying to tell us how to run this show?”

  Judith was on the verge of blurting out the truth when Eldritch broke in. “Clooney’s right, this isn’t any of your business. You don’t even live in Buccaneer Beach. It’s bad enough to get all these Californians coming up here telling us how to run our town, but now we get you people down from…”

  Judith held up her hands. “Okay, okay.” It seemed that the one thing the sheriff and the police chief could agree on was that she was a meddling pain in the neck. “I’m sorry, I got carried away.” She gave both men a self-deprecating smile. “It’s just that my cousin and I found the first body in our living room. Now we’ve got one in what is technically our boathouse. It’s terribly upsetting for a pair of women on their own in a strange place. I’m sure you understand. After all, there is a killer loose, and we’re utterly defenseless.”

  Both men visibly softened. “Yeah,” agreed Clooney, “it’s rough being the weaker sex, I suppose. No man to protect you.”

  “Maybe,” offered Eldritch, “we should send somebody to watch the house.”

  Although she knew Joe would approve, the last thing Judith wanted was a bumbling deputy or inept policeman to hover over every move she and Renie made during the next twenty-four hours. “That’s very kind,” said Judith, trying to look suitably helpless. “But won’t you have to pay them overtime? It is the weekend.”

  The sheriff rubbed at his chin. “I’d better check that out.”

  “I’ll get back to you on that,” promised the police chief, starting to shuffle away. “Got to catch that radio message.”

  “Hey!” shouted Eldritch. “That’s my radio message!” His long strides swiftly caught up with Clooney.

  Renie had strolled back toward the boathouse. She glanced over at the law enforcement officials and grinned at Judith. The cousins left them arguing on the sands.

  “What are you looking for this time?” Renie asked in exasperation as Judith attacked another packing crate in the carport. They had just returned from the beach, making a detour to verify Judith’s guess about the black van. It was in the motel lot, all right, parked in a stall near the office. The evening desk clerk was a young Hispanic man with large ears and perfect teeth. He had not seen Titus Teacher go through the lobby that evening, but confirmed the dead man’s use of the tram. The motel didn’t usually make exceptions, the clerk explained, but the staff was sensitive to the needs of the handicapped. Besides, he added, they understood he was going to be around for only a few weeks. Judith had given the young man a grateful—and enlightened—smile.

  “This stuff’s been rearranged,” said Judith to Renie, as she lifted the top off one of the boxes. “Again. I want to see what’s inside the ones toward the back.”

  In order to get at the cartons that were up against the carport wall, Judith had had to back out the MG. The boxes of bedding and dishes had been pulled away to make a path. Judith stood on her tiptoes, feeling inside the crate. “Clothes, I think.” She hauled out a man’s gray flannel shirt, a pair of brown trousers, and a dark blue pullover. She examined the tags, holding them under the carport light. “Made in West Germany. It figures.” She put the garments back in the carton.

  “Do you also figure that the owner is dead?” asked Renie, helping Judith shove the other boxes back into place.

  “I’m afraid so,” said Judith, tripping over what she presumed was a rough place in the carport floor. “It’s after ten. Too late to call on anybody, I suppose. Let me put the car back inside.”

  Five minutes later, Judith and Renie were in the living room. Having had their fill of iced tea for the season, Judith poured a scotch for herself and a bourbon for Renie. “If Alice Hoke has been living in Liechtenstein for the past several years, she wasn’t alone,” Judith declared. “I’ll bet anything she was with Titus Teacher.”

  “Who,” Renie offered, “isn’t really Titus Teacher at all, but…?” The word dangled between the cousins.

  Over the rim of her glass, Judith gazed intently at Renie. “Don’t hit me, coz. It’s only a guess. How about Race Doyle?”

  Somewhat to Judith’s surprise, Renie merely nodded. “The late Race Doyle.” She raised her glass. “Requiescat in pace.”

  “Amen,” said Judith.

  FOURTEEN

  JOE’S SURGEON, DR. Scott, had conferred with his peers and come to the decision that the patient should not be moved for at least one more day. “Everything’s coming along very well,” said Dr. Lundgren, relaying the message to Judith. “Dr. Scott is very pleased. It sounds as if Monday would be the latest that your husband will be released. Naturally, we can’t make promises…”

  Judith let the intern run on with his medical sops. She and Renie were in the visitors’ waiting room, since Joe had not yet returned from wherever Dr. Scott had taken him. After Lundgren departed, Renie showed some signs of agitation.

  “Gee, coz,” she fretted, “Bill’s coming home tomorrow. And although the Franciscan monks may have all the patience of St. Francis, Maestro Dunkowitz will flip his toupee if I don’t get going on that symphony job. Guilt has started sneaking up on me. I really should head back tomorrow morning.”

  “Tomorrow?” Judith gaped at Renie. “You can’t! We don’t have a killer yet! Heck, we don’t even have a motive!”

  Slumping in the imitation leather chair, Renie sighed. “I bought an open-ended round-trip ticket. The train stops in Salem around noon. I can get home by earl
y evening. You and Joe wouldn’t have room for me in the MG anyway.”

  That thought had never occurred to Judith. She was used to her four-passenger Japanese compact. And she wasn’t accustomed to including a husband in her driving plans. Judith gave her cousin a forlorn look. “Great. Left all alone, I’ll probably get murdered and you’ll have to read about it in a badly-written story by Terrence O’Toole.”

  “At least we’ve got the rest of today,” Renie pointed out.

  Judith was still wearing a disheartened expression. “Right.” Slowly, she got to her feet. “Let’s make the most of it. We’d better see if Joe is back in his room.”

  He was, looking as down in the mouth as Judith. Jake Beezle, on the other hand, was dressed and raring to go. “I’m outta this joint,” he announced, leaning on his crutches and showing off a pair of brand new overalls. He was shirtless, but had tied a red and white kerchief around his scrawny neck. “I hear you two found another stiff.”

  “Some teenagers found him,” said Judith in an uncharacteristically lackluster voice. She turned to Joe. “Renie’s abandoning me. She’s going home tomorrow.”

  Joe looked unconcerned. “So? We’ll probably be heading that way the day after. You’ll have to drive. Just don’t let it drop under eighty on the freeway.”

  “But…” Judith started to protest.

  “Hold it.” Joe put up a hand. “When I get out of this hospital, we’re getting out of town. I’ve had enough of Buccaneer Beach. It’s even possible we can leave tomorrow, too. Forget the murders. In fact,” he continued, his round face hardening, “after this last one, I want you both to back off. This killer is utterly ruthless. I mean it, Jude-girl.”

  There was no brooking Joe’s argument. Judith actually flinched at the stern expression in those green eyes. Indeed, the gold flecks sparked like flame. It had been a long time since Judith had felt her will thwarted by anyone. Except Gertrude, of course. She turned uncommonly meek.

  “Okay, Joe,” she mumbled. “We’ll concentrate on finding the treasure.”