“Oh my gosh!” Jada exclaimed. “Me too! My undergrad is actually in bio.”
“My ex is a marine biologist.” Evangeline’s tone was completely nonchalant.
“Oh, maybe he can be the investigator!” Molly exclaimed.
“Uh, no thank you. I have no need for him in Bryce Beach. He’s on the other side of the country, which is perfect. We need at least three thousand miles between us.” She rolled her eyes and put her fork down. Apparently talking about her ex-husband, whom she called DW, had made her lose her appetite. I supposed this was not the right time to ask if DW was his real name or what it stood for.
“I hope they figure out what’s going on.” Thinking about all the dead sea life made my heart ache. Summer was just getting underway, and I had already planned to spend a lot of time at the beach. Our tiny cove had started to attract vacationers as well, which was a real boon to our local economy.
I hoped there wasn’t something wrong with our water. Where there’s water, there’s life. And all that death on our beaches could be a harbinger of more death to come…
“Nancy, can’t you turn the TV off? We’re about to eat!” my dad said, coming in the sliding glass door from the deck carrying a heaping pile of hamburgers and hot dogs.
“Smells goooooood, Grandpa!” my nephew Jake said as he raced around the corner, his twin brother, Drew, hot on his heels.
“Wait a sec, Phil! They’re about to do a story about the dead marine life on Bryce Beach!” my mother shouted from the kitchen. She was watching the TV from the small opening between the breakfast bar and the living room.
My ears perked up too. It had been a couple days since the story Evangeline told us about in The Bryce Beach Gazette. After hearing it, I scoured all the local news sources but couldn’t find any information. My mother was watching the television broadcast from the city, which was a little over an hour away from us. We didn’t have TV stations out here along the coast, so the fact they’d picked up the story meant it was gaining more attention.
I stepped into the living room to get the full experience, and so my nephew’s rambunctious activities wouldn’t interfere with my absorbing the story.
My dad turned to me, a perturbed scowl on his face. He didn’t like anyone or anything interfering with mealtime. “Hey, can you shut it off when this story is over so we can have our prayer and eat?”
“Yes, Dad. No problem.” I sat down on the sofa, and my mother came in to join me, putting her arm around me.
“I’m worried something bad is going on,” she admitted, looking up at me with wide green eyes that matched my own.
“Me too.” We both held our breaths as the anchorwoman introduced the story. They didn’t cover happenings in our area very often, so it was always exciting to see how our tiny little burg was depicted by outsiders.
“…And now we head to Bryce Beach, a small community on the coast, for our next story. Steve?”
The camera panned the length of the beach, from the lighthouse to the marina, probably drone footage, I was guessing. Then a tall man wearing a suit and a friendly smile came on screen, holding a microphone. “Thanks, Alicia. I’m Steve Wilhouse reporting with Action 10 News at Bryce Beach Marina. Joining us today is Bryce Beach Chief of Police, Vincent James. Chief James, what can you tell us about the reports of dead sea creatures washing up onshore in your town?”
I thought the reporter was tall, but Chief James dwarfed him with his massive frame. He bent his head to speak into the microphone. “A week or so ago, we had reports from local fishermen and beachgoers that some fish were washing up dead on the beach. The first day or two, it was only a few different species, but on days three and four, we saw a bigger variety of marine life, including horseshoe crabs and even a small shark. But today, we are sad to report that a young whale has also washed ashore.”
I gasped as the camera panned down to the beach on the other side of the marina, where a crew of folks wearing yellow and orange life vests were swarming around a massive lump on the shore. It was fuzzy and hard to see, but I guessed that was the whale.
“A whale!” my mother said, squeezing me toward her. “How terrible!”
“Do you have any idea what’s causing the animals to die, Chief James?” Steve continued his interview.
“We’ve contacted the state university’s marine biology program,” Chief James replied, “but we’re waiting on forensic analysis and necropsies to be performed. A team came and took samples yesterday, but we won’t know the results for a while. I know our citizens are anxious for the mystery to be solved, but I want to be clear that there is no evidence of a crime being committed, so there’s not actually anything for the police to investigate. We’ve made a report to the Department of Natural Resources, and they’re sending someone out today, I think, now that we’ve also found the whale. We hope to have some answers soon.”
“So you heard it straight from the Chief of Police, Vincent James,” Steve said, returning this gaze to the camera. “The citizens of Bryce Beach will need to be patient while the appropriate agencies complete their testing so we can solve the mystery at the Bryce Beach Marina. Let’s hope this is the last of the dead sea creatures on our beaches for a long while.”
“Exactly. Thank you, Steve.”
“Thank you, Chief James. Back to you, Alicia.”
My mother turned to me as I flicked the television set off, the image of Alicia the anchorwoman frozen in my photographic memory for the next few seconds. “What?” I questioned when I noticed her intent stare.
She put her hand on my knee. “You should do something about this.”
“What?” I shook my head. “What on earth would I do about it?”
“You did such an amazing job figuring out what happened at the library gala,” she explained. “I have no doubt you could get to the bottom of this mystery too.”
My eyes narrowed into slits as I tried to figure out why my mother thought I had any business taking up this case. “You know I’m a librarian, right? I have an actual job.”
“You’ve always had a knack for solving problems,” my mother complimented me. “Remember when you were in junior high, and you didn’t win class secretary like you wanted? You figured out that the kid who beat you had rigged the votes.”
“He bribed half the class to vote for him!” I rolled my eyes, remembering that little twit. I wondered what he was doing today and how big his prison cell was.
“And you handled it so diplomatically too,” she recalled, further stroking my ego. “It doesn’t sound like the police even want to solve the mystery. They outsourced it.”
“Are you guys coming to eat?” my father called from the kitchen, where he and the other menfolk clearly felt abandoned.
My mother rose, gripping the arm of the sofa to stabilize her bum hip. “We better go get dinner started, or we’re never going to hear the end of it.”
I laughed, knowing she was absolutely one hundred percent right about that. About the police, though? I had my doubts. “The police don’t have evidence of a crime,” I reminded her.
“You should think about looking into it,” she said. “I have a feeling the marine biologists and DNR folks are going to uncover something…”
I’d had that feeling too, but I’d kept it to myself. “I’ll think about it, Mom. It’s just that I’ve gotten busy at the library now that I’ve had money to buy new books and resources, and to start up programming again.”
“You’re so smart,” my mother doted on me, reaching up to tweak my cheek.
“Oh, please. Let’s go eat before the folks in the kitchen starve to death.”
Four
“Hey, have you heard anything else about the dead fish on the beach?” Molly asked as we stretched out on the sidelines of the ball diamond. My nephews were playing a doubleheader today, and I promised my brother and sister-in-law that I’d catch at least one of the games.
I looked over at my best friend, who was finally relaxing after Murphy go
t bored playing with his ball in the grass and dozed off. He looked so cute perched under her chair with his floppy ears covering half of his face. He was also cute when he was awake, of course, but there was a special kind of adorableness that came when he was snoozing. I supposed it was because it was impossible for him to get into any mischief when he was asleep.
“Actually, no, not since the whale washed up last week,” I answered. “My mom said I should take the case, you know, like I did for the Bryce Beach Bandit.” I rolled my eyes to show that it was clearly a joke and not to be taken seriously.
The expression on my friend’s face told me she didn’t comprehend the joking part. “You totally should!” She reached out and put her hand on my knee, leaning closer to me. “C’mon, Sunshine. It doesn’t sound like the police have done anything! It’s been almost two weeks since we saw those dead fish at Lighthouse Park, and no one has released any information about what’s going on.”
“I think it’s strange that no one has reported the findings from the lab yet. They were supposed to perform necropsies on some of the dead animals. I thought for sure we’d hear something by now, like they’d been poisoned, and what the poison was.”
“It’s probably just pollution,” Molly groaned. “I hate that our oceans have become landfills.”
“Ironic since they aren’t land at all…”
“Aqua-fills,” my friend corrected. “It’s terrible. God made us stewards of the land and sea. And this is how we take care of His creation. Selfish, greedy humans.”
I nodded, but I had a feeling there was something else going on here than everyday pollution, though pollution was scary and awful in its own right. “Maybe I’ll go talk to Chief James and see if he has any info. You know how much he loves me.” Yep, being sarcastic again.
“That’s a good idea, and he does like you!” Molly insisted. “He said hi to you at church last Sunday.”
“Right.” I heard the crack of the bat and realized my nephew Drew had just hit the ball into the outfield. I watched it sail toward the open mitt of the boy in center field, only to bounce off it to the ground. And then I witnessed Drew’s little legs pumping as hard as they could as he rounded the bases.
Everyone rose to their feet cheering him on. “C’mon, Drew!” I yelled. “C’mon home!”
Another burst of excitement welled up when he slid into home, safe. “Whoo hoo! Way to go, Drew!” I screamed at the top of my lungs. Well, I must fulfill my auntly duties!
Seeing one of my favorite two kiddos score a home run inspired me. I was going to talk to Chief James first thing Monday morning on my way to work.
The Bryce Beach Police Department was absurdly gray. Gray walls, floors, doors, counters, trim. The police officer’s dark blue uniforms stood out against the sea of gray. I noticed the cadet who had worked on the Bryce Beach Bandit case, Allison Adams, was at the desk. It was a relief to see a friendly face among all the officers grizzled from years of fighting crime. I say that with a smirk because…uh, it’s Bryce Beach.
“Hey, you!” she exclaimed when she saw me, a broad grin curling her lips. “What can I do for you? Everything good at the library?”
I nodded. “Things are peachy down there. I wondered if Chief James had a few moments to speak with me on another matter?”
Her lips instantly straightened; they might have even turned down. “Oh…” She glanced at her phone, then her computer, before returning her gaze to me. I hadn’t noticed before, but she had lovely gray-green eyes that popped against her wheat-colored skin.
“I can make an appointment, if that’s better?” I suggested. Didn’t a citizen have the right to an audience with the police chief when something this important was on the line? Our beaches needed to be safe for both animals and humans, and until we knew what killed those fish, we couldn’t guarantee any degree of safety for any living thing. I was warming up my speech for when I saw the Big Guy.
“Just a sec.” She lifted her phone to her ear and punched in a few numbers. “Hi, Chief. Oh, you can? Oh, okay. Thanks.” She set down the receiver. “He said you can come on back.”
Could he see me on a camera or something? How did he know what Allison wanted?
I shrugged, pleased with the outcome, but a little taken aback. I didn’t think I’d actually get in to see him so easily. “Thanks, Allison!” I hoped she didn’t mind me using her first name, but she wasn’t really Officer Adams yet, and Cadet Adams seemed…
Her brilliant smile told me she didn’t mind. “You know the way?”
Oh, do I ever!
Well, Lord, I prayed as I made my way down the gray portal to the chief’s office, give me the right words. And help me take no for an answer, if that’s what he gives me.
I wasn’t always great at taking no for an answer. I was working on it, though that quality had served me well in my profession, where we had to fight for every single dollar and resource.
Chief James had his back to the door when I knocked on the frame, and he quickly spun around to greet me. “Ms. Baker,” he offered, standing to greet me.
I wasn’t prepared for the shock of warmth to envelop me when he squeezed his thick, meaty paw around my hand, which wasn’t small, but it was dwarfed by his. He was probably every bit of 6’3” or 6’4”, and he had broad shoulders, a thick neck and a barrel chest to go with the rest of his stature. But what was most noticeable about Chief James were his eyes: chocolate brown and deeply penetrating, they didn’t miss a thing. He regarded me for just a moment before the edges of his lips turned up.
I sat in the chair across from his desk and smoothed the skirt of my blue and white gingham dress over my thighs. I had a whole slew of summer dresses, and by golly, I planned to wear every last one to work at some point this summer—otherwise I’d have to donate some to charity. I had a policy that if I didn’t wear an outfit at least once a season, I had to part with it.
“You’re looking well, Ms. Baker,” he said, folding his hands together on top of his desk. He was always so formal. “To what do I owe the pleasure of this visit? Is everything alright down at the library?”
“You can call me Sunshine, you know,” I reminded him of the conversation we’d had after I’d broken the case of the Bryce Beach Bandit. A glance at the three-tiered metal file organizer perched on the corner of his desk conjured a vision of me knocking it over on accident when I left his office during a prior visit. One file landed open, and my photographic memory took a snapshot of the contents, though the image was too blurry to glean much from at the time. Later on, that mental picture I took helped crack the case.
“You didn’t answer my question, Ms. Baker,” his voice deepened.
“Right…well, I wanted to follow up on the dead fish case,” I announced. “Actually, scratch that. I think that’s a pretty horrible name for the case. It brings a rather bleak picture to mind, doesn’t it? It needs to be something with a little more panache, like Mystery at the Marina.”
Chief James’s eyes narrowed. “There is no case.”
“What do you mean? Of course there is!” He was just dismissing me because he didn’t like me nosing around in his territory. He was like an alpha wolf, and I was trespassing on his turf.
“No,” he insisted. “We never got any info back from the labs that collected samples, and we haven’t had any more animals wash up since the whale. And now that it’s been disposed of, we are moving on. A case was never officially opened. There’s no evidence of a crime.”
“So you think it’s just a coincidence that we haven’t had a whale or a shark wash up on our beach for three decades, and then all the sudden both happen in the same week?”
“Pollution is getting worse,” he replied. “And though that’s a shame, we don’t patrol the actual water, where the pollution is happening. Some of it is likely happening up the coast from us, anyway. There’s nothing we can do about it. It’s out of our jurisdiction.”
“I see.” I wanted to say, “well, thanks for nothing,” bu
t I knew better. I still needed to be polite, though inside I was fuming at how little he seemed to care. What else did Bryce Beach PD have to do, anyway? Write parking tickets? Make sure people didn’t park in the fire lane outside the boardwalk businesses? They were basically glorified parking rule enforcers.
“Sorry I can’t be of more assistance. I can tell you that the university’s marine biology lab never called us or sent us any results, and we haven’t heard back from the Department of Natural Resources either.”
“Do you plan to follow up with them?” I pressed, hoping to spark a wee bit of empathy for the dead sea creatures.
“Most of the time, universities and government agencies don’t want a small-town police department interfering in their work.” He leaned forward and gave me a matter-of-fact lip purse that was slightly more patronizing than I wanted it to be.
“Fine, no problem,” I told him. “I’ll just follow up myself…as a concerned citizen.”
“Suit yourself.” His lips straightened into a neutral position, and his nostrils flared ever so slightly as he took a deep breath. It seemed very possible I was tap dancing on his last nerve. I’d never considered myself much of a dancer, but if it meant getting answers…I was going to tap, tap, tap away.
“I will, thank you.” I didn’t mean to sound so snarky, but…well, I’d failed miserably in that department.
“Let me remind you of my earlier advice, Ms. Baker.” He rose to his feet again, a signal he was ready for me to leave. “You stick to librarianship, and I’ll stick to the police work.”
“Duly noted, Chief James.” I narrowed my gaze at him, sending the message that his advice was about as useful to me as a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.
I headed down to the beach after work, this time to the boardwalk. The disappointing turnout at my afternoon program and the conversation I’d had with Evangeline left me craving a bit of sugar therapy. That called for a visit to The Candy Shoppe, one of my favorite stores on the boardwalk. Okay, my favorite one, next to the gourmet coffee place, The Sophisticated Bean.
Dangerous Curves Boxed Set 1: 3 Cozy Christian Mysteries Page 20