The Eulalie Park Mysteries Box Set 1

by Fiona Snyckers

  It was good to feel the breeze against her cheek and the shade of the tree-lined boardwalk on her head. The pull and suck of the waves against the sand never failed to soothe her.

  The dream had upset her more than she realized.

  Ever since she had first laid eyes on the ocean at the age of twelve, it had had the power to calm her. Angel had thought she might be afraid of the sea when she saw it for the first time, but the opposite was true. Eulalie had felt a connection to the ocean the moment she had laid eyes on it. As much as she loved and missed the village, she hadn’t wanted to live away from the sea again.

  Eulalie looked out across the lagoon. Somewhere out there where she could see waves breaking, the coral reef lay hidden. Beyond that was the open sea. And beyond that, where her eyes couldn’t reach, were the cays. Monk’s Cay was waiting for her. She knew that. She had acknowledged at the beginning of this case that she would have to go back there and confront her childhood fears. There was no other way.

  She wasn’t looking forward to it, but now that it had become a reality, she was keen to get it over with. She turned off the boardwalk and walked briskly back to her scooter.

  Eulalie reached the harbormaster’s office exactly on time.

  Rajesh Dev was waiting for her on the steps of the office. According to the information Mrs. Belfast had sent to her phone, he had risen in five years from the rank of Mooring’s Officer to Deputy Harbormaster. He had not only been on the boat that had found the three teenage boys, but had been the one to pull them on board.

  It would be a relief to speak to someone who was not emotionally connected to the case.

  “I’m glad someone is keeping that poor girl’s disappearance alive,” he said as they settled into his small office. “I always felt as though justice had not been done there.”

  “Interesting. Can you expand on that?”

  He thought for a moment. He was a precise looking man in his mid-thirties, neatly dressed in the distinctive blue and white uniform of the harbormaster’s office.

  “I have no idea whether anyone was to blame or if it was just a case of tragic misadventure, but those boys should never have left her there, and it doesn’t sit well with me that her body hasn’t found. At the time, we lived in daily expectation of finding some sign of her. Then we thought it would be a matter of months at the most before her body turned up. But there’s been nothing. Not so much as a shoe. It is quite unusual.”

  “Can you tell me about the night she went missing? I’m sure you’ve told the story to reporters many times over, but I would like to hear it again.”

  “Actually, I haven’t.” He smiled at her look of surprise. “Most of the reporters wanted to speak to the harbormaster himself, Mr. Ellred McMasters.”

  “Didn’t he retire a few years back?”

  “That’s right. The new harbormaster is Carolyn Gould. She was the head of boat safety at the yacht club. The point is that those media people wanted a quote from the harbormaster himself, not a humble moorings officer.”

  “Was the harbormaster there that night?”

  “He was piloting the boat. The waters were tricky that night, so he stayed at the helm while I dealt with the kids.”

  “Please tell me about it.”

  “We got a call at about eleven-thirty that there were kids out joyriding in one of the motorboats from the marina. Mr. McMasters and I were on duty that night. When we didn’t find them in the lagoon, we knew they must have gone out into the open sea. That usually means they’re heading for one of the cays. Logan Cay is always a popular choice, because of all the nightclubs there, but Monk’s Cay is also a possibility. We normally do a loop to take in Logan Cay and Monk’s Cay. If we don’t find them there, we head towards St. Michaels Cay and Queen’s Cay.”

  “You’re never tempted to leave them to face the consequences of their own stupidity?”

  “Never!” He sounded quite shocked. “If we only rescued people who weren’t guilty of stupidity, we would be out of a job. We exist to keep people safe - to rescue them from the consequences of their bad choices. We’re not in the business of judging people.”

  “So, you were doing a loop around the cays, looking for them?”

  “That’s right. There wasn’t so much as a sign of them until we’d been out for a few hours. There was a lot of cloud around, leaving us to navigate more or less in the dark. Still, the boat has powerful running lights, and I had a spotlight that I was using to sweep the area. It must have been about three, or a bit later, that my spotlight reflected off the hull of a motor boat. They were sailing without lights, so I immediately knew it was them. I hailed them over the megaphone and they started waving.”

  “How sure are you that there were only three people on that boat?”

  “Positive. It was a small vessel. There was nowhere to hide. There were definitely just the three of them.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I asked Mr. McMasters to heave to and we took the kids on board. The last one – the American – tied a rope to their little motorboat so we could tow it.”

  “What was your first impression of them? Your very first impression?”

  Rajesh Dev pursed his lips in thought.

  “I thought they seemed guilty.”

  Chapter 10

  “Guilty?”

  That was the only word for it. At first, I thought it was because they had taken out a boat and gone joy-riding. This happens quite often, and the kids are usually a bit sheepish when we catch them. Of course, you get some really entitled brats who treat you like staff and can’t be brought to believe that they’ve done anything wrong. These kids were different. They were drunk as skunks, but very agitated. I’ll never forget the smell of cane brandy when I got them into the cabin. The fumes were enough to knock you off your feet. They kept babbling about something on Monk’s Cay that had attacked them. I reckoned it was probably a bird or something, because Monk’s Cay is deserted at night. It’s not a popular spot with anyone. You don’t even get criminals waiting to mug rich kids having a campfire on the beach.”

  Eulalie nodded. Nobody spent the night on Monk’s Cay. Nobody.

  “I didn’t take them seriously until they began to talk about a fourth person – a girl who had been with them and now wasn’t. At first, I thought they meant someone had gone overboard, so I leapt into rescue mode. I was sweeping the light across the water and readying the life preservers. That kind of thing. Then they told me that the fourth person had been left behind on the island.”

  “I know it was a long time ago, but can you remember the dynamics between the kids at all? Why did it take them so long to mention a fourth person? You’d think that would have been the first thing they said. Do you think they always intended to tell you about her?”

  “I’ve asked myself that.” He looked troubled. “I’ve wondered about it. My feeling has always been that they were drunk and confused and frightened. You can’t expect coherence from people in that condition.”

  “Can you remember who said what? If you have the boys clear in your mind, that is.”

  “Oh, they’re clear enough. There was the tall, rich kid. Yacht club type. Dumb as a box of rocks. Then a shorter, stockier one who was quite respectful and apologetic. Then there was the American who didn’t say much to me but kept arguing with the other two. I think they didn’t intend to tell me about the girl at first. The stocky one blurted it out, and the other two told him to shut it. They said something about how she must have gone into the sea because they couldn’t find her. That’s when I started looking for a person overboard.”

  “Can you remember who corrected you?”

  “I think it was the stocky one again. He kept saying no, this wasn’t right - it was better to find her now. And then he told me she was back on Monk’s Cay.”

  “Do you think the others wanted to leave her there to be discovered in the morning?”

  “That was the impression I got. The first ferry gets there at what
, six o’clock? That was only a few hours away. They probably thought she’d be found when the tearoom or giftshop people arrived. That way they could put some time and distance between them and her.”

  “But obviously she would say what had happened to her and who she had been with.”

  “Exactly. They weren’t thinking clearly.”

  “What did they say about whatever had attacked them?” Eulalie asked.

  “Listening to them, you’d think it was the night of the living dead. Those kids were spooked out of their minds. Cold things clutching at them in the dark, that kind of nonsense.”

  “Some of them had injuries, didn’t they?”

  “Yes. They were a bit banged up. I always had a theory about that.”

  “What was it?”

  “I reckoned they’d been fighting among themselves – the three of them. Probably over the girl. Then they left the island to come home, and only realized later that they’d left her behind. So, they concocted a story about being attacked. I got the feeling that two of them – the rich kid and the American – wanted to forget they’d ever met her, but the other one, the stocky kid, couldn’t do that.”

  “Interesting. What do you think happened to her?”

  He shrugged. “If she was in anything like the same condition as the boys, I think she either wandered into the sea or into the forest. Most likely the sea, because our people went over every square inch of that island and didn’t find a trace of her. I think she decided to go for a drunken midnight swim and drowned. Like I say, it’s weird that we never found a trace of her, but then everything about that case is weird.”

  It was lunchtime.

  Eulalie remembered that she had a date to go over some designs with her friend Fleur. She would eat lunch at the same time, thereby killing two birds with one stone.

  It was barely twelve when she got to Sweet as Flowers, and still fairly quiet. The lunchtime rush would only get underway at about twelve-thirty. Fleur had printed out a series of graphic designs and spread them out on the counter next to the cash register where Eulalie normally sat when she was visiting.

  Fleur was planning to pitch her branded confectionary to some of the high-end hotels of Queen’s Town. She wanted them to stock her products in their minibars and complimentary welcome baskets. The main thing holding her back was the quality of her logo and packaging design. She had recently outsourced those to a New York based design company. Now she wanted Eulalie’s opinion of the designs they had sent her.

  Eulalie glanced at the printouts and then looked around the shop. Fleur was nowhere to be seen.

  Then she heard the sound of yelling and splintering glass, and realized her friend was in the kitchen.

  A moment later, the headwaiter Jethro came out of the kitchen retying his apron and looking flustered. A high-pitched shriek and a crashing sound followed him out.

  He raised his eyebrows at Eulalie and shook his head.

  She gave him a sympathetic look. “It sounds like Fleur’s on the warpath again. What’s the problem today?”

  “One of the kitchen staff has been skimming stock as it came in from the supplier. She’s in the process of being fired.”

  “Oh, dear. Is she in financial difficulties?” Eulalie’s soft heart was wrung.

  “Not at all. She’s an intern from the hotel school. She’s been selling off our stock to pay for her designer shoe habit.”

  They both winced as another splintering crash reverberated through the swing door.

  “Don’t worry,” said Jethro. “Fleur only ever breaks the cheap stuff.”

  As the screaming and crashing reached a crescendo Eulalie sighed.

  Fleur’s temper was legendary. The Prince William Islanders – always inclined to be superstitious – blamed her fiery red hair. Eulalie blamed the fact that her parents hadn’t said no to her nearly often enough as a child.

  “She’s more careful these days,” said Jethro. “She doesn’t yell at people where the customers can hear. Like now, she knows the shop is empty. Any minute now she’ll come out as cool as a cucumber ready to take orders and to chat to the customers.”

  There was a last splintering crash followed by Fleur’s voice howling, “And stay out!”

  A moment later, the swing door swished open and Fleur came out. She looked delighted to see Eulalie.

  “Hey, babe. Thanks for coming. I can’t wait to show you the designs they sent me.”

  Jethro was right. She did look as cool as a cucumber. It was only the pinkness of her cheeks and a slight hoarseness in her voice that gave away the fact that she had recently been screaming her head off.

  She smiled at Jethro. “Do you think your sister might be able to come in this afternoon?”

  “I’ve already phoned her. She’s on her way.”

  “That’s great, thank you. Has Eulalie told you what she wants for lunch yet?”

  Jethro pointed finger-guns at Eulalie. “Grilled cheese sandwich and a side salad, right?”

  “Spot on. And about a gallon of water, please. I feel as though I’ve been talking non-stop since early this morning.”

  “New case?” said Fleur.

  “The walk-in client from yesterday. She wants me to look into the disappearance of that American college student, Jessica Manilow. You know the one who vanished from Monk’s Cay five years ago?”

  “Sure, I remember that. I hadn’t been here long and for some reason I identified with her. We were close in age - strangers in a strange town, with dubious taste in men. I remember thinking it could have been me, if I’d gone off with the wrong boys at the wrong time.”

  “You had me, remember? I wouldn’t have let you go off with the wrong boys. And besides, I pity the fool who tries to strand you on a deserted island.”

  Fleur smiled complacently. “I’d have ripped him a new one. I felt so sorry for that girl. I hope you find out what happened to her.”

  “That’s the plan. Now, let’s look at these designs.”

  While Eulalie ate her lunch, they went over the printouts with a fine-tooth comb. Eulalie got quite excited when she saw the quality of work that the New York company had submitted for Fleur’s consideration.

  “I love the one with the old-fashioned sugar bowl and spoon. It’s so cute. This one with the fields of sugar cane is boring. Sugar looks like nothing when it’s growing in the ground. I can’t believe no one has tried to brand Prince William Island sugar before now. It’s our biggest export.”

  “Well, I thought of it and I’m the one who’s going to cash in. If I can just figure out which logo goes best with the sugar bowl image.”

  “This one,” said Eulalie. “It looks all cozy and Victorian. Nostalgia is what you’d be selling.”

  Fleur nodded.

  “I’ll sleep on it and check again in the morning, but I think you’re right. This is the winning combination.”

  Eulalie stood up and put some money down on the counter. “I’d better get on now. My childhood fears won’t face themselves.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m catching the ferry to Monk’s Cay this afternoon. I need to take a look at exactly where Jessica disappeared. I might go into the forest and check that out too.”

  “Take me with you!”

  “What? No. Why would I do that? Why would you even want to come? It’s not like this is going to be fun.”

  “You always refuse to take me into the deep forest even though I’ve asked you a million times.”

  “I’ve told you before, I’ll take you when the forest gets Wi-Fi and hairdryers.

  “Fair enough. You think I’m a city girl, and you’re not wrong. Perhaps spending the night would be too much for me. But this is just an afternoon expedition. It will be broad daylight and we’ll come back home on the last ferry. What could possibly go wrong? I’ll get my forest experience, and you’ll get to investigate your case. Win-win.”

  “I don’t know…”

  “Oh, come on. It’ll be fun. I t
rust you completely. I know you’ll get us both out of there safely.”

  Eulalie was surprised by how much this idea appealed to her. She had been perfectly willing to spend the afternoon on Monk’s Cay alone, but the thought of doing so in Fleur’s company was much more appealing. The voice in her head that said she should do it the hard way was easily ignored. Eulalie had never been much of a puritan.

  “What about the shop? Can you afford to leave it for the afternoon?”

  “I was going to do stocktaking this afternoon, but I can do that any time. Jethro can handle the rest, especially now that his sister has arrived to help out in the kitchen.”

  “Then let’s do this.”

  Eulalie’s second ferry ride out to Monk’s Cay was a big improvement on the first.

  This time she was sitting with her best friend and ordering mimosas from the ferry bar.

  She drank the first one thirstily because she was still parched from her morning of interviews. A waiter immediately appeared with another. She drank that rather more slowly as they gazed out to sea and Fleur told her the long, sad story of how she had caught her kitchen employee skimming stock as it came in from the supplier. Fleur’s anger had burnt itself out, leaving her with nothing but sadness. She hated it when people made choices that had the potential to ruin their lives.

  Eulalie’s head was buzzing pleasantly after the second mimosa. She ate a bag of potato chips to soak up the alcohol and waited for the feeling to subside. By the time they pulled into the dock at Monk’s Cay, it already had.

  It was nearly three o’clock. They were accompanied by a tour group of Japanese tourists. The tourists would enjoy a guided tour of the ruins, followed by afternoon tea in the tearoom, and a chance to browse the gift shop. Then they would catch the last ferry back at six o’clock. Eulalie fully intended to be on that ferry too.

  She and Fleur walked up to the ruins with the tour group. There was no access from the docks to the beach. The only way down was via the cliff path. As the tour group turned to walk towards the ruins, Eulalie and Fleur followed the cliff path down to the sandy strip of beach.