The Haunted Beach (Tropical Breeze Cozy Mystery Book 4) (2 page)

“And yet you two are usually so talkative,” Edson murmured as he sat in his desk chair, arms crossed on his chest, swiveling gently.

Standing on the other side of the desk, Poppy and Rosie glanced at one another.

“Now you’ve got nothing to say? If Ben and Dolores Brinker are in trouble – I assume they’re the Mister and Missus you keep talking about – then ladies, I want to know. I want to help. And you seem to think I can help, so let’s have it.” He stopped swiveling and regarded them, waiting. They would break. They always did. Edson had a lot of experience with this kind of thing – dealing with people who wanted to talk, but thought they shouldn’t. The wanting always overcame the shouldn’t in the end.

“It’s Miss Frieda,” Rosie blurted at last.

“What about her?” Edson asked.

“She’s back.”

“Back from the dead,” Poppy added sepulchrally. “She’s after The Missus. Haunting her. Driving her insane.”

Ed took a moment to digest this. His head lifted in an informed way, and his expression became professorial. He pondered.

“Well?” Rosie demanded. “You don’t look surprised.”

“I’m not. In fact, I could have predicted this. If I hadn’t been distracted by that blasted show, I would have. Frieda Strawbridge was not the type to simply rest in peace. The fact that she is now haunting her only child is only too believable. She had too strong a hold on things – and people – in this world to go quietly on to the next. Please. Sit down, ladies.”

The twins eyed one another. “Well, maybe just for a minute,” Poppy said. They sat down reluctantly. “We don’t want to get behind schedule.”

“You’re always behind schedule. And you do the first three houses, break for lunch, finish with the big house at the end by two or three in the afternoon, then take the rest of the day off.”

“How did you know that?” Poppy asked, genuinely startled.

“Because you’ve told me yourself nearly every time you’ve been here. Besides,” he added, gazing at each in turn and slowing down his speech, “you need to get this off your minds. It’s troubling you. You want to help, but you don’t know how. I do. You know I do. If it turns out to be nothing, it will go no further. Now, I assume this haunting is going on in the Brinker house itself –“

“Oh, no,” Rosie said, rising to the bait. “It’s at the house across the street.
Her
house. Miss Frieda’s house. It’s still sitting there empty, and we figure –“

“—that the reason The Missus won’t sell it is because her mother is still in there. In the house.”

“And on the beach,” Rosie added.

“The beach?” Edson sat up. He had never investigated a beach haunting.

“They dance together. On the beach.”

“Really?!” He had never investigated a ghost who danced, either. Then he frowned. “They never danced together on the beach when Frieda was alive, did they?”

“Not lately, they didn’t, but back in the old days they did. Anyway, that’s what The Missus said. Miss Frieda was too crippled to even leave her bedroom toward the end, but back in the day, when she first built her house, they spent a lot of time on the beach. Miss Frieda was a young woman then.”

Edson nodded. They waited for him to comment, occasionally glancing at one another, but several minutes went by as he became lost in thought.

Poppy leaned close to Rosie’s ear and whispered, “This is a mistake.”

Rosie leaned close to Poppy and whispered, “Maybe he’ll bring Teddy Force in to help.”

Poppy sat back and snapped her mouth shut.

“Maybe they’ll even do a show on it,” Rosie added out of the side of her mouth.

Suddenly, Poppy was on board.

Edson, a man capable of absolute concentration, had missed the exchange. His sharp brown eyes had lost their focus as he took his glasses off and laid them on the desk, gazing past the twins into the Haint Blue paint on the wall. There was a legend that that particular shade of light blue formed a barrier against spirits, much as water did,
haint
being a corruption of
haunt
. Ed was amused at the idea that a color of paint could keep ghosts away, but it was a pretty blue and he found it soothing, so he used it on his office walls. Superstition had nothing to do with it.

When he finally spoke, his voice was distant.

“Frieda Strawbridge West. A daughter of the Gilded Age. The only one in her generation left to inherit. A brief marriage, then tragedy. Her husband dies a month before their first child is born. Hence the baby girl’s name: Dolores: sorrows. Not that Frieda is saddened by her husband’s death; he was a drunk and an abuser, and she never remarries. She resumes her more famous maiden name and goes on with her life, having acquired a docile daughter.

“She’s a genius at speculating in real estate, and builds on her fortune. Then, looking for a retreat, she purchases some cheap land on a barrier island in Florida that gives her privacy and a stunning view. She creates a world for herself there, along with her daughter, a companion, and the companion’s daughter, a little girl named Willa, who is conveniently close in age to Dolores. She calls her new home Santorini. It’s near the quaint old town of St. Augustine. As time goes by, her land appreciates, and she develops and sells the other lots on her property, but not for some years. At first, while her daughter is young, she keeps her private sanctuary tightly locked away from the world.

“In Santorini, she settles down to dominate the three women who are completely dependent upon her. Only her companion manages to escape, through death, leaving Willa at the mercy of a woman who has no blood ties to her and can cut her off at any time. If turned out, Willa knows she’ll be homeless and alone, so she behaves herself. No, ladies, I wouldn’t expect Frieda to ever loosen her grip on her daughter, even in death. Very interesting. Has Willa seen Frieda in her spirit form?”

The twins looked at one another, then back to Edson.

“She never said.”

“We never asked.”

“It would be fascinating to know,” he muttered.

Edson was silent for long minutes, gently rocking and twirling his glasses.

“Well, Mr. D-D,” Poppy said, glancing at Rosie, “we’ve got to get on with our day.”

They half-rose out of their chairs, then stopped, suspended, as Edson snapped, “Wait!”

He put his glasses back on and said, “I need more information. You said Frieda was haunting the house, but that Dolores danced on the beach with her. What goes on at the house?”

“Well,” Rosie began slowly, “you know, we still clean it, even though it’s been shut up and nobody lives there. We thought at first Dolores just wanted to keep it nice so she could show it to buyers, but she never put it up for sale. So we go in every Tuesday afternoon.” She stopped, gazing at her sister, and Poppy picked up the narrative.

“She’s there, Mr. D-D. We can feel her.”

“You’ve seen her?”

“No, not
seen
her, exactly. It’s . . . the third floor.”

He waited, but nothing else seemed to be forthcoming. “What’s on the third floor?” he finally asked.

Rosie answered. “The master bedroom. We never saw it when Miss Frieda was alive, because Dolores and Willa took care of things up there, but we’ve been cleaning it since the old lady – died – and . . . .” She shuddered to a halt.

“You sense her there?” Edson prompted.

The twins nodded in tandem. Looking at their faces, Edson decided not to pursue it just now. The investigation was just beginning. He’d find out about the third floor later, hopefully by studying it himself. Instead, he asked, “Does Dolores go up there? To the third floor? Is that where they meet?”

The twins were on their feet now, obviously anxious to go. Finally, Rosie came out with what was really on their minds.

“You are going to call in Teddy Force, aren’t you?”

He blinked, gave a spasmodic jerk and blushed, all at the same time. “Why should I? He never knew Frieda Strawbridge.”

“He doesn’t know any of the other ghosts he goes after, either, but he does it all the same,” said Rosie, almost scolding. “Aren’t you two partners?”

“Yeah, aren’t you partners?” Poppy said. “I think you two need to do one of your investigations right here in Santorini.”

“So
that’s
it,” Edson said, glaring. “You just want to be on TV.”

Poppy began to protest, but Rosie went off like a rocket. “Mr. D-D, you take that back right now!” She startled everyone, including herself.

Her sister took over. “How dare you, Mr. D-D?” she said more quietly but not less passionately. “You know how much we care about all of you. You’re our people. We like taking care of you, and that doesn’t just mean your houses. We even liked that old devil, Miss Frieda, in a way. She had the right stuff, only she threw it around too much. She was a legend. But The Mister and The Missus are in trouble, and we’re worried something awful might happen. What if her mother wants to take The Missus away with her?”

Edson made a calming motion and the twins sat down again.

“I apologize, ladies. You have no idea the people I’ve been associating with since
Haunt or Hoax?
has gone into production. There are people out there who will do anything to get on TV. Sometimes, I forget what normal people are like.”

“Oh, that’s all right,” Poppy said. “We know about showbiz folks. We’ve seen the magazines.”

“And
The Housewives
,” Rosie added.

Ed missed the reference to housewives, whoever they were, but he didn’t bother to ask. He wanted to get back to Frieda. “Can you tell me any more about this situation?”

“That’s just about all we know,” Rosie said pensively. “The Mister and The Missus don’t talk about it.”

“Then how do you know?”

“We saw the pictures,” Rosie said.

Ed spasmed as if he’d been electrocuted. “There are
pictures?”

“Well, not snapshots or anything,” Rosie said. “Paintings. You know, The Missus has always painted. She has a little studio at the back of the house, facing north. She told me something about north light; it’s better for painting. She used to do vases of flowers and half-eaten apples and beach scenes. Nice stuff. Pretty stuff. Then all of a sudden she went off the deep end and started doing one right after the other, sometimes two or three at a time, all with the same creepy thing in them.”

“When was this?”

“It started about a month after Miss Frieda passed over, but lately it’s been getting worse, or – what do I mean? – faster. She’s painting faster.”

“And they’re all the same,” Poppy added. “Dark. Blues and blacks and silvery white, and this – figure. Always the same figure. Wispy, twisty, arms in the air and feet walking toward you over the water, and eyes looking right at you. I asked her one day when The Mister wasn’t around what the creature in the paintings was supposed to be, a water sprite or something? And she said no, that’s my mother. I got a funny feeling.” She took hold of her elbows, and Ed saw goosebumps on her flesh. “I thought I knew what she meant, but just to be sure, I said, your mother, you mean like she used to be? Like you remember her? From when you were a little girl and you first moved here? And she said, No, like she is now. Like when I see her
now.”

“And that’s when I knew for sure,” Rosie said, her voice edging up sharply. “That was no water sprite. That was Miss Frieda! The Missus has been painting pictures of her mother, but not the alive Frieda – the ghost Frieda. I was so surprised I asked her straight out, have you been seeing your dead mother? And just as calm as you please, she said yes. Yes, she says, Mother comes to see me all the time now. We dance and we talk and everything is better between us now, but you mustn’t tell Ben, she said, because Ben can’t handle it. He couldn’t when Mother was alive, and he’s even worse about it now that she’s dead. That’s what she said, I swear it.”

Ed was stupefied. Electricity rippled through his nervous system with an almost audible hum. “I must see those paintings,” he gasped.

“Mr. D-D,” Rosie said, forgetting that she was talking to a client, and clients were always spoken to with respect, no matter what they were acting like. “You have to keep quiet about this. The Mister is really upset about it.”

“Really upset,” Poppy said. “He’s all to pieces over it. You can’t go telling
anybody
about this, and if you want to see those pictures, you’re going to have to be sneaky about it. You can’t just go knocking and say hey can I see those ghost pictures your wife painted? It would be
bad
, Mr. D-D.”

“Good lord, do you really think I’d do that?” He didn’t let them answer. “I’ve been doing this kind of investigation for decades. I promise I will not upset Ben or let him know you’ve been gossiping about his wife. You’ve done the right thing, ladies. You came to the right person.”

Rosie eyed him sternly. “And you are going to call in Teddy Force, right? And Porter?”

“We probably don’t need the Ghost-Sniffing Dog,” Poppy said. “I’ve got my doubts about him sniffing out ghosts anyway, and he’s always knocking things over.”