Starlight Dunes

by Vickie McKeehan

  Brent for one, like many residents in Pelican Pointe, felt it was a welcome sight, even if it had put an end to an era. It was time for a new beginning. Most were glad to see the drug store change hands. A few old-timers though still grumbled that it had always been Knudsen’s as far back as they could remember and always would be. But in time, Brent believed they would come around to accepting the latest arrivals.

  He had no doubt that townspeople like Nick and Jordan, Ethan and Hayden, Keegan and Cord, Logan and Kinsey, would see to it the Campbells were made to feel at home here.

  But simple issues, like watching the newcomers settle in, didn’t have him waking up at three a.m., unable to get back to sleep.

  Like a baseball coach before a big game, Brent’s mind seemed to choose that time of the night to go over his lineup of who wanted him dead.

  The FBI had already ruled out most of the drug dealers in Santa Cruz. Much to his dismay, they’d already cleared his top suspects. No doubt the whole thing had him stressed out and waking up in a cold sweat ticking off suspects. Trying to figure out who wanted him dead was always there nagging at him.

  His deputies had canvassed the neighbors. The neighbors hadn’t seen a thing. No strangers in the area. No reports of unusual cars. Which meant, so far, the bomber’s identity remained unknown.

  It bugged him.

  To make matter worse, over the past three weeks, there’d been a lot of back and forth within his own department about the best course of action to take. A few of his advisers thought it best to “pretend” the perpetrator had succeeded in killing him. There had been talk about his faking his own death. But that hadn’t made a lot of sense to Brent Cody. He’d nixed that idea before it had time to take hold.

  In the hospital room, Brent had done some major soul-searching. He’d awakened to find his worried parents, his brother, and several of his closest friends standing watch, waiting for him to come out of the coma. Since he’d spent the last three weeks in recovery mode, a little downtime had made him realize the enormous pressures of his job. The prospect of not knowing who wanted him dead was merely part of it. He wasn’t happy about being placed on medical disability even though his body had yet to regain its full mobility. With all that, he had to dig deep to remember why he’d gotten into law enforcement in the first place.

  By the time he’d turned twenty-one he’d been an MP in the army. It meant he didn’t know how to make a living doing anything else. If his career ended at forty, he wasn’t sure how he was supposed to handle that.

  Even now, he knew there were politics at play in getting back to his job. Those twice a week PT visits to Santa Cruz weren’t just for medical reasons. They also included mandatory trips to a shrink, paid for by the department. Brent had decided after the second visit, he might need to watch what he admitted—he wasn’t sure the sessions were completely privileged information. Even if he needed to address a few issues, like the daily grind of his job, it was best to remember to keep certain aspects of his life—private. So far, he’d managed to maintain the focus on getting his body working and his life back to the way it had been before.

  While he’d been out of it, his friends and family had gone through what remained of his home and possessions. They’d tried to salvage whatever they could from the debris. It hadn’t been a lot. Before he’d regained consciousness, his optimistic father had even leased him a truck to use. The Chevy Silverado, a model father and son had admired on the showroom floor together, had been waiting in the hospital parking lot for Ethan to chauffer him over to Pelican Pointe.

  After he’d said goodbye to his hospital bed, he’d moved into Autumn Lassiter’s house. The same house his brother, Ethan and wife, Hayden, had occupied up until six weeks ago when they’d purchased a larger place on Landings Bay.

  Brent would have preferred to stay in Santa Cruz. But as soon as his mother started a campaign to get him to move in with her, he’d opted for his late grandmother’s little bungalow on Ocean Street. It made the most sense. Even though it meant he’d have to hobble around on his own, fix meals on his own, even though the cottage didn’t have all that much furniture left inside, he needed and wanted his solitude.

  That’s why before his release, his mother and Hayden had furnished the rooms with a few odds and ends people had donated. The rest they’d picked up at thrift stores in Santa Cruz and San Sebastian and had hauled over for him.

  Brent found the gesture incredibly generous, especially since Hayden had her own house to fix up. For the last couple of months, she and Ethan had been involved in major renovations on the home they’d bought, the much-larger one that had once belonged to Sissy Carr, the one-time banker’s daughter and embezzler.

  The couple had wisely put the history of the Carr house behind them. Good thing too because with an eight-month-old baby, no family needed the extra space more than the Codys did. His nephew, Nate, was sprouting up faster than a weed in spring.

  As Brent wobbled along Ocean Street toward the beach, he glanced over at his brother walking beside him, pushing a stroller. He couldn’t believe fatherhood had taken Ethan Cody full circle.

  “Sorry, Nate, I know you love to go faster but your uncle here is having trouble keeping up.”

  “Kiss my ass,” Brent muttered.

  “Hey, is that anyway to talk in front of my baby boy?”

  Brent looked over to see Nate sound asleep. “I doubt I could get in position anyway. Funny thing happened to me last night though.”

  “If this is about your sordid sex life I’m all ears.”

  “I don’t have a sordid sex life.”

  “That’s just sad, bro. You’re a single guy with no strings and no significant other in your life. And no prospects on the horizon either—at least none that I know anything about.”

  “Not unless you count the cute brunette who kept sticking a bedpan under my ass the entire time I spent flat on my back and couldn’t make it to the bathroom on my own.”

  Ethan shook his head. “If that’s all the action you’ve gotten lately, I’ll say it again. That’s just pathetic. So what happened last night?”

  “You know that rumor about Scott Phillips?”

  “You mean the fact that he’s a ghost? Yeah. It’s no rumor. Ask Hayden next time you see her. Hell, for that matter ask Cord Bennett or Logan Donnelly. You saw him? Where? In Autumn’s house?”

  “No, not in the house. I saw something. Someone.”

  “Scott’s all over this town, Brent. Has been for years now, ever since he didn’t come back from Iraq. Scott paid you a visit?”

  “Not really. Last night I nuked some chicken in the microwave, cooked it way too long and ended up having to stuff it down the garbage disposal. I had to settle for a ham and cheese sandwich. Anyway, the smell stunk up the house so much though that I had to open the front door to let in some fresh air. When I did, I saw this guy standing across the street on the wharf looking out to sea.”

  “That’s not so unusual. People stand there all the time, especially tourists. It’s a pretty view.”

  “It is. But that’s not the unusual part. This guy was just standing there staring up at the lighthouse.” Brent stopped walking to bob his head in the direction of the cliffs. “And there, up ahead, the area that collapsed during the storm three weeks back.”

  Ethan nodded. “The night you almost died.” Ethan tapped his brother gingerly on his injured back. “I’m glad you didn’t. Not sure I said that to you in the hospital but I’m saying it now.”

  “I’m pretty happy about that, too.”

  The night Brent’s house exploded, a Pacific disturbance had rolled in hitting the coast hard. It had brought power outages and flooding to the area. For two days the massive wind and rain had battered the cliffs. Once it had passed, the top of the bluffs near Smuggler’s Bay had given way to a series of mudslides. The shift in the earth along with the erosion had given up a Chumash encampment beneath the surface sand and grit.

  Brent knew for scienti
sts it amounted to hitting the lottery. For the local tribe it caused them a headache, an immediate uneasy fear that sharks of the two-legged variety would descend in droves and start removing Chumash relics from the past. Although the so-called experts might shed light on how the tribe had lived, it didn’t mean there was a happy medium, at least not yet.

  “So what happened after you saw Scott Phillips?” Ethan wanted to know.

  “He vanished into thin air right in front of me. Seriously. One minute he’s standing there big as life, the next he’s gone. I swear to God it was so weird that I thought my pain had crossed over into hallucinations. But before I flushed my meds down the john, I remembered a conversation you and Dad were having one afternoon about ghosts, specifically Scott Phillips.”

  Ethan sighed. “We were talking about it because Scott’s often done that to me, and quite a few others. Locals say it isn’t unusual to see him strolling around town with Megan Donnelly.”

  Brent scratched his chin at that and shook his head. “Megan Donnelly? Logan’s sister, the one murdered by the serial killer, Carl Knudsen, when she was seventeen? That Megan Donnelly?”

  “Yep, one and the same.”

  “This town’s a virtual lure for the weird these days.”

  “I can’t disagree with that statement. And Wade Hawkins certainly wouldn’t. He’s finally published his own book after two years of research on the subject. He let me read the manuscript. I have to say, Wade did a decent job with the topic.”

  “Wade specifically wrote about Scott?”

  “He didn’t name names, no. But he did illuminate a few intriguing details about him.”

  “Like what?”

  “For one, lately whenever Scott’s seen with Megan he’s around seventeen. Other times people have reported seeing a boy of around ten years old fishing down at the cove. He’s even been seen swimming off Treasure Island at the ripe old age of fourteen. Of course, he vanishes before anyone can approach him. Then there’s the ghost of the soldier who died in Iraq, a man in his mid-thirties, usually seen wearing a pair of khaki shorts and T-shirts that vary like he changes clothes. Probably the same image you saw standing on the pier though. Dad seems to think Scott is one of the most powerful spiritwalkers he’s ever encountered, one with a strong, unbreakable bridge between his world and this place. You know the legends as well as I do.”

  “Sure, I know the stories, grew up with them. But seeing it right outside my front door is another matter. I know what I saw last night but I’d be hard pressed to admit it to anyone else but you.”

  Glancing at his brother, Ethan said, “As I recall, you and Scott used to hang around together quite a bit as kids, didn’t you?”

  “Despite the age difference, yeah we did.”

  “But it’s only two years. Dad believes Scott appears to people who are troubled about something. If you’re depressed, Brent, it’s okay to admit it.”

  “Don’t try to psychoanalyze me,” Brent snapped. “I have a departmental shrink who does that on a regular basis. It pisses me off.”

  “I can see that. But all I’m saying is someone tries to kill you, it messes with your head, messing with your head you start to show a little anxiety from time to time.”

  Brent decided they needed a change of subject. “What do you know about this archaeological find on the dunes everyone’s talking about? I’ve been a little busy to pay much attention to it. According to Dad, the Southwest Tribal Foundation already sent someone out to head the dig. It’s all over town she’s checked into the B & B, looks to be here a while. Dad’s not too happy about it.”

  “Just what he’s mentioned in the last week or so and the grumblings I’ve heard from the other elders. None of them are too keen on unearthing our ancestors so a bunch of scientific studies can be done on them.”

  “I didn’t hear they’d found remains. In fact, I didn’t even know they’d started to dig.”

  “They haven’t. Yet. But if it turns out this is a settlement, there’s a good chance human remains are down there somewhere. We all need to prepare for that eventuality. I told Dad the same thing. There’s been some talk around town about how this discovery will likely put Pelican Pointe on the map. Half want the exposure. The other half would rather the whole thing just go away. It’s split the town down the middle.”

  “Like we needed that to happen,” Brent said, looking up at the uneven crags as the waves splashed up against the rocks. Two days ago the park rangers had finally showed up to rope off the area and post signs warning the public about the now unstable side of the one-hundred-foot drop off. In spite of that, beachgoers were out sunning themselves at the base and enjoying a perfect fall day with temperatures expected in the high seventies.

  “We always knew it could happen,” Ethan went on. “We always knew one bad squall could cause a collapse. Who knew we might find evidence of a settlement belonging to our ancestors underneath the sand right here in town though?”

  That’s one reason Brent wasn’t sure he understood why his father was so upset about the whole thing. “Now that you mention it, I guess it was just a matter of time before something like this happened. Since our forefathers lived all up and down this same coastline for thousands of years I’m surprised it took this long. Think about it.”

  “All I know is I haven’t seen Dad this excited since he found that little missing girl in Oregon. Not sure he trusts this archaeologist the center brought in though. He’s afraid this will turn the ruins into nothing more than a tourist attraction just like a lot of the other Native sites in North America. He doesn’t want that and neither do the elders.”

  “Can’t say I blame them. Once the vultures begin to circle they’ll likely hang around for whatever they can scrounge and put up for sale on eBay.”

  “They did that with Hohokam artifacts found in Arizona.”

  “I know. Well, the council delegated the job to Dad so he’s stuck with it.”

  “Hey, it isn’t the first time he’s ended up the liaison between the elders and the center.”

  “From what I hear he’s already at odds with this woman and she hasn’t even been in town a week.”

  “I wouldn’t say at odds so much as establishing a trust between the two. River Amandez is her name,” Ethan revealed.

  “You’re kidding? River? What kind of name is that?”

  Ethan grinned and repeated, “River. She’s Pueblo Indian. And she’s a smart one all right. Has enough degrees to rival Keegan Fanning. Well, Bennett, now. Nick says this River seems to be settling in just fine at the B & B despite the fact she’s a hotshot archaeologist who’s been all over the world, excavated digs in the deserts from Texas to Mongolia.”

  That brought a chuckle out of Brent. “With that kind of background, River Amandez will get bored with our little neck of the woods real quick. Wanna bet she’ll be ready to hightail it out of here first chance she gets?”

  Chapter Two

  Brent Cody couldn’t have been more wrong.

  River Amandez was in her element. She stood on the sandy shore between Smuggler’s Bay and the cliffs staring at the aftermath of the mudslides. Goose bumps formed along her arms at the idea of getting her hands in the dirt, particularly this dirt, this site.

  As the lead archaeologist on the project, River studied the Chumash ruins winking back at her from the glistening sand. Mother Nature might’ve done her damage and moved on—but sometimes she left treasures in her wake.

  Now, thanks to low tide, an exposed base of the bluff opened up enough where one could peer inside an open crater. She could make out the first object, a canoe that had more than likely been stuck in the sludge for centuries. She itched to touch, to run her hands along the wood. A mass of shards from pots and cooking utensils and other remnants of village life also remained lodged in the mud. A string of what she’d already deemed were animal bones, most likely used in some decorative manner, drew her in and had her wondering how these people had lived.

  Standing am
ong the dunes and sandbanks, she tried to imagine what the Spanish explorer Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo might have seen in the sixteenth century from the bow of his ship as it sailed past the bay heading northward.

  River had already learned the Chumash Indians had thrived along the Pacific Coast for hundreds of years. She could picture their villages, the gatherer-hunters paddling out to catch supper, and then maybe bargaining to exchange the fish for the bead money they used to make from olivella shells.

  River knew the cave-in would yield more, a lot more. Her instincts told her what she saw now was tip of the iceberg stuff, including the canoe. She tried to picture what might be farther down in the sandy muck.

  Among waist-high beach grass, sand and rock, the dunes and bluffs had probably protected this site since before Cabrillo had ever set foot on California soil.

  From the minute her phone had chimed with the news that an ancient Native American campsite had been discovered in Pelican Pointe, California, the Southwest Tribal Foundation had reassigned her.

  Her boss, Emilio Matias, had split up his staff and taken her off the Coushatta project in the swamplands of Alabama to come here to head her own excavation. It had taken her less than seventy-two hours to pack up her stuff, hop into her ancient Jeep Wagoneer to drive across the flat prairie grasslands of the Southwest to California.

  It was a place she’d never been before, a new adventure that would keep her busy without a lot of time on her hands to dwell on anything personal. She took it as a sign, an opportunity to redirect her thoughts, even for the duration of a dig was welcome.

  By concentrating on her job, River would stay sane. She liked to think that by digging up artifacts and what had once been a thriving village hidden under all the silt, she could bring to light the people who had inhabited this area. As an expert in pre-Columbian settlements, River had lobbied to get here, to be part of it all.