Lighthouse Cottage (A Pajaro Bay Mystery Book 3)

by Lee, Barbara Cool

  Ahead, the beam from the lighthouse clicked steadily on.

  It was still too far away.

  But it was closer.

  Matt snapped to alertness.

  It was closer. The pale sandstone cliffs of Pajaro Isle glistened ahead.

  He was wide awake now. Yes, he could see the tiny island, and not just the light atop it. What time was it? It must be getting close to dawn, because he could just make out the cypress trees clinging to the edge of the cliff, and he could actually distinguish the glowing oval of the signal light itself as it flashed on and off through the raindrops.

  And beneath the towering light stood a small squarish shape that must be the keeper's cottage.

  Dawn. If the island was visible, it meant he was, too. Matt looked back out to sea, wondering if his kayak—or anything else—was following along in the tide behind him. He let his body bob in the waves, treading water as he scanned the sea, looking for any sign that he wasn't alone.

  He couldn't see much over the cresting waves. With a bit of luck the overturned kayak had been caught in the current and was drifting miles away by now.

  He had stopped swimming. Not good. Enough of this wasted energy. Time to move on.

  Once again he began the slow, painful swim toward the beckoning light.

  The keeper's cottage. Square windows glowed golden through the rain. Of course. The place was no longer empty. That girl from the grocery store was staying there. His fuzzy brain tried to remember what he'd learned about her. Everything blurred in his tired mind, but he remembered her eyes. Vivid blue. Alert. Suspicious of him. Shockingly beautiful. When he'd stumbled across her in the cookie aisle, she was loading up on chocolate chips like she was outfitting an expedition. She'd batted those eyelashes at him and told him she'd been hired by the historical society to come out to the island and take pictures.

  She must be in the cottage now. And she'd have blankets, and a radio to call for help. And coffee. His mouth watered at the thought of a gulp of steaming hot coffee warming him down to his toes.

  He doubted there'd be a welcome mat out for the likes of him, but that didn't really matter. One way or another, he was going to take what he needed, and the lady lighthouse keeper had better not get in his way.

  And on stormy nights, locals say the lady's dog still roams the cliffs of the lighthouse island, searching endlessly for his murdered mistress.

  Outside, a dog howled.

  Lori stared at the book in her lap. "...the lady's dog still roams the cliffs...," she whispered.

  She looked around the warm kitchen, and across to the tiny sitting room where Ophelia sat on the floor by the bookshelves, carefully washing herself. The cat hadn't heard anything.

  Still, Lori got out of the rocking chair and headed into the main hall of the cottage. To the left was the doorway to the lighthouse tower.

  She went right instead, into the pantry. She made her way past the two-by-fours and paint buckets stored there and reached the back door.

  Ophie followed, meowing for her to open one of the big cans of salmon on the pantry shelf. As Lori well knew, Ophie believed a fish dinner was the only acceptable excuse for leaving the warm kitchen.

  Lori shushed the meowing cat, then stood with a hand on the doorknob, listening to what waited outside.

  There it was again. It was impossible, but through the storm's roar came the spine-tingling howl of a dog who'd lost his beloved owner and still searched for her.

  Yeah. Sure. That made loads of sense. She was hearing the howl of a dog who, if he had ever lived, must have died almost a century ago.

  But she had heard something .

  She pulled the door open, only to be met by a cold blast of wind and rain that pushed at her, as if trying to keep her inside. She braced herself against the door jamb and peered out into the darkness, ignoring the rain pelting her in the face.

  If the sky were clear, she would be able to see all the way to shore from this spot—even to Aunt Zee's house, one of the glittering row of mansions on the cliff overlooking the wharf. But right now, she couldn't see anything more than three feet outside the door. The light from the pantry spilled out around her, but it did little to pierce the darkness.

  She couldn't see much, but she could hear everything.

  In the time she'd spent here she still hadn't gotten used to what the True Tales book called the "breathing" of Pajaro Island. The island seemed alive all around her: the pine trees dug their roots into the crags and bent their heads away from the wind, and the rain and sea lashed at the rocks. There were supposedly underwater caves beneath the island, and she could hear a faint, unearthly moaning far beneath the ground that might have been coming from them. Through it all, she was surrounded by the endless roar of the ocean.

  And over a hundred feet above her head, in the little room at the top of the winding stairs, the beam from the tower ticked steadily around in its metered circle: flash, flash, flash. A pattern all sailors knew. Warning, warning, warning. Stay away.

  And everyone stayed away on a wild night like this.

  All around her Lori saw movement, but no other living creature—neither dog nor human. "Of course not," she muttered. The real Mrs. Aiden had died in the 1930s, according to the book. Even if the woman had actually owned a dog, it had died long ago. There was no dog on the island. And no canine in his right mind would swim all the way from shore through a storm just to sit and howl all night on this rock.

  And she was glad there was no dog. She had no interest in meeting any strange dog. They had big wolflike teeth, smelled bad, and were unpredictable. She had enough trouble dealing with Aunt Zee's obnoxious cat. She definitely didn't want to find a dog out here.

  Just the same, she stood in the doorway for another minute, listening to the whistle of the wind, and watching the dimness for something. Anything.

  Finally, reluctantly, she closed the door on the breathing island. She was completely alone. Logically, she knew there wasn't a dog, there couldn't be a dog.

  She turned her back to the door. Ophie, her fur glistening with raindrops, glared accusingly at her.

  "Tea," she said to Ophelia, who still had the betrayed expression of someone who'd been woken from a cozy nap by a splash of cold water. "I should make a cup of tea." Tea solved everything. Aunt Zee said so. And if Aunt Zee said so, it was true.

  But she didn't want another cup of tea. She was sick of tea. She wanted somebody to talk to.

  She picked up the iPhone on the table. She couldn't call this early. Aunt Zee would be fast asleep. Lori knew she had to stop relying on other people to do everything for her, to be there for her, to entertain her and to make the empty hours pass for her. But it was a tough habit to break.

  The first days out here at the island lighthouse has been fun, a kid's adventure. But tonight, when her first storm had rolled in during the pre-dawn hours, she had finally felt how cut off from everyone she actually was. She had no boat, no company, no reliable internet, nothing but the whistle of the wind, the rhythm of the rain against the old casement windows, and the grouchy cat.

  When the sun had gone down last night, and the tinny voice on the radio had reported that a small craft advisory would be up within a few hours, there had still been time enough to call Aunt Zee. The old handyman, Sandy, would have gladly come out here with the boat to fetch her so she could spend the night in her great-aunt's cozy guest suite.

  But no, she hadn't done that. She was sure she would be fine alone out here. And she was fine. She was just bored, and lonely, and feeling the isolation a bit too much.

  If she called now, in the midst of a storm, it wouldn't be old Sandy with the speedboat running across from shore to get her. Instead the Coast Guard would be knocking on her door (knowing Aunt Zee's powers of persuasion, they'd arrive in under ten minutes). She couldn't do that. Maybe everyone jumped for Ms. Zelda Potter, but she couldn't justify calling out the Guard just because she was getting lonely. She'd have to tough it out, with or without g
hosts.

  Aunt Zee had promised her pirates, not ghosts: "You go to an island lighthouse, you're bound to meet some pirates. Cute ones, with loads of swashbuckling experience." They had agreed that modern men were sorely lacking in swashbuckling experience.

  As with everything else in her life, she had discussed the swashbuckling potential of the jock in the grocery store with Aunt Zee. Never one to be shy, Aunt Zee had suggested that Lori try running out of cookies more often, but Lori had decided that lurking in the aisles of Santos' market in hopes of a chance encounter with an obviously disinterested Neandertal wasn't her cup of tea.

  He hadn't even asked her why. All she rated was a simple shrug when she told him she was spending the winter alone on an island miles from shore. For some reason that stung. Sheesh. Everybody asked her why. Zane, the teenage son of the fisherman who dropped by every week, asked her why. The Coast Guard crew that maintained the light asked her why. The clerks in the grocery store asked her why.

  But the ponytailed jock hadn't asked her why. The twit.

  Of course it always bugged her when people asked her why. She still hadn't come up with a pithy answer, one that didn't involve explaining all the messy details.

  Didn't matter. She didn't need to explain herself to anyone, particularly not to her pirate.

  But sitting out here alone day after day was getting old real fast. Somebody to talk to would be good. A corporeal being, preferably, who not only existed on the mortal plane but didn't require an out-of-area call to speak to. The phone bills were killing her. How the phone company could accuse her of "roaming" when she was stuck on an island 200 yards square was beyond her.

  Somebody right here, in this century, who wasn't just a verbal crackle over a cell tower link would make the loneliness slightly more bearable, would help her hold out until someone came by to visit.

  But there would be no visitors, not as long as this storm held on.

  As if on cue, she heard the howl again, and this time, Ophelia raised the fur on her back and hissed.

  "You hear it, too!" If Ophie heard the dog, it must be out there somewhere in the storm. The fact that Ophie also saw monsters in every dustball and hit the ceiling with every pop of the sitting room fireplace wasn't going to dissuade her. There was a dog. She knew it now.

  She marched to her bedroom and threw on a thick sweatshirt, jeans, and her old sneakers.

  She put on her rain slicker, all the while studiously ignoring Ophie's incredulous expression as she snugged the hood down over her head and put the phone in her pocket.

  Just in case she found something worth calling somebody about. "Yes, like a dog," she said to Ophie, who did not appear convinced.

  This time she turned left at the lighthouse tower. Skirting the stairs, she went to the outside door of the tower.

  The heavy iron door opened with a reluctant creak of hinges, and she stepped out onto the glass-enclosed porch. Some time in the last century, someone had added this little storm porch, probably to allow the keepers to look out to sea without having to go out into the rain.

  Right now she could see nothing except her own rather wild-eyed reflection in the storm door's glass. For a moment she was struck by the uncanny resemblance to Aunt Zee in her youth, but brushed the thought aside. Aunt Zee wouldn't have been caught dead in this situation, in her youth or at any other time. By the age of 24 the inimitable Zelda Potter had been on her second husband and fifth scandal. The similarities between her and Aunt Zee were only physical, unfortunately.

  She was no glamorous Zelda Potter. She was just Lorelei York, shy, sheltered, and in over her head. But she had to find out where that howl was coming from.

  Outside the storm was pierced only by the sweep of the revolving signal light upstairs. She watched as the light passed over the twisted shapes of the cypresses at the edge of the cliff.

  She didn't see a single visiting pirate.

  And of course no dog. She had no idea what she'd do if she found some ugly, snarling beast out there. But she couldn't ignore it. It might be suffering.

  There was the howl again!

  She waited until the howl died down. That animal, wherever and whatever it was, was upset in some way. She could hardly sit by the stove and ignore it.

  She picked up the flashlight from the bench next to the glass door.

  Outside, the dog howled again, louder now.

  "The wind," she said fiercely. "Don't be stupid. You're standing in the middle of a storm with wind whistling around and you're hearing things."

  Occam's Razor, she told herself. The simplest explanation was the most probable. "It's a whole lot more likely that the wind roaring through the pine trees sounds like a dog than it is that the ghost of a dead lightkeeper's dog is roaming the island, crying for its dead mistress."

  Ophie meowed her agreement from somewhere behind her.

  "Shut up back there, Ophelia, or I'll lock you in the tower."

  Ophie stalked off, unimpressed.

  Lori stood there for what seemed like forever, holding her breath and listening, poised between following the cat back to the hearth and following that sound outside.

  Creaking, whistling, roaring, smacking shutters, pattering raindrops. And a bark. That last sound was definitely a bark.

  She opened the screen door, ignoring the fact that this was exactly what a too-stupid-to-live heroine in a horror movie would do just before the evil slasher attacked out of the darkness.

  "It's a dog. What can it do to me?" she muttered, and stepped out into the rain.

  She stood there, rain pouring down the neck of her raincoat and sending a spine-chilling river down her back. "Dumb, dumb, dumb," she said in time to the click of the light revolving overhead. "This is dumb. You've got a warm kitchen full of chocolate cookies waiting back there and you're standing out here doing what? Looking for a dog. And you don't even like dogs."

  She took the steps down onto the muddy ground with a splash and a squish. The mud came to the top of her sneakers. She wiggled her toes. Ah, the joy of wet feet. She looked around as her eyes adjusted to the semi-darkness.

  Nothing. Nothing but wind and rain and fallen branches, not to mention the appalling amount of mud, most of which seemed to be stuck between her toes.

  She looked at her watch, but couldn't make out the time. Was it late enough to call Aunt Zee? Not that she would be much help from way across the bay in the village. But at least Aunt Zee could send someone to whisk her away in a straightjacket to a cozy, mud-free padded cell.

  The storm had rattled her more than she'd wanted to admit, that was all. And then she'd made the mistake of distracting herself by reading about dead women murdered by pirates, and now she was imagining that she was alone in a world where every creak had a sinister motive, and every gust of wind became a creature from her imagination.

  She saw the dog.

  For a full minute she stood there with rain pouring down her face, gaping like an idiot. There really was a dog walking slowly away from her through the raindrops, toward the island's outer sandstone cliff, where the land met the ocean in a steep tumble of rocks and frothing surf.

  The dog disappeared over the edge of the cliff.

  She shouted something, she wasn't sure what, and ran toward it, but then spotted the dog a few yards farther away, again slowly walking away from her toward the cliff.

  Again it disappeared over the edge, then a minute later reappeared.

  "This is crazy. Crazy, crazy, crazy," she said to herself, and noticed that the dog moved in rhythm with her voice.

  And she was speaking in rhythm with the signal light.

  She turned back toward the lighthouse tower. One small light bulb gleamed inside the huge revolving glass dome.

  She put up a hand to protect her eyes from the falling rain, and watched the dome slowly turn.

  She had photographed the lens many times, trying to capture the look of it in every kind of light. She knew that it was the perfect image to use for the cover o
f the tourist brochure.

  It was a Fresnel lens, precisely engineered to focus light beams to the horizon where ships could see it from many miles away. The revolving glass oval was made up of hundreds of sparkling prisms all angled to capture the light from one tiny source and shoot it out toward the horizon. From across the sea, it appeared to be a clear, piercing ribbon of light. But here, at the foot of the tower, some of the light spilled out, stray beams arcing out onto the mud and rocks and trees around her. As the dome turned, the patterns of light broke and reformed along the ground, their flickering rhythm creating eerily beautiful patterns in the trees, and rainbows on the rain-slick rocks ahead.

  She turned back to watch once more as the "dog" made its slow trek to the edge of the cliff and over, the signal light's flicker reflecting on the raindrops as a gossamer shape floating through the mist.

  She was caught, transfixed by the ghostly illusion.

  An otherworldly dizziness came over her, almost like she was floating herself. The ground disappeared beneath her feet. She had just started to whisper "No. Not again," and she was gone.

  Chapter Two

  She woke to a clatter and crack and the taste of mud in her mouth.

  She was sitting in the mud. "In the mud" was putting it mildly. Every part of her was covered in mud. Her clothes were muddy. Her face was muddy. Even the spaces between her fingers were muddy. To add insult to injury, the rain had tapered off to a dull drizzle, just heavy enough to be annoying, but not heavy enough to wash away the muck.

  With the dawn the glow of the lighthouse beam was gone, and all that remained was the echoing, repetitive boom of the foghorn.

  Tears ran salty through the mud pack on her face.

  "Hey, kid, what ya crying for?" she scolded, ignoring the shakiness in her voice and the catch in her throat that made her sound high-pitched as a two-year-old. "It's nothing but dirt and sea kelp, blended with some nice fresh rainwater, and maybe a stray frog or two. People pay big bucks for European spa treatments, and you're getting this mud pack gratis." At this particular moment, she preferred not to think about what the ever-present sea gulls had contributed to the mix.