Murder in Tropical Breeze (Tropical Breeze Cozy Mystery Book 1)

by Mary Bowers

  “I’m glad. It’s nice that you’ll have that memory of the last time you saw her, acting like her old self. I, regrettably, had seen the signs. The trouble had already started, and I dreaded seeing an old friend go down that route. My mother,” he said, then abruptly stopped talking. He took his glasses off and rubbed his eyelids.

  “I’m sorry,” I told him. “I’ve always felt cheated because my parents died when I was still a young woman. But in a way, I was spared having to see them grow old, and maybe, grow confused. Forget one another. Forget me.” I trailed off and looked away. Dr. Fleming had had the walls of his exam room painted a soft, medium green, and I let the color envelop me. How clever of his decorator to choose that exact color; it made me feel like I was floating in an aquarium.

  “You have no idea,” he said softly. “Seeing them slip away. People who’ve never been through it have this picture of an old person slipping into a comfortable, happy little dream world, forgetting all their problems. It’s not like that. They know! They know they’re slipping, and it frightens and frustrates them. It . . . changes them. I couldn’t bear it when I saw that Vesta was going through the same stages as my mother. I knew how it would end. And she had so much pain,” he said, letting his voice fall to a whisper.

  I remembered Barnabas’s suspicions. “Was it the pain meds? Did she take too many?”

  “I warned them,” Dr. Fleming said. “Just sorting her weekly prescriptions was a major job.” He lifted his hands helplessly. “I made sure the family understood the dangers of opiates.”

  “But she was still driving. One of my volunteers just told me she’d seen her in town lately. Was that all right?”

  “No, it wasn’t,” he said angrily. “I had no idea. I told Graeme to take the keys away, but some people just can’t do it. But she was lonely out there in the hammock. She just wanted people to talk to. What would she need to shop for at her time of life? She didn’t need to go shopping. She needed companionship.”

  “But she had her son. Her grandson. Her daughter-in-law.”

  He gave me a sharp look with his pale blue eyes. “Her grandson is a grown man now. He lives down in Miami.”

  He suddenly stopped himself, as if he’d said too much. Then he got brisk and professional, stood up, shook my hand and gave me a friendly smile.

  Doctors – lawyers – I was beginning to get very frustrated with professional people who wouldn’t tell you anything. Naturally, we don’t want our doctors and lawyers gossiping with other people about our own business, but when it came to somebody else’s business – very frustrating.

  While I got dressed in the exam room, I sifted through the information I’d managed to glean from what little he’d told me. If we both hadn’t been friends of Vesta’s for so long, he wouldn’t have told me anything at all, I was sure. We were all getting to be part of the old guard in Tropical Breeze, I realized. Even me. I’d never be a native – I was “that girl from Chicago” – but I’d lived in Tropical Breeze for so long, and Doc Fleming had been one of the first people I’d met.

  Shaking my head, I picked up my purse to leave, then stopped before I could open the door.

  I looked around the room.

  I stared. I blinked.

  I wondered what trick of the light had made the room’s walls look that wonderful shade of green for me. They weren’t green at all. They were beige.

  Chapter 12

  Saturday morning I left for Girlfriend’s very early. We’d let word get around that we’d have a lot of Vesta’s things in the showroom by then, and we expected a crowd. As I got dressed, the new cat stayed on my bed, watching, then jumped down to precede me as I picked up my purse and keys.

  “Not today, Basket,” I said, feeling unaccountably nervous. I was in a hurry to go. “There are going to be too many people in the shop; you won’t like it.”

  She just stared at me. Something about her stillness communicated a powerful will, and my anxiety increased. In a moment I was going to start babbling. To a cat.

  She could see it the moment she won. Then she took her eyes away from me and I took a deep breath.

  “Okay, fine.”

  Once she was in the pet carrier and stowed in the back of my SUV, I could almost feel the weight of her presence against my back. Rebelliously, I decided to stop at Perks for a cappuccino. I hadn’t had one in a while, and it’s right next door to Girlfriend’s, on the other side from The Bookery. Florence might not be in the shop yet, but I could leave the cat in the back room. In fact, I decided as I took the carrier out of my car, if Florence was there, I wouldn’t even bother her about the cat. I’d set the carrier inside the back door of Girlfriend’s and pop next door. I’d only be a moment, and “Basket” would be safe in the carrier while I got my coffee. I was the human. I was in control.

  I set the carrier down without looking around, then quickly walked back out the door. It felt good.

  When I went into the back door of Perks, I immediately stopped and stood in the hall, holding my hands out for balance. I put my head down and closed my eyes, but when I opened them again, the illusion was still there: the walls were green. Like an aquarium, but this time I didn’t find it soothing. This time the effect made my skin crawl because I understood: being human didn’t necessarily put me in charge. I felt a rebelliousness swell within me, but it didn’t make the walls any less green, and I knew that Ronnie hadn’t painted her coffee shop any more than Dr. Fleming had painted his exam room. Something inside my head was painting my vision. I took a deep breath, tried to shake it off, and went inside.

  Perks was as it had always been – a normal, friendly, slightly over-warm coffee shop, normal in every way except for that soft, green tint in the air. Ronnie looked up and said hi, did a double-take, asked me if I was all right (which made the only other customer in the shop turn to look), and I made up my mind that I wasn’t going to act like I was possessed. If you act crazy in a small town, even for a few minutes, you never live it down. I put my shoulders back, told Ronnie I was fine and went on up to the counter.

  Ronnie, the owner, is a coffee fanatic, and she trains her staff like a Marine Corps drill sergeant. Even so, the specialty coffees come out better when she makes them herself, so I was happy to see her manning the counter. What didn’t make me so happy was stepping inside and seeing that the customer who’d turned to look was Tina Armstrong, leaning coquettishly against the glass case and aiming her perky little behind at the front door. She was barely legal for walking around in public in her cutesy, tightsy tennis outfit with its flippy little skirt.

  When she saw me, she straightened up and pulled her butt back in. “Morning Taylor. Did you manage to get some sleep? You seemed a little frazzled last time I saw you.”

  I didn’t assault her. I’d said what I’d wanted to say, and I was done with that. I just said, “Tina,” in a brisk, John Wayne manner, then turned back to Ronnie.

  “What’ll you have?” Ronnie said.

  “A cappuccino.”

  The life of a barista terrifies me. All that timing. All that frothing. All those customers speaking coffee-code. But Ronnie thrives on it, though apparently it has left her gaunt and exhausted. She’s always sort of panting, and she’s about a size 4, but not a glamorous one, if you know what I mean. With her back to me, she worked her skinny arms around fiddling with the gigantic espresso machine that sat against the wall behind the counter, looking like the throne of the Sun King. It was a steampunk extravaganza, with embossed copper plates, silver wings, and spigots everywhere. It had probably cost more than my car.

  “A cappuccino, the lady says. What size?”

  “Enormous.”

  “Extra large. How many shots?”

  “Just short of making my head explode.”

  She considered, then said, “Nah. Better stick with just two,” then went to work.

  Used to talking to customers over her shoulder, she went on as if she were facing me. “So what’re you gonna do when Tina leaves t
own? She’s your top volunteer, right?”

  The steampunk machine began to froth and fizzle, and Tina started doing the same. “Now I never said I was leaving right away, Ronnie. I just said, some day I’m gonna blow this pop stand, as my Mama used to say. I’m heading south one of these days.”

  I turned bodily and looked at her. “Really? I thought you were a Tropical Breeze lifer for sure. Isn’t this where you were born?”

  “But girl, it is not where I’m gonna die. I just never mentioned it to you, because I know you need all the volunteers you can get. I knew you’d just be devastated.” Twinkle, twinkle.

  “Uh huh. I’m just surprised, that’s all. Tropical Breeze not big enough for you?”

  “No, honey,” she said, “I’m meant for bigger towns than this. And now, ladies, I gotta go. My tennis team is number two in the standings, and we’re taking down team number one today.” She made an empty-handed tennis serve, picked up her iced coffee, and flipped out of the shop with her little skirt twitching.

  “So long, Tina. Give ‘em hell,” Ronnie called after her. Then she turned back to me. “Seems like all anybody can talk about is leaving town these days. Diana Huntington’s the same way. She was in talking about it just a day or two after Miss Vesta passed, rest her soul. Well, I guess she can go now if she likes. With her mother-in-law gone, there’s no reason for her and Graeme to stay on in that house.”

  “That’s what everybody’s saying. It seems strange to me. I’d love to live on an estate like that – a grand old mansion on the river with plenty of room to spread out.”

  “Diana’s no country girl. She never liked being out there in the middle of nowhere, with nobody to admire her in a swimsuit but her husband. Didn’t bargain for that when she married a rich man. Stuck out there in the marsh with her mother-in-law and that dingbat Myrtle all day long. She thought she was on her way to Biscayne Bay the minute she married Mr. Graeme Huntington, esquire.”

  “I’m not sure Graeme wants to move, though. It came up when we were out there picking up Vesta’s things. Diana talked about it, but she didn’t get a rise out of Graeme.”

  “Those two don’t get a rise out of each other much over anything these days,” she said with a meaningful look.

  “Well, maybe there’ll be less tension in the house now. Jordan was there too. I guess he’ll stay around for the family memorial service. It’s going to be private, you know.”

  She made a choking sound. “I guess he’ll stay around for the reading of the Will, more likely. That’ll be five-fifty,” she added, handing my cappuccino to me.

  “Five-fifty! I could get a shot of whiskey for less.”

  “Do you want a shot of whiskey?”

  “No.”

  “Then that’ll be five-fifty.” She handed the cardboard cup across to me, then broke into a grin. “Hey, a girl’s gotta make a living.”

  “Don’t I know it? Dog food doesn’t get any cheaper either.”

  She looked at me speculatively for a moment, then said, “Hey, let me ask you a question.”

  “Okay.”

  “That Tina. Is she really a good worker for Orphans of the Storm? Cleans the poop out of the cages and so on?”

  “She’s not with us anymore.”

  “In other words, no,” she said. “I thought as much. She figured you were lucky to have her around giving the place a little class, and you finally got fed up with her, right?”

  “Pretty much. Let me ask you one back. Do you really like her? She seems to enjoy coming in and gossiping with you.”

  “That’s what coffee shops are for,” she said guardedly.

  “But – do you like her?”

  She answered negatively with her eyes, then aloud, she said, “I like all my customers.”

  I put a dollar in the tip jar and said, “That’s what I thought. Have a nice day.”

  “You too, Taylor.”

  I got back into Girlfriend’s and let the cat out of the cage. She strolled out, looked toward the curtains of the shop, then hopped up onto the shipping desk instead, pausing to gaze speculatively at the wall that separated us from Perks. I glanced at my wristwatch, realized that it was still too early for Florence to arrive, and managed to get a few things done in the back room. When I happened to come into the showroom for something, I saw that a crowd had gathered on the sidewalk waiting for the shop to open at 10:00. The wall clock said it was ten to. Never keep money waiting on the doorstep – that’s my motto. I unlocked the door and welcomed them in. Florence still wasn’t in yet, but I knew how to run the register.

  The way word got around town that we had Vesta’s collection, you’d have thought we had the treasures of King Tut’s tomb on display. Even the paparazzi showed up, in the form of Bernadine Horning, editor-in-chief-and-everything-else of The Beach Buzz, our local newspaper. She had a digital camera hanging around her neck and a hand-held recording device of some kind in her hand, with Michael Utley for an escort.

  Bernie has a fondness for lavender, and those who sell pants sets in polyester to octogenarian ladies know just how women like Bernie feel about pastels. And flowers and lace and the bliss of pull-on pants with elastic waistbands. Bernie was in the mid-range of lavenderness today, with a pull-over top that had a sweet little gingham inset embroidered with flower buds. Her sandals were a slightly darker shade of lavender, but being from the same mail-order house, matched divinely. Today she had braved the July temperatures without socks, though I knew she had just the pair to match back home in a drawer somewhere and would be pulling them on again about the end of September when temperatures dipped into the eighties.

  “Taylor!” she cried, “What a coup for you and the shelter. And all because of Michael. Don’t you just love a true gentleman!”

  Michael shied, and said, “Now, Miss Bernie.”

  She thumped his arm and said, “Don’t be modest, boy. If it weren’t for you, Taylor here wouldn’t have half the goodies in Girlfriend’s, and everybody in town is just beside themselves, itching to get in here and see all of Vesta’s Egyptian things.”

  “Morning, Miss Bernie,” I said, gazing with real affection at her beautiful face. She had a fine head of white curls, a small face corrugated with the deeply-carved wrinkles people get in the tropics, and liquid brown eyes. She affected a little brown cigarillo every now and then, just so she could wave it around in the air. She thought it shocked people. I’ve never actually seen her light one up. “Are you going to give us some free publicity?”

  “All the free publicity you want, any time, even when you haven’t had such good fortune. So tell us,” she said, coming closer and whispering, “have you found anything that old Waffles snuck out of King Tut’s tomb?”

  I laughed. The shop was filling up, and more than one head turned to hear my answer. “Bernie, we’re a resale shop, not a museum. And old Waffles was an archeologist, not a thief. We haven’t even finished pricing everything yet, but we’ve got quite a lot out in the showroom and some even bigger pieces in back. You know the press is always welcome here. Come on into the back room and bring your camera; you can take pictures of anything you like.”

  “I’ll just wait out here, ladies,” Michael said, still beaming.

  I really do like that guy. I beamed back at him, turned, and ushered Miss Bernie along.

  “My goodness!” she said in a hushed voice, looking at how boxes and furniture were stacked up in every extra square foot of space.

  “There’s more in the attic,” I told her, and she said, “My goodness!” again.

  “Whatever are you going to do with all these lovely things?” Bernie asked Florence as she came in from the alley.

  “I might just keep them all to myself,” Florence said coquettishly. “Goodness, it sounds like we’ve got a full house today. I’d better get in there and get behind the check-out counter.”

  I reminded myself to put a twenty into the cash register to pay for the cat pendant that I still wore. That’d be valuing it hig
h, as resale jewelry goes, but I wanted to be more than fair. I’d take care of that later, but first, I dug around in boxes trying to find nice, photogenic things for Bernie to put into The Beach Buzz.

  We ended up trying to place the two Queen Anne chairs attractively in the cluttered room, but they just wouldn’t pull their knees in. The cabriole legs stuck out and made them incredibly awkward, and we had just about decided to take them outside where they wouldn’t knock into things when there was a burst of applause from the shop.

  Bernie and I stopped and looked at one another, and she muttered, “Sounds like we missed something,” then bustled back into the shop with me close behind her.

  The crowd of customers was facing the check-out counter and still cheering. “Atta girl, Tina!” a voice said from somewhere, and next to the cash register, Florence was beaming, and waving a pink slip of paper in the air. Catching my eye as I came out of the back room, Florence said, “Isn’t it wonderful? Tina paid a thousand dollars for the necklace I was wearing!”

  I stopped in my tracks. It was then that I saw Tina in front of the check-out counter, waving to the crowd and generally acting like she’d won a beauty pageant. Seeing me, she sent me a particularly vinegary smile.

  Michael was behind her, at the door, and I could tell from the nervous look on his face that he knew all about the tension between Tina and me.

  Well, if Tina was damn fool enough to pay a thousand dollars for a necklace that was worth ten or twenty bucks at the most, fine. I knew what she was really buying – a moment in the spotlight, and maybe a way to get some attention from Michael. It also fluttered across my mind that just possibly this was her way of apologizing to me. I’m not saying I thought it was likely. But it was possible.