Moondance Beach (9 page)

“Absolutely not!” Abigail stomped her Easy Spirit walking shoe onto the bricks. “Who will coordinate the festival? Who will register Island Day vendors and hold auditions for the children’s play? Who will decorate for the Mermaid Ball?”

Barbara shrugged. “This thing has become way bigger than us. The Chamber of Commerce and the festival board of directors run things nowadays. They don’t need us anymore.”

“But we
are
the festival!” Abigail seemed shocked that no one was taking her side. “If we disappear, who will testify to the power and mystery of the Great Mermaid? Without her—without the heart and soul of the legend—then what’s it all for?”

Everyone lowered their heads.

“Let’s face it,” Polly said, her voice just above a whisper. “None of us was even willing to serve as temporary president when Darinda left. Rowan, Annie, and Evelyn have repeatedly refused to consider joining—hell, Rowan and Annie have made fun of us since they were kids! There isn’t a soul on earth to lead the next generation of mermaids!”

No one had a comeback for Polly. Layla used the back of her wrist to wipe away tears. Izzy stared down at her Birkenstocks. Mona sat on the bench, watching the pale sunlight hit the faces of the Mermaid Society members the way it had for one hundred and twenty-seven years.

Was Polly right? Was this really the end?

The Great Mermaid stared out to sea, as stoic and unchanged as the day she was unveiled. She never grew old. She never doubted herself in the face of change. But she
was made of bronze, of course—not flesh and blood—and though she might possess mystical knowledge of true love, she would never know the human heartache associated with losing it.

“Polly is right,” Mona said. “Without some kind of miracle, the Bayberry Island Mermaid Society is dead in the
water.”

D
uncan’s eyes popped open with the sun. He lay still for a moment, aware that something had changed. First off, he was sore as shit. Six miles had been too much, and he would need to rest his hamstrings and calf muscles for a couple days. But the change went beyond physical. Something had shifted in his mood. He was excited to begin something. It was almost as if he had a new mission . . .

The water woman! There was no way she had been a dream.

Duncan rose from the bed and took a quick shower—well, quick
er
. In just over a month, he had managed to reduce the time required for grooming and dressing from forty minutes to twenty minutes. Not bad. He caught himself humming as he slipped his feet into his favorite old Docksiders and headed down the back stairs to the kitchen.

It was a typical summer morning, ovens filled with baked goods while trays of fresh fruit, bacon, and scrambled eggs were ferried out to a noisy dining room by the
summer waitresses. It was controlled chaos, and the controller was Imelda Silva.

“
Não,
Svetlana! That’s the cottage cheese. We need cream cheese for the bagels!” Mellie rolled her eyes and shooed her summer employee toward the walk-in refrigerator. When she turned back, she caught Duncan reaching for a miniloaf of banana bread right off the cooling rack. She smacked his hand.

“Good morning, dear Mellie.”

“Get!”

“But I’m starving.”

She pointed to a stool at the large butcher-block table in the middle of the room. “Then sit down like a person. Have coffee and juice and maybe some eggs.”

Duncan couldn’t help but smile at her showmanship. Mellie liked to pretend she was annoyed with everyone and everything, but Duncan had always been able to see the laughter in her dark almond-shaped eyes.

Wait.

Those eyes. They looked familiar. They were similar to the eyes of the witchy-woman mermaid painting.

He went still as a strange heat radiated from his chest, through his body, and out to his limbs. He knew he was staring at Mellie but couldn’t seem to stop himself.

“What’s this all about? You’re acting strange today. Now, sit down.” She poured him a cup of coffee and fetched the container of half-and-half, then threw together a breakfast plate. Duncan dug in, realizing that the word “starving” may not have captured just how hungry he was.

His plan was to eat and get out of there. Looking into Mellie’s eyes was suddenly way too uncomfortable.

“You good?”

“Absolutely. Thank you for breakfast.”

She frowned. “Where are you headed in such a hurry at nine in the morning?”

“I gotta go see Clancy at the station.”

“Hmm.” Mellie sat down across from him, folded her hands on the table, and looked him up and down. “Something is different with you today. What is it?”

Duncan shrugged, giving Mellie a quick, reassuring smile. “I’m feeling a lot stronger. I ran almost six miles last night, and I’m looking forward to my meeting with the captain next week.”

“That’s not it.” Mellie shook her head and waved her hand at him. “It’s not your running and it’s not your captain.”

Duncan laughed, wiping his mouth with a napkin and finishing his coffee in a single gulp. “I gotta go, Mellie. Thanks again for breakfast.” He grabbed his dishes and placed them in the large sink, then kissed her cheek on his way to the side door.

He could feel her eyes on his back, and the sensation lingered long after he’d left the kitchen.

It was a twenty-minute walk to the Bayberry Island Police Department and Jail complex—if two old, weather-beaten clapboard buildings held together by a breezeway could be called a complex. But Duncan enjoyed the sunshine and the cool morning air. He cut through a few alleys and parking lots once he got to the oldest part of town, knowing the shortcut to his destination. A bell jingled when he opened the front door and the assistant chief of police, Chip Bradford, looked up from his paperwork, his face breaking out into a big smile.

“Duncan! How you doing?” Chip stepped out from behind the desk and gave him a hug. “It’s good to see you, man. You’re looking wonderful!”

“Thanks, Chip.
Whoa
!”

Something made a sharp barking sound and leaped up to the level of Duncan’s chest. He caught it in midair and came face-to-face with what reminded him way too much of an Ewok from the
Star Wars
movies. He stared at it for a moment, laughing. “Is this thing supposed to be a dog?”

Chip laughed. “Yeah, but that’s all we know about her. She’s a stray—no tags, no microchip, no collar. She was hanging around the back door last week, and we let her in when it started raining. She was soaked. We think a tourist dumped her.”

“Classy.” Duncan put the creature down on the old wood floor, shaking his head. “My brother is too soft. He should have called Animal Control.”

“We did, but when Fred got here, Clancy told him never mind, that we were going to keep Ondine.”

“Who?”

“Ondine. I named her that after the water sprite from mythology, you know, because she was nearly drowning in the rain.”

“Of course.” Duncan decided if he didn’t divert Chip to some other topic, he could be there until nightfall. “Listen, is he around?”

Chip inclined his head toward the hallway. “In his office. He’s finishing shift scheduling for festival week and told me not to bother him. Our moonlighters will be here soon.”

The dog began sniffing and scratching at Duncan’s shoe. He ignored her.

Chip went on. “Just between you and me, we got some new scheduling software, and it’s a wicked piece of crap. Your brother’s probably not in the greatest mood.”

“Roger that.” Duncan knew that every summer the Bayberry Police Department beefed up its force in order to deal with festival-week crowds. Most of the temporary guys were Clancy’s buddies from his Boston PD days, more than happy to spend their vacations making triple overtime.

The scraggly little dog had just finished rolling around on her back, her tongue sticking out of her little mouth. Now she sat staring up at Duncan with big puppy eyes.

“It needs a bath,” he told Chip.

“It’s a she.”

“
She
needs a bath.” Duncan let himself through the gate that separated the public part of the station from the offices. He tapped on the chief’s door, then pushed it open.

“Whoa!” He shut it and backed down the hallway. That wasn’t meant for him to see—his brother pressing his wife down onto his desk, kissing the hell out of her, her legs wrapped around him. Duncan wandered farther down the hallway and leaned against the wall, deciding how best to apologize for the intrusion.

Thank God all they were doing was kissing.

Evelyn exited her husband’s office first, her eyes averted. Clancy was right behind her, buttoning up his shirt, his eyebrows raised in annoyance at his brother.

“Very sorry about that.” The worst part was Evelyn. Would she be angry at him? Embarrassed? Sure, he saw her often enough, but they weren’t particularly close. Duncan wasn’t even sure how it worked with a sister-in-law—he’d barely spoken to Clancy’s first wife.

Right at that moment, he felt like a real tool.

“Evie, I didn’t see anything. Really. And you have nothing to be ashamed about.”

Evelyn kissed her husband good-bye, whispering, “See you tonight, Chief.” As she passed Duncan, she winked at him. “Get your own girl,” she said.

“See you at home, sweetheart.” Clancy watched his wife exit the station, a shit-eating grin on his face. Honestly, Clancy looked just as dopey-in-love now as he had the summer he was fourteen, when a pretty, brown-haired festival-week tourist named Evie McGuinness stole his heart. As soon as the back door latched shut, Clancy’s demeanor changed.

“What the hell, bro?”

“Sorry. Really. But I need to talk to you.”

Just then the skanky little dog squeezed under the old swinging gate and came skittering down the hall, ears flying back, eyes focused on Duncan.

“Want a dog?” Clancy asked.

“Thanks, but no.”

“She likes you.”

“It’s an unrequited thing.”

Clancy laughed. “Well, come on in.” He began tidying up a mess of papers scattered everywhere. They probably had been in order before the police chief rolled around with his wife on the desktop.

“Everything okay with Ma? Everybody at the Safe Haven good?”

“Yes. Sure.” The dog was at his heels.

“So is this about Da? Have you talked with him lately?”

Duncan couldn’t believe how annoying the dirty ball of fur was. She was bumping up against his right ankle.
“No, no. It’s not about Da. I just have a few questions I need to ask you.”

“This better be worth the interruption.”

“Yeah. Again, I’m very sorry about that.” Duncan sighed heavily and sat down in the chair across from his brother. The dog sat next to Duncan’s foot. “Look. Do you know Adelena Silva very well?”

Clancy reared back. “
Lena
?”

“Yes. Lena. Mellie’s daughter.”

“Uh, no. Nobody knows Lena well. I don’t even know if Mellie knows her well.”

“You make her sound like the Unabomber or something.”

Clancy must have thought that was funny, because he laughed pretty hard. “Nah. She’s great. She’s just, well, Lena is unusual. She does her own thing and doesn’t seem to need other people for much.” Clancy stopped talking and smiled. “Anyway, you’re not exactly a social butterfly yourself. Does anyone know
you
well?”

Duncan attempted to answer his brother’s question but stopped, unsure what to say. The truth was that Justin had known him well, and so had Mike and Scotty, Terrence, Paul, Jax, Simon, and the other members of his platoon. But he had a feeling that was not what his brother was asking.

Did anyone really know
him
? The whole man and not just the warrior? Duncan had never given it much thought, and now wasn’t the time to start. The dog chose that moment to start licking his shoe. He shoved her away with his foot.

“Look. I need to run something by you. And it’s going to sound really bizarre, but I want to tell you the whole thing and then you can tell me what you think.”

Clancy leaned back in his office chair. “Sounds promising. Go for it.”

Duncan leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. “I decided to go for a run last night. My plan was to do about three miles, but the beach was like
Animal House
—I was tripping over kids everywhere.”

Clancy frowned. “I know. We rounded up sixteen kids last night—underage drinking and public intox mostly.”

“My God. Were we that bad as teenagers?”

Clancy laughed. “Definitely.”

“Anyway, so I ended up running a lot farther than I intended, just to get away from the hormone-a-palooza. And ended up on old Harry Rosterveen’s land.”

“Yep. Moondance Beach. It’s Lena’s now.”

“Right. So I decided to chill for a few minutes and lie back in the sand to watch the stars. The sky was clear and the water was calm.”

“You sound like one of the brochures in Safe Haven’s lobby.”

“Would you stop with the heckling and let me tell you what happened?”

“Sure.” Clancy cleared his throat.

“So all of the sudden I think I see . . . No, I’m almost
positive
I see a tail flip out from the water.”

“A tail.”

“Yeah, a fantail. Like on a dolphin.”

“How close?”

“I’m talking right up on the beach, maybe twenty feet from the sand.”

“Well, that’s not unheard of. Injured or sick dolphins and whales sometimes hang out in shallow water, where they feel safe. They’ve been known to beach themselves at night for that reason.”

Duncan shook his head. “Thanks, Professor, but I know all that, and that’s not what I’m describing to you. A fantail flipped out of the water with a splash, a playful kind of movement. But I didn’t see it again. What I saw instead was . . . I saw a woman.”

“Say what?”

“So I’m pressing myself into the sand, making myself invisible, you know, total ninja shit, and I see a head and shoulders come out of the water. I see a woman walk toward the beach, right out of the water, and she’s naked.”

Clancy did that thing with his eyebrows again.

“She walks all the way out and, holy shit, she’s the most gorgeous thing I’ve ever seen in my freakin’ life. Pale skin, dark hair, an incredibly beautiful face. I’m talking
stunner
. Naked. A naked stunner of a woman, coming out of the water, right in front of me.”

Clancy appeared slightly uncomfortable, crossing and uncrossing his legs several times. He might have been trying not to laugh.

“What? You don’t believe me?”

“I didn’t say anything! You told me to wait till you told the whole story. This is what waiting looks like. Jeezus!”

The dog was back. She had decided to plop down for a nap, and she rested her little black nose on the top of Duncan’s shoe. He ignored her and went back to the issue at hand. “Anyway, this woman is perfect and naked and she walks right past me, and I’m not even breathing. She looks so calm and peaceful, like she’s in a trance or something. No shit. And then she heads up the beach and I get the fuck out of there.”