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

by Winters, J. D.

  I took a step closer, trying to see through the bush, and something rustled and then a black form lunged at me. I screamed, but the intruder had already lashed out, and I was falling off the porch, into the camellia bush.

  It hurt. There were broken branches and I hit my head on something, but I struggled, trying to get upright as quickly as I could. I had to see who the jerk was.

  But I was too late. A bicycle was speeding off toward town, carrying the figure in black, including a black watch cap covering the head. I couldn’t be sure, but it looked a bit like Caroline to me. Why I thought that when I hadn’t seen even a hint of blond hair, I didn’t know for sure. Maybe it was just plain ignorance.

  But no. There was more. I could swear I’d caught a whiff of scented soap or some kind of cologne. It had smelled feminine to me. Caroline? Or Sherry?

  I looked up toward the winery. The castle was lit up with Christmas lights, looking eerie and beautiful at the same time. How sad—how odd. It looked as though there ought to be a ball going on there right now-something spectacular, something elegant. Instead, this sordid murder investigation.

  Sami appeared out of the bushes and began to circle my ankles.

  “I’m not feeding you, cat,” I said. But I did let him in the house.

  My impulse was to go back in and wake Bebe up. She ought to know about this. But then I realized that the BMW parked discretely around the corner of the house belonged to Michael. If he was with Bebe, I certainly wasn’t going to barge in.

  But what on earth was so fascinating about Bebe’s front yard? I walked around in the dark for a few minutes, knowing there was no way I was going to find anything until morning. Giving up, I went inside. I went into the bathroom and washed my scratches. There was a bit of blood. I wasn’t sure if that made me feel brave, or stupid.

  No one appeared in my mirror.

  “Thanks a lot, Dante,” I murmured. “You could at least have protected me out there.”

  He didn’t answer. Not even a sign.

  I sighed and went back to bed, my mind spinning with the various possibilities. The next thing I knew, it was morning.

  I got up slowly, hesitant to know what exactly I wanted to tell anyone about the injuries. I’d screamed and no one had come, so I hadn’t woken anyone. Luckily, none of the scratches were on my face. I could wear long sleeves and cover it all up. I could keep the whole thing to myself if I wanted to.

  I looked into my bathroom mirror again and it was normal-empty, unhaunted. Uninteresting. In fact, downright disappointing. Did I want to see the ghost-or did I never want to see him again? Good question.

  Bebe was in the kitchen, humming as she fixed eggs and toast for breakfast. There was no sign of Michael and I didn’t bring him up. I did decide to tell her about the visitor in the night—and that I thought it might be Caroline. That made her frown and shake her head.

  “Sit down and have something to eat,” she said. “You’ll feel better with a full tummy.” Our gazes met and we both broke out laughing, both recognizing where that came from.

  But I did as I was told and she made a plate for me and one for herself and sat down across from me to eat.

  “I’ve been thinking about your ghost,” she said.

  I groaned and she held up her hand.

  “No, let me finish. I’ve got a theory. But first, I want to hear what happened with Nolan. The last time I saw you two you were madly in love. What happened?”

  I put down my fork. Suddenly I wasn’t hungry anymore. It was time, I supposed, to lay it all out for her.

  “We seemed so good together at first,” I said, putting my hand around my coffee cup. “But you know, he’d been married before. And he has a little boy named Timmy. Eight years old. Very wary of me. I’m sure his mother has told him tales about what a witch I am.”

  Bebe winced. “Oh that’s too bad.”

  I nodded. “I tried to get to him but nothing seemed to work. Meanwhile, Nolan himself was having commitment problems. He wasn’t sure…he needed time…he had issues…. You know the drill.” I bit my lip and prepared myself for the next part. “And then there was the morning I walked into the apartment and found Nolan’s ex had stayed overnight.”

  “Oh.” Bebe sighed, then brightened again. “But that doesn’t necessarily mean… .”

  I tried to laugh but it sounded like a death knell. “Oh, I think it did. And even if that hadn’t been the case… .” I hesitated, not sure how to put it. “How was I supposed to trust him again? I just stared at the two of them and I knew in a flash that it was all over.”

  “Did he try to explain?”

  “Incessantly. And I tried to explain to him how his explanations were never going to work. It was over.”

  Bebe reached out and covered my hand with her own. “I know, sweetheart. Trust is always going to be a hurdle to jump over for you. You were betrayed by just about everybody you loved growing up. It’s not easy to put that behind you.” She squeezed my hand. “I remember how it was after your father left that first time. I remember dropping you off at school and watching you walk into the school yard and up the steps, like a brave little soldier, your head high, you shoulders set…and tears in your eyes, and I sat out there in the car and cried for you for an hour.”

  My throat was choking up and I couldn’t let that happen. “I was lucky I had you,” I reminded her. “You are the best, always there for me.”

  We hugged. I cried a little. She tried to tell me her theory about my ghost again and I wouldn’t listen.

  “We can deal with that later,” I told her. “Right now we’ve got a murder to solve. And we’ve got to figure out what is hiding in your front yard.”

  She shrugged. “That’s something I’d like to know myself,” she said. “If there’s a treasure out there, I’d rather be the one to find it.”

  “Why don’t we make a real effort?” I suggested, getting excited about the idea. “Listen, we could go over every inch of that place, step by step.”

  Bebe nodded her agreement. “Take a slug of your coffee and let’s go out there,” she said, and minutes later the two of us were marking off measurements and jotting down notes on a clipboard and trying to be professional about it. We lifted flagstones, we dug up flowerbeds, we opened every birdhouse and peeked inside. Nothing. Not a darn thing. I could hardly believe it.

  Just as we were hitting the last birdhouse, Caroline rode up on her bicycle. That made for an awkward moment. She definitely noticed the implements of exploration and knew what we’d been doing, but she didn’t say a word about it. Instead, she went into full best-friend whine, as though she counted on Bebe to rescue her from all her woes.

  You had to feel sorry for her, I suppose. I mean, her husband had just been killed. Still, I really wanted to ask her if that had been her hunting around in the yard a few hours before. Her reaction might have been interesting. And enlightening. I tried to read something from the way she looked at me, but the problem was, she very rarely did that. In fact, I might as well have been invisible. As far as Caroline was concerned, I wasn’t there.

  But we went inside and Bebe brewed up more coffee and we listened to Caroline talk, watched her cry. Bebe hugged her for comfort. I couldn’t do much hugging when I was wondering if she’d been the one who did my mugging.

  She began a long explanation of why she’d married Kyle in the first place. The funny thing was, she kept looking at her watch, as if she was waiting for something. It made me jittery and I thought she’d probably be more comfortable if she got to tell the rest of her troubles to Bebe without me there as an audience. So I headed for town and my own best friend. Mad for Mocha was calling to me on all levels.

  Jill started making my latte the minute she saw me come in the door. That’s what I call a friend! I grinned and slid into a seat next to where she was working at the counter and began to relax.

  “You’ve been busy,” I noted, looking around at the Christmas decorations. I stared at a cut out cardboard fig
ure of a tall man in red religious garb on a white horse. “Wait, that’s not Santa Claus.”

  “Nope,” she said, looking like the cat who ate the cream. “Tonight is December 5, Sinterklaasevond—St. Nicholas Evening. All good little Dutch boys and girls put out their wooden shoes and St. Nicholas arrives in the night to give them presents.”

  “Or tells Swarte Piet to put them in a big sack if they’ve been bad and take them to Spain to pick oranges. Right?”

  Her face lit up. “You remembered!”

  “Of course I remembered. I tripped over your shoes so many times in the old days when we roomed together. They weren’t wooden, but they were out for St. Nick. I celebrated the day right along with you. Who am I to turn away the chance for presents? For all the good it did me. But I stayed up late with you every time, the lost little Dutch girl, pathetically waiting for the saint who never came.”

  “Oh he came. In spirit if not in the flesh.” Jill sighed happily. “With everyone else flaunting their ethnic background, I decided to show this town a little Dutch treat.”

  “Good for you. It’s adorable.”

  “Thanks.” She settled down and looked at me expectantly. “So, what’s going on in the mystery that is your life these days. Anything new?”

  I hesitated. I loved Jill to death, but I didn’t feel like I should be talking about my suspicions right now. They were based on nothing at all and it wasn’t fair to throw them around as though they meant something.

  I could, however, tell her about my ghostly meetings. Jill loved stuff like that.

  “The mystery lives on. I’m sure we’ll find out the answer to our own personal ‘who-dun-it’ at some point.”

  “Argghh!”

  “In the meantime, I think I met a ghost.”

  “A ghost?”

  That got her attention. I nodded. “A nice elderly Hawaiian woman who wears a straw hat and a green muu-muu. Bebe tells me her name is Aunty Jane.”

  Jill’s eyes were big as saucers. “Where?” she whispered.

  “In Bebe’s back yard. She just sort of comes and goes without warning.”

  “You mean like—disappears like smoke?”

  “Sort of.”

  “Oooh.” Jill was so thrilled. “Have you spoken to her?”

  “Not really. But she spoke to me. Once.”

  “Ah.”

  Her eyes sparkled with delight and I could tell she was going to start asking to meet her and to produce some proof of ghostly attributes and all in all, I was going to regret having told her. But it was what it was. If I had to bring her around to try to see someone she was probably never going to see, I suppose I could do that. But she shouldn’t get her hopes up and I was about to tell her so when I looked up and met the interested gaze of Detective McKnight and my heart sank.

  He turned from where he’d just collected his own coffee drink and sauntered over. “May I join you?” he asked.

  “Of course,” I said politely, but he had to notice the frown I said it with. Yeah. Big deal. It seemed to make him all that much happier to have cornered me. Jill quickly found something else to do on the other side of the shop. Best friend status can take you only so far.

  He dropped into a chair and regarded me levelly. “Let’s talk motives,” he said, leaning close so that he wouldn’t be heard by others in the coffee bar.

  “Let’s not and say we did,” I jabbed back, not relishing the prospect of being his sounding board.

  “We’ve got a fine set of suspects, don’t you think?” he went on as though I hadn’t spoken. “And most of them have great motives. The trick is going to be to winnow out the lesser actors and cut to the chase. We need to decide who has motives that go deep and hit hard.”

  I was intrigued despite it all. I leaned closer to him instead of moving away. “Who’s in the running?” I asked him softly.

  He glanced around the room and moved so close, I could feel his warm breath on my ear. My traitorous pulse began to speed up, making me bite my lip and try to fight it. “The widow, of course,” he said. “The angry son. The old girl friend.”

  I nodded, feeling a little breathless. Those all seemed logical.

  “And maybe…just maybe…your aunt.”

  “What?” I jerked my head back, away from him and glared. “You’re crazy. What has she ever done to make you think she had any deep emotional ties to the man at all.”

  “Are you kidding? Everybody hated him. Why should she be any different?”

  “Right. Half the town had a motive. Is that what you’re saying? Then how about the housekeeper? The head winemaker? The Pool boy. Everybody gets to play.”

  “You got that right.” He chucked me under the chin in a really annoying way, rose, preparing to leave. “Take care, Hawaiian girl,” he said, his eyes smiling. “Catch ya’ later.”

  He started toward the door, then turned back. “Oh…listen, Mele. One more thing.”

  I looked up and stared at him. “Are you trying to Columbo me?”

  He gave me his slow, lazy grin and didn’t answer the question.

  “Did you know that Kyle hired an investigator to look through Bebe’s finances, hoping to find irregularities that would open up the way for him to buy her out?” His mouth twisted to the side. “I won’t tell you what he found, but you might want to ask your aunt about it.”

  My jaw dropped. Talk about a motive for murder. At least, it would be if he actually found malfeasance. How would I even begin to ask her about that?

  He started toward the door again, looked down at a text he’d just received on his phone, and turned back one more time.

  “Why are you torturing me?” I moaned. I’d had about enough. But when I met his gaze, he wasn’t smiling anymore.

  “Looks like we’ve got another one,” he said, watching my reaction. “Adrian was found dead this morning. He was at the bottom of a pile of fallen wooden wine casks.”

  I gasped. “Accident?” I managed to blurt out.

  He shook his head. “What do you think? See you later.”

  And this time he really did go.

  Chapter Eleven

  A day later and no closer to solving the crime. Everyone was on edge. I went with Bebe to stay with Caroline at the winery while the police did their thing. Caroline had a perfect alibi. She’d said goodbye to Adrian and the housekeeper at the same time that morning and she’d come directly to Bebe’s. Bebe and I could both swear to that. But I kept remembering how often she seemed to need to check her watch while she sat in Bebe’s kitchen drinking coffee.

  Still, she wasn’t there when Adrian’s demise took place, and no one was about to attribute the skills needed to rig the casks so they would tumble down when he walked by to her. And so we treaded water yet again.

  I went into town that evening, stopping in at Jill’s for sustenance, then heading out on my own. The town was sizzling with Christmas by now. Lights were strung everywhere, and animated Santas vied with blinking deer as the most popular lawn décor. Christmas songs were playing from every store, every restaurant. I walked around downtown after dark, taking it all in, living in the moment. I didn’t want to go home. I didn’t want to talk to Bebe and wonder if she was telling me the truth. I just wanted to lose myself in Christmas.

  I had spent the afternoon at the library, looking up area history, trying to make sense of things. Kyle’s family, the Madronnas, had lived here and owned the land since the late eighteen hundreds. The Miyakis, Bebe’s husband’s family, had lost everything in World War II when they’d been forced to stay at Manzanar. They’d come back strong, though, fighting their way back into land ownership and built a hugely successful cut flower business. To think that Kyle had worked in some underhanded way to try to take their land from them again made me sick.

  But there was also a new factor. I’d found out something I didn’t know. Jimmy had a sister, May Miyaki, who’d gone to Berkeley and then into the foreign service for awhile, working in Japan and Okinawa. That made me wonder w
here she was now and why she wasn’t involved in the flower business along with Bebe. But I would save that story for another day.

  The next day I helped Bebe with some accounting problems she had, then went into town to have lunch with Jill at Mad for Mocha before heading down to the park in front of the city office building. I sat on a bench beside the lake, watching the ducks. Someone sat beside me and I turned to find Detective McKnight watching ducks, too.

  “Hey,” he said.

  “Hey,” I said back.

  “So, do you know someone named Detective Nolan Carter?” he asked.

  I stiffened. “Maybe I do,” I said. “And maybe I don’t.”

  “That would be strange,” he said. “Because he seems to know you. And he’s been bugging me for the last two days.”

  I looked at him for a long moment. He looked at me, one eyebrow raised questioningly. “Do you need his help on anything?” I asked.

  His mouth relaxed in a grin. “No way.”

  I shrugged. “Then tell him to get lost.”

  He nodded. “Cool,” he said.

  We listened to the wind in the trees for a few minutes, then I turned back to him.

  “So if you don’t need help, how come you haven’t solved this crime yet?”

  “These crimes, you mean?”

  I blinked. “Do you think there will be more of them?”

  “Who knows? It all depends on how scared the killer is. If he thinks he’s threatened, he’ll kill again.”

  “’He?’” I said archly. “So is that the current position of the investigation? That the murderer is a male?”

  He just grinned at me.

  “Okay, assuming the murderer isn’t Bebe, has it occurred to you that she might need police protection while this is going on?”

  He looked suddenly alert. “Why? Did anything happen?”

  I hesitated, then told him about my encounter with the person in black in the middle of the night.

  He looked definitely disturbed by that. “You should have called me right away.”