Cozy Mystery: Life's a Beach (2 page)

A
mber coddled
me the rest of the night, acting as a mother-figure to the shocked child by wrapping me in blankets as I sat in the air-conditioned house, bringing me cups of hot tea. She was an anchor in the storm and I was grateful. I may not have seen the poor woman that had been stabbed to death but the shock of walking into that house was enough to leave me almost a vegetable the rest of the night.

Tina was unconcerned, surprisingly unconcerned. She just wanted to talk about her ring and the man that had given it to her. What she told us wasn’t very enlightening other than to tell us the man liked to party, a lot. Tina never mentioned a job or how they were funding this party lifestyle but she seemed happy. After the day I’d had I wasn’t willing to rock the boat too much but if she shoved that ring into my face one more time tonight I might have to break her finger!

“I’m going up to bed. Do you all mind if I take the front room? For the night at least. I want that ocean breeze blowing that smell out of my nose.” I stood as I spoke, my fingers going to my nose. I wondered for a moment if it was from watching Tina doing it so often tonight but knew it was because of earlier events.

“No, that’s a good idea, Mel. Take a shower and get to bed honey. Tomorrow we’ll sit on the beach with some Long Island Iced Teas and let the surf wash away all the badness.” Amber said with a grin that made her appear even younger than she was. I really loved that woman.

Tina looked like she wanted to protest but bit her lip and turned her head away.

“I guess I can show you the pictures of our trip down to the Keys tomorrow.” She said begrudgingly.

I didn’t know what was up with Tina but this self-involved, almost childish woman, wasn’t the Tina I’d known for so very long. She gave off an odd vibe and I realized as I went up the stairs that she’d disappeared when Amber brought up paying for the house. Amber had paid me but Tina hadn’t. I was starting to wonder if she would now.

I wasn’t blind, shocked maybe but not blind. My friend had allowed herself to be drug into some kind of badness, illegal drugs if that nose rubbing was any indication, and I think our friendship was about to get a bit rocky. I had no experience with drug abuse but I knew it caused a lot of heartache.

I wandered into the bathroom and turned on the shower, hoping clean hair and skin would finally remove the lingering haze of death that I felt clinging to me. It was, perhaps, only in my head, but I could still smell the scent of the woman’s decay and feel it like an almost oily ooze that flowed over my flesh. I had to get it off of me!

I scrubbed at my skin as scalding water flowed down over my body. By the time the water had started to cool I felt better, clean finally, and went into my bedroom wrapped in large fluffy towels and sat down on my bed. Amber apparently brought me a shot of something strong and brown because it was sitting on the bedside table with a mug of cocoa beside of it.

I slugged back the shot, which turned out to be scotch, and dived under the covers to sip at the cocoa. I turned on the television, flicking through until I saw something I recognized. I didn’t pay attention to the show anyway, it was merely background noise.

Now that I’d cleared my senses my brain was functioning, asking questions that I would have been asking earlier if I’d been in my right frame of mind. Who was the woman? Who had she been there with? Why hadn’t anyone come to look for her there? How could the woman’s body have just been abandoned there without anyone knowing about it?

I cried for the woman, an unknown party but to end your life in such a way broke my heart. It seemed not a soul had cared about the woman. What had led to that? I imagined the woman’s last moments, her final breaths, there in that room and wondered who had killed her. Possibly a jealous lover, a rival, it could have even been a random murder.

The possibilities were endless and the clues were few. Tina’s behavior was weird too. It wasn’t just this death; the drug use must have really changed her a lot. Tina had always been a little self-centered but now it bordered on obnoxious. What had once been a quirky but loveable trait had morphed into something worse. I didn’t like it a bit and knew I’d be up early to talk with Amber about it. If I could get to sleep, that is.

I tossed and turned most of the night but somewhere around three in the morning I finally fell into a light sleep. I don’t remember dreaming or falling into a heavier sleep but by eight in the morning the sunlight was beaming right in through the glass walls and I felt as though I’d been set on fire. I pulled the cover over my head and peeped out of one eye. Spotting what I was looking for I jumped out of the bed to pull the blinds down on the walls and blocked out the piercing rays.

I thought about going back to sleep but knew it was pointless. I could smell the faint aroma of coffee so I put on some shorts and a t-shirt and went downstairs. Amber was there with warmed Danishes and coffee waiting for me. I got a friendly hug and sat down on a stool at the bar that separated the kitchen from the living room. I gratefully took a bite of the confection and sank into heaven.

“Oh, that is so good.” I murmured before taking a sip of coffee. “Oh my, this, this is, may I come live with you?”

“Oh, you’d quickly get tired of interrupted nights, Aunty Mel, and sticky handprints on everything. I swear, they can barely walk but they’re always sticky!” Amber gave a rueful laugh as she thought about her children. “But how I love them.”

Her eyes glazed over for a moment as she thought about her kids, and for the millionth time since we’d met I envied Amber. She led such an extraordinary life. I finished my Danish and put the plate in the sink.

“So what are we doing today?” I asked, forcing a cheerful note into my voice.

“Hm. Tina was up late, talking with someone on her phone, so I doubt we’ll see her before noon. Plus, with that…” Amber broke off, sniffed, and wiped at her nose dramatically. “Problem, I don’t think she’s going to be up before lunchtime is dead and gone.”

“Ah, so that wasn’t just me that caught that? I thought maybe it was just me being paranoid but if you caught it too…” I let my own words trail off.

“No I noted it earlier. Something isn’t right there but I don’t want to talk about it in here. Later, when we’re alone.” She whispered, pointing up at the ceiling.

I doubted Tina was awake but I agreed, this was a conversation that required some privacy. We went out shopping and talked in the car on the way. We decided to not make any waves for the moment, to wait until it was confirmed, before we tried to talk with Tina about it. We could be wrong, after all, but I doubted it.

“She’s lost a lot of weight, she looks ill, Mel. Do you think that could be it?” Amber said before we pulled off on the exit to the house.

“She left Georgia, went to Louisiana where she had a very good job and a life, to be with this guy that apparently doesn’t work and has no real address. She’s always sniffing, hyper, and not acting right. She’s on something and I’d say her dearest fiancé is the reason behind it.” I looked over at Amber as I drove back. She looked just as concerned as I did.

“Tina’s always been different, but this new person. Do you know she wouldn’t even look at the new pictures of the kids last night? Flat out said that was boring and that she wanted to dance instead. She kept trying to turn the radio up but I wouldn’t let her. You don’t want to know the language she used when I told her you were trying to sleep. I just don’t understand what’s happened to her. It has to be drugs, I’ve seen it so often in the shelters. People just change, completely.”

We both went quiet after that and tried to get through the day without making too much noise. I called the detective on the case but he didn’t reveal much of anything, not even the woman’s name. Apparently they were having some difficulty tracing the woman in Florida so had sent out requests for information from the Feds. I thought this stuff all worked at the click of a button but I guess not.

Somehow our vacation, the last Spring Break we planned on spending in Daytona, Florida, had gone from a wistful walk down memory lane to a nightmare ride through Hell. Matters didn’t improve when Tina woke up, either. She was cranky, demanding, and acted as though we were there to serve her. She demanded food and coffee, got into a snit when we insisted she go outside to smoke her cigarette, a new habit we hadn’t seen before, and generally made a mess she had no intention of cleaning up.

Amber and I were both getting very irritated with her. When the time for dinner rolled around Amber and I thought we were all on the same page and I drove us towards a new seafood restaurant that had just opened.

“Where are you going? Lenny’s is to the right!” Tina shouted from the back seat.

“Why are you shouting? We didn’t tell you we were going to the Crab Palace instead? Amber and I have both heard a lot about it and wanted to try it.” I told her, certain that would calm her down. I had no idea of the explosion my words were about to cause.

“What do you mean the Crab Palace? We always go to Lenny’s!” Tina punctuated her shrill, angry words with a punch to the back of my seat. “I don’t want to go to the Crab Palace, I want to go to Lenny’s! Take me there now!”

Amber and I looked at each other in a way that expressed “has she lost her mind” very well and I continued to drive to the Crab Palace.

“You’re outvoted dear.” I told her calmly, hoping the sound of my voice would appease her.

“No! Lenny’s! Now you cow! Or you can let me out of this car right now! I don’t want to go there, I want to go to Lenny’s!” To our utter shock Tina then began a screaming, kicking, all out hissy fit that would have left a toddler taking notes. I pulled over in a parking lot before her fit became too violent.

“Tina! What is wrong with you?” I demanded to know as I got out of the car, and the way of her flailing fists and feet. “Fine, we’ll go to Lenny’s if that’s what you want but calm down, woman. This is so far beneath you!”

Tina snuffled in the back seat for a few more minutes, still lying flat on the seat where she’d been kicking at the roof of the car.

“Fine. Let’s go.”

Amber had also got out of the car by then and we just looked at each other. How should we handle this? I raised an eyebrow at Amber in question and she just shrugged and held up her hands. She mouthed something at me, it looked like the word “later”, and I shook my head. This was not going to work. The trip had been ruined from the start and this was just taking out those final pieces of glass from the broken picture frame that had been the illusion of what this vacation was supposed to be.

The rest of the drive was quiet, except for Tina’s snuffles from the back seat, and when we went into the restaurant Amber and I were so uncomfortable with Tina that we sat speechless. We ordered our food but, in a move that somehow didn’t surprise me, Tina only ordered a drink. She told the waiter she wasn’t hungry but she’d love a Bloody Mary. I tried not to glare daggers at her but failed.

Tina didn’t notice anyway, she was too busy staring at the door, as though she were waiting for someone. Four Bloody Marys later Tina was sloshed and Amber and I struggled to get her out to the car. Neither of us had indulged in a drink, both suspecting we’d need our wits about us tonight, and we’d expected an argument from Tina when we said it was time to go but she’d complied, still staring at the door.

Instead of angry and violent, Tina now seemed sad and tired, her eyes starting to glaze from the alcohol. As I drove back to the house I was surprised to hear sobbing from the back. A few moments later I heard snores replace the sobs and breathed a sigh of relief. Sleeping it off was a good idea.

We got her home, put her to bed, and moved some lounge chairs out to the surf. A warm wind was blowing and the night was clear, a beautiful time to be on the beach with a drink in hand. Or it would have been if we didn’t soon hear sounds coming from the house that didn’t bode well for our bank balances, things were being broken in there.

Amber and I ran into the house and found Tina in the bathroom, a broken mirror resting on the side of the toilet as she sniffed crushed pills from the reflective surface.

“This is all her fault. Every bit of it is
her fault!
” Tina sounded miserable and we had no idea what she was talking about but Amber, brave little Amber, kicked the mirror into the tub before Tina could sniff anything more from its surface and I pulled her up, dragging her back into the bedroom.

I knew we should call an ambulance but something stopped me. Some sense of foreboding that sprang from the words Tina had spoken. Who was the woman Tina had been talking about? Did it have anything to do with the dead woman?

“Do we call for help?” Amber asked, tucking the covers around the already zoned-out Tina.

“No, I have a feeling this isn’t her first go-round. We’ll let her sleep it off. Then tomorrow we stop this.” I knew I had a fierce look of determination on my face as I stared down at Tina. “We’re also going to get some answers. Or she can go.”

Amber’s face told me she wasn’t exactly on-board with my plans but I had no idea what else to do. I gave Amber a look that was half plea and half demand. She could only lower her head as we sat down in the chairs in the room, watching over our friend as she tripped through her drug haze, still mumbling about a woman that had ruined all of her plans. I think I spent most of the night with shivers running down my spine.

T
he ringing
of the doorbell woke me up the next morning. Throwing the luxurious down-filled duvet off me I was glad I’d put on the brown pajamas for bed last night. They looked like normal clothes and I didn’t have to rush to get dressed. Instead I blearily walked down the stairs to the front door, Amber in tow, where the doorbell was ringing unmercifully.

“Somebody answer the door!” I heard Tina shout from upstairs as I pulled the handle.

Blinking through the morning light shining in through the doorway I held up a hand to shield my eyes. Standing there were two police officers in black uniforms. My face scrunched up as I tried to figure out who called the cops if we’d all been asleep.

“We’re looking for a Tina Ross, ladies. We were told we could find her here.” The tallest one asked, a blonde, no-nonsense looking fellow.

“Yes, just a moment. Come in, I’ll get her.” I said, moving away from the door.

“That’s alright ma’am,” the dark-haired handsome one said. He seemed friendlier. “We’ll retrieve her; just tell us which room she’s in.”

I pointed at the room at the top of the stairs and looked at Amber with worry as she moved by my side. I put an arm around her and we waited as the officers moved up the stairs, both with their hands on their guns. What was this about?

“Ms. Ross? We’re with the sheriff’s department. We have a warrant for your arrest.”

We heard Tina scream, a momentary scuffle, and then the policemen were coming down the stairs, Tina handcuffed in front of them, her head hanging. She was still dressed in the soft tiny sleep shorts and tank top we’d put on her the night before.

“Where are you taking her?” Amber demanded but I didn’t hear the response, all I could focus on was Tina’s huge, terrified eyes.

She shot one last look at us as the cops tucked her into their car, a look that begged for help from her best friends. That look came from a scared little girl, far in over her head. Tina was involved in something we knew nothing about, something that could steal her freedom. This was more than just drugs.

Amber read the words from the card the dark-haired policeman gave her before clutching it in her fist.

“Come on, let’s get dressed and see if we can get her out of there. I think we have a long day in store for us.”

We dressed quickly and were soon sitting at the police station. Our jaws dropped when we finally heard what Tina had been charged with.

“Murder?” I shouted. “Of who? She’s been with us the last two days!”

“That woman you found in that house? That’s who.” The detective walked up behind us as we spoke to the desk sergeant person, whoever they were.

I turned to look at him, still confused. “How is Tina responsible for that? She didn’t even arrive until
after
I did.”

“That’s where you’re wrong ma’am. Her fingerprints are all over that bedroom and the murder weapon.”

“You’re kidding right? That isn’t possible!” Even my belief in Tina was shaken now. How was that possible?

“I’d suggest you find her a lawyer and post her bond. Have a good day ladies.” The detective wandered off then, his hands tucked into his pockets. The move caught my attention as I didn’t think people did that anymore, walked around with their hands in their pockets. Amber soon drew me back to reality as she took my arm and steered me out of the station.

Finding a bail bondsman wasn’t hard. Finding a lawyer that would take the case was, however. We searched for four hours before we found one. It was after seven pm by the time Tina was released. When she came out of the station, her head hung down and her shoulders slumped we both ran to her and helped her to the car.

We’d talked about it, Amber and I, and decided that whatever had happened, we had to do what we could to help Tina. This Tina we’d come to know wasn’t the woman we’d loved for all of these years and somewhere in that mixed up brain was still our Tina. We had to find a way to reach her, to throw off this demon that had taken over our friend.

Some might think we were wrong but we didn’t even bother trying to contact her fiancé, Tony. He obviously created this monster. We didn’t want to bring him into any of this, at all. We were determined to help Tina and anyone that had introduced Tina to that lifestyle wasn’t out to help her and didn’t deserve to know what was going on.

Tina disappeared to the bathroom when we got home. Amber was ordering dinner for all of us when I realized how long Tina had been in the shower. I had dismissed it at first as Tina getting off that prison grunge and washing away the funk of drug and alcohol consumption. I became concerned after 45 minutes passed though and tapped on the door.

Tina didn’t answer so I tried the door knob. It opened under my hand and I walked into the steamy room. Every surface was covered in the mist from the super-powerful steaming shower and I could barely see. The frosted glass only revealed vague shapes when the shower wasn’t in use, now it might as well have been painted black.

I called out to Tina but yet again no answer came.

“Come on Tina, stop playing around!” I called out as I slid the door open. “Tina! Amber call for an ambulance!!”

I pulled an unconscious Tina out of the shower and checked her breathing and pulse. Both were present but slow, scaring me deeply. I held a towel to her as I tried to lift her. I more or less drug her to her bedroom where Amber helped me put a long t-shirt on our friend and sat with me while we waited for the ambulance. I was terrified Tina would stop breathing and had her resting in my lap, her back pressed to my chest. Despite everything Tina did not wake up and I feared for the worst.

We totally forgot about the food we’d ordered as we headed out of the door following the ambulance. Amber remembered before we got there and called them but my mind was focused on driving and Tina, nothing more. I knew something was up, in the back of my mind I think I already knew she’d done something terrible, but I tried to deny it.

When the doctor came to talk to us she assured us Tina was going to be fine physically, they’d counteracted the drug overdose, but Tina was going to be hospitalized.

“We don’t know if this was a suicide attempt or simply a drug overdose. We’re keeping her for observation and that’s about all I can tell you at the moment.” The doctor rubbed the back of her neck before walking away. I’d hate to have her job!

“Wait, can we see her?” I called out before the doctor disappeared.

“Not tonight, ma’am. Come back tomorrow. Let her rest for now.” She gave us a “stay strong” kind of smile and walked away.

I stopped at an all-night drive-thru on the way home and ordered us some heartily unhealthy food before I drove us home. We didn’t speak; we were both left numb by the “accident”. I suspect it was a suicide attempt, Tina had seemed broken, in retrospect, and we’d let her down. That wasn’t going to happen again.

“Right.” I said to Amber as we pulled into the driveway. “We don’t have a lot of time here; all we have at our fingertips is whatever Tina brought with her, and a decided lack of information. I suggest we get back to the house and start digging through her things. It’s not very ethical but this is not your usual situation. What do you think?”

I expected indignation, maybe even recriminations about being an awful friend but I got a simple nod of the head as Amber sipped at her pineapple milkshake.

“Right after we scarf down these onion rings, buddy. We’ll tear her suitcase apart if we have to.” I could almost swear I heard a growl as Amber finished speaking. Rawr!

We ate our dinner and got straight to being very bad friends, or good ones, depending on your perspective. Amber took Tina’s handbag, a monstrously huge thing that was a suitcase in its own right, and I took the actual suitcase. What we found wasn’t very encouraging but explained quite a lot.

“It’s a good thing those policeman didn’t search her bags, I think we’d have all been up the creek without a paddle.” I said as I looked down at a pile of small plastic baggies.

Pills of every color of the rainbow filled the tiny bags, along with several powders, and other things I couldn’t identify. I picked each one up, one at a time, and wiped the bags with a t-shirt, I didn’t want our fingerprints on them. I placed them into another larger bag before we went through the rest of it.

“I think we know how they’ve been making money anyway. Tina couldn’t have been doing all of these could she?” Amber asked. “Surely that many drugs would have killed her?”

“She very nearly died tonight. Maybe she was taking them all? But I doubt it. I also doubt these are vitamins and blood pressure pills. I think this powder is cocaine. What do we do with it?”

“Nothing. We put it back and do nothing with it. This frightens me, Mel, it really does. Drugs don’t bring the good kind of people around, you know? And if she was dealing that means there’s someone out there she owes money to.” Amber looked frightened, very frightened. I couldn’t blame her, I felt the same.

“Wait, have you found any money?” I asked, looking back at Amber.

“Not yet.” Amber said as she shook her head no.

I went back through the suitcase once more, checking the lining of the case. I found a hole under a storage bag sewn into the lining and slid a finger down into it. I could feel paper, a lot of it. I started pulling out the paper, finally ending with a stack an inch and half thick when I had it all together.

“Three thousand two hundred and eighty one dollars.” I concluded as I counted out the money. I looked at Amber with sorrow. “She was definitely dealing.”

“What if that’s from a savings account or something?” The statement was almost a question.

“Look at the bills, all crumpled, some even rolled up into tubes, all of it in bad shape. This didn’t just come from a bank. There’s a lot of different denominations as well but mainly ones and fives. Either she took up waitressing or she’s dealing.” I’d seen enough shows to know most drug deals didn’t take place with large denomination of money.

“Dang it all, Tina.” Amber came as close to swearing as she’d ever come.

“This doesn’t look good. It doesn’t equal murder though. Have you found her phone?” I went back through the pile again.

“Got it.” Amber said. She flicked through the lock screen, the year of Tina’s birth the not so secret lock code, and started going through the pictures. There were a lot of pictures of houses, women dressed in expensive clothes, and things that didn’t make sense, such as jewelry and other items. It started to dawn on me what we were looking at when I started to see electronics as well.

“Ah. They were selling stolen property as well. Look, I think these are the houses they robbed, this is all the stuff they stole.” I flicked back through the pictures to show Amber.

“I think you’re right.” Amber looked like I felt, sick to my stomach.

“What do we do with this information?” I asked. I was thinking out loud more than anything.

“I think we have to report it but Tina is our friend.” Amber’s anxiety wasn’t levelling off. Mine wasn’t either.

“I say we give it a little time, let me do some research, it’s what I’m good at. Maybe we can find a way to help Tina out of it.” I offered as Amber started going through Tina’s text messages.

Amber found messages of where Tina had arranged sales of the items she had “available” and we noted down those numbers. Not much use but if we did turn this over to the police they could track the stuff anyway. I know, we should be turning all of this over to the police but it was a hard decision. Our friend had almost died tonight, her life was in shambles, and we knew the person beneath all of that. We loved that person, not the one she’d become, and for now we were sticking by her, hoping to find a way to help her turn her life around.

I have to admit though, with the information we’d found out already it was kind of hard to keep protesting to myself that Tina was innocent of the woman’s murder. Maybe the woman had caught them breaking in? Tina knew where the key to the house was so they could have gotten in with no problems. That gave me an idea and I noted it down, promising to check the houses I’d seen and try to find out if they were all vacation rentals.

“So we’re sitting on this for now then?” Amber asked absently as she scrolled through messages.

“Yeah, for now.” I said, going through the handbag one more time.

“Holy cow. Mel, look at these!” Amber’s voice told me something was wrong.

I scrolled the messages indicated by Amber and blanched. Yeah, I saw why she sounded so afraid now. Tina had been getting threats from Tony to keep her mouth shut or face the consequences for three days now. The last one demanded to know where she was because it was time to assure him she still loved him.