A Ghost in Time (Destiny Bay Cozy Mysteries Book 3) (16 page)

“She…uh…was a strong woman,” I commented a bit lamely.

“Oh yeah. But she was setting the lady up. I knew her tricks. She was going to ambush her as she came up the winding road. I’ve seen her do it before.”

“What?” I couldn’t quite get that one.
 

“Yeah, it was a thing she liked to do. She said, ‘Come on, Jason. I’ve got to get out there. This little sucker is coming and I’m going to throw her for a loop.’”

“Hmm.”

“I followed her out onto hillside. I was trying to explain to her that she couldn’t do anything until we talked to a lawyer and straightened it all out. She laughed at me. She said it was too late. The property was already gone. She had to sell it to pay the bills. I said, ‘How could you do that without me? I’m part owner.’”

“What did she say to that?” I still had my hands up, but they were drooping.

He shrugged. “She said she had friends who helped her and it was a done deal. ‘Your problem,’ she told me, ‘is that you never had any friends. Not the right kind, anyway.’ Can you imagine?”

“No.” I was trying hard to make him think I was sympathetic to his cause and by all I could see, he seemed to be buying it.
 

“That’s when I grabbed her and she shrieked and began to whale on me and I pushed her, just a little, you know, just to get her away from how she was hittin’ on me, and the next thing I knew, she was rolling down the hill, right into the turnaround, which is lined with these big rocks….well, you’ve seen it. And I guess she hit her head because when I got to her, she was a goner.”

“Oh my gosh.”

“Yeah. I didn’t mean to kill her. And actually, it was
her
fault. But…you know? I couldn’t just leave things that way. I knew people wouldn’t understand. I had to do something to take the blame away from me and put it somewhere else. And that’s when I got my idea.”

“Uh huh.” I was trying to edge away from him. “So how did she get into the road?”

He grimaced. “I put her there.”

When I gasped, he sighed.
 

“You see, you don’t know about Star. She had the place set up for her usual game. So I thought, what the hell. Might as well put it to use. If I could move fast enough, I knew I could arrange things. You see, I knew that Bebe was coming. I conceived of a plot, right there on the fly. I grabbed the wooden chair from the apprentices’ front porch and I set Star’s body in the chair, right there around the curve. The blue tarp and bungee cords were waiting there where Star had put them by the side of the road. I grabbed them and covered the mirror.”

“So Bebe couldn’t see around the corner as she came up?”

“Exactly.”
 

“You’re telling me that Star was ready to do that to Bebe anyway?”

He nodded. “Sure. She loved to scare people driving up that road. She’d hide in the bushes and when they came around the curve, she’d jump out at them and half the time, they’d lose it before they realized what was going on.”

“But that’s so dangerous.”

“Sure it is. That’s what made it fun for her. One guy—Kenny Madred—went right over the side. He got the slide stopped in time. It didn’t kill him. But it could have.”

“Wow. Star was….”

He laughed. “Yeah, whatever word you’re thinking, it’s not bad enough to cover what Star was.” He looked a bit woebegone. “And I still loved her.”

That would take some puzzling over, but I had a feeling it was one of those human things impossible to understand.
 

“So anyway, your aunt was a little too quick for me. I didn’t get a chance to get away. She came cruising around that bend and ran smack into Star. So I just stuck around and tried cleaning up some of the evidence. I knew she’d be hysterical at what she’d done, so I snuck on down and pulled the parts of the chair up, then took the tarp back off the mirror and hid all that in that little storage unit down the hill that you found today. Then I high tailed it out of there.”

“Didn’t she see you?”

“Who? Oh, your aunt? Sure. But I was wearing a dark hoodie and I used the flashlight I got from the storage unit to light up my face from below to look eerie and evil. You know what I mean? Like kids do on Halloween. I knew she’d never recognize me after I did that.”

I frowned. He wasn’t tall and gaunt. The flashlight probably made him look it, but… And then I realized something else. Bebe was about 5 foot in her stocking feet. Any man over 5’5” looked tall to Bebe. And Jason was a lot taller than that.
 

Jason Moon was the man who killed Star. It was all his fault. Bebe was just an innocent bystander. That made me furious.
 

But now that I knew all that, what was he going to do with me?

Chapter Eighteen

“Get up,” Jason was saying now. “We need to get into that little grove of trees and bushes. If I remember right, there’s actually a tool shed in there. That’s what I’m looking for.”

“Why?” I got up and we started toward the place he’d indicated. “What are you going to do?”

He looked at me and I could tell what he was thinking. He was thinking he ought to kill me. But as I watched, his gaze shifted and he ran his tongue over his lower lip. I felt a surge of hope. He wasn’t a cold-blooded killer and he was looking for some other way. Relief swept through me. Maybe I wasn’t going to die after all.
 

And then something occurred to me. I hadn’t tried any magic. Not that I knew any that would help in this case. But I did know a chant. Would that help? I really didn’t know.

We trudged toward the brushy area and he kept talking, telling me he had access to a boat.
 

“What do you know about sailing?” he asked me. “Hey, if we start right after dark, we could make it to Catalina by morning.”

I turned to look at him and he gestured with the gun, reminding me to keep my arms up. “I don’t want to go to Catalina,” I told him. “And can I please put my arms down for now. This is killing me.”

Oops. Unfortunate choice of words. But he didn’t seem to notice.
 

“Okay, hold them straight out for awhile.”

“What are you planning to do to me?” I asked, my voice trembling a little. To my surprise, that seemed to get to him.
 

“Hey, I’m only doing this because I have to,” he said. “I don’t want to hurt you. You’re too pretty for that, tell you the truth.” He actually grinned at me. “So I’m trying to think of ways to make this work. You’re from Hawaii, right? Maybe we could sail to Hawaii. Would you like that?”

I stared at him. He was serious. I didn’t know what to say.
 

“Come on. Let’s go. We’re almost there.”

We walked on. It was now or never. I had to try it. I started the chant I’d learned from Aunty Jane. At first it was so low, he probably thought I was mumbling to myself, but as we walked along, I got louder and louder. And the funny thing was, it was working some kind of magic on me. I felt better, stronger, more confident, the longer I chanted. It was empowering.
 

“Hey,” he called to me. “What’s that you’re doing?”

“I’m just singing an old Hawaiian song,” I told him. “One my grandmother used to sing to me.” And I went on with the chant.
 

“Hey, you know? I sort of like that,” he said, his words slightly slurred. He was walking closer behind me now. “Do you know how to dance to it?”

I nodded. “Want to see?”

We’d reached the shed and he’d opened it. We went inside.
 

“Yeah,” he said. “Show me.”

The shed was full of the kinds of tools workers who fill these fields when they’re planted with flowers—these we’d been walking in weren’t for the time being-need to get things done. Jason sat back on a wooden box against the window. I took a deep breath. I’d taken many, many hula lessons when I was young. I knew it would all come back like second nature. But it still felt odd to be doing it this way. Hula in jeans and a grey hoodie. Lovely.
 

I did a basic hula, vamp, vamp, vamp, and I didn’t make full moves. I wasn’t trying to entertain, just to engage. But I was really getting into the chant. It began to sound almost as good as those professional singers at ceremonial events in Honolulu.
 

Somehow, someway, it seemed to come more and more from my heart and soul. And all the while I did the chant, I was staring right at him. I caught his gaze and held it. He looked like a man coming under a spell. My heart began to beat quickly with excitement and I had to calm down in order to keep this thing going. His eyelids were getting heavy. Just a bit more and he would be out.
 

Maybe. If I was lucky.
 

Then he slumped down against another big box and his head began to loll. I kept it up. His eyes closed. He was out.

I could hardly believe it. I’d actually put him into a sleep state, just by using my chant. I stopped dancing but I didn’t stop chanting. I didn’t dare-I kept repeating the same line, over and over. But I did start to move toward the door, my heart racing, my mouth getting dry.

I heard someone outside. My heart jumped. The door was pushed open and Roy stood there. To me he looked ten feet tall and more handsome than any man had ever looked. A couple of men seemed to be with him as backup, all three with guns drawn. Tears filled my eyes. I was safe. But I didn’t stop chanting. Not until Roy pulled me up into his arms and held me tight.
 

“You done good, Hawaiian girl,” he whispered near my ear while his companions shook Jason awake and put him in handcuffs. “I’m proud of you.”

I was trembling with elation. “How did you find me?”

“Jill told me to look for you at Star’s, and when we got here, we saw that black cat of yours. He saw me and went into his ‘Timmy’s in the well!’ act. You know, the way Lassie always does on that TV show. So we followed him and here you are.”

“Oh…I’m so glad you were looking.”

I melted against him, sobbing quietly. He kissed me, then rocked me until I got over it. I looked up with a teary smile on my face, but before I could say anything, he wanted to know something himself.

“How did you manage this?” he asked, gesturing at Jason, still lolling with his mouth open.
 

I hesitated. Oops. This was going to be the touchy part.
 

“You know I told you Jill and I were fooling around with hypnosis on Bebe,” I reminded him. “I think I’m getting pretty good at it.”

He stared at me, brows drawn together, and I pulled out my cell phone and handed it to him.
 

“You’re going to want this,” I said. “If it recorded the way it was supposed to, I should have a full explanation of how Star died right on it.”

He looked from me to the cell and back again, astonished.

I grinned. “You’re welcome.”

And I pulled away and walked out on my own.

Chapter Nineteen

Against all odds, the flower show was a huge success. Peace and harmony ruled the day and the most beautiful flowers won the highest prizes. Everything was as it should be.
 

“It is amazing,” Bebe said at one point, “how one little stinker like Starflower Moon could send an entire organization into a tail spin for so long. Now that she’s gone, everything is clicking along like clockwork.”

“Hmm,” I said, tapping my watch which seemed to be on the fritz again. “You don’t say.”

“Oh, you know what I mean. It’s fun to be part of the growers community again. Nobody is avoiding meeting my eyes anymore. Things are back like they used to be when Jimmy was here.”

“I’m glad.” I smiled at my favorite aunt.
 

It had been about two weeks since all the excitement had died down. Jason Moon was in custody and by all accounts, going to stand trial for murder, even though he claimed he didn’t really kill Star. I was going to have to testify because of that hour or so he’d abducted me, even though he hadn’t hurt me. And the funny thing was, I don’t think he would have. He was sure trying hard to think of ways to get around it at the time.

Still, his wife did die from actions he initiated, and he didn’t tell the truth at the time. Not only that, he’d tried to pin the whole thing on Bebe and as a result had his wife smashed by a car in a horrible way. No, there was no denying he deserved punishment of some sort.
 

To tell the truth, I hadn’t been following things very ardently lately. Those few days of “sleuthing” had put me way behind in my job as Activities Director and I had to do a good bit of catch-up in order to make sure everything went smoothly for the Spring Flower Show. I hadn’t had time for anything else.

So it was nice now to have this time with my aunt, so sort of sum up what it all meant to me. Arm in arm, we were taking one last turn around the showroom, admiring all the beautiful flowers, waving to friends, giving thumbs up to prize winners.

Fred Carver was proudly displaying the Grand Prize at his booth. His long-stemmed red roses had finally been rewarded with the recognition they deserved and he was beaming.
 

“Didn’t I tell you?” he said as we passed. “Now wasn’t it worth all the trouble we went to?”

I didn’t answer. I sort of wanted to go over and smack him one and say,
“Who’s this ‘we’, mister?”

He’d given good advice and he’d helped make sure Bebe kept her job, but as for risk-taking—I hadn’t noticed him during the times of strife.
 

But never mind. We were all one big happy family now. So I gave him a smile and a wave and we moved on.
 

We saw Karl MacKenzie and his wife ahead. They were holding hands.

“Ah,” said Bebe, always ready to forgive and forget. “How sweet.”

We made a turn to get a look at the sweet peas—always favorites of mine—and also to avoid the MacKenzies, and we ran right into the Millers instead.
 

“Hey.” Margie was always friendly. Funny how she could look so much like her sister and be so different. “We’ve been talking it over and we’ve decided to keep Star’s farm and continue her style of flowers. So next year you’ll be dealing with us when it’s time for the yearly flower show.”