Sand City Murders

by MK Alexander

“We only need two… but I’m talking extra pages.”

  “Well, yeah, that’d be great. One small problem though.”

  “What’s that?”

  “My camera died, the digital one… I had to use film.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “I’m not.” He handed me three cans of film. “Can you develop them?”

  “I guess… What’s on ’em?”

  “Basketball finals.”

  “Okay, you’ve got three extra pages then.”

  “Hey thanks, I owe you.”

  I turned to Eleanor. “See… Frank will take three, even four if we need it. Basketball finals.”

  “Fine,” she said. Eleanor rarely left her desk so when she did, everyone knew it was about something important. She reluctantly followed me to the studio. Pagor stopped his bellowing as soon as we opened the door. Eleanor spoke quietly, “Sorry Donald, Amy. We’ve decided to bump the paper up by eight pages. We’re going to thirty-two.”

  “Let’s see, sixty eight divided by twenty-four was… um, no it’s thirty two… that’s about forty nine percent ads. Still a good number,” Pagor boomed as usual.

  “Are we changing the back pages?” Amy asked but it sounded more like a complaint.

  “No,” I said. “They’ll go in the middle. We’ve got two pages of legal at the back. Some more sports pages, and we’ll need lots of jump space from the front page.”

  Amy strolled over to the drawing tables. She swayed close to me. I felt her hand trail against my leg. “Okay, whatever.” She gave me a small smile and a wink unseen by anyone else.

  “Can you re-stack the ads?”

  “Whatever, okay,” Amy said again. She was leaning against the drawing table and against me, though just barely. Something was wrong. Two days ago, I was a creepy old guy, and now Amy actually seemed more than a bit flirtatious.

  Miriam had finished her formatting. The keyboard had gone silent. She floated into the office again and I could see her putting on her coat.

  “Eric from the printing plant called about the green color,” she told me.

  “Did he leave a message?”

  “He said you forgot about the twenty percent dot gain… something about uncoated newsprint.”

  “Right. Okay. Can you call back for me? Tell him three thirty eight.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “He’ll know.”

  “Now?” Miriam made an angry face. “I’m on my way out.”

  “Don’t worry about it, Miriam. I’ll talk to him tomorrow.”

  She was happy to leave. “Oh, and don’t cash your paycheck till Friday,” Miriam added on her way out.

  I looked at Eleanor and she gave me her look. It wasn’t the first time cash flow was a problem.

  Afterwards, I went upstairs to the morgue. Oddly or not, I found the box of archives where I remember leaving them on the desk. Was that really just yesterday? The years 1975 and 1976 were still out, easy to find… I checked the police blotter again: Clara Hobbs was not missing but her dog was: Roxy. Debra Helling, though I was sure she was a Debbie, or a Deb… had reported a stolen car, a Pontiac T-37. I also checked for Lorraine Luis… Weird though, all the issues for 1977 were in disarray, scattered across the old desk and spread out along the floor. I took stock and came to realize the entire month of July was missing. How could that be?

  “Hey El, who was up in the morgue today?”

  “No one that I know of, but you should probably ask Miriam. Why?”

  “I was just up there, and well, there seems to be some missing issues.”

  She gave me that look, her look, that cross between frustration and dubiousness. “Can’t say I’m surprised. What were you looking for?”

  “Old pictures of the breach.”

  “You couldn’t find any?” she asked, certainly surprised.

  “No... no, I found exactly what I needed… it was something else... We’re missing a whole month from nineteen seventy-seven. July to be exact.”

  “Hmm…” Eleanor considered. “Trying to remember if anything happened back then…” She grinned. “A girl disappeared, Ester… no… Ester was her mom... Sweet lady. One of her daughters…” A distressed look crossed her face. “Hmm, I can’t seem to remember their names, but they rhymed with each other… One of them disappeared but she showed up about a month later.”

  “That’s unusual.”

  “Not really. Boyfriend troubles, I think.”

  I went back to my desk. It was nice to be able to knock out my op ed column for the week, Jardel’s Journal. It also doubled as my blog entry. Some weeks were harder than others. Some weeks I just had nothing to say:

  Sand City Island—

  I was up at the breach the other day, just to see if it looked any different. I was thinking maybe last weekend’s storm opened it up some more, wider, deeper, faster. Well, no. It looked about the same, but a funny idea popped into my head: What if the breach grew by just a couple of hundred yards a year? How long would it take before it reached Serenity Bay and we became an island?

  I talked to noted geologist, Clifford Myers, and he said this, (Call Cliff @ USGS for quote…)

  And what about the salt marsh? Is it the only thing stopping us from becoming an island? Some environmentalists say just that. The marsh’s unique ecosystem is the very thing that’s stopping the breach from going any further. If it dies, it’s sure that the marsh will revert back to dunes and the ocean will cut right through, probably in a matter of months, especially if we get a few more storms like last week’s.

  Am I being alarmist?

  Probably.

  You can still jump across the breach and land in Oldham at low tide.

  But let’s all stop and ask ourselves this: What would being cut off from the mainland mean to us? What will it mean to the tourist business? Will we be strangers to our Oldham neighbors; drifting further away from them with every passing year? How much further from Fairhaven can we get? Will we be accessible only by boat? Will the county build a bridge? Perhaps we will have even more allure, be an even better tourist destination as an island. And most important of all, will we have to change our name?

  To what? Sand City Island? Sand Island? City Island?

  Who can answer these questions? Only us.

  Your thoughts and comments always welcome… email them to pj@SCchronicle.com

  I looked up from my computer and saw cub reporter Joey Jegal walk into the office. “Joey, just the guy I want to see. What do you say to a little overtime?”

  “Overtime? I’m on salary.” He grinned.

  “Right. Well, I could use some help on a research project. I need you up in the morgue.”

  “Now?”

  “No, not now, for later.”

  “What’s this about?”

  “I need you to check the back issues for news… about fifty years worth.”

  “What is this about?” Eleanor asked now.

  “It’s about the murder this morning. I think this girl might be related to Luis.”

  “Ester Luis?”

  “Yup. That’s where they found her, on her memorial bench.”

  “Really?” Eleanor seemed surprised.

  “So... I need Joey to go through the archives and find out anything he can about the family. Not today… maybe Friday when it’s slow.”

  Joey looked doubtful. The eagerness drained from his face.

  “Come on, it’d be fun to work together on a story. We haven’t done that since you started here, like last year.

  “A double byline?” he asked.

  “Absolutely, and yours goes on top. Let’s start by narrowing this down. I think we’re looking for a Lorraine Luis. I’ll check the phone book and see if she still lives in town. Think she was born in nineteen fifty-six— we’ll start there with the birth announcements. See if there’s any news for her from then till now.”

  Joey frantically scribbled everything I said into his reporter’s notebook.

  �
�What’s the point of all this?” Eleanor asked again.

  “It might have a bearing on the murder,” I replied. “Background stuff, maybe.”

  “On one condition,” Joey said rather bravely and smiled.

  “What condition?”

  “I get to help with the Treasure Hunt this year.”

  “Really. You want to help?”

  “I’ve got some good ideas, like with old maps, puzzles to solve, secret codes, sneaky clues… I’m totally into the whole pirate thing, you know.”

  “Hmm…” I considered falsely, but could not believe my luck. “Okay, it’s a deal.”

  Joey grinned satisfied, then changed the subject. “Hey… you’ll never guess who I ran into today.”

  “Who?”

  “Alyson.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, and I think she’s expecting a call… something about lunch or coffee.”

  “Where did you see her?”

  “The shelter.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Oh, you know, Pet-of-the-Month… her email was down, and I went over to get the picture.”

  “Don’t tell me, a yorkshire terrier?”

  Joey’s grin changed to surprise. “Well, how the heck did you know that?”

  “Goes by the name of Roxy?”

  “I’ll be damned.”

  “That’s why they pay me the big bucks, Joey. It’s my job to know everything that goes on in this town.”

  Once the office cleared out it was time for a little Fynn fact checking. How did the inspector get a Pontiac to sit in a garage for almost forty years? Tracing down ownership would take some work. I’d have to leave that for later, or get Joey or Eleanor on it. Everyone had left the building by eight o’clock or so. I had Frank’s darkroom work to do, but first I wanted to see some modern records. Debra Helling-Long had a Facebook page. Gravity had not been kind to her features, nor the rest of her, though it did seem like she had lived a full life. I also found a Linked-In profile for Clara Hobbs. She had fared a bit better through time, physically at least. By her picture, she looked to have a spark of life left in her. Still… it meant nothing really. I had another internet task to do and looked up the latin word tractus. It seemed to mean: “dragged, drawn out, extracted, continuous, flowing…” It was a hard word to translate exactly. I guess it’s a matter of context.

  I also looked up sidereal time on Wiki:

  …a time-keeping system astronomers use to keep track of direction… to view a given star in the night sky. Briefly, a sidereal day is a time scale based on the Earth’s rate of rotation measured relative to the fixed stars.

  I finished up in the basement darkroom around nine or so. Three rolls of girls’ basketball. It seemed a little redundant to me, but I also knew that Frank Gannon had a knack for picking out the right photos. Every family in town got a kick out of seeing their daughter or son in the paper. I gathered up the contact sheets to leave on his desk and locked up. A thought struck me about my own camera, the pictures I had taken in Fairhaven, in the county records room. Shouldn’t they still be on there? Cameras never lie. This was a puzzle and I was distracted by it when I bolted up the stairs to the main floor. At the top, just at the bend, I literally bumped into someone. It was Jason. I bounced off his chest and went flying. I was falling. Jason grabbed my arm and stopped me after two steps or so. I was a bit shaken. I looked up at him.

  “Dude, you just saved my life, I think. Thanks.”

  “Hey, Mr Patrick, you startled me. I didn’t think anyone was here tonight.” Jason almost smiled, something very unusual for him.

  “You and me both.” I gave him a once over. “Nice shoes by the way.”

  “Thanks, they’re new.” He pushed against his gold framed glasses. “What are you doing here so late?”

  “Darkroom. Pictures for Frank.”

  “Oh.”

  “Hey listen, I was rethinking the Treasure Hunt thing. Maybe make it more informational rather than interactive.”

  “That would be great. Save a lot of work.”

  “I agree. I’m pretty sure I can talk Eleanor into it. And we might be bringing Joey into the mix too. Keep you posted… Later.” I was just about to leave but thought of something important. “Hey Jason, can I ask you for another favor?”

  “Another favor? What was the first one?”

  “Can you trace a hotel reservation?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Can you find out if someone stayed at a certain place at a certain time?”

  “Easy.” Jason looked at me expectantly. “Who, when and where?”

  “Oh. Let me write it down…”

  My thoughts returned to Inspector Fynn. The poor sweet man was delusional. And I was caught up in it somehow. A Folie à Deux, a shared delusion. I only hoped it was innocuous for now… Part of me tried to avoid blame and I considered that he may have used some kind of hypnosis on me, or the power of suggestion. Even now, my memories of the other two murders seemed to be fading. They were just two middle age ladies. Then I recalled the inspector’s inadvertent challenge, his dare…

  No, I am not going to forget this, I vowed to myself, and thought whether or not I should write this all down just in case. Stuff like: victims, timelines, suspects, records— oh, never mind... And how was I supposed to help? I don’t think Fynn ever answered that question. Something struck me then, something Eleanor had mentioned: Ester Luis’ daughters… Lorraine had sisters, or at least one. This was not something Fynn had mentioned to me. I decided for now, not to mention it to him either. Now I knew two things he didn’t: Lorraine had a sister, and Roxy was wearing a collar.

  chapter 13

  double jack

  It was back to Partners at the end of my Wednesday, and what a Wednesday it was. Safe to say unlike any other. Seeing Suzy again, ambling up to my end of the bar seemed a great comfort. I slid onto the barstool. I noticed a basketball game on the big TV… maybe the Bulls and the Heat. The sound was off. The jukebox was on, and I heard strains of a Rolling Stones tune, Goodbye Ruby Tuesday, who could hang a name on you… When you change with every new day…

  Wait, isn’t it Wednesday?

  “A double jack, straight up, please.”

  “Patrick!” Suzy said, utterly shocked.

  “I know. Tough day though… Oh, and a draft.”

  She complied with a slight smirk on her face. “I’ve never seen you drink Jack before.”

  “Like I said, a tough day.”

  “Wanna talk about it?” she asked and smiled sweetly.

  “Not really.”

  “Might help.”

  I tossed back the shot and then drank half the beer. “Well... that did.”

  “Good, but what’s up with you?” Suzy persisted.

  “Arg… another murder, a crazy guy, and... I know it’s so late that the kitchen’s closed.”

  She laughed. “Oh Patrick, I just can’t say no to those blue eyes. I’ll nuke you some soup… we got lots of oyster crackers, maybe some celery too.”

  “Thanks, Suzy.”

  Ten minutes later, my belly was lined with hot creamy chowder. I was feeling a little better.

  “Okay, another murder and a crazy guy. That’s a good place to start.” Suzy leaned across the bar, face up to mine. “Who got murdered?”

  “A girl up at Sunset Park.”

  “I heard about that.”

  “From who?”

  Suzy glanced down the bar at the regulars all huddled near the side door. “Danny told me.” She squeezed my hand. The regulars had changed shifts. Tonight it was Little Bob, Stan the tan-man, and old Danny boy. Cuz and Crazy Mary appeared a moment later from the side door. Out having a smoke probably.

  “But you said another murder…”

  “That’s the whole thing... with the crazy guy,” I said a bit incoherently.

  “A crazy guy was murdered too?”

  “No, the crazy guy is telling me this is the third murder, and damn it, I rem
ember the other two… Only everybody else only remembers one.”

  “You’re not making a whole lot of sense, Patrick. Want me to make some coffee?”

  “No thanks.”

  “Okay, so this crazy guy murdered three people?”

  “No. The crazy guy told me he’s a time traveler… Told me he fixed the first two murders.”

  “Well, that’s pretty nice of him,” she said and smiled. Her green eyes flashed for a moment. “A time traveler, huh? Hey, want another double Jack?”

  I laughed. “Yeah, maybe.”

  Suzy reached under the bar.

  “No wait, just kidding. I’ve had enough.”

  “That’s for sure,” she said, but was looking for something else. She pulled her purse up to the counter and rummaged through. “Here, take a look at this…” Suzy handed me a crisp twenty dollar bill.

  I looked it over. “So?”

  “Look at the date,” she said, and pointed at the series number.

  I did.

  “Read it.”

  “Two thousand fifteen.” I looked at her. “Not you too?”

  She raised an eyebrow. “It’s not counterfeit. I checked and double-checked. It’s real. And it says two thousand fifteen. Explain that.”

  “Where did you get this?”

  “From the other night.”

  “What night?”

  “The night your friend was here, Monday.”

  “My friend?”

  “The guy who ordered the good scotch. He raised his glass to you, didn’t he?”

  “Me?”

  “It sure looked like it.”

  “He could be anybody…” I stopped to think whether it could’ve been Fynn. “Okay, if it was him then maybe he’s not crazy, maybe I am.”

  “What did he say to you?”

  “He told me he can travel to the future.”

  “Don’t we all?” Suzy said more than asked.

  “What?”

  “Isn’t it what we all do. I mean, aren’t we all traveling into the future, second by second.”

  “Not like that,” I said and shook my head. “He also says he can travel to the past.”

  Suzy was flustered, then said, “Yeah, it’s called memory.”

  I let off a weak smile. “He doesn’t travel second by second. He opens his eyes and days or weeks, or months have gone by.”