Twelfth Night (A Wendover House Mystery Book 2) (11 page)

It wasn’t pretty. I had never seen a drowned person so it
isn’t surprising that I would be shocked. The old man had obviously been in the
water for a while, and I had never seen any male members of my family, so it
took me a moment to realize why Harris was gasping and backing away. When I
didn’t move fast enough, he grabbed me by the arm and pulled me back a step
too.

“Dear God!” Jack said.

“Dead at least two days,” Ben added, finally reaching us.
“Maybe three.
The water’s cold.”

No one suggested CPR or further examination of the body
which rolled slightly as the waves washed over it, slowly releasing it from its
shroud.

“Tide’s going out. It should be safe for a while.” It was
Ben, again being practical.

“But—he looks like.…” I stopped, staring at the slimy gray
hair and bloated, waxy face that had stretched out most of the wrinkles and
forced the eyes closed.

“Kelvin,” Ben said flatly. “It looks like Kelvin.”

“No,” I denied, though of course the body did look a lot
like photos I’d seen of my great-grandfather, only more blurred.

“No, it can’t be Kelvin. Kelvin is dead.
Buried.”
But Harris didn’t sound any more convincing than I did. “And I don’t think this
man is old enough.”

“Oh it’s probably some Kelvin,” Ben said calmly. “The
question is which one.”

I stared at him, not understanding at first, then
remembering that all male Wendovers in the direct line were called Kelvin.

“Dear God,” Harris said again. “But … how? Who? I tell you
that I looked. There was no other Wendover.”

“It can’t be a Wendover. There was no son,” I said.
“Just Grandma.
And she had two daughters.”

“Well, it sure can’t be your grandfather. Can it?” Ben
crouched down.

“No!” Harris and I said together. Harris added, “Don’t touch
the body.”

“I’ll call 9-1-1,” Brandy said, looking rather green. Her
coat was light wool and now sodden. “We need to call someone. There’s a
b-b-body.”

“No,” Harris contradicted again, finally regaining his wits.
He pulled out his own phone. “Let me call Bryson. We don’t want to bring out
the mainlanders if we can avoid it. Not until we know what’s going on. Let’s
just leave this as a drowning death for now. We can decide what to do if the
body is identified.”

No one argued. Everyone had been there long enough to figure
out how things worked in the islands.

“Identification may be difficult,” Ben conceded.

It was my day for looking blank.

“The hands.”
He pointed halfway
down the body. “They’re missing. And I think that the teeth are missing too.
The hands might be the work of a shark, but the teeth—”

I reminded myself that Ben often wrote about true crime and
this was not as horrifying to him as the rest of us.

“
Oohhhh
.”
Brandy fainted.

Jack sighed and picked her up, putting her over his shoulder
in a dead-man’s carry. I bent and retrieved her right shoe. The leather would
never be the same after standing in the surf. I slipped it back on her foot
anyway and then picked up her purse.

“I guess we won’t be catching our flight today.” Jack
sounded resigned.

“No, you can catch your flight,” Harris said. “Ben can take
you over.”

Jack’s mouth fell open and I think he almost dropped Brandy.
I was in shock so my jaw was a bit slower to drop. Harris was sending away
witnesses?

“You can’t add anything important to this investigation, can
you?” Harris asked impatiently. His cool manner had returned. “You don’t
recognize the deceased. You don’t know the cause of death.”

“Well, no. But—”

“You can give a statement about finding the body later.
Write it out and fax it to me. Trust me, you will only be in the way when the
coroner arrives to deal with the body, and I don’t think that your lady friend
is going to be any help at all.
Quite the opposite.”

Brandy had begun to stir and moan. The sound was pitiful. I
think we were all recalling her hysterical and incoherent story about seeing
ghosts in Los Angeles. What if this sent her back around the bend?

“Damn it.” Jack’s brows drew into a scowl. “Okay, we take
Brandy to the airport and get her on her flight. But I’m coming back. No way am
I leaving Tess to deal with this.”

“
It’s
okay, Jack,” I said. “It
isn’t necessary for you to stay, and it would be best to get Brandy out of
here. I’ll be fine and I’ll call you tonight.”

“I’m coming back, Tess,” he said stubbornly.

“I’ll get the luggage,” Ben said pacifically as Harris began
punching numbers into his phone and walking up the hill where reception was
better.

“Leave the small brown bag. It’s mine,” Jack called as he
started for the boat.

Not sure what else to do, I followed Ben back up to the
luggage. My knees weren’t as steady as I would have liked and I moved slowly,
shivering as the rain overflowed my hat brim and ran down my neck. My pleasure
at having resolved my ghost problem had evaporated.

Nor was I entirely happy to find Kelvin waiting for me on a
rock next to the abandoned luggage.

“Kelvin, do you know what’s going on?” I asked him, not
caring if Ben thought I was weird for talking to my cat. Let him chalk it up to
shock.

The cat looked me in the eye and began licking his paw.

“He probably does,” Ben muttered. “After all, he was your
great-grandfather’s familiar. What a pity he can’t really talk. He might be
able to tell us if that body is Kelvin or not.”

“But how could it be Kelvin? He’s dead. The doctor couldn’t
have made that kind of mistake.”

“Sure he could. Old Doc Kauffman is older than dirt and
twice as blind. Tess, do you know how your great-grandfather died?”

“A boating accident?
Or he just
drowned? I….” Harris had told me, hadn’t he?
But not with any
specificity.

“Yeah, a boating accident they said. Except Kelvin had
gotten to where he was terrified of boats and wouldn’t go out in them anymore.
So, Kelvin disappeared and a body washed up. It was a mess. The fish had been
at it, but the upper dentures matched and there was an appendix scar—”

“Stop.”
I was beginning to feel as
green as Brandy. “I don’t need those kinds of details.”

“Sorry. But the thing is there was no autopsy. The man they
found had a dark coat like Kelvin’s and had your great-grandpa’s dentures and
more or less the right kind of gray hair, so they looked no further. There was
no autopsy, no DNA sent for analysis. Everyone just assumed it was Kelvin since
no one else was missing and the corpse had washed up on Little Goose. They
dropped the body in the coffin and buried it in the family mausoleum.”

“Oh God.”

Ben pulled a flask from his coat pocket and offered it to
me. I shook my head. The whisky would never stay down.

“Yeah.
I’m afraid this may mean an
exhumation. Unless Harris can hush it up.
Or if this corpse
isn’t your great-grandfather after all—though that does raise some questions of
its own, doesn’t it?
Like where has Kelvin been and why did he disappear?”

I sank to the ground and put my head on my knees. I felt
like an idiot for pulling a Brandy, but Ben’s words had brought me to the edge
of a blackout.

“Cheer up, Tess. Maybe Harris and Bryson between them can
make it all go away.”

“How?”

“A few rocks in the pockets and the storm dragging the
corpse back out to sea. With any luck it would never be seen again.…”

I didn’t hear the rest. My brain decided it had learned
enough and sent me sliding into the dark.

Deadly Tide
, the
third Wendover House Mystery

About the Author

Melanie Jackson is the author of over 50 novels. If you
enjoyed this story, please visit Melanie’s author web site at
www.melaniejackson.com
.

eBooks
by Melanie Jackson:

The Chloe Boston
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Moving Violation

The Pumpkin Thief

Death in a Turkey Town

Murder on Parade

Cupid’s Revenge

Viva Lost Vegas

Death of a Dumb Bunny

Red, White and a Dog Named Blue

Haunted

The Great Pumpkin Caper

Beast of a Feast

Snow Angel

The Butterscotch
Jones Mystery Series

Due North

Big Bones

Gone South

Home Fires

The Wendover House Mystery Series

The Secret Staircase

Twelfth Night

Wildside
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Outsiders

Courier

Still Life

The Book of Dreams
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The First Book of Dreams: Metropolis

The Second Book of Dreams: Meridian

The Third Book of Dreams: Destiny

Medicine Trilogy

Bad Medicine

Medicine Man

Knave of Hearts

Club Valhalla

Devil of
Bodmin
Moor

Devil of the Highlands

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