Beachbound

by Junie Coffey

  “I’m practically broke, but thanks for your help today,” said Nina. Frank chuckled, raised his hand in parting, and shuffled off down the sidewalk toward a giant boat of a car. It was a vintage 1950s Oldsmobile convertible, baby blue. Nina had seen it around town a few times and had wondered whom it belonged to. Now she knew.

  8

  Nina was fast asleep in her bed when the phone rang. What time was it? Moonlight spilled in through the open window, and the curtains gently lifted and fell in the soft night air. She leaned over and felt on the floor for the old-fashioned rotary-dial telephone she’d inherited from Miss Rose.

  “Hello?” she said, glancing at the clock on the bedside table. It was after midnight.

  “Nina, it’s me,” said Pansy breathlessly. “There’s been another incident at the inn. This time it looks like Sylvia Putzel-Cross was the target. Andrew just got home. He was in the bar with his golf buddies when Blue and a couple of his officers showed up looking very official.”

  “Oh! Was Sylvia hurt?” asked Nina, already wriggling out of her nightie and into the jeans and T-shirt she’d left on the floor by the bed last night.

  “No, I don’t think so. Andrew said he saw her in front of her bungalow talking to Blue.”

  “Well, thank goodness,” said Nina, stepping into her flip-flops. She ran her fingers through her hair. “What is going on? Why would anyone want to hurt Sylvia? This conference is going downhill fast. I’d better get over there and see what I can do.”

  “Hold on. I’ll give you a ride. Be there in ten minutes,” Pansy said quickly, and hung up. Nina splashed some water on her face, brushed her teeth, grabbed her bag, and was pacing the sidewalk out front when Pansy rolled up in her turquoise golf cart a few minutes later.

  The inn was quiet when they arrived. The dining room and bar had been shuttered for the night, and most of the guests had retired to their rooms. A few lingered on the veranda, chatting quietly in the dark. A light was burning in the lobby, and in its yellow glow through the open door, Nina could see Michel’s silhouette as he stood talking to Josie, his hands in his pockets. Nina sighed. She couldn’t imagine he’d be thrilled with this latest turn of events.

  “Let’s go to Sylvia’s bungalow first,” she said to Pansy. “I’ll talk to Michel later.”

  They cut across the lawn in the moonlight to the bungalow where Sylvia and Philip were quartered. Several people were sitting and standing on the porch of Sylvia’s side of the bungalow, which was closest to the inn. Philip’s half was in darkness. Nina picked out the tall frame of Blue Roker, a uniformed officer at his side. Blue was talking to Sylvia, who was barefoot in a red-silk kimono tied at the waist. She was perched on the porch railing with a martini glass in her hand.

  “I wonder what Danish is doing here,” said Pansy. Nina followed Pansy’s puzzled gaze. Danish was standing under the porch light talking in an animated fashion to Mike, the inn’s security chief. He was bare-chested and barefoot. He appeared to be wearing only blue boxer shorts.

  Philip was nowhere to be seen. Strange that he hadn’t been drawn out by the commotion next door. They reached the foot of the stairs.

  “Evening, Blue,” sang out Pansy. The chief of police looked in their direction. Blue’s eyes narrowed when he saw Nina and Pansy. He looked tired.

  “We heard Sylvia was attacked and have come to see if she needs anything,” said Pansy.

  “Evening, ladies,” he said, nodding to them politely. “I appreciate your concern, but this is a crime scene. We haven’t finished our investigation.”

  “I’m absolutely fine, thank you, girls,” said Sylvia. “Just a little excitement. It’s all over now. We seem to have some sad prankster in our midst, but I have every confidence that the deputy superintendent here will soon root him out.”

  She took a sip of her martini and looked at Blue over the rim of her glass. He remained stone-faced.

  Danish trotted down the steps and joined Nina and Pansy on the sand.

  “Hey, ladies. This stuff is getting out of control. Some psycho climbed over the wall into Sylvia’s outdoor garden shower. Scared the crap out of us,” he said.

  “Us?” said Nina. “How is it you happen to be here in the middle of the night wearing only your boxer shorts, Danish? Did you hear Sylvia scream from all the way over in the staff quarters?”

  “Not exactly,” said Danish, running his fingers through his thick mop of dark hair and glancing up at Sylvia. She blew him a kiss through bloodred lips and a hand tipped with long crimson fingernails. Danish grinned and lazily slid his gaze back to Nina’s face, the smile still on his lips. She glared back at him, her hands on her hips.

  “You’re kidding me. You and Sylvia? What about Alice? Boy, you thought Uncle Blue had it in for you before. He must really be loving this,” said Nina, slowly shaking her head.

  “Actually, Alice and I broke up,” said Danish, looking out at the sea, which was a black void in front of them.

  “Oh, Danish. I’m sorry. You seemed like such a cute couple,” said Pansy, reaching out to squeeze his arm.

  He shrugged and looked away. “It was fun while it lasted, but you know. You only live once.”

  “Unbelievable,” said Nina.

  Danish turned to face them head-on.

  “OK,” he said. “So, there’s a limit to how many documentaries about rusty cannonballs found in a field that a man can watch before he goes mental. Especially with old Aunt Agatha sitting over there in the corner in her vintage recliner talking to the television like the people on the screen can hear her. And the doilies. I’ve never seen so many doilies. On the coffee table where you’re not supposed to set your glass of lemonade unless you put one of the Will-and-Kate commemorative coasters under it. But you’d better not get that wet, because then it would be ruined. Doilies on the arms of the sofa where I was allowed to sit next to Alice—but not too close, unless I wanted a hole drilled in my head by Aunt Agatha’s evil glare. Doilies on the backs of the chairs. Like cobwebs, everywhere! I felt like I was trapped in a web!”

  “Um, given that Agatha’s brother is just a few feet away,” Nina said, gesturing at Blue, “maybe you should keep your voice down.” Alice was Blue’s niece, and she lived with his extremely devout sister, Agatha.

  “Excuse me if I’m confused,” said Nina. “A couple of weeks ago, you were so lovesick for Alice that you almost got us both thrown in jail. And now it’s over and you don’t care?”

  “People change,” said Danish.

  “In two weeks?” asked Nina, incredulous at this turn of events.

  “I realized that I’m not ready to be tied down with a wife and mortgage and two kids,” he said.

  “Last I heard, Alice was the one. It can’t all be Aunt Agatha’s fault. You and Alice must have spent some time together without her aunt around.”

  “Yeah, sure,” said Danish with another shrug. “We hung out at The Redoubt, went to the beach. And I must say for the record that Alice looked fine in a two-piece. But let me put it this way. There was way too much homework involved in getting to the main event, if you catch my drift.”

  “You mean that you’re a shallow, pleasure-seeking cad,” said Nina.

  “Oh, come on. Like your interest in Ted is purely intellectual,” he said with an eye roll. “I know it can’t be his sparkling conversation that you doll up in a fancy dress and lipstick for. The guy never says more than ten words in a row.”

  Nina sniffed and looked away. “You might try that sometime,” she said. “Sometimes not talking is just the right thing to do.”

  Pansy giggled.

  “Just remember, Nina, if you point your finger at someone, there are four pointing back at you.” Danish looked down at his hand for a moment, his eyebrows knitted, his fingers going through the motions of pointing and counting.

  “Well, three, actually, because thumbs don’t bend that way, and I’m not sure if technically they are called fingers, but anyway, there was a lot of talk about feelings
that just seemed to go around in circles with no obvious point.”

  Alice again, apparently.

  “She liked to talk about the future—her career, stuff she was going to do, what color she was going to paint her living room in the house that didn’t even exist yet, what she wanted to name her kids!” exclaimed Danish. “Her other favorite topic was stuff that happened three hundred years ago. King this-or-that did this-or-that in 1672. I, on the other hand, am a man of action. I live in the here and now.”

  Given that Alice was the curator of the Pineapple Cay historical museum, Nina had wondered what the two possibly talked about.

  Danish continued, “We discussed the situation in a very mature manner, and we decided to treasure the sweet memories but to move on down our separate paths in life.”

  “Really?” said Nina in a gentler tone, fixing him with what she meant to be an I’m-not-buying-it look.

  Danish sighed heavily, and his shoulders drooped. “OK, so her hotshot ex-boyfriend, Dr. Brainy McBrainiac from the main island, chased her down over here a couple of days ago, and they’ve reunited. Apparently, they’re soulmates. They’re getting married. I was her rebound, if you can believe it,” he said.

  Pansy cooed sympathetically.

  “Oh, Danish. I’m sorry,” said Nina. She was pretty sure he was more upset than he was letting on.

  “No biggie,” he said, looking down at his feet then over at Sylvia, wrapped in her red-silk kimono. She blew him another bloodred kiss.

  “So, Sylvia is your rebound,” said Nina.

  “Well, I guess technically that honor would go to Stephanie. She’s a dog groomer from New Jersey. She left yesterday . . . Sylvia and I ran into each other in the hot tub today after my yoga sesh. She’s dynamite. We’re on the same wavelength.”

  “Really,” said Nina.

  “Nina, I know what you’re thinking, and that’s sexist. If I was a hot young chick who enjoyed fine wine and talking about real things, and Sylvia was a mature gentleman with a zest for life, no one would have anything to say,” said Danish.

  “OK, OK. I don’t want to know anymore,” said Nina, shaking her head to get rid of the image that was just beginning to form. “Just give us the facts about the break-in.”

  “Listen to you, Nina Spark, PI! ‘Just give me the facts. I’m on the case.’” He imitated her in a gruff, hard-boiled Hollywood-detective voice.

  “OK. We were relaxing in the bedroom area. Sylvia asked me to get her a glass of wine, so I went out to the veranda to get the bottle we’d left there. I was trying to find it in the dark when I heard her shouting. ‘Hey! What’re you doing! Get back here!’ Like that. I hotfooted it back into the bungalow, and she was in the outdoor shower whacking the back fence with a broom.”

  “A broom?” asked Pansy.

  “Yeah. The chambermaid must have left it,” said Danish. “Anyway, I was, like, ‘Hey, Sylvia, what’re you doing?’ And she said somebody had come into the bedroom. She’d drifted off, and when she opened her eyes, someone was standing next to the bed. She yelled, and he took off through the shower. She took off after him and was trying to whack him down with the broom, but he escaped over the fence. I ran around the side of the bungalow, but I didn’t see anything. Then I called Mike, who called Roker. And that’s it. Now you’re up to speed.”

  “So, did Sylvia recognize the intruder?” asked Pansy.

  “No, she said she didn’t get a good look at him. It was dark, and he was wearing a hoodie and something over his face, like a bandana,” said Danish. “She did say that he was on the short side. Not as short as her, but not tall like your friend Victor.”

  “Victor is just about the last person who would climb over a garden wall to murder someone,” said Nina. “It really would not be his style. Strychnine served to the victim in a crystal tumbler of aged scotch whiskey would be more his speed.”

  Razor is on the short side. So is Philip, she thought. Bridget is almost as tall as Victor.

  “I’d like to have a look in the bungalow and at the garden wall,” said Nina. “I just can’t make sense of any of this.”

  “First Philip, and now Sylvia. Maybe it’s someone who doesn’t like professors for some reason,” said Pansy. “Maybe it’s someone who has a grudge against Philip and Sylvia, in particular. Someone they knew while they were married.”

  There was movement on the veranda. Blue Roker went into the bungalow. The officer moved into position on the top step, standing guard over access to the crime scene. Sylvia squeezed past him and sashayed down onto the sand to where Nina, Danish, and Pansy stood.

  “Well, kids. This is one for the books,” Sylvia said.

  “Are you all right, Sylvia? Danish was just telling us what happened,” said Nina.

  “Absolutely fine. The villain escaped over the back wall, but not before I got a piece of him.” She smiled wickedly, slipped her hand in the pocket of her robe, and pulled out a ragged piece of dark-blue jersey cloth.

  “A piece of his hoodie,” she said triumphantly.

  “You should give that to Blue so he can get it tested for DNA or something,” said Pansy.

  “Oh, I will. I just wanted to show you gals first. I had him by the foot as he was trying to get over the wall. He kicked me off, but not before snagging his sweatshirt on the broken glass on the top of the wall. I bet he cut himself. We had quite a tussle. I told the deputy superintendent that much, and he’s got someone looking for blood on the wall as we speak.”

  “You’re surprisingly calm, considering all this, Sylvia,” said Nina.

  “I assure you, I’ve had worse scares than this in my lifetime, Nina, darling. I once went to a dinner party at the embassy in London and found I was to be seated with a lawyer on my left, another on my right, and a third across the table from me. It still frightens me to think of the evening I might have had to endure if I hadn’t had the presence of mind to switch the place cards and put myself next to the fellow who walked across Ireland with a refrigerator on his back. As it turned out, I had a fantastic time that evening.” She threw back her head and laughed.

  Nina, Pansy, and Danish looked at one another.

  Is it normal to be so unaffected by an attempt on your life? Nina wondered.

  “Well, I think I’ve had enough fun and games for one day. I’m going to call it a night,” Sylvia finally said. “The dashing deputy superintendent promises he’ll be finished here shortly, and then I’ll toddle off to bed. Thanks for checking in on me, girls. You’re very sweet. Good night, Danish. I’ll see you later, I’m sure.” She gave him a girlish grin.

  “Sylvia. What on earth is going on?” It was an irate Philip, strutting up the beach from the direction of the inn.

  “Such a shame, Philip. You missed all the excitement. Well, I must toddle. Nighty night, everyone,” said Sylvia, turning and jogging back up the stairs and into the bungalow before Philip could say anything else.

  Nina, Pansy, and Danish exchanged glances again. Where was Philip coming from? Did he have an alibi, or was he just circling back after going over Sylvia’s garden wall? Nina looked to see if he was bleeding anywhere. Philip looked at Nina expectantly, his chin jutting upward, and she gave him a bare-bones account of the event.

  “I don’t know what to say,” he huffed. “Crime appears to be rampant on this island. This inn has appalling security. The police are incompetent. No one has been brought to account for what happened to me two days ago. And now this. I am extremely disappointed, Nina.”

  That made two people who had expressed their disappointment in her that day, Nina noted.

  “Nothing like this has ever happened in all the twenty-five years this conference has been held,” stormed Philip. “It will be a black mark on my record, and for that I hold you personally responsible.”

  He jabbed the air with a finger pointed at Nina’s face. Her hands went to her hips.

  “Hey, man,” said Danish. “Chillax. I’d like to point out that nothing like this ever happene
d here on this island or at this hotel before you rolled into town. Chicken and egg. Kettle and black. Or pot, kettle, and black. You know what I mean.”

  Philip huffed angrily and glared at Danish. He opened his mouth to reply, but Nina jumped in.

  “I’m sorry, Philip. I’m sure the police are working as hard as they can to find out who attacked you,” she said.

  “Anyway, how was your evening, Philip?” asked Pansy, gracing him with one of her brilliant smiles. “Were you out on the sunset dinner cruise with some of the others? I hear it’s fabulous.”

  Philip perked up. Good old Pansy.

  “Actually, I found a charming local rum shop,” Philip said. “An authentic island watering hole called The Pirate’s Wake. I spent the evening with some genuine Pineapple Cay residents observing island culture. Quite invigorating. Razor Hudson thinks he’s got a monopoly on participant observation research methods. I was doing it before he was born. I sat and had a few bottles of beer with some locals, and as a result, I think I’ve uncovered a novel island custom that I’ve never seen written up in the literature. It is the public display of undergarments in social clubs. I don’t know what it means yet, but I’m going to research it further and write an article. I’m aiming for the Annals of Tourism Research. That’s a top-ranked journal.”

  Nina, Danish, and Pansy exchanged another silent look. The Pirate’s Wake was a sleazy bar a few miles south of town frequented primarily by afternoon drinkers and college spring breakers looking for a walk on the wild side. The walls and ceiling were adorned with hundreds of pairs of women’s underwear and brassieres.

  “I’ll tell you what it means,” said Danish. “People blow in here on vacation for a few days, get drunk with people they’ll never see again, and either convince themselves or their girlfriends that nailing their leopard-print undies to the wall means they are not boring, unlike the schmucks they left behind in cubicle land.”

  “Well, young man, I think there may be a bit more to it than that, as will be revealed by a rigorous ethnographic study,” said Philip, chuckling condescendingly.