Before I made it inside, I saw Officer Harmon and Cadet Adams flanking the kid, his hands cuffed behind his back, as they walked him up the street. When it became clear his pace was only one notch above a dawdle, Officer Harmon jerked him by the elbow toward the patrol car. I knew I needed to head inside for my meeting, but something about the kids’ eyes searing into me pinned me in place.
They were full of such rage, such indignation—and something else…hurt? I couldn’t tear my gaze away. I was also sure the officers would want to take a statement from me, so I lingered there, waiting to see what would happen next.
As Cadet Adams helped the boy into the back of the patrol car, Officer Harmon approached me. “Did you witness the attempted crime?”
I nodded. My heart sank at the prospect of ratting out this kid—who looked like he had very little going for him—but what choice did I have? The whole thing was captured on our security feed anyway—another upgrade we installed after the Bryce Beach Bandit case.
“He was just browsing the books, and then I looked over, and he was trying to steal the donation box in the lobby,” I explained. “I’m sure he doesn’t mean any harm. He looks…hungry.”
Officer Harmon’s lips thinned as he sucked in a deep breath, his badge moving up on his uniform-covered chest and then back down again as he considered a response to my theory. “This is the third time we’ve caught him stealing or trying to steal something in the past week.”
“Who is he?” I asked, but before Officer Harmon could answer, his radio squawked with a nasal female voice.
“All available units respond. 725 Shore Road. 10-54. Repeat: 725 Shore Road. All units respond.”
The two officers’ eyes snapped to each other’s as their mouths parted slightly in surprise. Officer Harmon said something into his radio, and it crackled for a moment before the operator answered him. Then he turned to his partner. “We better go. I’ll drop you off at the station, and you can process Mr. Monroe.”
“10-54,” Allison Adams repeated, her eyes wide.
They seemed to have forgotten I was standing there. As they were rushing down the steps to their patrol car, I called out, “Wait, what’s a 10-54?”
“Possible dead body,” Officer Harmon answered.
Next thing I knew, his siren was back on, and his lights were flashing.
Four
I stood there frozen for a moment, unsure what to do. Though Evangeline was expecting me upstairs at nine for the interview, I really wanted to climb in my car, head down to 725 Shore Drive, and see what was going on with my own two eyes. Maybe it was because I’d solved two cases where the police were either duped by the perpetrator or told by higher-level agencies to stand down. Maybe it was because I’d been bitten by the sleuthing bug, and I didn’t know how to stop. Either way, I had to get down there.
I whipped out my phone and dialed Evangeline’s office number.
“Where are you?” she snapped. “And what’s going on down there?”
I wasn’t going to lie to one of my best friends. “Hey, don’t know if you heard the alarm going off—”
“Well, I’m not deaf!” she retorted.
“Right, well, the police got the kid who tried to steal the donation box, but as they were questioning me, they got a call on their radio—”
“Okay, so they’re gone, then? You can come up for the interview now?” she assumed.
“Uh…” I stared down the street. The sirens were starting up again, so I imagined Harmon had left Adams at the station and was going lights and sirens to 725 Shore Drive.
“What’s going on, Sunshine?”
“They got a call that a possible dead body had been found down the road.”
“What?” my boss gasped.
“I’ve gotta go down there, Evangeline. I’m sorry. Can you do the interview without me?” I doubted the guy would want to work here anyway after walking into the mess he’d witnessed—not to mention we now have a possible dead body to contend with? Yeah, I wouldn’t want to work here either if those were my first impressions of Bryce Beach.
A long, heavy sigh came down the line. “Fine,” she relented.
“After that, I’m going to stop by the station and finish giving them my statement about the attempted theft this morning,” I shared. “I don’t have anything on my schedule today, except Liz will be in later to work on the library website. Lord knows she doesn’t need any supervision.”
Liz Cooper was Anna-My-Favorite-Patron’s older sister, who had been doing some work for my department this summer, and when she finished that, Evangeline hired her to redesign the library’s website—a much-needed intervention to save us from the early 2000s design—and I use that word loosely—our former director was too cheap to upgrade.
Now that I (sort of) had permission, I walked the three blocks to the coffee shop where I’d left my car this morning. I passed Mrs. Monroe’s house and thought about stopping in to see if she was there, if she was okay after her no-show at church and the council meeting, but a growing feeling of dread compelled me to get down to 725 Shore Drive as fast as I could.
Shore Drive was a winding road on the outskirts of town that connected some of the wealthiest properties in our county to the rest of Bryce Beach. It was only a few minutes from town, yet, once out there on its curving, snaking pavement, you felt miles away from civilization. The multi-acre properties were all perched right on the shore and boasted two- and three-story modern homes with classic coastal architecture and pristine landscaping. Many of them had their own boat docks as well.
There were only five houses along this drive, but they were some of the largest and most valuable in the state. One was the vacation home of a famous recording artist who was retired now but had a few chart-topping albums in the eighties. One belonged to a plastic surgeon whose practice was in the city, about an hour away. I believed one belonged to a lawyer who also practiced in the city. I wasn’t sure who the other two owners were, but they evidently weren’t the type to hang out in town. They had their homes here and pretty much kept to themselves and their private beaches—who could blame them?
Sure enough, I saw police cars parked askew in the driveway at house number 725, along with the medical examiner’s van. The fact that there wasn’t an ambulance confirmed this was a body—not a patient. As I pulled up, I heard sirens in the distance, and before I could get out of my Mazda, a state police SUV coasted in behind Chief James’s unmarked car.
I didn’t plan to get close to the action. Hoping no one spotted me since I parked down the road just a little ways, I locked my car and ambled down into a sweeping green meadow that was dotted with pine trees and shrubs. I just wanted to make it down to the beach so I could see what was going on. I couldn’t tell from the road because the palatial home blocked the view of the water.
I made it past the tree line to the sandy outcropping. There was a bathhouse at the edge of the property, and judging by the fence around the perimeter, I assumed there was a pool on the other side. Sneaking down to the front of the bathhouse, I was pleased to see it wasn’t gated beyond the beach, leaving an unhindered shoreline that stretched the entire curve of the cove. I saw the Bryce Beach marina to my left, and beyond that, the lighthouse was a tiny dot on the other side.
A swarm of officers was huddled around a mass on the beach. Evidence markers were being photographed in a hurry as the tide was coming back in. I wondered if that meant the body had washed up during the last high tide and had thus been there for several hours.
I remembered I still had binoculars in my purse from my last case, so I pulled them out and lifted them to my eyes. Focusing in, I watched the medical examiner and another man lift the body onto the stretcher. Once they turned the stretcher perpendicular to me, I could see it was a tiny, frail, older woman.
An audible gasp slipped out when my worst fear was confirmed. I was nearly one hundred percent certain the body belonged to Willa Bryce Monroe.
The image of our town matriar
ch’s lifeless body on that stretcher was burned into my mind as I trudged back to my car and climbed inside. I sat there for a moment, completely numb. The radio was playing an upbeat pop song from my adolescence, and I scrambled to turn it off. The silence wrapped around me as I tried to process what I had just seen. Even though I’d had a niggling feeling in the back of my mind that I might see exactly what I just saw—ever since Tom said Mrs. Monroe hadn’t shown up at the council meeting—I’d been praying I was wrong.
“Oh, Lord,” I cried out. “How could this have happened?”
Willa Bryce Monroe was eccentric, and some of her ideas were a little antiquated—and, yes, she’d basically told me I was too fat to find a husband—but how could she be dead?
And how could her body have washed up on the beach?
She was elderly. Frail. Walked with a cane. I couldn’t see her voluntarily venturing out into the surf. I couldn’t even picture her walking on the sand—not with a cane. If she was going to die, wouldn’t it be in her bed at her home?
It just didn’t make any sense.
Once the temperature reached the point of nearly suffocating me, I realized I hadn’t started the car. It was August, after all, and the sun was rapidly climbing in the late morning sky. Going back to the library to report what I’d seen didn’t seem like the right thing to do. Instead, I’d head to the police station and see if I could follow up on the kid who tried to steal our donation box. Maybe I could learn a few more details about Mrs. Monroe’s death as well.
The grayness of the police station matched my mood as I stepped inside and gave a lackluster half-smile to the man at the desk. It was the older, mustached officer who had been gruff with me in the past, but he seemed to have already heard the news. He wore a softer expression on his face, and his eyes were red, as though they’d misted up and he’d rubbed the moisture away.
“May I help you, Sunshine?” he asked.
I was surprised to hear him use my first name, since the chief and everyone else at the station—with the exception of Cadet Adams—seemed to be so formal.
“Hi, I, uh…I was going to follow up with Officer Harmon about the attempted theft at the library this morning.” Memories of my conversation with Mrs. Monroe on Friday night flooded back. I wondered if anyone had spoken to her after Molly and I did…
“Officer Harmon has been called out to—”
“I know about Mrs. Monroe,” I stated.
His eyes closed slowly for a second before gradually opening as if he was operating in slow motion. Words seemed to be trapped in his throat because his mouth parted to speak, but no sound came out.
“I spoke with her on Friday night,” I revealed. “And what she said might be important to the case—”
“Well, I don’t know if there is a case.” His brows drew together as he looked me up and down. “Not everything is a case for you to solve, Ms. Baker.”
Oh, there it is. There is the formality. Because I’m trespassing on his turf.
“Still, what she said might have some value. Can you let Chief James know I stopped by?”
It was as if merely stating his name conjured him from the ether. “Good morning, Ms. Baker,” came his deep, resonant voice down the hallway. He must have entered from a back door. And he must have left the scene at the same time I did to get here so fast.
“Chief James, I—” If I wasn’t mistaken, there was the slight glisten of what might have been a tear in the corner of his eye. Surely he’s not crying!
He didn’t speak; instead, he gestured with a single finger to follow him to his office. I shot Mr. Mustache a smirk as I fell in step behind the chief. I never imagined I’d spend so much time in the chief of police’s office, but I’d already lost count of how many times he’d ushered me into his guest chair since the Bryce Beach Bandit case.
By the time we both settled into our respective seats, I’d already forgotten about the kid at the library, and all I could think about was Mrs. Monroe. “I just got back from 725 Shore Drive,” I admitted.
His eyes widened as they settled on me. “You did. How did—”
“Officer Harmon and Cadet Adams were at the library investigating an attempted theft of our donation box when it came across the radio. I had just heard she didn’t appear at the council meeting last night, and I didn’t see her walking her dog this morning—”
I couldn’t bring myself to say her name.
Apparently the chief couldn’t either. “Her dog,” he echoed. “I’ll need to send someone from the shelter over there immediately.”
Tears stung at my eyes as the seriousness of this discovery crushed me like I was being buried beneath an avalanche. Nothing would ever be the same again in our town. Willa Bryce Monroe was the backbone of our community.
“What happened?” I finally pushed out through the frog in my throat.
“I can’t say anything until the medical examiner has a chance to do an autopsy.” His fingers dug into his bald brown scalp, leaving lighter impressions in the shiny skin before he dragged his hand down his neck and leaned back, taking in a deep lungful of air.
“It’s me, Vincent,” I reminded him. “I thought after the last case, you’d agreed to be more forthcoming.”
I couldn’t hide my disappointment that he was closing me out, treating me like just any citizen when I’d already proved my value as a detective, albeit an amateur one. And, yes, maybe the widow had died of natural causes, and there was a perfectly reasonable explanation for her body being found on the beach, but—
“She was shot, Sunshine.”
As soon as the words left his lips, they fired into me like bullets. “What?”
His nostrils flared as he drew in another deep breath. “We have no idea on anything else yet. You’ll have to be patient and wait for our investigation.”
Waiting was not my strong suit, and I was sure this wasn’t an opportunity to practice patience. I wanted answers yesterday.
“I spoke to her Friday evening,” I blurted out.
His eyebrows arched over his dark eyes, which were bouncing back and forth between mine. His fingers laced together on top of his desk. “Where? When?”
“Friday night I had my summer reading program awards at the library, and on my way back to my car—I’d parked a few blocks away to leave more parking for my patrons and their parents—I ran into her with her dog for their evening stroll. She walked every morning and evening without fail.”
“I know.”
“Well, anyway, I was with Molly Simmons, the Children’s—”
“I know Ms. Simmons.”
“Fine, well, she was all in a tizzy—Mrs. Monroe, I mean—about what she called the ‘gentleman’s club’ being proposed for the vacant lot near the boardwalk. She was outraged that the town would even consider it, and she planned to outbid the developer and buy the lot herself to keep Bryce Beach from being tarnished by a ‘house of ill repute,’ as she called it.”
“I see.” Chief James reached into his desk drawer to pull out a notebook, then proceeded to jot down a few words. “What else did she say?”
“That’s the gist of it.” I strained my forty-plus-year-old memory to replay the conversation in my head, just to make sure I hadn’t missed anything important. “Oh, she said the mayor was all for it.”
I then remembered what my dad had said. What Tom had said. There were definitely people who were in favor of the developer’s proposal—it was capitalism in action, my father argued.
“Surely the mayor didn’t—” I shook my head. I’d been suspicious of Mayor Steyer and his family on more than one occasion, but they’d always been exonerated.
“Let’s not jump to conclusions,” Chief James implored. “She could have shot herself. We just don’t know yet.”
“Suicide?” I shook my head adamantly. “No. She was just saying on Friday that she planned to be around for a long while, and how she wanted to fight to keep the town free of riffraff.”
“Riffraff?” he re
peated, just like I had on Friday night.
“The developer,” I gasped. “The developer shot her!”
Five
I drove back to the library, my earlier grief replaced by an overwhelming need for vengeance. Though Chief James assured me there would be a thorough investigation in collaboration with the state police, it couldn’t hurt for me to launch my own inquiry. I may have been the last person to speak with Willa Bryce Monroe before her murderer got ahold of her. If they even spoke with her at all!
What if they just gunned her down in cold blood? And how did her body get to the beach?
When I walked in, it was clear no one knew what had happened. Life was going on as normal at the Bryce Beach Public Library, as though a horrific and unfathomable crime hadn’t just been discovered in our fair town. Avid readers were browsing the stacks, looking for gems. Tom was at the reference desk helping a patron, likely giving her an earful of random knowledge and bits of anecdotal humor. Barbara was at the circulation desk, checking out books to an elderly lady wearing a big, floppy beach hat and a floral-print swimsuit coverup. Molly was in the children’s area preparing for story time.
No one was in the young adult area, so I marched straight up the stairs. Evangeline would be my first stop. When I made it to the top of the stairs, I saw her with the cataloguer candidate I’d seen entering the building earlier.
“Sunshine!” my boss’s voice rang out across the room. “Come meet Falcon Roberts.”
Falcon Roberts? That did not sound like the name of a cataloguer. It sounded like a stage name or a nom de plume, or possibly a character from a Broadway musical or a soap opera.
“Hello, Falcon, I’m Sunshine, the YA librarian,” I introduced myself, extending my hand to greet him.
“Charmed,” he said, sounding as though he had stepped out of a vintage black and white film. He had a thin blond mustache and pale gray eyes. His skin looked as though he either hadn’t been exposed to the sun in a good decade, or he was part vampire. Or maybe he was related to Evangeline, since she was nearly as pale as he was.
Dangerous Curves Boxed Set 1: 3 Cozy Christian Mysteries Page 36