Murder at the Beach: Bouchercon 2014 Anthology

by Patricia Abbott

  “For the sand fairies?” I asked.

  She nodded and ran back to her spot next to the water where she resumed digging. Her tunnel was large enough to hold at least two adults.

  As usual, I dozed off and when I woke, I saw the beer drinker hurrying Lake away from her work. As they got closer to my blanket, the man spoke, slightly slurring, something about Aubrey’s audition. He loomed over Lake and snapped the strap on the right shoulder of her bathing suit. The gesture was both crude and cruel. Lake stared straight ahead.

  On Wednesday, I brought layered salads in jars, vegetable chips and chocolate drop cookies. Lake poked a fork into the jar and mixed the ingredients slowly, holding the jar up to her eyes and smiling.

  “I like this,” she said.

  “I thought you might,” I said.

  After a bite of her salad, Lake asked me,” Do you have trouble sleeping?”

  “Sometimes,” I answered. “Why do you ask?”

  “I’ve heard old people can’t sleep.”

  Lake twirled her fork into her salad, stirring lentils and lettuce and cucumbers. Placing the jar on the blanket, she reached into the small canvas backpack she carried.

  “Here’s one of my mommy’s pills. She uses them to sleep.”

  She placed a large serious-looking capsule in my hand. I shook my head.

  “I don’t need it and you should never take your mommy’s pills,” I said.

  “I don’t take them. I would never take them. I got it for you,” she said, jumping up. “It’s a present. You can throw it away if you don’t want it.”

  I slipped the pill into a small coin purse in my bag thinking that I might be able to identify it later. It seemed important to hold on to it.

  “Thank you. But no more pills, Lake. Nothing like that. I sleep fine.”

  “May I keep my jar?” she asked, holding it up and turning it in her hand.

  She waited until I nodded and then tucked the half-full jar into her bag.

  On Saturday, I shopped for groceries, choosing food I thought Lake might like. Gouda cheese, marinated artichokes, pitted ripe olives she could stick on her fingers like rings. I bought an extravagant pound of dark cherries. Would she hold the stem, chew off the cherry and ask if she could keep the stone?

  On my way home from the market, I saw Lake in the village. She was with a man who was not her mother’s beach friend. I assumed this was her father, down from the city for the weekend. They were sitting at the counter in Piggy’s Snack Shop, Lake licking an ice cream cone while the man sipped a cup of coffee and nodded, although neither of them seemed to be speaking. I didn’t remain watching at the window long. If Lake swiveled on her stool and saw me staring, she might think it odd. I taught school long enough to know that when children see you outside of the place where they think you belong, they are startled and suspicious.

  On Sunday, our small village newspaper announced a cost cutting measure. Lifeguards would no longer be on duty on Mondays, Tuesdays, or Wednesdays. SWIM AT YOUR OWN RISK shouted the headline. Since the beach would remain open and I don’t swim, this shouldn’t have bothered me, but I felt a chill. What if Lake and her mother no longer came to the beach?

  I needn’t have worried. On Monday, as soon as I planted my umbrella and spread my blanket, I saw Lake close to the water digging. I only saw her when she moved from side to side, since the mountain of sand she had removed from her tunnel obstructed my direct view.

  She appeared at my blanket earlier than usual. Why did I never see her until she stood at the edge of my blanket? I felt as if I never averted my eyes from her and yet it always surprised me when she arrived.

  “Could we have lunch a little later today?” she asked

  I nodded, amused at how much she sounded like a co-worker, someone who had the cubicle next to mine.

  Although I assumed she would head back to her giant tunnel, putting some finishing touch that the sand fairies demanded, I was surprised to see her climb over one of the rocks that led to the horseshoe.

  Her mother and the friend, who was certainly not the man I had seen Lake with over the weekend, were sitting close together on the blanket, but thankfully not engaged in any behavior that might upset the child. I watched Lake open the large tote bag next to the cooler and spread out lunch for the two adults.

  It was like watching a pantomime or silent film. I didn’t even need to see the dialogue cards on the screen. Lake’s mother was surprised and pleased. I watched Lake set out small layered salads in jars. She pointed to the man’s salad and shook her head at her mother and waggled her index finger. I could read her lips clearly. Fish. Her mother must be allergic and Lake had been careful to make separate salads. The male friend opened a beer, unscrewed the jar, and sniffed its contents. While Lake set out grapes and cookies, her mother elbowed the man and nodded at the food. He shrugged and began to eat. Lake stood up quickly, blew them an extravagant kiss and scampered back across the rocks.

  I watched her return to her tunnel and lay down her shovel and pail and place her canvas bag on her towel. She then ran up to me and sank down next to my picnic basket.

  “Mother has a callback this afternoon,” Lake announced. “It’s for a national spot.”

  “So you made her a special lunch?” I said, smiling at her authoritative use of national spot.

  “Yes. Lunch for her and Freddy,” said Lake.

  Although I always gave Lake my undivided attention, I glanced over at the couple in the horseshoe. Freddy was on his third beer. I could see him pointing to the almost empty jar and thought he was saying something about being thirsty. Tunafish, I thought. Always too salty.

  “Your mother’s an actress?” I asked.

  Lake nodded. She was eating the cherries, slowly and carefully, just as I imagined she would. She spit the pits carefully into her hand and made a pile of them in the sand.

  “She’s catching the train to the city right after lunch and then turning right around. If she’s not back by four, Freddy’s going to take me home.”

  I was careful not to ask anything. What I didn’t know wouldn’t hurt me.

  “You like the cherries?” I asked.

  “Especially the stones,” said Lake.

  She didn’t ask if she could have them, but I noticed after we’d eaten our macaroons and she’d hopped up to go back to her tunnel that the little pile of cherry pits was gone.

  I was still packing away the lunch supplies when I saw Lake’s mother leave the beach. She was a beautiful woman, all legs and long hair. I wondered what the national spot was for. What did it matter? Beautiful young women could sell anything, couldn’t they?

  Freddy stood up on wobbly legs and walked out toward the water. Walking through the waves was the only way to get out of the horseshoe without climbing a few rocks and Freddy looked in no condition to climb. He didn’t seem to notice he was dragging his towel through the water as he made his way toward Lake and her tunnel. When he reached her, he sat down on the edge of the hole and swung his legs over the side where they disappeared.

  I wanted to keep an eye on Freddy and the child and so I struggled to stay awake, but the sun and waves never failed to knock me out. What Lake had guessed about old ladies and sleep was true. I didn’t rest well at night and this summer, the beach had become the only place where I could sleep for an hour or more at a time.

  When I did open my eyes again and adjusted to the light, I could tell right away by the long shadows across the sand that I had dozed longer than usual. There were a few more people on the beach now. A family was playing paddleball near the shore and a gaggle of teenaged girls huddled together on their towels, their heads bent, plotting.

  Lake was next to what had been her tunnel but was now a man-sized mound of earth. I assumed that she had once again buried Freddy. That hole had been deep. I had seen her stand in it. Hadn’t I seen Freddy sit on the side, dangling his legs in the space?

  My thoughts came together more clearly. Freddy’s unsteady walk,
his disorientation as he sat down next to Lake. What had she put in the salad to make it salty? To make sure that only Freddy ate it and not her mother?

  Lake stood up and began jumping the waves as they came closer and closer to shore, closer and closer to where buried Freddy lay under the sand. No lifeguard. SWIM AT YOUR OWN RISK. I checked my watch. It was 3:30.

  I folded my chair and packed up my things. I piled them on the edge of my blanket. I was going to go. Leave. Mind my own business. But when I stood up, I found myself making my own unsteady way down to the water. When I got to Lake’s blanket, I saw her canvas bag, her pail and shovel. I saw the giant mound of sand, a crumbling sarcophagus. Two straws, my straws, stuck out of the sand in the place where the head would be. A pile of cherry pits mixed in with the smooth round beach stones sat on top of where Freddy’s midsection would be. A cairn marking what?

  “Lake,” I called out scanning the water. She was no longer skipping waves. She was nowhere in sight.

  “Lake, what have you done?”

  I dropped down to my knees, no easy task. I heard the bones rub in my ankles, in my hips. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to get up again, but it didn’t matter. There was a man buried alive and I was the only one who knew he was there. I wasn’t able to dig through the packed wet sand as quickly as I thought I could. I reached for Lake’s tin shovel and scraped away sand at where I thought Freddy’s face would be. Were the straws sticking out of his mouth allowing him to breathe? Would I be in time to save him?

  I dug frantically, calling out Lake’s name. I could hear people rushing up behind me. “Help me, there’s a man buried here,” I said. I heard my own voice, creaky and raspy.

  “Lake,” I yelled.

  When I turned around they were all standing there, a respectful distance from the crazy old lady shouting at the lake.

  The family who had been playing paddleball stared openly at me, their hands holding paddles, dangling by their sides. The coven of teenaged girls, a few of them with fingers flying on their phones mid-text or tweet or whatever they were doing as I caught them staring at me. Their faces were identical to the haughty ones I stared down year after year, the girls who ignored me as I tried to pour social studies facts into their vacant skulls.

  Directly behind me stood Lake’s mother. Her makeup perfectly applied, she was wearing an expensive looking sundress and carrying her high-heeled sandals in one hand and holding Lake’s hand with the other.

  “Lake,” I said, “we have to dig up Freddy. The straws.” I said, holding them out to her, “They’re filled with sand.”

  “Why is she looking at you that way?” her mother asked. “Why is she calling you Lake? And who in the world is Freddy?”

  Lake shrugged. “I don’t know,” said Lake. “Mommy, Bill went home because he didn’t feel so good,” said Lake. “I want to go home now.”

  I couldn’t speak. As confused as I was, I knew that Freddy or Bill or whoever the man was under the sand was buried deeply enough that it would take more than my weak scratching to uncover him. I held the straws in my hand and once again reached them out to Lake.

  “Lake, the sand fairies,” I said. “They’d want you to uncover him.”

  Lake began to whimper and hide behind her mother. The teenagers snickered at the mention of sand fairies and the paddleball mother began whispering rapidly to her husband in a language I didn’t immediately recognize.

  Lake’s mother began backing away from me, Lake in tow. “We’ll get you some help,” she said to me, then turned toward the parking lot, pulling Lake behind her. “The woman’s confused, Christine, let’s go.”

  “Lake,” I called, my voice now weak.

  “Why does she keep calling you that?” asked her mother. The girl shook her head, making a face both sad and frightened.

  “I don’t know,” said the girl.

  “We’re done with Bill, leaving you alone like that.” The breeze carried her mother’s words down to me as I stayed on my knees, unable to move the packed sand with my gnarled hands.

  “Daddy drove me back here. I got the commercial and we’re going back to the city tonight.”

  My knees were locked. I knew I needed help to get up. The father from the paddleball family offered me his arm and I took it and slowly struggled into a standing position.

  “Can I call someone for you?” he offered. “Should we call the police, or an ambulance from the next village?” He spoke with a slight accent and I knew they must be the German family staying in the Meyer beach house for the month. I slowly turned around in time to see the little girl I knew as Lake skipping alongside her mother as they reached the parking lot.

  I shook my head. “I was confused,” I said. “It must have been a bad dream.”

  The teenagers, bored by my confession, began to drift off to their spot down the beach and the family looked relieved that I had quieted. “I’m just an old woman,” I said to them. “I get confused.”

  I could no longer see Lake or her mother. They were probably already on the road, driving to their summer rental to pack. The girl I now knew was Christine and her mother would be swallowed up into the city by tomorrow morning, by the time the water uncovered the body, if there was a body, wave by wave by wave.

  Back to TOC

  The Haunted Room

  Gigi Pandian

  “There’s no such thing as ghosts,” I said.

  I believed what I said. At the time. But what Nadia was about to tell me made me question what I thought I knew.

  “Jaya,” my landlady said to me with a shake of her head. “Though your experience in Scotland had rational explanation, that does not mean it is always so.”

  I eyed Nadia skeptically. “I didn’t know you were superstitious.”

  We were sitting together on a park bench across the street from the “haunted” house Nadia had brought me to see, a San Francisco mansion from the post-Gold Rush boom in the late 1800s. Because I’d recently solved a mystery that involved folklore and a legendary Scottish fairy, Nadia wanted to tell me about her own unsolved mystery.

  Nadia shrugged. “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

  Nadia had come to California from Russia as a young woman and had lived in San Francisco for decades. She spoke perfect English, but with a strong accent. And she loved being dramatic. Which included quoting Shakespeare.

  “Your ghost story has to have a rational explanation,” I insisted. A swath of fog descended around us as I spoke, making my statement less convincing. I shook off the feeling. It was summer in San Francisco. Chilly weather was to be expected, especially on the hilltop that gave the Pacific Heights neighborhood its name.

  After leaving India as a child, I grew up in the Bay Area, but on the other side of the bay. My father raised my brother and me in Berkeley, which, while only ten miles from San Francisco, has a completely different climate. After spending my childhood in scorching Goa and sunny Berkeley, I still wasn’t used to San Francisco weather.

  “I will tell you the whole story,” Nadia said, wrapping her black stole more closely around her elegant shoulders. “You can be the judge of whether or not you believe it.”

  I nodded, not taking my eyes from the building. A gust of wind blew my bob of thick black hair around my face.

  “It was in October,” Nadia continued, “nearly two years ago, before you moved here for your teaching job. I have always thought of Halloween as a holiday for children, but Jack made it sound exciting. Plus, the profits from this haunted house go to charity.”

  “I remember hearing about this place.” It sounded like the kind of thing Nadia’s on-again off-again paramour would like.

  “It is still a popular attraction,” Nadia said, “but I will never again step inside. Not after what happened there.” She shivered as she looked at the dark windows of the house.

  The effect was contagious. Nadia was not a woman who scared easily. The haunted house was in a part of th
e city I rarely passed by, and based on Nadia’s reaction to it, I found myself wondering if this imposing Victorian structure had unconsciously caused me to avoid the neighborhood, in spite of its gorgeous views of bridges and beaches. This house was one of the oldest in the area, having survived the Great Earthquake of 1906.

  “I wore a gown from that thrift store down the street,” she continued. “Cream-colored satin, reminiscent of Countess Volkonskaya. A brocade, matching satin gloves, and a crimson silk hat.”

  That was more like Nadia. She noticed my amused reaction and shrugged.

  “Even though the holiday is childish,” she said, leaning forward conspiratorially, “if one chooses to participate, one should do so in the spirit of the occasion. Jack did not mind my smoking that evening—I was playing the part of a countess, you see, with an elegant cigarette holder—”

  “Nadia,” I cut in.

  “Yes, yes. You young people are so impatient. You must allow an old woman an excuse to ramble.”

  I had never learned Nadia’s exact age. She looked like she was barely old enough to have retired, but I had a suspicion she wore her years well and may have been much older. And I wasn’t so young. I’d recently turned thirty. I’ve been told I look younger, which I attribute to the fact that I’m only five feet tall. It’s an image I’ve had to fight against. As an assistant professor of history, it’s rather embarrassing to be mistaken for a college student.

  “Jack said it would be a romantic evening to go to a haunted house,” Nadia continued, “for there was a full moon that night. He said we could go on a moonlit walk afterward.”

  “So you went to the haunted house and it was spooky?”

  Nadia ignored my sarcastic remark. “You will not be able to dispute what I experienced. After waiting in line, we were placed into groups to walk through the rooms of the house. The darkness was nearly complete. The brightest lights were the dim ‘EXIT’ signs above the doors. Only the light of electric candle chandeliers lit up the displays—dry ice around tombstones in a cemetery room, animated skeletons in caskets in a morgue room, mannequin figures masked with beaked bird masks in a plague room...It was the plague room where it occurred.”