Death, Island Style, page 1
DEATH, ISLAND STYLE
DEATH, ISLAND STYLE
MAGGIE TOUSSAINT
FIVE STAR
A part of Gale, Cengage Learning
Copyright © 2012 by Maggie Toussaint.
Five Star Publishing, a part of Gale, Cengage Learning.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination, or, if real, used fictitiously.
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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Toussaint, Maggie.
Death, island style / Maggie Toussaint. — 1st ed.
p. cm.
ISBN-13: 978-1-4328-2566-9 (hardcover)
ISBN-10: 1-4328-2566-6 (hardcover)
eISBN-13: 978-1-4328-2749-6 eISBN-10: 1-4328-2749-9
I. Title.
PS3620.O89D43 2012
813'.6—dc23 2011038792
First Edition. First Printing: February 2012.
Published in conjunction with the Author.
This title is available as an e-book.
ISBN-13: 978-1-4328-2749-6 ISBN-10: 1-4328-2749-9
Find us on Facebook– https://www.facebook.com/FiveStarCengage
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Printed in the United States of America
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 16 15 14 13 12
This book is dedicated to Craig for indulging my bone-deep need for beach vacations.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Over the years I've been blessed with excellent critique partners. I'm grateful for their kind assistance and expert opinions. My pals JL Wilson, Judi Fennell, Lynne Connolly, Donna Caubarreaux, and Diana Cosby provided invaluable input on this book. Also, my longtime critique partner Marilyn Trent did a final read-through with a fresh set of eyes. My writer friends in First Coast Romance Writers and at the Book Spa helped me come up with the book's title. Like fine wine, good friends keep improving with age. Thanks also to two great editors, Deni Dietz and Alice Duncan.
CHAPTER 1
One of the perks of my new life is walking on the beach. I love to sink into the crisp morning sand, leaving behind perfect impressions of each plump toe, slender arch, and narrow heel. Those footprints proclaim to the world that MaryBeth Cashour lives here on Sandy Shores Island.
At least until the wind changes, the tide comes in, or someone else tramples my tracks. Oh, who was I kidding? My footprints were transitory, just like me. That's the worst part about starting over, figuring out who I am and what I'm doing.
I turn to face the wind, taste the salty spray on my face, and bask in the unfamiliar warmth of the October sun against my skin. Back in Maryland, a warm fall day like this was called Indian summer, but here in coastal Georgia, short-sleeved weather is standard fare. In time, I'd relinquish that northern concern that a howling snowstorm could hit at any minute, but for now, I was still stuck in that cold weather mindset of a nasty storm on my horizon.
After my husband of ten years drowned unexpectedly in April, I sold everything but one framed picture of the two of us and moved back home, only to discover that my mom had kept her terminal cancer a secret. I spent the next three months watching her die.
Two deaths in three months gave me the willies. Worse, it made me responsible for all their possessions. Grandmother Esther's gilt-edged porcelain lamp was a family heirloom, but I hated it. And Uncle Wallace's faded latch-hooked rug? It had clearly seen better days. The marble-topped buffets I listed on e-Bay, and I gave away Mom's junky old car, which was in worse shape than mine. The horrid checkered tile bathroom floor I left as was, and the house sold anyway, thank goodness.
By the time I'd finally gotten to the point of sorting through Mom's personal papers in August, I believed I could see daylight. I couldn't wait to finish this chore and do something, anything, else, but I learned a hard lesson. Be careful what you wish for. The information I discovered in her bank lock box knocked the wind out of me.
I'm adopted.
You would think that being thirty-five years old, I might have heard about this by that time, but my mom never mentioned it. Not once. I can't blame my dad for his silence, as he passed away two decades ago, but Mom had years upon years to tell me the truth.
She sewed my prom dress, mailed me crafty care packages all through college, and single-handedly created beautiful decorations for my wedding. No mention of my adoption. Not even a hint. And it wasn't like her death was unexpected. She knew the end was coming as surely as one ocean wave follows the next.
Secrets. I hate them. And yet the shores of my life were littered with them, much like the scattered shells dotting this deserted beach.
I stopped at another deposit of seashells and chucked them one at a time into my plastic pail. Justine Mossholder, the vibrant woman who'd sold me her gift shop named Christmas by the Sea, told me that part of owning the craft store was continually harvesting shells to make into Christmas ornaments. “Tourists love buying these local crafts as souvenirs,” she'd said.
She'd left detailed instructions on how to make oyster shell Santas, scallop shell angels, and sand dollar snowmen. “Paint the shell until the color suits your eye,” she'd said. “Use a dollop of glue to hold the ornament together, and accent it with a clump of tulle.”
Her instructions might as well have been in Greek. Turns out I had no eye for color, glue guns hated me, and I couldn't tell tulle from organza. So here I was, collecting shells as instructed, only I didn't want the nice big paintable shells.
I wanted the little itty bitty shells. I picked up one shell, then another, but that pace wasn't satisfying. I wanted great glopping handfuls of them. Something about these little shells felt urgently right.
I couldn't explain my sudden unfathomable craving for them, but I needed these tiny shells as much as I needed air. With increasing fervor, my fingers grabbed clumps of miniature colored shells and tossed them in my pail. It was as though I was in a timed contest, and I only got to keep as many shells as I could cram into my hot-pink pail in the next ten minutes.
Stupid, I know, but so was trying to start fresh when I'd lost myself along the way. I'd gone from functioning as a devoted wife and competent receptionist to a berserk seashell-grabber. What was I going to do?
I had no friends.
I had no family.
I had no roots.
All I had was a yellowed piece of paper that said I was adopted. How the hell was I supposed to deal with that? My whole life was a lie.
My throat tightened. I sat down and allowed the shells and dry sand to drizzle through my curled fingers. How could I figure out who I was? My past was a jumble of secrets, my lonely future too dismal to contemplate.
I touched my gold heart-shaped locket, a treasured gift from Bernie on our first anniversary. Engraved inside were the words, “All my love forever.” Hollow words for a hollow life. I'm supposed to grieve and go on with my life, but the little kid in me wanted to stand up and shout, What happened to my Happily Ever After?
That sappy fairy tale sentiment wasn't real. It was fiction, and I'd best realize that MaryBeth Cashour was a ghost of a person.
The offshore wind whipped my hair under my glasses. I flicked the tangled locks away from my eyes and stared out at the sea buoys on the watery horizon. Sea gulls lazily rode on currents of air above the cresting surf. I huffed out my disgust at their freewheeling lifestyle. Oh, to be so unencumbered. To let go and glide on the wind. If only I could be so free, so uninhibited.
After all the changes of late, I couldn't fathom living like that. I needed to know what was coming next. I needed structure and anchors to keep me grounded.
The tides were regular. I'd learned that in a few short weeks. Natives of McLinn County, Georgia, set their watches by tidal fluxes. High water meant big waves, depth in the winding creeks, and delightful onshore breezes. Low water meant lots of beach sand, fish and crabs that could be caught moving with the tide, and offshore breezes. And nasty, biting flies.
I smacked one that was stupid enough to land on my ankle. Take that you bloodsucking varmint. I buried the insect carcass in the dry sand. My gaze drifted back to the hopeful blue sky above the cresting waves and noticed those sea gulls were still wheeling over the same part of the sea as before, just off the beach. That was unusual.
I caught sight of a dark shadow in the water. Something was out there beyond the breakers. Something big. Like a dolphin or a shark. Only it wasn't swimming. It was drifting with the current.
Curiosity had me rising to my feet. I brushed the sand and crushed shells from my Bermuda shorts and cupped my h
The object approached the shore. It bobbed in the surf, slowly rolling over, a dark back, a light underbelly. That's when it hit me. My upside-down life wasn't completely ruined. Things could be a lot worse.
I could be the dead guy floating in the ocean.
CHAPTER 2
Eight hours later, I couldn't get the graphic image of the man out of my head. His faceless body played endlessly through my thoughts in my own private horror reel.
Thank God I hadn't known him.
For a moment, a teeny-tiny moment, when I'd realized a body was washing up on the shore, I'd worried it was my drowned husband whose body had never been recovered. Ridiculous, I know, as my husband drowned more than six hundred miles north of here.
Even so, shock and horror had grabbed hold of me and wouldn't let go. All day long in my Christmas store, I'd felt like I was viewing the world from beneath the water. I interacted with customers as needed, but my responses had been superficial.
This morning the police had asked me a zillion questions, and all I could tell them was I didn't know. I didn't have any male friends down here. I didn't know if anyone in the community was missing.
Some warped sense of ownership about finding the dead guy had kept me standing on the beach long after the police detectives had swarmed over him. I should have left well enough alone. I should have gone to work immediately instead of opening up two hours late.
Could be that's why they'd questioned me so extensively. But it wasn't like there were any other people around they could pester. Most of the houses at my low-rent end of the island were vacant summer rentals.
Children chattered happily around me, bringing me back to the reality of the moment. The cream-colored walls of my shop's back room amplified the noise until it seemed I had sixty kids in there instead of six.
I should have canceled the craft class I'd scheduled for six- to ten-year-olds this afternoon, but this was my first class. I didn't want to disappoint the kids or be labeled as unreliable. So here I was, standing in the middle of chaos and wishing I was home with a dozen chocolate donuts.
Eight-year-old John Curtis Washington was eating seashells. His impish smile showcased his missing teeth and his devil-may-care personality.
I battled through my mental slumber and leveled my glue gun at him. “Don't eat that! Spit it out.”
“I'm not gonna eat these old seashells, Miz Cashour. I only wanna know how they taste.” John Curtis spat the shells out of his mouth. Six plopped onto his paper plate of crafting supplies. Three shot over and glommed onto Claudia Barber's cute Christmas mouse.
“Oooh! Make him stop,” Claudia yowled as she flicked the damp coquina shells off her decorated walnut. Her hip-length chestnut braids shivered with outrage. “Boys are so gross.”
Across the table, Claudia's twelve-year-old brother, Steven, leered at the googly eyes he'd used for breasts on his X-rated Christmas mice. Privately, I agreed with Claudia about the antics of young boys, but someone had to act like an adult in this room. That someone was me. “Let's all settle down.”
Daytona Washington hummed along with the Christmas music I was playing. “I'm ready for glue,” she sang out in time with the chorus of “Gloria in Excelsis Deo.”
At six, Daytona was the same age my oldest child would have been, if I hadn't miscarried. Her big brown eyes and curly black hair sliced into my heart in a would-have-been, should-have-been sort of way.
“That's lovely, dear.” Did my voice sound as fake to her as it did to me? I lifted the felt triangles of her Christmas tree and glued them onto a cardboard form I'd pre-cut for this crafting class. Amazing how you could function and yet be haunted by a dead man rolling in the surf.
I summoned a compliment from my beleaguered brain. “I really like the way you used blue circles for your ornaments. And the gold glitter makes this extra special.”
“It's fairy dust. For all the magic of Christmas,” she said.
The gold glitter stuck to my glue gun and under my stubby fingernails. I'd be peeling it off for days to come. I surely could use a little magic in my life. “Steven, why don't you help Claudia measure that ribbon?”
Steven glared at me, but grudgingly got up to help his little sister. His yellow T-shirt read “Parents for sale, buy one get one free.”
I should've insisted only one craft could be done per class. As it was, John Curtis was making jewelry from beads and shells, Claudia and Steven were doing the Christmas mice out of walnuts, Daytona was working with felt, and cute little Tyson, bless his heart, was making a mosaic picture frame using my itty-bitty shells and doing a fabulous job.
Jolene was making sparkly sequin sandwiches with white craft glue on her plate. My heart went out to poor little craft-challenged Jolene. I knew exactly how awful it felt to be surrounded by talented, creative people.
Trying to instruct six very different children simultaneously was impossible. I would have had more success trying to herd the lizards on the island.
My gaze rested on Jolene again. She wore a floppy faded cloth hat, the brim pinned up sailor style with diaper pins. Wisps of red hair straggled out from under the hat. With her fair skin, she'd probably been told to stay out of the sun her entire life. Hard to do on a southern island.
I should do something to engage her interest. My goal had been for my students to take home a completed craft after each class. Jolene's glue globs didn't fit that bill. I carried the basket of pre-cut felt over to her. “Would you like to make a Christmas tree?”
Jolene's upper lip curled into a sneer that would've done Elvis proud. “Felt is for babies.”
“Is not.” Daytona stuck out her tongue.
I tried again. “Maybe you'd like to try one of the other crafts? Beading? Shell mosaics? Christmas mice?”
“Nah. I like what I'm doing.”
“Let me know if you change your mind.” In frustration, I shoved my felt basket into a work counter cubbyhole. Why did Jolene come if she didn't want to make crafts? I didn't get it. I glanced at the clock over the sink. Only fifteen more minutes until I could go home and relax.
Without warning, the dead man rolled in my mental surf. Chills swept over me. My fingernails dug into my palms. I was just barely aware of the conversation going on around me in the room.
“Whatcha got there, Jolene, big green machine?” John Curtis asked.
Jolene's chin went out. “More than you. That's for sure. And I'm not a machine.”
John Curtis's big brown eyes lit up. “Yes, you are. You're a globby gluing machine.”
“Shut up,” Jolene said.
“String bean, sewing machine, snarly queen, Jolene,” John Curtis taunted.
“You moron.” Jolene flung one of her sequin globs at John Curtis. He ducked, and it struck me solidly in the head. Thwack.
I jolted out of my mental fugue, but I was too late. Jolene picked up another glob and flung it at John Curtis, who ducked under the table. I sustained another hit.
Daytona hummed and skipped about the room as if glue glob warfare were an everyday occurrence in her life. Steven moved closer to his sister and glared at Jolene, who made sure none of her sticky arsenal got anywhere near the Barbers.
John Curtis fired off a shower of little seashells at Jolene.
“That's enough.” I stepped between them and got pelted with more seashells and another wad of sequined glue.
John Curtis smirked. “She started it.”
“I'm finishing it.” I snatched Jolene's soggy plate of glue bombs out of her hands and lifted it high over my head. “Time to clean up your stations and get ready for your parents to come pick you up.”
“Those are mine. Give 'em back.” Jolene shoved me, her pasty hands tearing at my bright green Christmas by the Sea craft apron.
At the sudden motion, the remaining glue globs rolled off the plate into my hair. If I'd carried any of my three babies to term, none of them would've been contrary and craft-challenged like Jolene, right? They would've all inherited my mother's crafty genes. I'd once heard that inherited traits could skip generations.
