A Ghost for Christmas (Destiny Bay Cozy Mysteries Book 1)

by Winters, J. D.

  And a very good friend of Caroline’s, I would say. Hmm.

  Detective McKnight was back.

  “Now,” he said a bit sharply, “Let’s fill in some blanks, shall we?”

  And so it went for another hour or so, until the coroner carted Kyle Madronna off to wherever it is in this town that they take the recently deceased of the victim variety and the police packed up their equipment and drove off and left us alone, staring after them and wondering what we were supposed to do now.

  “There’s blood on the walkway,” Bebe said, and suddenly she looked as though all the air had gone out of her.

  “No problem,” I told her, taking her hand and leading her up into the house. “I’ll take care of it for you in the morning. Let’s get something to eat. You’ll feel better with some food in your tummy.”

  There it was again, something my grandmother had always said, and now it was coming out of my mouth. Inside, I groaned.

  Chapter Three

  We headed for the kitchen and I made her sit down at the kitchen table while I rummaged for something simple, like soup. I kept her talking. I figured that would be best. She had a look in her eyes that told me she might just collapse if she started thinking about what had really happened here this evening.

  I fixed some ramen. She had the fresh noodle kind in the refrigerator and it gave me a thrill to see that, and other foods I’d grown up with and hadn’t seen for years, piled high in her cupboards. We both grew up in Hawaii and we’d lived in neighborhoods where the Kimchi pot sat on the table and the rice cooker was on the counter. Despite everything it warmed my heart to see those things again.

  We ate and talked and she began to relax. I had some questions I was dying to ask, but I knew it would just set her off onto the edge again. I was going to have to wait.

  At one point, she reached out and covered my hand with her own, beaming at me with such obvious love, I felt a shiver of uneasiness.

  Why? I asked myself that-- and all I could come up with was that I was afraid she was expecting too much from me. Too much trust, too much allegiance, too much love—too much staying. Did she think I’d come here for good? Was I going to have to disappoint her again? Taking a deep breath, I shoved those thoughts down into a dark hole where I hoped they would die, and asked her, point blank, “So who do you think killed him?”

  She pulled back her hand and stared at me and I grimaced, wishing once again, that I would think first, speak later.

  “I didn’t do it,” she said. “I had no idea he was out there. I…I didn’t like the man but I would never….”

  I grabbed her hand back and held it tight. “I know that, Bebe. I never for a moment thought you did it. I know you too well.”

  I was lying, but it was the sort of lie you have to tell to people you love.

  Her eyes softened again. “Your mother,” she began, and I craned forward, not wanting to miss a syllable of what she was going to say. The moment stretched. What was it? Something she hesitated to tell me? My heart began to pound. She started to speak.

  And—boom!

  At that very moment something slammed into her back door, right close to where we were sitting. We both jumped and screamed at the same time.

  It was someone knocking.

  “Let me in, Bebe,” a loud male voice called aggressively. “And tell me why you killed my father.”

  “Oh no,” she said, pulling away. “It’s Adrian. Don’t let him in!”

  I stood and looked through the screened window in the kitchen door. A young man in his early 20’s stood there, looking distraught. Dressed in jeans and a dirty hoodie, he might have been a hobo, except for the fact that he wore a thick gold chain and his haircut was spectacularly trendy.

  I glanced back at Bebe. “I…I think we have to talk to him,” I said. “If he’s Kyle’s son, his father just died in your yard. Don’t you think you should tell him as much as you know? It’s only fair.”

  She let out a heart-rending sigh and nodded. “Okay. But get your cell out. If he gets nasty, I’m calling the cops.”

  We let him in. He glared at Bebe, then turned his anger on me.

  “Who the hell are you?” he demanded.

  “Bebe’s my aunt,” I told him. “I’m here for a visit.”

  He turned away, effectively dismissing me as unimportant to the situation and started yelling at Bebe. I looked him over, wondering why a young man his age seemed to want to act like a pre-adolescent. He was good looking, but petulant. I decided not to like him.

  “Listen, stop yelling,” I told him. “If you want to find out what happened, why not listen instead?”

  He eyed me malevolently. “Okay, if you know so much, tell me. Who killed my father?”

  I shrugged. “That I don’t know. It happened before I got here.”

  “Oh yeah?” He thrust his chin out. “How do we know you didn’t do it?”

  Okay, I had to tell myself very sternly not to react the way I wanted to. This guy had just had his father killed in a nasty way. No wonder he was distraught. I couldn’t take what he said personally. Still, I didn’t have to let him abuse us.

  “Like I said, I wasn’t here. I tripped over him on my way to the front door.”

  “Oh great.” He turned and glared at Bebe. “But you were here, weren’t you? I know you were sick of him coming on to you. You said so often enough. Did you decide to do something about it and…?”

  Bebe jumped up, red spots in her cheeks. “You don’t know what you’re talking about!”

  “Oh yeah? Well the cops were interested when I told them about it.”

  “Oh!” Bebe fell back and slumped into her chair, seemingly overwhelmed by what he’d said.

  “Okay, out,” I said, herding him toward the door again. “If you can’t be civil, you’re out of here.”

  He argued, but I got him out the door. Meanwhile, Bebe took a cell call and when I came back in from shepherding Adrian off the property, she was pulling on a sweater and grabbing her purse.

  “Caroline needs me,” she said. “Michael just called to let me know she wasn’t doing very well.”

  I frowned, beginning to wish I had a program for this pageant. “Who’s Michael?” I asked her.

  “Oh, you don’t know Michael.” Her smile was benign and I immediately understood that Michael was a favorite of hers. “Michael is such a good guy. He teaches biology at the high school and I let him use one of my greenhouses for 4-H projects with his kids. He’s the advisor. Anyway, he stopped by to see her and thinks she’s in pretty bad shape. I’m going over to see if I can help.”

  I saw a flash of movement out of the corner of my eye and I turned quickly, afraid of what I was going to see. But it was just a black cat, running low along the far side of the room, as though he had something he wasn’t supposed to have and was hoping to sneak by unseen.

  “Sami!” Bebe cried, racing after him. “What have you got?”

  I helped and we cornered him in the hall.

  “A chicken bone,” Bebe moaned, grabbing it away from him. “He must have pulled it out of the trash. You bad kitty! This could hurt you!”

  Sami didn’t care. He was annoyed, but not chagrinned, to have had his snack taken from him. He stopped to lick his paws, one by one, completely ignoring us.

  “He’s beautiful,” I noted. “That thick fur looks like black velvet. And those green eyes…”

  “He’s pretty, but he’s a little thief. If I leave a drawer open, the next thing I know, he’s running through the house with one of my bras.”

  “That I’d like to see,” I said, leaning down to scratch the top of his head. “He’s such a handsome fellow, he should be allowed to do whatever he wants.”

  We went back to the kitchen and she took out the trash to make sure he couldn’t get any more of the bones. Then she collected her things and started for her car.

  “You don’t need me to go along?” I asked.

  “Oh no, sweetie. You stay here and get s
ome rest. I don’t know how long I’ll be.”

  “Okay. Call me if you need me.”

  I watched her go and felt uneasy. If Michael was her special guy, why was he comforting Caroline? Or had the fact that the woman was suddenly a rich widow had any bearing on his choices?

  Whoa! Here I was making judgments on a man I hadn’t even met yet. That might be going a bit too far. Ya’ think?

  But I was tired and I was nervous and it was bound to have an effect on my own way of looking at things. Here I was, all alone and jumping at every noise I couldn’t immediately identify.

  Then I realized—hey! There might have been a murder just a few feet away from where I was standing that very day. No wonder I was jumpy. Who wouldn’t be?

  I went out to my car to get my bags, looking over my shoulder and shivering, then brought them in, moved into the room I knew would be mine for the time being, and puttered in the kitchen. By ten Bebe still wasn’t back and I was bone tired, so I decided to go to bed. But deciding to sleep and getting to sleep are two different things and I lay there for a long time, staring at the ceiling and listening for creaks.

  There were plenty of them and every time I heard something, my heart was in my throat again—and I was wondering. It could have been the cat. But somehow, I didn’t think so.

  A door slammed and I jumped up, grabbed my robe and headed for the living room. The door to the kitchen was closed. I knew I’d left it open. My heart was beating hard for no real reason, or so I told myself.

  I whirled. Maybe the sound had come from behind me. I whirled back. Maybe… I caught my breath. Maybe someone was looming back there in the shadows… a bloody rock in his hand…

  I turned again, moving slowly so I could catch sight of any movement, bending into a crouch so I could spring away from whoever was there….but there was nothing. My heart began to slow. I began to breathe normally.

  Nothing happened. No one appeared like a specter in the night. I went back to bed, slightly embarrassed, but annoyed as well.

  The creaking didn’t stop. Was there a wind? No. Probably just the house settling. Probably.

  Finally I couldn’t stand it anymore. I sat up in bed and looked around in the dark, took a deep breath, and spoke.

  “Okay, I know you’re out there. I really can’t take this. If you’re going to keep it up, I’m going to go to a motel. That’s not a threat, just a promise. If you’re trying to chase me away, you’re doing a pretty good job. Now cut the crap and let me sleep!”

  I flopped back down, throwing myself hard against the pillow and clamped my eyes shut with pure determination. The next thing I knew, it was morning and I could hear Bebe talking to someone on the phone in the kitchen.

  I looked around the room. Nothing seemed to be out of place and I didn’t feel anything at all—anything supernatural, that is. Was I going crazy? Possibly. At any rate, I didn’t think I would be telling anybody about my ghostly visitor.

  I got up with a sigh and pulled on my skinny jeans and a bright yellow cotton sweater, and added a slick new pair of demi-boots. I ran a brush through my hair, washed my face and headed for the kitchen. Time to face another really weird day. Something told me the murder in the front yard was going to have repercussions for a long time.

  Chapter Four

  Bebe was pouring out mugs of coffee when I got there, and she smiled brightly at me, handing me one.

  “Morning sleepy head. You must have really been tired.”

  I glanced at the clock, surprised to see it was almost nine.

  “I guess so. I didn’t even hear you come in last night.”

  “I wasn’t too late,” she said, but she didn’t offer any more details. I sank into a chair at the table and looked up at her. She had her hair pulled back in a ponytail and looked younger than her years.

  She’d married a young grower named Jimmy Miyaki about fifteen years before. They met at the University of Hawaii in Manoa where he’d gone to study tropical plants. He’d brought her back here to Destiny Bay where his family had been running various farming enterprises for generations—with a major interruption during World War II when his grandparents were interned along with a lot of other Japanese Americans at Manzanar. Jimmy and his father had begun the switch from vegetable products to cut flowers for the supermarket trade and turned it into a roaring success. Bebe had been right by his side all the way, as the business grew and his parents passed away. It was the two of them against the world.

  Then Jimmy died from some rare disease I can’t remember the name of about three years ago and Bebe had been running the place on her own ever since. She’d mourned good and hard at the time, but there was something in her eyes now that told me there might be a new man in her life.

  This Michael person? Maybe.

  I ate a piece of toast and we talked about this and that but Bebe seemed to be studiously avoiding telling me what had happened at Caroline’s the night before, so finally I came right out and asked her.

  She hesitated, then gave me a fleeting smile. “Oh, not much. Caroline seemed to be more angry at Kyle than sad for his loss, if you know what I mean. And he was such a jerk, you can hardly blame her.”

  “What was that his son Adrian was saying about him coming on to you?”

  She nodded, avoiding my eyes. “Sure, he did that. But I was hardly alone. He came on to any woman he came across, any time, anywhere.” She was finally meeting my gaze. “I don’t know if you remember, but he thinks—or I guess he thought—that he was the biggest thing around, just because his winery is huge and very popular and all his grapes have been winning awards and all. Typical local rich guy who thinks he can act like small town royalty.”

  “One of life’s loathsome winners,” I commented cynically.

  She grinned. “Something like that.”

  I decided to be direct. “Did you have an affair with him?”

  “What? No! Of course not.” But her eyes shifted and I wasn’t sure she was telling the truth. She turned to clean up some dishes in the sink and I walked over to the window that overlooked the back yard, feeling like I’d had too much caffeine even though I’d only had a sip or two of coffee. I was wired. There was something going on and I wasn’t sure what it was.

  Looking out, I saw an elderly woman in a straw hat and a muumuu moseying around the flowerbeds. Sami, the black cat was following her around, rubbing against her legs and she seemed to be talking to him.

  “You’ve got a visitor,” I told Bebe. “She’s taking flowers.”

  “What?” She looked startled, then her face relaxed in bemusement. “Oh, that must be Aunty Jane.” She turned and looked at me harder, as though surprised about something. “She’s an older Hawaiian lady who lives nearby. Do you see her out there?”

  That seemed a funny way to ask, so I turned to look at her. “Sure. She’s right out there, pruning shears in hand, cutting a few of your red roses.”

  Bebe laughed. “That’s Aunty Jane. She’s a character.” But Bebe was looking at me sort of strange and when I looked out again, Aunty Jane was gone. I turned back to ask some questions, but a call came in and she was answering her cell.

  “Detective McKnight requests the honor of our company at the station after lunch,” she told me as she hung up, making a face. “I thought they’d already got our statements.”

  “There are probably some questions they want to ask. Details to tie up.”

  She shrugged. “I guess so.” She looked at me. “Why can’t they just call it an accident and let it go?” she asked, almost as though I could do something about that.

  I gave her a noncommittal smile, not at all comfortable. I wished it was an accident, too, because as things were going, I was beginning to wonder if there might be reason to suspect Bebe of something. Not murder, of course. But something.

  I needed a change of scene, so I told her I was going to go out for a bit. My old college roomie, Jill De Jong, managed a small coffee shop in town—Mad for Mocha. She was always brag
ging about what an adorable place it was and I’d been looking forward to seeing it. This seemed like a good time for me to go by so she could show it off.

  I had to clean up the front walk first. After all, I’d promised, and I felt the urge to do something for Bebe anyway, anything to make her feel a little better about things. The blood washed away pretty easily. I watered the begonias while I was at it, and gave all those birdhouses a little spray to wash down the dust from the road that had collected lately.

  Suddenly I was aware of a woman running toward me. I did a double take. The way things were going, I wasn’t sure if she was human or something from the spirit world. And then I realized it was the same woman I’d seen running right after I arrived. I watched her come closer and she paused right outside the picket fence, though she didn’t stop running. Only now, she was running in place.

  “Hi,” she said. “I’m Ginny Genera. I take it you’re Bebe’s niece.”

  “I am,” I said, smiling at her. “I’m Mele Keahi. I’m visiting for awhile. What are you training for?”

  “The Sausalito Marathon. I enter every year.”

  “Love your running gear,” I told you. “The colors are very eye-catching.”

  She grinned. “Today it’s peachy-pink,” she said. “I call these my daiquiri colors. You’re too young to remember when Daiquiris were trendy.”

  “Are you serious? Daiquiris are always trendy.” I gave her a wink. “And they’re coming back. The tyranny of the appletini is nigh-ended.”

  She laughed and waved. “I’m off,” she said. “Someday we must do lunch.”

  “You’re on,” I called after her.

  In moments, she was out of sight, but the warm feeling she’d engendered remained. I felt like I just might like it here in this valley. As long as the murdering thing cooled down and didn’t become a daily event around here.

  I felt better myself once I got into my car. For just a moment, I sat there and thought about things. Something about Bebe’s attitude was beginning to worry me. Why did I get the feeling that she knew more about Kyle’s murder than she was telling?