by Pam Moll
CHAPTER FIVE
I fumbled for my cell phone with shaking hands, turned off my music, and punched in 911. As I stared at the man, I realized I was alone with the body. And that’s when I screamed at the top of my lungs.
“Ma’am, are you okay? Are you hurt? Please try and keep calm,” the dispatcher said.
Calm? I vaguely recall that I shouted a lot of one-word sentences at the dispatcher. “Ambulance. Seaweed. Beach. Drowned. A man, not me. Fell off a boat. I think.” I looked around, but even in the fog, I couldn’t see a nearby boat. “Come quickly.”
“Slow down, ma’am. I need your name and your address.”
I gave him my name and the address of my café. “If they park in front, there’s a path behind the café and there’s a boardwalk that leads to the beach.” My voice was shaky like my hands.
“Help is on the way. Are you sure he’s dead? Do you know how to preform CPR?”
CPR? I switched from my panic mode to my life-saver mode. It never occurred to me that I could still save him because the way his unblinking eyes were staring up at me, and it was pretty obvious he was dead and had been that way for a while.
“I’m, um, I’m fairly certain he’s been dead awhile.” I swiveled my head toward my café and saw there were lights on now. Where was the ambulance?
“Okay, there’s no pulse, correct?”
“Correct. And he’s very, um …” I felt bile rise in my stomach fairly certain I was about to toss my banana.
“… he’s cold and blue.” I flashed my cell phone light on his face. “And green.”
“Green?”
“Seaweed everywhere.”
“Seaweed. Is he in the water?”
“No, close to the water’s edge.” I noticed that with the tide coming in, each wave that crept onto shore came closer to lapping up on the body.
“Okay, hold tight. There may be a slight problem.”
“Problem?”
“The ambulance and help may be delayed.”
“What?” I knew the Palma County police officers could be here in less than fifteen minutes.
Calling 911 in our small town works the same as calling 911 in, say, New York City. But there was a tiny difference. When you call 911 in Bay Isles, somebodyalwaysshows up to see what’s wrong. Not so in a big city.
Our 911 dispatchers also work the computer terminals and the National Crime Information Center, the lifeline of law enforcement. These dispatchers know CPR and they know everyone in town and the quickest route to our houses.
“Delayed?” My heart thumped.
“The Bay drawbridge is broken, and it’s been stuck in the open position all night,” the dispatcher said.
“The Ten Cent Bridge is stuck open?”
“Yes, apparently all night.”
The Bay Isles low-level drawbridge was built over fifty years ago to serve the many condominiums, housing communities, businesses, and shops in Bay Isles. The drawbridge was the only link between the barrier island and the mainland. Drivers used to have to pay a toll when it was first opened, and that was why today many referred to it as the Ten Cent bridge.
“There’s got to be an off-duty doctor or someone you can call,” I stammered.
“I’m working on it.” His voice was soothing, much more at ease than I was, but then he was trained to remain calm.
I panicked. If the drawbridge was stuck in the up position, then no one could get on or off the island. No one could travel to the smaller island of Isla del Mar or the mainland and back. We were trapped.
Looking back down at the ghastly body, I worried about how Jim Grist had drowned. Did he go out with his friends last night fishing? Where was his boat? Had he been alone?
“Sit.” I said to Snickers who was sniffing around the body. I didn’t want him to contaminate the area. Why had I thought this might be a crime scene? Surely, it was an accidental drowning.
“Excuse me? I am sitting,” the dispatcher’s said in my ear bud.
“Sorry,” I said, “my dog is here with me.”
“Okay. Help will be there soon.”
As Snickers and I waited, I noticed the incoming tide crept closer and closer to the body. By the time the police got there, Jim might be floating in the bay.
I flashed my light on the hard sand and saw two bicycle tire tracks bordering the shoreline, and the one closest to the water was barely visible. I often rode my bike on the packed sand myself.
In addition to the bike tracks, I saw footprints and slashes in the sand followed by small holes. I followed this pattern and saw that it trailed up to the boardwalk from the beach. My eyes followed the path to the Village where the Bean Café sat, and my apartment. Could the noise in the middle of the night have been Jim falling from his boat? No, the noise had been a distinctive creaking sound with no water splashes.
The boardwalk ran at a diagonal from the water. If one entered the beach from the café side their footprints would trail from the boardwalk. The entrance here to the beach was too far from shore for the waves to reach and totally erase any marks. However, if someone entered the beach from the Bait Shop side, closer to the water, the waves would eventually wash away any marks.
The tire marks had come from the Bait Shop side where soon the waves would cover the marks and half the steps to the beach.
With the incoming tide, I knew the tracks in the sand would soon be washed away, so I snapped a few photos of the marks with my cell phone.
Another thing bothered me. It was the corpse’s position. There was something odd about it. One leg contorted at an impossible angle. I know I once read that drowning victims are almost always face down. Jim’s slumped body faced up. And the seaweed looked gathered around the body, versus collected on it.
I rubbed my eyes. I’d only seen one dead body in my life and that was at my great aunt’s funeral in a coffin. She looked like she was asleep and was more made up than she had ever looked in her life. The fisherman on the beach looked ghastly.
“Ms. Molly, “the dispatcher said, making me jump. I forgot I held my cell. “Yes, sir. I’m here.”
“The bridge is open.”
I heard sirens. “Thank goodness.”
I flashed my light around the body. Another thing that caught my attention was the fisherman’s hands. One hand seemed to be clutching seaweed. His hands were pale, but his fingers and nails were asparagus colored. I don’t know what got into me, but I bent down and removed a small piece of the seaweed and stuck it in my pocket. I shivered, thinking that I just committed a vile blasphemy.
Sirens grew louder. I relaxed a little when I heard the sound of tires squealing in the Village parking lot and saw the red flashes reflecting off the shops glass windows.
“Mo!” A shout came from someplace behind me. “Mo,” he yelled again.
I turned to see Drew “Lucky” Powell.
“Over here, deputy,” I said waving frantically.
He sprinted over, kneeled in the sand beside the body, and checked for a pulse. He nodded at the first paramedic to arrive right behind him. Two more paramedics scrambled down the beach to assess the body.
Deputy Lucky Drew turned to me. “You found him?”
“We did.” I nodded to Snickers. “Out for my morning jog, and there he was.”
“Looks like he drowned. Do you know him?” Deputy Drew asked, as he eyed my jogging outfit.
My running shorts were a blinding shade of crossing-guard-vest orange. I wore this color on foggy mornings.
“I believe that’s Jim Grist. He’s a local fisherman who comes in the café. You saw him yesterday, remember?” I said.
“Oh yes, that’s right,” Deputy Lucky said, writing something on his pad. “We may need you to come into the precinct sometime this morning for a statement.”
“Statement?” This would be a routine drowning … or was it? Did they suspect foul play? “Why?” I asked.
“Because you found the body,” he said. “Routine.”
Why w
ere my hands trembling and my voice so shaky? I stuck my hands in my pocket and tried to calm my voice. “I read in the paper that he won a fishing contest this past week. It was in the Beach Beacon News.”
“Yup, know the guy well,” Deputy Lucky said, taking some notes.
A few curls tumbled onto my forehead from my bangs that badly needed a trim. I pushed them out of my eyes and tucked them behind my ears with one quick sweep. As my hand brushed my cheek, my nose twitched, and I fought off the urge to sneeze.
Drew’s comment seemed odd. Had Jim been in trouble with the law in the past? My mind was racing, and my nose was running. After a few dozen sneezes, and at that exact moment I knew this hadn’t been an accident. And if it wasn’t an accident, then it was—I could barely say the word—murder. A homicide here?
“Were you friends?” I managed to ask between sneezes and sniffles.
“Not exactly.” Deputy Lucky nodded to the paramedics still examining the body. The two paramedics backed away from the scene and motioned Drew over while another pair brought over a gurney.
Drew looked my way, then lowered his voice. What he didn’t know is that I could read his lips – and everyone else’s. When I was younger I had a hearing impairment and was taught to read lips at a young age. Fortunately, surgery had fixed my hearing loss, but my lip-reading skills remained strong over the years.
“It looks like asphyxia,” the paramedic said.
“So, he didn’t drown?” Drew asked. “If he died by suffocation or strangulation that usually means it was personal.”
“I said asphyxia, not suffocation.”
“Asphyxia is lack of oxygen. Which is caused by suffocation,” Drew said.
“Or when the respiratory muscles are simply paralyzed.”
“Paralyzed? How?”
“My best guess, poison. But you’ll have to wait for the toxicology test results.”
“I’ll get with the ME and ask to expedite the tox reports. I’ll also get the finger prints and crime scene photos and −.”
Drew turned his back to me and I couldn’t read his lips anymore.
Poison? I thought.
As the sun peeped over the horizon and the fog began to lift, I distinctly heard what I had just concluded.
Jim was already dead when he washed up on the beach.
After what seemed like hours, which had only been twenty minutes, the body had to be moved back a few feet to avoid the wet sea foam now frothing the beach like a latte.
Several more Palma County officers showed up. Deputy Lucky introduced me to Detective Dawn Lacey, an energetic, forty-something woman with ash blonde hair framing her tanned cheeks. She looked like a model dressed up in a cop’s uniform for Halloween. She was gorgeous. I glanced at Lucky to see if he had noticed her drop-dead figure in the tightly fitted uniform.
Deputy Lucky had turned back toward the tarp-covered body and was examining the sand closer to the boardwalk. He was joined by Detective Lacey’s partner, a tall slender built man with a graying beard.
I noticed, the sand in front of the body was now covered in salty sea waves.
The entire Palma County force including the Chief was now on the beach behind my café investigating the body.
Most of the officers, including Lucky, looked perplexed and out of place. These officers broke up fights, helped kids cross the street safely, and located lost pets. Now they had a dead body to deal with just weeks before Christmas.
Detective Lacey fixed on me with a concerning stare, her brown orbs drilling into my green ones.
“Nice to meet you, Molly Brewster,” she said, but didn’t offer her hand to shake.
“Nice to meet you too,” I replied, my itchy nose now settled down.
“Okay Miss Brewster, I have …”
“Molly or Mo, as most people around here call me,” I interjected, although I couldn’t see her calling me either. She may have been a knock-out, but standing there she was all cop.
She nodded. I figured she already knew my full name, nicknames, age, birthdate, and any other information she could google on her ride over with her partner.
“Why don’t you tell me what you were doing here and how you found the body,” she said.
I recited the story of me and Snickers out for our morning jog, and how we saw the body at a distance.
“At first, I just thought a palm frond, or a log had washed up on shore, but when we got closer …” my soft voice trailed off.
She nodded and made a few notes. “Would you be able to come to the precinct this morning and talk with us?”
“Um, sure,” I replied.
“Standard procedure,” she added, just like Lucky had said.
Standard procedure for an accidental drowning?
I now knew was not the case. This wasn’t an accident, because Jim Grist hadn’t been floating in the sea long, if at all. The green seaweed stuck between his nails and fingers, causing the green twinge of coloring on his hands, was not from the sea. It was some type of mint. My nose knew it anywhere.
“What was your relationship to Jim?” the detective asked.
“Me?” I felt my cheeks flushing to match the color of my raspberry hair. “My relationship? None. I mean I only knew him from my coffee shop. Outside of stopping by my café, I didn’t know him at all.”
This reminded me of the argument I saw between the dead guy and Erica yesterday in the parking lot. I felt my shoulders start to tense up.
“You said to Deputy Powell that the deceased had won a fishing tournament,” she said looking at her notes.
I glanced over at Deputy Lucky who was talking to a paramedic.
“I read that in the Beach Beacon paper yesterday evening.”
“I see.” The detective glanced around. “Can you be at the station around noon?”
“Yes,” I followed her gaze. There were a few elderly residents strolling toward them, and amongst the crowd I recognized Aurora. She pushed her way through the gathering gawkers to get to me. Rushing over, she gave me a big hug.
“Oh Mo, thank goodness you’re okay.”
“Good morning. I’m fine, why wouldn’t I be?” I stared into her dark eyes.
“I saw the ambulance and firetruck and the police cars in front of the café. And I know how you like to jog and I thought …” she stopped talking when she eyed the body, now mostly covered with a tarp.
“Oh no,” she said. “Did someone take a fall? What happened? Are they dea …” Aurora couldn’t say the word and held her hand over her mouth.
“Yes, a fisherman is, um, gone.” It struck me how no one wanted to say the d-word, as if dead, died, dying was contagious. I was still rattled. Nothing could prepare me from finding a body on the beach behind my shop. And I felt sad, even though I had never really known Jim Grist and didn’t even like him.
Detective Lacey’s thinly plucked eyebrows went up as she watched us talk.
“Who is it?” Aurora whispered.
“Jim Grist, the fisherman.”
Aurora pursed her lips when she heard his name.
“Jim? Was he shot?” Aurora asked.
“No, why would you think that? You’re assuming Jim was murdered?” I asked.
“Wasn’t he? I mean everyone disliked him. I’m pretty sure some people even hated him. If anyone were to wind up dead, he’d be the most likely candidate,” she said.
“He was unpleasant, that’s for sure,” I agreed.
“Yes, and he was only in his thirties. And healthy. So, a heart attack, which is common here in our community, would seem odd.”
“No, you’re right. It doesn’t look accidental or self-inflicted,” I said. “But I’m no expert.”
Aurora’s comments worried me. Why wasn’t she surprised about his death?
“And you’re okay?” Aurora whispered. She swept a few windblown strands of her dark hair behind her ear as she focused on taking in the whole beach and body scene.
“I’m still a bit shaken. It’ll be fine.”
She squeezed my shoulders.
Detective Lacey eyed us. “You need to move back to the boardwalk,” she said. “Unless you know something about the scene here?”
Aurora shook her head.
Detective Lacey’s partner called to her. She looked at me and pointedly said, “See you around noon. And please try to keep this quiet,” she said to both of Aurora and me.
Quiet, I thought. That would be difficult. Half the island probably already knew, and the other half who were still sleeping would know before they finished their first cup of coffee.
Detective Lacey walked off to meet with the other officers.
“They want you at the police station?” Aurora asked. Her hand reached for mine.
“Yes, routine, since I found the body,” I explained. I wondered how many corpse-finding-joggers Deputy Lucky had interviewed in the past.
“Oh my,” was all Aurora could manage to say, her eyes wide and her face filled with concerned.
She knelt down in the sand and retrieved something. “You dropped this.” She handed me a pink elastic hair tie. I absentmindedly slipped it around my wrist.
I looked back at the body and saw the local police investigators were up to their ankles in water. The sandy tire marks were history.
You should know that before 10 a.m., no matter what
the question is, my answer is always coffee.
~ Anonymous
CHAPTER SIX
Snickers and I were at Granny’s house agonizing over the morning. I needed to check out a few items on the home front.
I had stopped by the Bean and asked about Erica. No one had heard from her all morning, which wasn’t unusual since she wasn’t due to work until the afternoon. I had pulled out her employment application and written down her address in my small red moleskin notebook. She and Fiona, her mother, had the same address. I hadn’t realized that she lived at home with her mother. I wanted to talk to her and find out why she and the dearly departed had been in an argument yesterday.
I also wanted to check out Erica’s garden.
First, I needed to ask Granny’s gardener, Jet a few questions.