Homecoming By The Sea

by Kathi Daley

  “Could be. The initial break-in could have been a recon mission. Once they got the lay of the land and a peek at the security system, they could have planned to go back to get what they were really after.”

  I was silent as I tried to figure out a way to let Woody know about Dredge and the fifty grand without sharing the secret of Booker’s ghost. I didn’t know Woody well enough to be sure how he would react to an announcement of my ability to see ghosts and decided it was best to keep that to myself for now. “I was given some information by a reliable source who prefers to remain unnamed. If I tell you what I know, will you accept that I’m confident that it’s solid without requiring me to reveal my source?”

  Woody frowned. “Sounds hinky.”

  “I know. But while I’m at liberty to share the information, I can’t reveal the source. Are you interested or not?”

  “I’m interested. What do you have?”

  “It seems Booker initially hired Oliver Pendergrass to help him look for the sunken ship. Part of his agreement with Pendergrass was that he kept their project to himself. Apparently, Booker was under the impression Pendergrass had talked about it to someone, so he fired him and began looking for a replacement boat and crew. I understand Pendergrass was angry and vowed to ‘get what he had coming to him.’”

  “So you think Pendergrass killed him?” Woody asked.

  “Not necessarily. Let me finish. It gets complicated.”

  “Okay. I’m listening.”

  I took a deep breath and then continued. “Booker was given the name of a man who sometimes skirted the line between legal and illegal salvage work. I don’t have a real name, but I understand he’s called Dredge. On the night he was murdered, Booker met with a representative of this man. Although Booker brought the down payment of fifty thousand dollars with him, he was told the deposit wouldn’t be accepted until he was able to offer proof that it was possible to locate the treasure he was after.”

  Woody frowned. “Mr. Oswald went alone to meet some guy about a job and took fifty grand in cash with him?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you know this how?”

  “From my source.”

  Woody raised a brow. “Of course. Your secret source. Please continue.”

  “Booker figured he had the proof he needed in the form of the captain’s log he’d found decades ago. He didn’t have it with him and didn’t want to bring Dredge’s representative to his home, so he arranged to meet him again the following evening. He took back his money and went home. The cash went into his safe and he changed into his pajamas and robe, then went into the library to look over his charts and graphs. It was while he was doing that that someone broke in and demanded he open the safe. The fifty grand was taken, but the captain’s log, also in the safe, was left behind.”

  “And an anonymous source told you all this?”

  I nodded.

  “You realize the only people who could possibly know what happened after Booker got home are the man himself and the killer, and the only way the killer could know about the meeting with Dredge’s man is if he killed Mr. Oswald?”

  “I know. I have to wonder if Dredge’s man is the killer. Having said that, I also think it’s possible someone other than Dredge’s man shot Booker.”

  “Someone like who?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. But doesn’t it feel sort of like a home invasion gone bad?”

  “Sure, if this is all fact and not fantasy. There’s no way anyone other than Mr. Oswald can know all this, and he’s dead. I think your contact is pulling your leg.”

  “What if Booker was being watched?” Okay, now I was making things up, but the lie seemed to serve my purpose. “What if my source had reason to want to keep an eye on Booker and was following him? What if this individual had put a listening device not only on Booker’s person but in his home?”

  “Legally?”

  I shrugged. “Or not. The point is that the person who provided the information was able to convince me that he could actually see and hear everything that happened.”

  “Your source is the killer?”

  “I didn’t say that. I said he was a spy.”

  Woody leaned back and steepled his fingers. “If this source of yours saw what happened and knew Mr. Oswald was in trouble, why didn’t he call 911 when the break-in occurred? If he had, he might have saved his life. Did you think about that?”

  “No,” I admitted. “I guess I didn’t.”

  “If that was true, if someone was watching him, I think you’d need to tell me who your source is. If you don’t, and it turns out this person did kill Mr. Oswald, you could be looking at obstruction charges.”

  I groaned and took a second to decide what to do. I should have known this would get complicated. I looked at Woody and took a deep breath. “Booker told me what happened.”

  To his credit, Woody did no more than raise a brow. “Mr. Oswald told you what happened?”

  I nodded. “I can see ghosts. I was able to see them when I lived here before too. Now I can speak to them as well. Or at least I can speak to Booker. If you don’t believe me, you can ask Mac, Trevor, or Monica. They all know.”

  Woody didn’t say a word. He was probably trying to figure out if he’d been punked.

  “I know it’s a lot to take in, but I’m not lying. If you don’t believe me, come with me to Booker’s house and I’ll show you.”

  “Can’t Mr. Oswald come here?”

  “No. He’s bound to the library.”

  “Okay.” Woody stretched the word out. I wondered if his next call would be to mental health. I guess I couldn’t blame him for doubting me. “If you can talk to Mr. Oswald, why don’t you just ask him who shot him?”

  “He doesn’t remember. He didn’t remember anything past the point where he was at the party at first, but I helped him focus a bit and he could walk me through the evening right up to the point where he was in the library going over his papers and heard a noise. The next thing he remembered was floating over his own body. He didn’t remember the money had been taken, but Monica and I checked the safe today and it was gone.”

  Woody crossed his arms on the table. “You don’t seem like a crazy person, but this is a lot to take in.”

  “I know. I can prove it if you’d like. In fact, I can prove it right now.”

  “How?”

  “Is this office bugged?”

  “No.”

  “There’s a spirit in here right now.” I glanced at Alyson, who’d come in with me. “I’ll leave the room. You say a word. Any word. When I come back, I’ll ask the spirit what you said and repeat it back to you.”

  Woody looked more than just a little doubtful. “Okay. I guess I can do that.”

  “I’ll go out, count to ten, and come back in. Make the word hard. Something I’d never guess.”

  Woody nodded.

  I walked out into the hallway, closing the door behind me. I counted to ten and then returned. Woody was sitting at the table. His face wore a look of doubt, but also curiosity. I looked at Alyson. “Giovanna,” I said, repeating what Alyson had told me.

  The blood drained from Woody’s face. “How did you know that?”

  I sat down across from him. “I told you; I can see and speak to ghosts. The ghost in the room agreed to help me out. Do you want to do it again?”

  “Yes. Only this time I’ll go out. Have the ghost follow me. I’ll say something and then come back.’

  I nodded to Alyson, who looked as if she was having the most fun ever. When Alyson came back in, she said, “He actually had us go into the bathroom. I guess he figured no bugs in there. The word is Pegasus.”

  “Really? The bathroom?” I teased. “The word is Pegasus.”

  Woody’s mouth fell open. He dropped into a chair. “Well I’ll be.”

  “Don’t worry too much about the ghost thing. The ghost helping me out is a friend who came here with me. I don’t sense anyone else lurking around. So, back to Booker.
Do you think the real motive for his murder was the money? Could it have been that all along? Might it even have been the motive when whoever broke in the week before the murder and took the books?”

  “I have no idea, but robbery of a large amount of cash is as good a motive as any. Let’s dig into that angle and see what we can find out.”

  “Great.” I stood up. “The gang is meeting tonight if you want to come over.”

  “Can you see all ghosts?” Woody asked.

  I shook my head. “It’s not like I walk around bumping into ghosts all day. The ones I see usually come to me for a reason. Either I’m supposed to help them in some way or they have information I need. The first ghost I saw was Barkley Cutter. I was sixteen and had just moved into his house. He came to me one night, and I knew I had to help him. I found his grandson and helped solve his murder and he moved on. Booker is stuck in the library and wants to move on. I don’t think he can until we solve his murder. I intend to help him do just that.”

  Chapter 13

  Monday, May 28

  It had been four days since I shared my secret with Woody. Four days since we’d met to try to put a finger on Booker’s killer. Four days since I’d learned as much as it appeared I was going to learn from the horse’s mouth. I’d visited Booker on two more occasions, but as hard as he appeared to try to push past the limit of his memory of that night, he continued to become stuck at the point at which he heard the noise and looked up. Whatever happened next must have been traumatic. Maybe remembering was simply too difficult a task even for a ghost.

  There had been progress in other areas in the past four days. I’d spoken to everyone I even vaguely considered to be a suspect, but everyone seemed to have an alibi, and even those who didn’t had no reasonable motive. Logan Poland, the man who’d threatened Booker after he cleaned him out playing poker, had been drinking in a bar on the night of the murder. He not only had a roomful of other patrons to back up his story, he had gone home with a local girl who provided an alibi for the hours after he left the bar. Oliver Pendergrass was as mad as a man can be, and insisted that, despite Booker’s demise, the man still owed him money, but he’d been out to sea with another customer when Booker died.

  Woody hadn’t been able to speak to Dredge. The man was as slippery as an eel, but Woody had asked around and was able to verify that he wasn’t the sort to steal from his customers. The more I thought about it, the more certain I was that the reason Booker was blocked was because the killer was someone he knew and trusted. If some random person had shot him, I doubted he’d be suffering the emotional turmoil that appeared to have affected his memory.

  On a positive note, my mom confirmed that she’d arranged to fly out with Tucker on Monday of next week. She left her stay open-ended, hinting she planned to stay in Cutter’s Cove until I was ready to head home.

  That morning, I sat up in my bed and glanced out the window. It was still dark, but I knew the sun was just beyond the horizon. Alyson was sitting in the window seat looking out into the inky blackness, while Sunny and Shadow slept curled up on the bed.

  “Who wants to try to catch the sunrise?” I asked.

  “I do,” Alyson said.

  Sunny jumped off the bed and started prancing around, while Shadow yawned and began his morning stretches. I slipped out from beneath the sheets and clicked on my bedside lamp. I pulled on a pair of worn but warm sweatpants and a long-sleeved T-shirt. Slipping a headband over my hair, I slipped on socks as well as a worn sweatshirt, then tiptoed down the stairs to the kitchen.

  After starting the coffee, I pulled on my Nike’s, then jotted down a note for Mac, should she rise early and decide to join me. I poured coffee into a large stoneware mug and headed out into the darkness. By the time Alyson, the animals, and I had made it to the bluff, the sky had begun to lighten. Sunny ran around, expending some of the energy she’d gained during the night, while Alyson stood next to me, her hand in mine. Shadow sat at my feet, looking out toward the sea as if he too wanted to be sure to catch the sunrise.

  “Wow,” Mac said as she walked up next to me.

  “Yeah. It’s really beautiful.”

  Mac picked up Shadow and hugged him to her chest. “It’s colder than I thought it would be.”

  “Give it ten minutes. Once the sun pops up over the bluff it will start to warm up. I checked the forecast; it’s supposed to be up into the high seventies today.”

  “Perfect for a day at the beach.” Mac grinned.

  “I’m really looking forward to this. It’s been so long since I committed an entire day to fun.”

  “You don’t have days off from your job?” Mac asked.

  “Sure, I have days off. Technically. But I take a lot of work home, and when I’m not working, I’m afraid Ethan tends to make commitments on our behalf that are more work than fun.”

  Mac glanced at me. “What sort of commitments?”

  “He’s working his way up the corporate ladder, so he tries to attend all the need-to-be-seen-at parties and social events. I used to think that lifestyle was exactly what I wanted, but now I’m not so sure. What I do know is that I’m a lot more excited about a day at the beach with my friends than I am about attending the June Regatta or some boring yachting party in Newport Ethan keeps trying to convince me to fly home for.”

  “I suppose yachting could be fun, and there must be a lot of free champagne,” Mac mused.

  “Trust me, it gets old fast.”

  “Maybe you should invite Ethan to come out here. Do you think he’d like Cutter’s Cove?”

  I laughed. “He’d loath everything about it. He’d hate the house, and the early mornings spent watching the sun come up. He’d hate Sunny and Shadow, and if he knew about Alyson, he’d surely have me committed. Ethan’s a city boy. He’d be like a fish out of water here.”

  Mac set Shadow down as the sun peeked over the bluff. “So, I guess what you’re saying is that if you marry him someday, visits to Cutter’s Cove will most likely be out of the question.”

  I looked Mac in the eye. “I’m not going to marry Ethan. I’m not sure I’ll ever marry anyone. But if I did, it would be someone I could build a life with. Ethan and I have been good for each other. I do care about him and we’re compatible in many ways, but I’d be less than honest with myself if I didn’t admit we aren’t compatible in the most important ways.”

  The conversation stilled as the sun rose higher in the sky. I stood with my best friend on one side and my other half on the other, and everything felt perfect. Maybe the time had come to have a conversation with Ethan about where our relationship was heading, which, I’d just realized, was nowhere. It was the right thing to do. I planned to be away for another month at least. It seemed fair that I let him go rather than have him wait for me when the end of what we had seemed inevitable now.

  “You said Booker heard a noise, looked up, and the next thing he knew, he was dead,” Mac said, seemingly out of nowhere.

  “Yes. That’s what he’s been telling me.”

  “So it seems whoever killed him found their own way into the house.”

  It took a few seconds, but then a light went on. “I see where you’re going with this. Woody said there was no sign of a forced entry, so he’s been operating under the assumption that Booker let his killer in, but if Booker is correct and he was sitting alone in the library when someone came in, he hadn’t necessarily opened the front door.”

  “Exactly. I wonder if he remembers setting his alarm.”

  I turned toward Mac as the sun climbed higher in the sky. “I need to ask him. If he does remember setting the alarm, the killer had to be someone with the alarm code and most likely a key. I’m betting that isn’t a very long list.”

  Mac and I returned to the house. It was a little early to call Monica to ask if it was okay to come over, so I made breakfast while Mac answered some emails. Once the omelets and buttery biscuits were done, I poured us each a glass of orange juice and set everything out on the tab
le on the deck, in the perfect spot to get a panoramic view of the sea.

  I texted Trev, telling him to come over to the house whenever he was ready. I wasn’t sure how long the interview with Booker would take or if there would be new clues to follow up on once I spoke to him, so it seemed best he come here rather than meeting us at the beach, as we’d discussed last night.

  “I’m going to call Monica after we finish eating,” I said. “I hate to call too early, but I don’t want to risk missing her if she has plans today.”

  Mac sat down at the table and took a bite of her omelet. “Wow, this is really excellent. What’s in it?”

  “A few mushrooms, a little bit of fresh spinach, crab, and Havarti cheese. I drizzled a little bit of sour cream sauce, to which I added a pinch of horseradish to give it a bit of a kick.”

  “It’s delicious. And the biscuits look like homemade.”

  I shrugged. “The recipe is one of my mother’s.”

  “I knew your mom was a great cook, but I had no idea you’d inherited the gene.” Mac took another big bite of her omelet, rolling her eyes in pleasure as she chewed.

  “I never cook when I’m home in New York. Too busy, I guess. And I don’t have the skills my mom does. In fact, I only know how to make a few things she taught me when I still lived at home. But what I do know usually comes out well. And I like to cook. I find it relaxing. I think I’ll try out some new recipes while I’m here.”

  “I volunteer to eat whatever you want to experiment with, and I’m sure Trev will too.” Mac finished off her omelet, then took a sip of her coffee. “I’ll get the dishes because you cooked. I’ll start putting together things for the beach as well.”

  “Thanks. I’ll run upstairs to change into some shorts and then I’ll call Monica. It would be so great to have this mystery wrapped up so I can relax and enjoy my time by the sea.”

  I began to dig through my drawers for appropriate beach attire. I hadn’t brought anything quite right for a day lounging around on the sand, but Alyson had left behind bathing suits, cut-off shorts, tank tops, and flip-flops. Choosing a one-piece suit that would work best for surfing, I pulled on a pair of faded cut-off jeans, a yellow tank top, and a dark blue hooded sweatshirt. After slipping my feet into a pair of blue flip-flops, I headed into the bathroom to search for a headband to keep my hair out of my face.