Terror on the Beach (5 page)

CHAPTER NINE

I was get
ting really worried. Things were missing, someone was using my car and someone had put blood on some of my things and then somehow or other getting them while I was passed out. Now my down jacket was missing and someone besides me or Tory had ordered sunglasses for the shop.

I got to the shop in a daze.
Tory asked me if I was all right. “I feel like someone is trying to drive me crazy.”

“Who could it be?
Who have you pissed off?”

“No one that I know of.”

Robert called later that day to say he would be working late, “Do you want to come and stay at my apartment and wait for me?”

“No, Robert, I think I’ll turn in early and get some uninterrupted sleep.”

He laughed, “I understand. By the way, the hairs they found in the dead man’s fist were from a blond wig. We’re hoping for something from your car. Did you ever find the cap and gloves after I left?”

“No but I noticed my down jacket is also missing.”

“Sarah, none of this is making any sense to me. Are you sure you had this cap and gloves and that you found blood on them? There was no blood on your hands when I found you. Had you washed them before I got there?”

“I’m positive.
I found the gloves and they were sticky. When I looked at my hands they were bloody. That’s the last thing I remembered until I woke up in bed and you were calling my name.”

“Were you on the bed when you noticed the blood on your hands?”

“No, I was standing on the chair I had pulled up to the closet to reach the back of the shelf.”

“What chair?
There wasn’t any chair near the closet and the door to the closet was closed. How did you get on the bed?”

I was getting angry that he acted like he didn’t believe me.
“There are a lot of weird things happening to me right now that I don’t understand. Now you’re acting like you don’t believe me. This is real scary for me. You could be more supportive,” I said as I hung up.

Tory and I uncrated some new merchandise, marked some more items down and waited on a few customers.
It wouldn’t be long before school would be out and the families would be pouring into Monroe Beach. We wanted to have enough merchandise to last the summer. There would be little time to order more until we started ordering the fall clothes.

I was dog tired when I got off work.
When I got close to my condo I saw Robert’s car parked on the beach in back. He was sitting on the hood.

He jumped down when he saw me and held out his arms.
I ran into them and we both said, “I’m sorry,” at the same time.

We didn’t have that many fights and always found it easy to make up.
We ended up taking our shoes off and walking on the beach to the hot dog stand and eating another corndog while walking and talking.

Robert
finished his and wiped his hands and mouth and threw his trash in one of the trash cans they keep on the beach.

“I’ll tell you one damn thing,” he said, “This is the craziest case I’ve ever worked.
It’s almost like someone is trying to frame you. Who have you pissed off?”

I gave a bitter laugh.
“Tory asked me the same thing. I can’t think of anyone.”

Robert walked me back to the condo and left saying
the deputy would be guarding my condo. “I don’t know what good it will do. Someone managed to get past him and plant evidence and then remove it from your condo. This guy is good, I’ll give him that.”

The next morning when I got to the shop, Tory handed me a letter that had come for me and marked private and personal.
I opened it and inside was one page handwritten letter. It said:

Dear Sarah,

You’re next.
I can’t wait to stab the living daylights out of you. It will be the most pleasurable of all my cases. I will probably come over and over again. I can do that, you know.

Make sure you show this to your boyfriend, the sheriff.
It won’t matter. He’ll never catch me and neither will that FBI agent, Simon.

Enjoy your last days alive even though you don’t deserve them.
It will be soon.

Hate,

Twoon, aka The Beach

Front Stabber

In a panic, I called Robert.
He and Simon came over right away. “You shouldn’t have handled this, Sarah,” Robert said.

“I didn’t know what it was and I couldn’t find out what it was without opening it and taking it out of the envelop
e.” I was trying not to sound sarcastic but it was hard.

“Well, we’re going to need to take your fingerprints to rule you out.
Then see if there’s any left. He probably wore gloves though.”

He looked at the envelop
e, “Postmark is right here in town.”

Simon took my fingerprints using a por
table unit before they left. I went into the back of the store to help Tory unpack some boxes of merchandise that had just come in.

Tory was squatted over a box she had just opened, “Are we going to start carrying children’s clothes?” she asked when I walked in.

I knelt down next to her and lifted out a little girl’s toddler sized bikini. It was in pink. “Tory, please tell me you ordered these.”

She was looking at me funny, “I’m sorry, Sarah, but I didn’t.”

“Get on the computer and see if you can find any indication as to how this was ordered without either of us knowing it.”

Tory was the computer whiz and was the one who had taught me what little I knew about computers.
I knew how to log into our suppliers and order but I didn’t know how to follow up. If an order was late, Tory could track it.

I looked over her shoul
der and saw my name in the blank that asked who ordered it. “Tory, couldn’t anyone put my name there if they knew all this other stuff about me?”

“They could and they could even do it from a different computer as long as they knew your password.”

“You don’t even know my password, Tory. Could someone good with computers get my password?”

“There are hackers who could do it.
I don’t think I could but I’ve never tried. What would be the point of it though? I mean, what would someone gain by ordering stuff for your store? They’re not going to make any kind of profit from it. Are you sure you didn’t order this stuff yourself, Sarah and maybe forgot.”

I lost my temper.
“Hell no I didn’t order children’s swimsuits and then forget. I said when I opened this shop two years ago that it was going to be all women’s. The shop is too small to carry something for everyone.”

Tory got tears in her eyes.
“I’m sorry, Sarah, please don’t be mad at me.”

I hugged her, “No, I’m sorry.
I shouldn’t have lost my temper like that. I feel like I’m losing my mind.
I haven’t been living in this town very long and I don’t know that many people. I moved here two years ago and I spent most of my time setting up the shop and working my butt off. Why is someone doing this to me?” I started crying and now Tory hugged me.

“It’s going to be all right, Sarah, We’ll figure this out.
I’m here for you, you know that.”

Tory would graduate that year and I only had her for the summer before she left for college.
She was the only woman friend I had.

I told Tory I was going home,
change into my new bathing suit I had bought out of the batch that had come in a few days before, and run on the beach. I usually walked but I felt I needed to clear my head of all the cobwebs in there.

I ran until I was tired and I was beginning to feel better and then started walking.
I had ended up a lot farther down the beach than I had ever been. There was no one in that area and the sun was going down.

I sat down on a sand dune and before I knew it I must have fallen asleep.
But what scared me more than I could possibly describe was that, I don’t know how much later, I woke up to the sound of the phone ringing.

When I answered it was Robert.

“Where in the hell have you been? I was just getting ready to come over there.”

I looked at the clock, it
was 8:42 p.m. I looked down at myself, I was naked. At first I was confused, but then I was so terrified I couldn’t concentrate on what Robert was saying.

He was yelling now, “God damn it Sarah.
Can you hear me? Are you all right?”

“Stop yelling at me, I can hear you just fine.
I went for a run and came home and fell asleep. I lost track of time.”

“Freddy has been ringing your door bell.
He didn’t have a key and called me when you didn’t answer. I had called him to check on you after we found another body on the beach.

“
The teenage couple who found the body, and called it in, described it as a young woman and the description sounded just like you. It scared the crap out of me.

“I’m almost at the location now and I’ll tell you the truth, Sarah, I’m so reliev
ed I finally got you I could come over and kiss your feet. I’m coming over after we process the scene. Wait up for me.”

I mumbled an okay.
How had I gotten home and taken my clothes off? I didn’t remember it at all. I was missing two hours of time. I walked into the bathroom and looked at myself in the mirror. I was ghost white even after being on the beach for almost three hours.

I was going to take a hot shower but when I stepped into the shower it was wet as if someone had taken a shower there already.
On reflex I touched my hair and it was wet. I must have been the one to take a shower but I didn’t remember it.

In a daze, I went to get my favorite pair of pajamas.
They were from Disney World and Robert had bought them for me on a trip we took there last summer. They had Donald Duck on them and they always made me feel better if I was down.

I couldn’t find them and went to check the dryer even though I couldn’t remember wearing and washing them lately.
When I got to the laundry room I noticed the lid to the washer was closed. I always left it open so it would stay dry and avoid mold.

I opened the lid. T
here were clothes in there, my navy blue sweatshirt with a hood, a pair of my jeans, and the stocking cap and black leather gloves. Someone had put these things through the wash cycle.

I got so dizzy I sat
down on the floor of the laundry room and put my head between my legs. When I felt better I raised my head and my eyes fell on the shelf above the washer/dryer unit. I got up and pulled the item down. It was a blond wig. I fainted.

CHAPTER 10

The next thing I knew I was running down the beach.
Someone was chasing me. It was Kevin Payne, the artist. I didn’t understand how I got there but I knew I was going to die.

Freddy came running over a sand dune in front of me and I knew I was now safe.
He had his gun out. I ran toward him and he yelled, “GET DOWN ON THE GROUND, GET DOWN ON THE GROUND. It took me a few seconds to realize he was talking to me.

When I did realize he was talking to me I started to get down on the ground even though I didn’t understand why he wanted me on the ground unless it was to get me out of the way so he could have a clear shot at Kevin.

He then yelled, “DROP THE KNIFE, SARAH!”

I looked down and saw the bloody knife I was holding.
I brought it up to eye level to look at it just as Kevin tackled me from behind and I dropped the knife.

Freddy put his knee in my back and handcuffed me.
The sand was scraping my face and I began to cry. I still didn’t understand. I was so scared.

“I need Robert,” I cried.

“Oh, you’ll get to talk to Robert all right. I can’t wait to see his face when he sees you. All this time we were looking for a man. Low and behold the Beach Front Stabber, our own little ole Sarah.” I fainted again.

PART

TWO:

ROBERT

CHAPTER 11

I was worried about Sarah.
I had gotten hung up at the office filling out reports about the crime scene we had just processed. Freddy had asked if he could stay down on the beach and patrol for awhile.

I was just finishing up the paperwork and thinking about heading out and checking on Sarah when I heard Brenda yell from the front desk, “Hey sheriff, Freddy just called and, you’re
not going to believe this, he said he’s got the Beach Front Stabber.”

Freddy
had said he had a hunch about something, but he wouldn’t tell me what it was. I hadn’t taken it seriously, I still considered him a rookie.