Lighthouse Cottage (A Pajaro Bay Mystery Book 3)

by Lee, Barbara Cool

  She allowed herself one full minute to sit in the mud crying like a baby, then got to her feet.

  As always after a seizure, there was some residual dizziness, and the familiar queasy feeling in her stomach. She wanted to curl up where she was and take a nap.

  She always felt like a failure after her body betrayed her. She couldn't stop her seizures, or even predict when they would happen. This one must have been a big one for her to end up sitting on the ground. Complex Partial Seizures of Unknown Origin, Only Partially Controlled by Medications was the official diagnosis. In other words, "get used to it, kid. You're going to have to learn to live with it."

  "A cup o' tea'll set you right," she said in her dead-on imitation of Aunt Zee's aristocratic rumble. She forced herself to think, trying to assess the damage.

  She concentrated on the thought of the tea to clear away the last of the fuzz in her mind: water and tea leaves go into the teapot, then let it steep for five minutes, then into the cup with milk and sugar, with cookies on the side. Took a few tries to get it right, but she now had the knack of it.

  Okay, so it wasn't brain surgery. But she had spent a lifetime being told she could never use a stove, and she'd done it.

  Ginger tea. That would be just the ticket to settle her stomach. She wiped away the last of the tears and pulled her muddy sweatshirt straight.

  Tea. And a long bath in the claw-foot tub with that lavender-scented stuff she'd bought at the general store. Yes, a bath, another of the endless items on the "Lori Isn't Allowed To Do This" list, and then the sought-for nap in her flannel pjs by the beastly old Aga with Ophie on her lap.

  After that she'd feel right as rain.

  "As rain." She chuckled, looking up at the sky, where somewhere above the thick clouds she imagined the massive cold front still lurked, just waiting for the right time to dump another bucket of water on the island.

  She took off her slicker, which seemed to have gotten bunched into a knot behind her back, and shook it out. Muck flew in all directions, but when she'd finished, the sleek yellow rubberized coat had shed most of its "spa treatment," and it looked almost decent.

  "Which is more than could be said for me." She put the slicker back on. This wasn't exactly how she pictured dressing to meet swashbuckling pirates. She tried to laugh, imagining a panic-stricken hero making a wild-eyed dash for the breakers with a mud-covered woman chasing after him like the Creature from the Black Lagoon.

  It was hard to tell where the sun was above all this fog, but it was light enough to be daylight. Aunt Zee would soon be settling down to eggs benedict and the New York Times in her breakfast room.

  She'd call her after the bath and they'd laugh about it. She'd tell her every gory detail, and she'd say, "at least I'm lucky the pirate didn't show up," and Aunt Zee would agree. "But he'll be around next thunderstorm," Aunt Zee would promise, and they'd laugh again, and she'd put the incident behind her like she did every other time.

  Call. The phone. She felt the raincoat's pockets, but they were empty.

  Lori looked down at the mud. Great. She knew she should've bought the hot pink iPhone case. How was she going to find her black phone in the black mud, with only a dim light working its way through the fog to guide her?

  She looked around, and saw nothing much except mud interspersed with gray boulders jutting up from the ground. She must have tripped over a rock during her seizure and fallen forward—

  There. Right at the cliff's edge there was something too symmetrical to be a rock.

  It was the flashlight. She bent over to pick it up, muttering a curse as the dizziness threatened again.

  She stood up slowly, deliberately, and the dizziness receded. She tried the switch on the flashlight, and a scattered beam shone out.

  Her seizure had happened awfully close to the rocks. She pushed that thought aside, because it was like an echo of Mom's endless warnings: "Stay away from the edge, Lorelei." "Don't touch that, Lorelei." Every sentence out of Mom's mouth always ended with the unspoken "you have epilepsy and could get hurt." Too bad. She was not going to give up and live her whole life sheltered like a porcelain doll. Like Mom had. Like everyone told her to do.

  Lori wiped off the flashlight lens, and the light beamed straight out again. The light was good as new. But the phone?

  She realized she was still standing next to the edge of the cliff, and took a couple of steps back. Then, with a sick feeling that had nothing to do with her seizure, she remembered that clatter and crack she'd heard when she first woke up.

  Afraid she already knew what she'd see, she got down on her knees in the mud and peeked over, shining the flashlight beam on the rocks.

  Sure enough, only about twenty feet down among the tumbled boulders the light reflected off something glossy. It was the phone. It appeared to be wedged in a crack.

  Lori sat and looked at it for a couple of minutes. Well, she'd never had two seizures in a row. So she wasn't likely to lose consciousness mid-climb and crash down onto those jagged rocks.

  Nope. She was only a little bit dizzy, and only a little bit queasy, and only a little bit scared of slipping and falling to her death all alone in this spot at the edge of the world where nobody would find her body until the—wolves? vultures? or, ugh, sea gulls—picked her bones clean and she got her own entry in True Tales From Pajaro Bay . She'd probably end up with the cliff-diving drunks and spelunking teenagers in Chapter Ten: Stupid People Who Got Themselves Killed For No Good Reason .

  "What the heck. If I die, my bones'll be famous."

  This was one of those moments when it would be nice to have someone here to give her advice. "Your choice, chick," she muttered. "You wanted to be alone, you got it. You can't go looking for a hero to bail you out the first time you break a nail."

  After only a little scouting she found a less steep part of the cliff. The rain had carved a foot-wide path in the hillside at a not-too-treacherous angle. She followed it down past a twisted cypress tree and around a sandstone boulder, then cut across a mossy track to where she'd seen the phone.

  Her lifeline to the outside world lay on the crag. The phone's screen was cracked—not surprising after being thrown off a cliff—and it was as silent and useless as a rock.

  While she continued to press buttons, shake the phone, and curse at it, she heard Mom's I told you so echoing in her head. Well, Mom would never know about this.

  It was no big deal. There was a marine radio in the lighthouse for emergencies. Not much good for a private chat with Aunt Zee over eggs benedict, but useful if she was ever attacked by pirates.

  She looked down through the drifting wisps of fog to where the white sea foam sprayed against the tide pools in the little cove below. A lone harbor seal, oblivious to the incoming tide beginning to lap at it, lay sleek and gray in a crumpled heap on the rocks.

  The ocean was lively today. It was clear she couldn't go anywhere in this blinding fog and crashing sea. But this wouldn't last forever. This temporary setback would give her time to shoot a few more of the photos she'd promised to the historical society, and once the seas died down she'd call Aunt Zee to send the little motorboat out to pick her up and bring her to shore. No big deal—as long as nobody heard about it and gave her grief for being a risk-taking idiot. Besides, a trip to the cookie aisle of Santos' Grocery might be just what she needed to change her mood.

  She turned to go, but then glanced back at the harbor seal. It was lying awfully still. Another dead one. She sighed, then put the phone in her pocket and followed the mossy track on its circuitous path down the hill toward where the seal lay.

  She'd asked the Coast Guard officers last week why there were so many dead seals showing up, and had been told there was some kind of distemper virus going around, and that she should stay away from them.

  Seeing the sweet-faced seals dead on the shore was really sad. But she'd just take a quick look to make sure it was dead and then report it once she got back to the lighthouse.

  The sea
ls were cute, but they were twice her size and she wouldn't be surprised if they could eat her for lunch if they wanted to. So, in case it wasn't dead, she hid behind a big rock.

  The seal didn't move. Geez, this was the third one since the new year. The visiting fishermen had said it was normal for dead seals to wash ashore every once in a while, and even the lighthouse maintenance crew from the Coast Guard had dismissed her questions about them with an indifferent "It happens, ma'am," that had sounded so gruff they'd taken pity on her and hauled the dreadful thing away so Lori wouldn't have to look at it. Maybe to the tough and capable Sam and Vince it was something that "just happened," but to her it was a tragedy.

  She started to turn away from the dead thing, then she did a double take.

  The shape was wrong.

  It had that glossy dark look of a wet seal, but there was something more angular to the shape—longer and thinner than the fat seals. She had to get closer. She put the flashlight in her pocket and scrambled over more rocks until she was only about fifteen feet away.

  It wasn't a seal at all.

  It was a body.

  A human body. A dead person. The horror of it made her gag, and that was too much for her poor queasy stomach.

  She stood behind the rock retching until she managed to get control of herself.

  She dipped her hands into a tide pool and splashed her face with icy water. The salty tang helped clear the tangle of thoughts crowding in on her.

  A dead body. She peeked over the rock again, and it was still there.

  "Oh," she whispered, though nothing could've heard her over the ocean's roar.

  The body was wedged face-up in a fissure.

  Even from this distance she could see the face was ghost-white, starkly pale and still against the slick dark wetsuit. As still as death. Of course he was dead. That wetsuit—that was what the surfers wore. And she had seen the small black dots of the surfers way out in the water when the waves surged up high against the shore. They took crazy risks. She felt her pulse pounding in her throat and had to swallow hard again to keep down the nausea. This man had drowned out here in the storm, all alone.

  She had never actually seen a dead body before. Some cowardly part of her wanted to run away from it, to leave the horror behind and go hide in her kitchen with her books and her work and another of the endless cups of tea that nursed her through these long days.

  What she needed was some tough Coast Guard officer to clean this up for her. That was it. She would call in the cavalry and they'd take care of it. She reached in her pocket automatically, but the dead phone wasn't going to do her any good.

  She closed her eyes. She had to get all the way back up the hill to make the call from the lighthouse signal room. Until she did, she was alone on an island in the middle of nowhere with a dead body, and there was nobody to take care of the mess but her own foolish, cowardly self.

  She looked at it again. Maybe it was a trick of the light. Maybe it was a seal, and the light patch that looked like a face was just some optical illusion, like the dog that had led her out of the lighthouse and into this mess.

  She had to make sure. If she was wrong about it being a human body, and she called everyone out in the storm just to look at a dead seal, she'd never hear the end of it.

  So she forced herself to move forward, to grab onto the slick boulders, and slip across the gravel, and make her way closer and closer to where the awful, silent thing lay among the rocks. The sea roared in front of her and the foghorn bellowed way up the hill behind her. The wind picked up every wisp of fog and swept it around in little currents among the pillars of wave-worn stone. She felt completely alone and small amidst the forces of nature all around her, but she kept on.

  Then she came around the last boulder that stood between her and the body and saw: it was her pirate.

  He was dead, flat on his back with an angel floating above him.

  This angel was so golden, so shimmering, so straight out of a Michelangelo fresco that he felt embarrassed for doubting his catechism.

  He'd done so many things to be ashamed of in his lifetime. He hadn't even made a last confession. It was all too late now. But the angel didn't seem angry.

  He couldn't stop staring at the angel. All golden. Fine gold curls, a gold figure, and a light glowing at its feet.

  Its face was a weird grayish brown, almost mud-colored, definitely not human, and not like a Renaissance painting. An odd-looking face, but a dead man lying in a tide pool wasn't really in a position to pass judgment on his guardian angel.

  "Hello," it said. The voice was little more than a breath. A delicate, feminine voice from a tiny, fragile-looking angel.

  He meant to say something suitably contrite, but no sound came out.

  In a flash, the angel was at his side, brushing his face with one hot little hand. "No, don't talk. I'm sorry," it said. "You're hurt. You have to stay still."

  The hands were burning, searing him, the heat painful and yet a welcome warmth to his cold body.

  He could still feel his body, even though he was dead. He could feel the angel's touch comforting him, gently patting his cheek as it said "there, there" in the same way Mama used to when he was a small child and had scraped his knee playing in the tide pools.

  He sighed in relief. Death wasn't so bad. The angel wasn't angry, even knowing who he was—even knowing everything he'd done, and everything he hadn't done. He felt contentment wash over him, just this once knowing he was accepted in spite of everything, loved and forgiven with no need to explain himself.

  He thought of the death and destruction he'd left in his wake, and wondered how the angel could be so gentle to the likes of him. "It's been so long since my last confession," he whispered, but again no sound came out.

  The angel shook its head, bending over him again. "Lie still," it said. The angel's golden body crinkled with a strange sound like the squeak of a damp rubber raincoat.

  It was a raincoat, a glossy yellow one, he realized, and hard behind that realization came the dreadful conclusion that he wasn't dead at all.

  Chapter Three

  This was no guardian angel. He hadn't been forgiven. He was still Matt DiPietro, and he couldn't escape his fate, whatever it was.

  He tried to regroup, tried not to be disappointed that the moment of pure acceptance and forgiveness had been only an illusion.

  He had to pull himself together, to figure out what had happened. This must be Pajaro Island. The sandstone cliffs were right in front of him, so he must be lying among the tide pools at Pirate's Cove, right beneath the lighthouse itself. He'd made it.

  But now he was helpless at the hands of that girl from the grocery store. What was her name? The Project had briefed him on this.

  Her name became an obsession to him. If he could remember her name, then he was in control of the situation, and not a pathetic lump of flesh at the mercy of these people.

  The effort to concentrate was too much, and he drifted off again.

  Next thing he knew the girl had wrapped him in the yellow slicker and was apparently trying to examine his injuries.

  Her warm little hands felt so good he decided to let her go ahead and examine anything she wanted to.

  When she moved down his body toward his left leg, she gasped. It probably looked a mess. He wondered if the bleeding had stopped. Somehow he found it hard to care one way or another.

  The girl's hands cupped one of his hands. She was so hot—or was he so cold? It was hard to tell. She was talking again, leaning over him and speaking earnestly to him in that soft voice, but he couldn't make out what she was saying—something about ginger tea, and ghost dogs, and stupid surfers getting themselves killed.

  He knew that couldn't be right, so he decided to sleep some more.

  Her hands cradled his face. "Wake up!"

  He opened his eyes.

  "Don't pass out on me, you... you... twit!"

  Her eyelashes were the same golden blonde as her hair. He felt an
irrational urge to kiss them. For some reason, that thought made him smile.

  "This is not funny!"

  Her eyelashes were wet—sea spray, or tears? They really looked like tears. He didn't like that. Tears didn't fit his assessment of the scenario, and he wasn't up to doing a re-evaluation.

  "We have to get you out of this cove before the tide comes in," she said, with what he could have sworn was genuine concern.

  Don't trust. He closed his eyes, trying to dredge his memory for every scrap of information he had on her. He was too tired to remember. She was somebody he should know. Was she on his side, or the other?

  Whoever she was, he was going to die out here if she didn't help him.

  Finally, he thought of it: "Lorelei." His throat burned from the strain of speaking, but the sound came out.

  Lorelei. That was her name. The siren who lured sailors to their deaths. He had laughed about it when they told him. What a name for a lady lighthouse keeper. He was absurdly pleased that he'd remembered the name, as if it really did prove he was in control.

  "Lori," she said. "Nobody calls me Lorelei."

  Nobody except the IRS, NSA, and every other government agency that had a record on her.

  "How did you know my name? We hardly even spoke at the store." She looked surprised. This was bad. First word out of his mouth and he'd made her suspicious.

  He closed his eyes again.

  "It's all right," she said. "We'll talk later. But we have to get you higher out of the water before I go call for help."

  "Call?" His voice sounded like an old man's, weak from the effort of living.

  "I've got a marine radio in the lighthouse. Can you keep yourself above the waterline here while I call the Coast Guard?"

  He grabbed her arm.

  "Ow!"

  He ignored her wince of pain and kept gripping her tightly. If she called for help, he was dead. And so was she. Now he remembered. She was a civilian. She was Ms. Zelda's great-niece.