On a Dark Tide

by Valerie Geary

  ON A DARK TIDE

  A Brett Buchanan Mystery

  By Valerie Geary

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  ON A DARK TIDE

  Copyright © 2021 by Valerie Geary

  Broken Branch Books

  Portland, OR

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any manner without written permission of the copyright owner except for the use of quotations in a book review. For more information, address: info@valeriegeary.com.

  First edition April 2021

  ISBN 9781954815018

  www.valeriegeary.com

  To Nathan.

  He knows what he did.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  MORE FROM THE AUTHOR

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Chapter 1

  Brett hadn’t seen any signs of rats in the four months she’d been living with her grandmother in the big house overlooking Sculpin Bay, but Amma insisted she heard them. They were keeping her awake at night, she said. Furry little bastards would chew apart the attic if someone didn’t stop them. And by someone, she meant Brett.

  Amma was afraid of the ladder that unfolded from the ceiling, worried that if she tried to climb the narrow rungs, she would fall, break her hip, and lie for days in agony until someone found her. If someone found her. A woman who lives alone dies alone, Amma liked to say with a bitter twist of her coral-tinted lips. But she wasn’t alone anymore, Brett reminded her nearly every day.

  In June, Brett had uprooted her entire life to come and live with Amma in Crestwood, a salt-encrusted fleck of nowhere town in Washington, less than an hour’s drive from the Canadian border. Part of their arrangement was that Brett could stay on rent-free indefinitely as long as she helped out with the things Pop used to do. Like raking leaves, and cleaning gutters, and climbing into the attic on her day off to set traps for imaginary rats.

  As far as Brett could tell, no one had been in the attic since Pop died of a heart attack five years ago. A thick layer of dust covered the beams and eaves and boxes stacked underneath. She wiggled a trap into the narrow space between an old wardrobe and the wall. Once all the traps were in place, she worked her way back toward the open hatch, weaving through the cluttered odds-and-ends her grandparents had accumulated during their sixty years together. At some point, she and Amma would have to go through it all and decide what was worth saving.

  Downstairs, a door slammed. Brett startled at the sound and bumped into a stack of boxes. The top one fell, and the lid opened. Cameras, film canisters, and stacks of curled, faded photographs spilled across the attic floor.

  Brett sat a minute listening, in case Amma needed help. She’d been losing her balance recently, tripping over uneven thresholds and her own feet. It’s nothing, she’d say, waving away Brett’s concern. I’m getting clumsy in my old age, that’s all.

  When no other sounds came from downstairs, Brett assumed everything was fine.

  During the summer months, Amma took her breakfast of black coffee and toast onto the back patio, where she would watch cormorants glide across the glinting surface of Sculpin Bay and scan the horizon for whales. Though it was mid-October now, and most mornings were too cold to sit out on the porch for long, Amma would sometimes wrap herself in a sweater and do it anyway. According to her, the murmur of water against the pebbled beach calmed her nerves.

  Brett returned her focus to cleaning up the mess she’d made. She put the cameras and lenses back into the box without much thought but took her time with the photographs.

  Many were black-and-white, abstract glimpses of light and shapes, her grandfather dabbling with his artistic side. She took a minute flipping through a small stack of pictures where the subjects were people rather than buildings and landscapes. Pictures of Amma and Pop together and impossibly young. A baby in Amma’s lap grinning toothless, followed by more photos of the same baby in a frilly, white dress. Then in a diaper, crawling across the dock. Then in a sailboat with Pop. Then sitting in the grass outside this very house that hadn’t changed much over the years with its wrap-around porch, Victorian turret, and wind vane shaped like a whale. The baby in these pictures was Brett’s mother. The cowlick curl over her forehead was the same cowlick Brett had been trying to tame her whole life. In a later picture, her mother’s cowlick had disappeared, her hair turned honey-blond and soft, her eyes mischievous. The resemblance to Brett’s older sister was startling enough, she did a double-take. She had never realized how much Margot looked like their mother.

  As girls, Brett and Margot spent every summer from the Fourth of July to Labor Day in Crestwood with their grandparents. Wild days, golden days, she remembered them as glinting and saturated bright, until the summer of 1964 when their lives shattered. Brett hadn’t thought she would ever return to Crestwood after what happened that summer. Yet here she was twenty years later, and though her heart was no less broken than the day they found Margot’s body, she had at least gotten better at pretending.

  The smell of burning toast wafted into the attic.

  “Amma?” Brett called down. “Is everything okay?”

  When she received no response, Brett abandoned the rest of the mess to pick up later. She climbed down the ladder and went into the kitchen, where gray smoke billowed from the toaster. Brett fumbled with the handle until the damn thing finally popped. She pinched a corner of the charred toast and tossed it into the sink. A flush of water and the smoke dissipated, though the stench of it hung thick in the air.

  “Amma?” Brett called out again.

  From the small radio on the counter, two pundits discussed tomorrow’s second presidential debate between Reagan and Mondale. A mug beside it had been filled to the brim with coffee and left to go cold. Brett flicked off the radio.

  The double french doors leading out to the back porch hung wide open. A cool breeze blew through. Brett slipped on a pair of rain boots, grabbed Amma’s favorite sky-blue cardigan from its hook beside the door, and went outside. She stepped off the porch and walked across the backyard that sloped to a pebbled beach.

  Amma, a petite silhouette against a damp gray October sky, stood on the beach a few steps from the dock and a small boathouse, painted the same cheerful yellow as the main house. A fourteen-foot sailboat bobbed in the water, tugging against the ropes that kept it lashed to the dock. Amma’s back was to Brett, but she wasn’t looking out over the bay. Her head was tilted, and she was staring at her
feet. Not at her feet, Brett realized as she walked closer, but at a pile of wet clothes. She quickened her pace. Even this far away, she could tell that what had washed up this morning was more than rags.

  She stepped off the lawn. Pebbles crunched underfoot.

  Without looking up, Amma flapped her hand and said, “Don’t come any closer, Brett, dear. This isn’t something you need to see.”

  Brett grabbed Amma and pulled her away from the body.

  Small waves rocked the man gently. He was on his stomach, face pressed into the rocks, his arms trapped beneath him. The skin of his neck, visible above his shirt collar, was bloated and splotched purple. Working as a sheriff’s deputy for the past ten years, and now as a detective, Brett had seen enough bodies to know without needing to bend close or check his pulse that this man was unmistakably dead.

  She swung her gaze along the beach and out across the water, looking for a wrecked boat or something else to explain how he’d come to wash up on this particular shore. There was nothing out of the ordinary. An empty stretch of sand and stone, the soft pull of the tide, a seagull eyeing them from the roof of the boathouse.

  Brett turned her attention back to Amma, who was shivering so hard her teeth chattered. She had been out here only a few minutes, but the thin linen pants and short-sleeved blouse she was wearing did little to protect her from the mist and light breeze coming off the water. They were close enough to the shoreline that waves rolled over her bare feet. The cuffs of her pants were soaked past the ankle.

  Brett spread the cardigan over Amma’s shoulders. “What are you even doing out here?”

  “I was going to take the boat out for a jaunt.” Amma wrapped the cardigan tight around herself.

  “You don’t have any shoes on.”

  Amma looked at her feet, confusion rippling across her face, then she blinked and straightened her shoulders. A frown tugged at the corners of her mouth. “A man is dead, Brett. I hardly think now is the time to hassle me about my choice of attire.”

  “I wasn’t trying to hassle you. I just—”

  “I’m going to call the police.” Amma spun away from her and marched up the hill toward the house. The long hem of her cardigan a fluttering scrap of sky against the gray mist and steel-colored clouds.

  Chapter 2

  “Clara Louise, are you listening to me?”

  Clara blinked and returned her full attention to her mother. She’d been staring out the plate glass window of Crumbles and Cakes, the coffee shop downtown where they shared breakfast every Saturday with few exceptions. Sculpin Bay glinted in the distance, a dark thread against a vast sky, the horizon bleeding gray into the clouds. Orcas and San Juan islands, normally visible from almost any high point in Crestwood, were shrouded in fog today. A light mist coated the window and dripped from the eaves.

  Geana Pearce shifted in her chair, the antique wood creaking under her weight. “What’s wrong with you today?” She sipped her milky coffee and ate a bite of a chocolate croissant.

  “What do you mean?” Clara reached for her own coffee, hot and black.

  “You seem…” Geana fluttered her hand, a trio of bangles on her wrist clattering together. “I don’t know, distracted, I guess.”

  “Just a little tired. I could use a refill.” She started to get out of her chair, but before she could get far, Mary appeared, coffee carafe in hand.

  “You two ladies doing okay?” Mary Andress, the owner of Crumbles and Cakes, smiled at them. Her plump cheeks were dusted in flour, as was the apron tied around her waist. Her auburn hair, turning silver at the roots, was pulled into a thick braid, the tail draped over one shoulder.

  “As always, your croissants are too divine, my dear,” Geana said.

  Mary poured coffee into each of their cups, then set fresh creamer on the table in front of Geana and a small pink pastry box in front of Clara. “Treats for Marshall and Elizabeth.”

  “Mary, you don’t have to.” Clara started to push the box away, but Mary covered her hand, stopping her with a quick squeeze.

  “Full bellies, happy hearts.” She offered a soft smile before returning to the front counter.

  “So you’ll think about it?” Geana asked when Mary was gone, returning Clara’s attention to the conversation they’d been having about the upcoming Halloween festival before Clara got distracted by the distant clouds. “A couple of hours, that’s all I’m asking. Please, Clara, I need you there.”

  She sighed. “You did fine last year without me.”

  Geana laughed. “Two kids twisted their ankles, one woman got knocked over by a man dressed as Gumby who couldn’t see where he was going, and Linda released the balloons an hour early. It was an unmitigated disaster.”

  “Disaster might be a bit of an exaggeration, don’t you think, Mother? I’m just saying, there are plenty of people in this town willing to help you.”

  Before Geana could respond, three police cars screamed past the café, sirens blaring and lights flashing as they sped down Main Street toward the bay.

  “What in the world?” Geana craned her neck as the cars turned a corner. She rose from her chair. The legs scraped loudly across the linoleum.

  “Mama, don’t,” Clara protested, but Geana was already grabbing her hand and pulling her toward the door. Clara barely had time to snatch the pink pastry box off the table.

  * * *

  It was a ten-minute brisk walk from the café in historic downtown Crestwood to Bayshore Drive, where the town’s wealthiest citizens lived on private beaches in generous mansions with unobstructed views of the ocean. Clara and Geana were the first to arrive at the police barrier. More people gathered by the minute, drawn by the sirens and lights and possibility of tragedy. Crestwood wasn’t so small a town that nothing interesting ever happened, but small enough that everyone came out to watch when it did.

  The three cop cars that had blazed past Crumbles and Cakes were parked at angles blocking the street. Eli Miller, dressed in a crisp navy uniform and shiny leather boots, unrolled a spool of yellow tape in front of the sidewalk to keep onlookers from stepping into the yard of a three-story, cedar shake, gabled house. Clara had known Eli since elementary school. Eli and her husband, Marshall, had been best friends for even longer than that. He’d been with the Crestwood Police Department for over ten years, but she didn’t think she’d ever get used to seeing him with a badge, carrying a gun on his hip like it weighed nothing. He waved when he saw her, finished tying the yellow tape around a signpost, and came over to where she and her mother stood.

  “What’s going on?” Geana asked.

  They were about one hundred yards from the beach where another officer crouched beside a dark lump near the water’s edge. It was impossible to tell what the lump was from this distance.

  Eli leaned close and lowered his voice, so only Clara and her mother could hear. “A body washed up early this morning.”

  Geana gasped and pressed her hands to her mouth. “Oh, dear. A body? Like a person?”

  “Is that for me?” Eli grinned and reached for the pink pastry box in Clara’s hand. “You shouldn’t have.”

  She pulled it away. “Do they know who it is?”

  “Oh, Clare Bear,” Eli said, using a nickname from high school that he knew she hated but for some reason insisted on resurrecting. “You know I couldn’t tell you that even if I knew. Don’t be mad,” he teased, dimples creasing his cheeks. “You’ll find out soon enough. I’m sure Arlo’s on his way. Surprised he’s not already here actually.”

  Arlo Savage was the long-time editor of the Crestwood Tribune, the town’s daily newspaper. He was a man who might easily be as old as the town itself and who, like her mother, made it his business to know everyone else’s business.

  Another uniformed officer, younger than Eli, walked up to the yellow tape. He held a clipboard in one hand. He tipped his head toward the house’s back deck, where Detective Irving Winters stood talking with another man.
>
  Except for three years when she attended the University of Washington in Seattle, Clara had lived her entire life in Crestwood. While she wasn’t friends with everyone, between volunteering at her daughter’s school, her husband’s realty job, and her mother’s love of gossip, she knew a lot of people. Eli had introduced her to Irving Winters several years ago. Even without that connection, Irving was a man she would have noticed and remembered on her own. In a town where most people could trace their lineage to England or France or some ruddy group of Vikings, Irving was African-American. His dark brown skin contrasted starkly with the sea of pale faces that surrounded him. The bird ties he always wore, no matter the occasion, made him stand out even more.

  “Detective Winters wants you looking for this car.” The younger officer slipped Eli a torn piece of paper. “Medical examiner’s on his way. I’ll take over here.”

  Eli frowned at the slip of paper before tucking it in his pocket. He flicked a glance at Clara, showing off his dimples again, and gave her a playful wink. “Duty calls. See you and Marshall tomorrow?”

  She nodded, waving him off.

  He pumped his fist in the air. “Go Hawks!”

  He took his time walking along Bayshore Drive, checking license plates, zigzagging from one side to the other, before finally disappearing down a smaller side street. The officer standing in front of the perimeter tape widened his stance and stared into the distance, ignoring Clara, her mother, and the rest of the gathered crowd.

  Geana bumped her shoulder against Clara’s, her voice filled with reproach. “Aren’t I always telling you not to swim in the bay? I guarantee you that’s not the only body floating around out there.”

  “Mom,” Clara warned.

  “What? You know I’m right. That water’s deep. Who knows what else—or who else—could be hiding down there. At the very least, you shouldn’t be swimming alone.”

  Clara sighed and said, “I’m going, Mom. Thanks for the coffee.”