The Haunted Beach (Tropical Breeze Cozy Mystery Book 4) (18 page)

“She did?” Ed said. Then he sat back and said, “Oh.”

“What is it?” Taylor asked.

“I think she might have come to me around that time, too, only I was too involved with Teddy and Purity and all the commotion at my own house to be able to stop and listen.
Damn.
If only . . . .”

Taylor watched him quietly. He looked so devastated. It struck her that it had been a very long day for Ed. She had engineered this little gathering because she wanted to find out more about Dan, but she could see that Claire wasn’t going to talk about him. She kept changing the subject, and Taylor wasn’t interested in hearing about anybody else just now. She already knew way too much about Ben, and she didn’t like him, and she was already feeling sorry for Willa. Rod wasn’t going to be much of a husband, if tonight was any indication.

Claire switched the subject back to Willa and Rod, and Taylor gave up.

“She was excited, infatuated,” Claire was saying about Willa. “Wanting to change everything in her life, and afraid to upset her quiet little world at the same time. At first, she didn’t seem all that madly in love with Rod, but when she started talking about being a ‘Mrs.’ she got all gushy. I think she was in love with the idea of getting married, rather than with Rod himself.”

“What do you know about him?” Ed asked.

She shrugged. “Not much. He’s been after Willa since the day he rented the Greene’s house, according to those maids of ours. They seem to think he’s just boring, and Willa is too, so it’s a good match. But I don’t know about that. There’s more to the man than his corny jokes. I can’t quite put my finger on it. He tries so hard to be friendly, but he just makes my skin crawl.”

“Mine, too,” Taylor said.

“Really?” Ed said. “He always seemed all right to me. Just kind of loud.”

“What’s his story?” Taylor asked. “Is this his first marriage?”

Claire began to say she didn’t know, then stopped herself. “He must have been, because Willa said something about his having a daughter, who died. He never mentioned her to anybody else that I know of. Certainly not to me. But when he told Willa about it, it was this great tragedy, and it made Willa feel sorry for him. He’s always so desperate to get people to pay attention to him, I’m surprised he didn’t tell everybody about his daughter.”

“You sound like you think he made it up,” Taylor said.

She shrugged. “Why would you make up something like that? No, I think there’s a grain of truth there. He just used his daughter’s death to get Willa’s sympathy. He’s the kind of guy who likes people to feel sorry for him, I think. Maybe that was his way of letting her know he’d been married before without talking about his ex-wife. He used the daughter’s death to distract her from asking any questions about the other woman.” Then she stopped herself. “You must think I’m awful, talking about him like this when I barely know him. But there’s something about him.”

“Oh, I know what you mean,” Taylor said quickly.

“Poor Willa is so unsuspecting; I’m sure she didn’t even ask him about his ex-wife. It’s easy to read between the lines with Willa. Whatever story a man gave her, she’d believe it.”

“She doesn’t know much about men,” Ed said.

“You can say that again,” Claire told him. “All the things she told me at the dinner party were about Frieda and Dolores, Dolores and Frieda, and pretty much nobody else. She’s lived in such a bubble, she doesn’t know anybody else. She told me the whole story of her life, and it didn’t amount to much.”

“But she didn’t tell you her little secret,” Taylor said drily.

“Oh, you’re right! I’m just so used to thinking of her the way she was at that party, too friendly, and desperate to be liked. I keep forgetting that she’s an heiress. It’s just so
weird
.”

Ed nodded. “It’s going to take some getting used to, all right.”

“You never had a clue?”

“No. And I should have. Now it seems so obvious. I guess we’re so used to rich people being able to buy and sell other people, I never questioned Frieda just
owning
Willa and her mother.”

“Well, I for one am a little worried about Willa now,” Claire said. “How do we know that Rod didn’t know she was rich all along, and that was the whole idea behind this bang-slam marriage?”

Taylor immediately shook her head. “I don’t think he had a clue. He didn’t look happy when she told us. He wanted to be her sugar daddy, her knight in shining armor, and now here
she’s
holding the purse strings. I don’t think this suits his plans at all.”

“You’re right,” Ed said. “He didn’t even look excited. Actually, he looked kind of . . . scared.”

“Scared?” Taylor laughed. “Why should he be? Maybe he’s angry his scenario didn’t play out, but give him time to think it over. He’s filthy rich now. And he can’t be afraid of Ben. If he’s got so much money of his own, he doesn’t need to worry about lawyers or trustees, either.”

Claire shrugged. “Give him a few days to get used to the idea. I’m sure he’ll be wearing a happy glow by the end of the week. Still, come to think of it, he should have been wearing a happy glow
before
he knew she was an heiress, shouldn’t he?”

“He seemed happy enough to me,” Taylor said grudgingly. “What do you think, Ed?”

“No. To me he just looked – smug.”

In the quiet that followed, they heard the door to Ben Brinker’s house open and close. Claire stood up and went to the railing to look down. When Dan Ryder stopped in Santorini Drive and looked up, she waved.

“Is everything all right over there?” Taylor called, going to stand beside Claire.

“Oh,” Dan said. “I didn’t see you there. Yes, he’s quieted down. By the time I got him home he was feeling sorry for himself, and then he passed out on the living room couch. I don’t think he’s going to cause any more trouble tonight.”

“Good,” Taylor said. “Thanks, Dan. You’re my hero.”

He snapped a little bow and wished them a good night.

“Well, maybe we should be going home, too,” Ed said. “Are you feeling all right now, Claire? We could stay if you need the company.”

“You guys go ahead; I’m fine. Thanks for coming over. It’s nice to have friends.”

“Call us if you need anything,” Taylor said. She dug out an Orphans of the Storm business card. “My cell phone number is there.”

“Thank you. Listen . . . do you think she’ll be all right? I mean, really? Is she safe?”

“Who, Willa?” Taylor said. “She’s going to be fine. Better than ever. She’s a ‘Mrs.’ now, remember? And now that he knows he’s got a rich wife, I’m sure Rod Johnson is going to behave himself and be a very good husband.”

Claire forced a smile. “You’re probably right. I don’t know what’s gotten into me tonight.”

“If you want, we can go check on her tomorrow,” Taylor said. “We never did get to see those wedding pictures.”

“Yes, let’s do that. You don’t mind coming back?”

“Of course not, if it’ll make you feel better.”

As Taylor and Ed walked back down Santorini Drive toward his house, Ed said, “All right, what was that all about?”

“What do you mean?” she asked innocently.

“That ‘just us girls getting together to look at wedding pictures’ idea. I know you, Taylor Verone. Wedding pictures, indeed. You’re up to something.”

She was quiet for a moment. Then she said, “Claire’s right. Something’s fishy about Rod Johnson. I want to know more about his first marriage. And I want to know if this is his second marriage or his third, or maybe even his fourth.”

“You think he’s a gigolo?”

She looked at him and laughed. “That’s a charming way to put it. Actually, I’m wondering why a man would marry a woman like Willa Garden if she
wasn’t
an heiress. What do you think?”

After a long moment, Ed quietly said, “You’re asking the wrong man.”

Taylor let it drop.

The next morning, the twins were due to clean the houses on the south side of Santorini Drive. Before they did, they dropped off warm croissants at Ed’s house.

Ed was letting one melt in his mouth and pondering the mysteries of life when Teddy and Lily delighted him by coming out of the master bedroom, rolling their suitcases behind them.

“We are moving over to Cadbury House,” Teddy announced. “We’re done here. Don’t get me wrong, little buddy, I know you tried. It’s not your fault the Frieda Strawberry thing fizzled out. No ghost, no show. Gotta move on, am I right? At least Purity came through for us. This is going to be a big opener for the new season. I can feel it. Taylor’s still got my dad staying with her, helping her with those fundraising things she throws on the weekends. Turns out he’s a heck of an organizer, but I always knew that. Dad’s a genius. And Porter, here, wants to go visit all his little pals at the shelter, don’t you, guy?”

Out of everything Teddy had just said, Porter had only heard the word “go,” and it flipped a switch in the dog. He started running in circles and barking, and conversation was impossible for the next thirty seconds.

When Porter finally settled down, Ed said, “So sorry to see you go. Do you need any help with your bags?”

After they had driven away, Ed went into his office with Bastet, left the door wide open, sat behind his desk, and felt the peace and quiet expanding and filling the house around him. Alone at last. He took his first deep breath in weeks.

Then he booted up the computer. The lady from New Smyrna Beach had been calling his office phone, and he had been putting her off as gently as he could, which had turned out to be easy. All he had to do was mention that Teddy Force was in his house and they were working on a new episode of the show, and she became more interested in what they were doing than in her own problems.

But now that he was in control of his own world again, he felt strong – no, commanding. What had he been dithering about? Of course the dear lady needed to know the facts before it was too late. Her brother was only trying to convince her that her condo was full of malevolent spirits because he wanted her to sell it. The condo that she and her husband had purchased in 1989 for $65,000 was now worth over two million, and her brother wanted that money. The cad.

Edson barely re-read what he had composed that morning weeks ago, printed out a copy for the file, and decisively hit the “Send” button.

Then he went across the street to Dan Ryder’s house and rang the doorbell.

“Sorry to disturb you, Dan, but may I talk to the twins?”

Dan tilted his head slightly, but otherwise his expression didn’t change. “You
want
to talk to the twins?”

“If you wouldn’t mind?”

Dan opened the door all the way and said, “They’re in the kitchen. They brought me some croissants. They’re actually pretty good. Help yourself.”

Ed leveled with him. “They brought some to my house, too, but we needn’t flatter ourselves, Dan. They were for Teddy, really.”

“I figured as much.”

“Ladies,” Ed said, marching into the kitchen and making them drop their sponges in surprise. “I will be needing your services again today, I’m afraid. Could you come over at the end of the day and repair any damage to my master bedroom suite? They’ll need a good scrubbing. My guests have left. You will be compensated, of course.”

Their faces fell, but they nodded in tandem.

“Okay, Mr. D-D. We’ll be over around two,” Rosie said.

After a moment’s silence, the twins both looked at Dan and gave him watery smiles. Teddy Force had always been an impossible dream, they seemed to be thinking, but Dan Ryder would still need his house cleaned every week.

“Want to stay for coffee?” Dan asked Ed, as he easily read what the twins were thinking.

“Sorry, I’ll have to take a rain check. I have work to do.”

He returned to his house, strode into his office and went straight to the file cabinet. Picking through the neat hanging folders in the “Unsolved” section, he took out the material he’d labeled “The Beach Haunting.”

It was time to deal with Miss Frieda, once and for all.

As usual, Teddy had decided to take himself off down the road without telling anybody in advance, and Lily had found herself throwing everything into the back of the car and wondering how to sort it all out at Cadbury House.

As Teddy drove south on A1A, Lily looked into one of the few cars going the other way and recognized Taylor Verone in her white SUV. She tried to wave, but Taylor wasn’t looking, and by the time she told Teddy to toot the horn, it was too late.

“She wants us to come for brunch,” Claire’s text had said. “Willa’s house @ 10. OK with you?”

“Great. C U then,” Taylor had texted back.

Taylor pulled into Claire’s driveway at 10:01, got out of the car, and before she could ring the doorbell, Claire came out. She looked fabulous in a pink sundress with high-heeled sandals that were mostly little white straps, and had a stack of cherry-pink and green bangles on her wrist that might have been genuine Bakelite. Her thrift-shop manager, Florence, would have known if they were the real deal, just by the clicking sounds they made as they fell together, but Taylor was no expert on vintage jewelry.

Taylor was wearing khaki capris and a silky white top with a blue-green figure of the cat goddess Bastet hanging on a long chain. She had felt fabulous when she’d left Cadbury House. Now she felt extremely ordinary. Claire did that to other women, though she never seemed to be trying.

“Beautiful day,” Taylor said, letting the sun’s warmth melt over her skin. The ocean was active this morning, and sounded like a huge washing machine beyond the dune.

“Going to get hot later, though,” Claire said. Taylor suddenly realized the other woman was nervous, and wondered why.

“I noticed Rod driving away in Willa’s car about half an hour ago, so it’s going to be just us girls.”

“Oh, good.”

They walked across the street and rang the doorbell. Willa welcomed them inside. Taylor looked her hostess up and down and suddenly felt a tender sadness. Willa was in her early sixties, but she was dressed like a woman in her eighties: matching polyester pants set, chunky, dull necklace, and inexpertly polished nails. Inside her sandals, she was wearing sheer hosiery.

Still, she seemed happy and comfortable, and they all went up the stairs chattering like schoolgirls.

The breakfast table was set with expensive china, each plate with a different botanical design, and orange juice had been poured into stemware. Next to each plate was a sherbet cup full of fresh fruit. A little posy of wildflowers sat charmingly in the middle of the table, and beside it was a white satin picture book.

“We took the package deal,” Willa said. “DVD
and
hard-copy photo album. It was really very well done. No impersonators or anything.”

“Something smells good,” Taylor said, inhaling cinnamon.

Willa beamed. “Crème Brulee French Toast,” she said. “I got the recipe out of a magazine.”

“I’m sure it’s going to be wonderful,” Claire said, reaching for the album. “Can we look at your pictures?”

“You girls go ahead,” Willa said. “I’m going to plate our brunch.” She got busy in the kitchen, putting warm syrup into a pitcher and opening the oven.

Claire carefully opened the satin cover of the album and looked at the large portrait of the bride and groom on the first page.

“Oh, you look lovely!” Taylor said, looking at the radiant smile on Willa’s face. She’d worn a white suit, and had an orchid corsage. Rod was wearing a rented tux, and was standing behind Willa with a hand placed possessively on her arm.

“What a handsome couple you make.”

Willa came to the table and set down a couple of filled plates. She gazed at the picture and said, “We had that one framed and put it in the bedroom.”

Then, for some reason, she blushed and turned quickly back to the kitchen for the last plate.

“Please,” she said, coming back, “have a seat.”

“So what does it feel like to be an old married lady?” Claire asked when they had settled around the little breakfast table.

Willa took a deep breath and let it out again. “I can’t quite settle down and let it in. I know it’s going to hit me soon, but it hasn’t yet. It just seems strange to have him here, that’s all. I’ve lived alone for a long time now. Even when my mother was alive, I had my own room. I’ve wondered if I’m going to be able to get used to living with someone at my age. So far, it’s been . . . very nice. We haven’t had our first fight yet,” she added.

“Maybe you won’t have fights,” Taylor said, submerging memories of her own brief, failed marriage. It had been so long ago, she no longer had bitter memories, or even any specific memories. Even her mother-in-law was just a cartoon character now.

They toasted that with orange juice, but when she set her glass down, Willa said, “Everybody has fights.”

“You remember that,” Claire said, woman-to-woman. “You’re going to have fights, but it won’t be the end of the world. My husband and I had a terrible fight on our wedding night, and it didn’t ruin the marriage. I was so young and stupid! I was pregnant, and I decided to wait until our wedding night to tell him. I thought he’d be thrilled, but he exploded. I was shocked, and burst into tears like a little idiot; it wasn’t at all what I had expected. Not that he didn’t want the baby: he just didn’t like me keeping a secret like that. So we got off to a rocky start, but it all worked out in the end.”

“I didn’t know you had a child,” Willa said.

Without knowing why, Taylor began to feel uneasy. She thought frantically of anything she could say to change the subject. “My children are all dogs and cats,” she said in a light tone, hoping to get a laugh.

Willa gave Taylor a tiny smile, then asked Claire, “Did you have a boy or a girl?”

“A girl. Sylvie. She’s . . . ah . . . she’s her own woman. Always was. Not like me or her father. She’s completely impractical, and seems to think she’s going to be living in a castle one day with a handsome prince, and they’ll have plenty of money and everything is going to be wonderful, and in the meantime, she can’t even hold down a job.”

“Do you see very much of her?” Willa asked.

“Sometimes. She’s grown up now, of course. I never know what to expect from Sylvie. Sometimes she won’t even speak to me, and sometimes she acts like nothing ever happened and wants to travel with me, even come live with me, or have me come live with her. Then she flies into a rage for no reason and she’s off again. Her father had no idea how to handle her. When I said she needed counseling, he was furious. He just tried to ignore the situation, which made it much harder on me. When she blamed me for everything, he agreed with her.”

“That’s so unfair!” Willa said.

“Men can be like that,” Claire said. “Even a good marriage can be difficult at times. Remember that.”

Taylor gazed blankly out the window at the ocean, wondering just how much Claire actually regretted having that kind of a husband drop dead.

Willa was nodding. “I don’t expect perfection. We aren’t exactly a couple of naive kids. I don’t know if you know it, Taylor, but Rod was married before.”

“Was he? This French toast is delicious, Willa. I hope Rod is happy he’s getting such a good cook for a wife.”

“What do you know about his first wife?” Claire asked. “Has he said anything to you about her?”

“Oh, nothing much,” Willa said, setting her fork down and looking sheepish. “She wasn’t a very nice lady, from what I gather. She was a bit younger than he, and very immature. She only married him because she thought he was wealthier than he actually was, and as soon as they were married she started running up the credit card bills. He tried to put a stop to it, but when he tried to talk to her about it, she threw a fit. Then, of course, there was the daughter. He tried to keep the peace for the sake of the child, but the woman was impossible. After their daughter died, there was nothing to keep them together anymore, and he said getting a divorce was actually a relief. They don’t have any contact now; haven’t for years.”

Taylor noticed Claire being distracted by something through the window, and turned to look. Dan Ryder was walking by, heading for the beach.

“He’s attractive,” Willa said demurely. Then she gave Taylor a covert glance and a little smile.

Something seemed to burst in Claire, and she let it all out in a rush. “He’s so hot I could die. Right in his arms, I could die.”

“Claire!”
Willa said.

The lovely blond woman seemed to transform to a dewy teenager before their eyes. “I’m tired of trying to hide it. Are you surprised?”

“Nope,” Taylor said, while Willa just smiled.

“Well, I’m still having legal problems with my in-laws,” she said. “Does Taylor know?”

“You asked me to keep it quiet, and I have,” Willa said primly.

Claire explained the lawsuit, but before Taylor could take it in, Rod came into the kitchen with a sack from a hardware store and announced, “I got the new filters for the water dispenser in the fridge. I can’t believe you haven’t been changing that. You could’ve made yourself sick!”