Melody Steyer?!
That was pretty interesting considering I’d just been talking about her brother with Molly. What were the odds?
“Oh, Melody is our mayor’s daughter,” I offered, trying to make conversation. I rattled off my phone number and thanked Dr. Pink for her time.
“No problem,” she said. “Have a good day.”
I hung up the phone and sat there for a moment, feeling tingly and hyperaware, like I’d just had a major breakthrough in the case, but I wasn’t sure how to put these puzzle pieces together just yet. I pulled out my notebook where I’d jotted down a few observations. After adding Melody Steyer to my persons of interest list, I decided to add her brother too. And her dad. The whole Steyer family was on my radar.
Something was fishy with that bunch.
Seven
Apparently Molly’s program ran over, and Jada got caught up with something else, so it was only myself and Evangeline in the courtyard at the start of lunch. Evangeline was wearing sunglasses so big, they covered approximately half her face. She didn’t care for the sun and had ghostly pale skin. I was a redhead with freckles, and I was justifiably wary of the sun, but she took it to a whole new level.
I was so excited about what I’d learned from Dr. Pink that I’d completely lost my appetite, and I was glad I was getting a chance to chat with Evangeline alone. “So…” I began.
“So…” she echoed, looking at me with pursed lips.
“Do you know who your ex’s colleague is in the bio lab?”
“No, he didn’t say,” she answered as she stabbed a bite of broccoli and brought it to her lips. “Why?”
“I called the lab today and talked to the director,” I revealed, feeling super smart and proud of myself for being so assertive and sleuthy. “And she verified that the lab results weren’t tagged under Bryce Beach, but she said they could be under a different name—she’d have to ask the lead researcher.”
“If you were going to just call the director,” Evangeline glared at me, “why make me contact DW again?” She snorted out an exasperated breath. “He’s not exactly my favorite person, you know.”
“Sorry…I’m just trying to get to the bottom of this,” I rationalized my choice. “But Dr. Pink said the head researcher is none other than Melody Steyer.”
“So?” Evangeline fired back, but then the name sank in. “Oh… I forgot she worked there. That probably is his contact.” She rolled her eyes. “She always had a thing for him…”
“You knew she worked there?” My brows furrowed.
My friend smoothed her jet-black hair to one side of her neck. “I’d forgotten, to be honest. I have tried to wipe my memory of most things associated with DW.”
“You’ve never told me what DW stands for…”
“Nor shall I,” she said. “Your Christian ears don’t need to hear such vile language.” She smirked as she pierced her dark gaze into mine.
“Well, can you ask him about Melody? Just to make sure?”
Evangeline huffed, “It’s a good thing I love you so much.”
“Love?” I nearly choked on my drink. “I didn’t know that was an emotion you admitted to.”
“I only say it when it’s true.”
I couldn’t help but grin. I was lucky to have such great friends. “Well, I love you too.”
“Stop being all mushy and tell me what else you’ve learned about the fish mystery.”
I filled her in on my discovery at the marina, the meeting between Bob Summer and the unidentified man about crab traps, and finding out that Boxbury Seafood crabs in Bryce Cove.
Her eyebrows flew up her face. “You think Jada’s boyfriend’s family is involved in this?”
“It’s just a hunch, really. But my working theory is maybe one of the fishing boats dumped some fuel or some other chemicals in the water, and it ended up killing the fish. With that many dead animals, they had to have been poisoned, right? It couldn’t just be regular pollution…”
“They dumped something that could kill a whale?” She sighed. “That sounds horrible.”
I nodded. “If it was a fuel leak or something… I don’t know much about boats. I guess I’ll have to study up on what kind of chemicals they have on board. I just feel like it has something to do with all the Coast Guard boats being out there, but I can’t figure out what they have to do with the dead fish. It’s all tangled up. Like a fishing line, I guess.”
“Very funny.” Her brows drew together like she was trying to connect the dots. “Well, what if they’re not related at all? The dead fish seem to have stopped washing up now. So it might have been an isolated incident. It might not have anything to do with the Coast Guard being out there.”
“That’s true. I noticed the Coast Guard presence before the fish showing up.” I looked off in the distance at a monarch butterfly hovering over one of the yellow flowers in the bed across from our picnic table. “What Bob Summer said about only being able to handle state matters, not federal—the Coast Guard is the military, so that’s federal, right? And now the results have disappeared from the bio lab—which is at a state university. It’s all pretty fishy, isn’t it?”
“You’re full of puns today, aren’t you?” She rolled her eyes.
I remembered something I heard on the news report, and also something Chief James said when I went to meet with him a few days ago: the Department of Natural Resources was also investigating. I wondered if I could just as easily call up the DNR and find out who was in charge like I did when I called the biology lab.
I was going to spend my afternoon finding out.
I caught up with Molly after I finished lunch in the courtyard with Evangeline. “Hey you!”
“Sorry I missed lunch. This mom wanted me to find like forty books for her three kids to check out. All different reading levels.” She pretended to wipe sweat off her brow.
“It’s okay. I do have a question for you, though.”
“Oh yeah?” Her blonde eyebrows arched, and she scratched the tip of her nose like the curiosity was making her itch.
“You said you knew the Steyer kids when you were in school, right? Dylan and Melody?”
“Well, I told you Dylan was my first kiss. I didn’t know Melody that well. She’s younger than me.”
“How much younger?” I asked.
Molly pursed her lips, deep in thought. “Two years? Maybe three?”
“Okay…”
“Why?”
“So, it turns out that Melody works in the state university’s marine biology lab where they sent the dead fish for a necropsy—but now there’s no record of them at all.”
“Wow…that’s weird.”
“Yep.” I was grasping at straws, but I figured I’d ask anyway. “Do you know if Dylan and Melody are close? Did they get along when they were kids?”
Molly tapped her fingertips on her desk, the wheels of her memory visibly turning inside her head. “I haven’t thought about them for so many years…but here is something I remember.”
I leaned toward her. “What’s that?”
“One summer…they came back to Bryce Beach to stay with their father—just for a month or two. I don’t know why it was only the one year. We’d just finished tenth grade. Most of us weren’t driving yet, but we were starting to hang out and date and stuff. Of course, Melody would have been younger, like seventh or eighth grade.”
“Okay?”
“Dylan had started running around with this girl from Moon Point, Amanda something-or-other…Taylor, I think? I only met her once, and apparently she’d heard that I had a crush on Dylan back when we went to school together. Someone must have told her that he kissed me on the playground when I was in sixth grade and he was in fifth.”
I already knew that story. “Go on…”
“So we were all at the beach for a bonfire one night. It was right around July 4th, but not actually on the holiday, because I don’t remember there being fireworks or having music at the bandstand o
r anything. But anyhow, this Amanda girl from Moon Point came right up to me when I was trying to talk to Dylan, hands on her hips and copping an attitude. And she said something like, ‘I don’t know what Dylan ever saw in a fat cow like you. You’re so ugly, you must have paid him to kiss you!’”
Molly’s voice began to waver as the memory took over her tongue, the words spilling out before she even had a chance to process them. She clutched the sides of her face, her eyes misting over with tears. “I’m sorry…I’d forgotten all about that until just now… I must have completely blocked it out.”
I’d been bullied about my weight my whole life, and it wasn’t until my forties that I decided I didn’t give a flying flim flam what anyone thought about my body. It was none of their business. But I knew how Molly felt. No wonder we’d bonded and become best friends. We had matching scars. We were survivors.
I put my arm around her and drew her in for a hug. “I’m sorry to make you remember that horrible night…”
She pulled away. “I did have a point…something to do with Melody…”
“Okay?”
“Well, she was tagging along that night because their dad, the mayor, was out doing who-knows-what and didn’t have anyone to watch Melody, so Dylan had to keep an eye on her. But anyway, when she heard what Amanda said to me, she marched over, fuming, and stomped on Amanda’s bare foot as hard as she could. And I’ll never forget what she said…”
“What was that?”
“She said, ‘only a truly ugly and miserable person would ever say such hateful things.’ She broke her foot, Sunshine! We had to call an ambulance. I haven’t thought about Amanda Taylor for years, but from what I understand, her foot never did heal quite right. Melody must have really done a number on it!”
“Wow…that’s crazy!” I shook my head. “What did Dylan do after that?”
“I think he took Melody home. She got in pretty big trouble, but naturally Mayor Steyer smoothed everything over with Amanda’s parents.”
“Melody was a little spitfire, I guess.” I tried to reconcile Molly’s memory of her with what I’d learned from Evangeline. “I wonder what she’s like now…”
Right before my afternoon program started, I sat down at my desk and googled the Department of Natural Resources for our state. This website was a lot more extensive than the biology department at the university, but I found the directory pretty easily and jotted down the name of the executive director. With any luck, I’d call him up, and he’d say, “Oh, so-and-so is responsible for that,” and then I’d talk to that person and, voila, I’d unlock another clue.
But when I called Mr. Edward Dunworthy, that wasn’t what transpired at all. First of all, I didn’t reach him but an administrative assistant. And she was possibly the least friendly person I had ever spoken with.
When I tried to leave my name and number for him to return my call, she asked, “I’m sorry, who are you again? What agency are you with?”
I had forgotten to use a slick cover story this time. Oops. I was still getting my sea legs, so to speak. “I’m Sunshine Baker, and I’m…just a… private citizen.”
“Mr. Dunworthy has a contact form on the website and answers one email per week in our agency newsletter. I’m sorry that he doesn’t have time to respond to each individual message,” the woman snipped.
“Is there someone else I can speak with about the whale that washed up on Bryce Beach a week ago?” I pressed, unwilling to give up so easily.
“Do you have press credentials?” she barked in her abrasive voice.
“No, ma’am, but I am a concerned citizen, and according to our Chief of Police, they’re waiting on the DNR to release a report about the cause of the whale’s death.”
“Well, I’m sure that report will be forthcoming,” the rude woman snapped. “And if the police don’t have it, what makes you think you’re going to get it? You can wait to read it just like everyone else.”
Wow. Just wow.
“Okay, then,” I tried to summon every bit of patience and niceness the Good Lord had granted me, “thanks for your help.”
I wished I meant it. I didn’t.
“No problem,” she said, and that was the end.
I sucked in a breath as I stared at my phone, wishing I could shoot an electric shock right through it. Then I immediately prayed for forgiveness because that was a super mean thing to wish. When I looked up, two pairs of dark eyes were staring at me.
Anna and Elizabeth Cooper.
A smile instantly graced my face, taking away the not-so-nice thoughts I was having about DNR Lady. “Well, if it isn’t my two favorite patrons!” I gushed. “Don’t tell the others!”
They both giggled.
“I’m here for the program,” Anna said.
“And I’m here for some work. You said you have a project for me, right?” Liz asked.
“Yes, yes, I do. I want you to build a database for me for the summer reading program. I was trying to keep track of everyone’s points by hand, but it’s turning into a nightmare. Can you help with that?”
A confident, nearly cocky grin spread her lips. “Easy peasy.”
“Excellent!”
She glanced down at my computer screen, where I still had the DNR website pulled up. “Oh, the Department of Natural Resources! I did some work for them last summer.”
“You did?” I had to physically restrain my jaw from dropping with a hand under my chin. “What kind of work?”
“Work on their servers. Apparently they’d been hacked, and they needed some help getting them locked down,” she answered. “My aunt works there.”
“I really hope she’s not the person I just spoke to on the phone. I was trying to get some information, but she was so rude!”
“Worked there,” Anna corrected her sister. “She got a better job, remember?”
“Oh, right…” Liz rolled her eyes. “Sorry, I forgot.”
Anna was a very precocious thirteen-year-old, and her older sister, Liz, was smart as a whip and especially gifted when it came to computers and technology. Anna said, “Aunt Tara was always complaining about that place and how it wasn’t run very well.”
“Hence the cybersecurity problems,” Liz chimed in. “Why were you calling them?”
“I was trying to find out some information about the whale that washed up on the beach and the other dead sea creatures,” I shared. I’d never thought to ask Liz for help, but…
“I heard about that.” Anna’s face clouded over with a frown. “So sad.”
“I know. And no one seems to know why they died.” I sniffed in a breath. “I’m trying to get to the bottom of it.”
“Oh! Can we help?” Anna’s face brightened. “We had so much fun last time!”
“Shhh…” I put my finger to my lips in true librarian fashion. “Don’t tell anyone, okay?”
“We can keep it on the DL,” Liz promised with a wink.
“DL?” I thought I was down with teen lingo, but sometimes they came up with stuff that threw me for a loop.
“Downlow,” Anna answered for her sister.
“Well, if you can find out what info they have on the whale, that’d be helpful,” I told Liz. “I’ve gotta start this program for now, though.” I looked over to where a gaggle of teens had started to assemble.
“I can do it from home tonight,” Liz said. “I’ve still got all the info from their site on my laptop. How much do you want to bet they haven’t changed the passwords from when I reset them?”
If Liz could come through for me, it would be amazing! I might have felt bad about her hacking into the DNR computers, but if they were that mismanaged, and their secretary was that rude to people who called—well, we might never get to the bottom of what happened to those poor sea creatures.
And that was just not acceptable as far as I was concerned.
I got an email from Liz Cooper at midnight. I was dead asleep, but my phone buzzed, and it was like a switch went off inside my head. I k
new it was important. I grabbed my phone, rubbed my bleary eyes, and forced my vision to focus on the words of her message:
Hey, Ms. Baker,
Found out something super interesting about the whale on the beach. The tox screen they did came back with a whole bunch of negatives. The one thing that said positive? Opiates.
Screenshot attached.
See you tomorrow,
Liz
I looked over the report she attached, and though I would have had a hard time processing that much technical language when I was wide awake, my sleep-addled brain couldn’t really process it at all. I’d have to take a better look at it in the morning, but from what I could gather, it seemed like our whale had OD’d on opioids.
Eight
I awoke with a start about two minutes before my alarm was supposed to go off. Some sort of minor superpower allowed me to do that, but it wasn’t as impressive as my photographic memory. The mental screenshot I’d taken of that toxicology report was still burned on my brain, but it was fuzzy. I wanted to bring it up on my computer to look at it a little more closely.
After doing a little research about the reporting threshold for opiates in humans—couldn’t find info for whales—I found out that the amount in our young Globicephala melas was a hundred times what it would take to kill a person.
Holy smokes!
Saturday afternoon, Molly and I took Murphy back to Lighthouse Park to wear her rambunctious puppy out, and I also wanted to see if there were any more dead fish or Coast Guard boats in the cove. It was the weekend, and I expected to see more recreational boats on the water than anything else.
“He’s getting so big!” I cooed as I nuzzled the puppy’s wet nose and fluffed his furry ears. “He’s beyond cute. How’s the potty training going?”
“He’s doing better…not as many accidents. He’s just getting harder to wear out the older he gets!” Molly tugged his leash, and the puppy jumped down from her SUV. He looked twice as big as the last time I saw him, though it had only been a week.
Dangerous Curves Boxed Set 1: 3 Cozy Christian Mysteries Page 23