Murder in Tropical Breeze (Tropical Breeze Cozy Mystery Book 1) Read online

Thirty years later, here I am. Somehow, with a lot of help from volunteers and the community as a whole, it’s all worked out.

  I got out of the car and went into the shelter to see if anybody was there. Angie, the receptionist, wasn’t in yet, of course, so I propped the door open and got the crate of kittens in by myself. I’m tall for a woman, nearly six feet, and fairly strong.

  All through the process of getting the kittens settled with Sally and filling out the forms, I managed to stay focused, but with what I had on my mind, that couldn’t last. By the time I got the coffee going, had a cup, and went back to my office and put my feet up, the brain rebelled and demanded an explanation.

  I’ve heard some pretty strange stories about ghosts. I suppose everybody has. They’re good for a little thrill around Halloween, and I’d like to believe them, but I never had. Now I’d had my own encounter, and it had seemed – normal. No tingles, no vibes, no fear. None of the woo-woo, House of Horrors stuff you see in the movies. Vesta had been solid, real. I hadn’t doubted for a moment that she’d been a living, breathing woman who had simply wandered away from home in the middle of the night. I hadn’t tried to touch her, but I think I could have. Her voice had been a little thin, but it had definitely been her. The real question finally came to me. Why? Why had Vesta come to me, of all people? To save the kittens?

  Aloud, I said, “Why, Vesta? Why me?” not counting on an answer.

  “Because I need you.”

  I took my feet off the desk and sat up violently, sloshing the coffee as I banged the cup down on the desktop. I began to whip my head around looking for her and had to rear back because she was right there, right next to me, gazing at me with soft brown eyes. After taking a moment to make myself believe she was really there, I reached out to touch, but felt nothing in the air that she occupied. Maybe just a slight dampness, maybe a slight chill. I tried to sense the difference, then withdrew my hand as if it had been burned and held it close to my chest.

  Making an effort, I pulled myself together. I didn’t know the rules for dead people. Maybe there was a time limit or something. I didn’t know what to expect, but I didn’t want to take a chance she’d dissolve away before she gave me whatever message she had.

  “How can I help you?” I said carefully, enunciating.

  She smiled. “It’s all right, dear. Don’t be afraid. I’m all right. But I’m worried, Taylor. I’ve left something undone. There’s danger because of it. I can’t leave.”

  “I’ll do whatever I can, Vesta.”

  “Oh, thank you. I knew you would. You’re such a good person. And Bastet will help, of course. I called upon her as I lay dying, and she has come. She will be with you.”

  “Bastet?” The reference was so out of left field I forgot that I was talking to a ghost. Vesta was always chattering away about ancient Egypt; all of her friends had had the lectures from her, and therefore knew at least a little. She had told me about Bastet more than once – an Egyptian goddess who took the form of a cat, and protected a city named Bubastis. What she had to do with anything in modern-day Florida I couldn’t imagine.

  “Now, don’t worry,” Vesta said. “She will come to you. You’ll know. It was very bad, what happened to me, but there may be worse to come. It has to be stopped. It has to be punished.”

  “What was very bad?” I asked, desperately trying to make sense of what she was saying, because she was beginning to fade. I knew instinctively that there wasn’t much time left.

  “My murder,” she said. “They don’t even think it was murder, and if it isn’t investigated, others will die. You have to find proof, Taylor.”

  “How?”

  “Bastet will guide you. Visit my friends. Talk to the people of Tropical Breeze. Talk to my family. Then you will know. I’m counting on you, Taylor Verone.”

  “Don’t leave, Vesta! I need to know more!”

  “Bastet will guide you,” her voice said inside my head, after her image had already faded.

  I stood up, alone in the office and shaking all over. I called into the spirit world after her, “But I don’t even know where to begin! And where the heck is Bastet?”

  Chapter 3

  “Talk to my friends,” she had said.

  Vesta came from one of the first families of Tropical Breeze, and she had many, many acquaintances, but just who did she consider her “friends?”

  My own special friend, Michael Utley would qualify. He’d been the Cadbury family’s lawyer since he’d first gone into practice as a young man. His father knew Vesta’s father, and the Old Boy’s Network had done its magic generating clients. He’d be easy. I saw him almost every day, now that he was semi-retired.

  “Talk to my family.” But only a member of her family could’ve killed her, I realized. She had died in her own bed, at home, in the middle of the night. Vesta didn’t get out much anymore, and was almost never by herself. And Cadbury House was isolated – a Gilded Age hunting lodge surrounded by 1,500 acres of land on the Intracoastal Waterway – you couldn’t even get to the house from the nearest main road without driving for about twenty minutes over a winding dirt road through a tangle of coastal scrub. Nobody could’ve sneaked up on the place to do Vesta in.

  But I knew her son, Graeme Huntington, and had at least met her daughter-in-law, Diana, so I guessed I could sidle up to them and try to be subtle, but really, how do you interrogate a man about his mother’s death (keeping an eye to murder) while being subtle?

  Then the obvious place to start came to me: Barnabas Elgin. Like Vesta, he was kind of a Tropical Breeze legend – he inherited the book store from his father, who inherited it himself, going back generations I couldn’t count. The first Barnabas Elgin had probably set up a lending library in a tent on the beach, back when the Spanish landed in 1513. And Barnabas would’ve been particularly open to Vesta’s rather, um, arcane interests.

  By now it was daylight and everything was starting to feel normal. The shops in town would be opening up, and Barnabas was always right there with his books anyway; he lived on the second and third floors of his building. Yes indeed, I’d start at the book store. That decided, I went out into the shelter’s reception area and looked outside the front window. No indeed, I was not going to start at the book store. Michael’s little sports car was sitting there in front of Orphans of the Storm, which meant that he was somewhere in the back, playing with the animals.

  Michael was one of my volunteers.

  He came by the shelter most days since winding down his practice to a few select clients from the old days. Now he spent his time sitting on the City Council, playing golf, and taking an interest in anything that went on in Tropical Breeze.

  I found him crouched over a suite looking at the new kittens. Don’t get the idea we have lavish accommodations. We call our enclosures “suites.” They’re about four feet by six, and have swing gates with rotating bowls at the bottom for food and water so we can take care of the animals quickly without opening the gates. The floors are concrete, which can be quickly washed down, and the architecture is Early Prefabricated Warehouse.

  He gave me an over-the-shoulder glance, saying, “Come look at the kittens.”

  I could only smile. What else can you do when a man in a business suit gets down on his knees and makes silly noises at a bunch of kittens? His hair was a clean, pure white, and it was thick enough to look great in a close-cropped haircut. His eyes were a clear ice-blue, and he kept himself tanned and fit. Altogether he was pretty hot, and when he became a widower the year before, he was literally bombarded with casseroles from hopeful ladies. I’m not much of a casserole-maker, but it didn’t bother me a bit that one of the things he liked to do in his spare time was come to the shelter.

  “What’s with the suit?” I asked, walking up to the suite.

  “I had a breakfast meeting this morning with Vesta’s family,” he said. He stood up, brushing off the knees of his pants. “You heard about Vesta?”

  “Yes,” I said. I didn’t
tell him that I’d just seen her; somehow, I couldn’t. “She looked fine when you and I met with her last week. What do you think happened?”

  He just shook his head, gazing at the kittens.

  In the enclosure in front of us, Sally purred and stretched. Three of the kittens burrowed into her belly, nursing, and made little protesting mewls when she moved. The other two kittens slept next to one another close by.

  I thought back to the last time I had seen Vesta. Alive, that is.

  “Miss Vesta, what’s all this spy-story stuff?” Michael had said when we were all seated around the desk in his home office. “If you wanted a meeting with Taylor and me, I could’ve brought her out to Cadbury House. Why have Graeme drop you off at the coffee shop, then have me pick you up and bring you here? Does Graeme even know where you really are right now?”

  “No, he doesn’t,” she said pointedly, “and you’re not to tell him. He’s always been a good boy, and never greedy about money, but as for that wife of his . . . .”

  I got uneasy at the mention of money. I didn’t want trouble with the Cadbury family, or rather, the Huntingtons, since that was the last name of the man Vesta had married.

  Vesta went on, not noticing my unease. “It’s none of their business how I leave my money. Graeme has his own trust, and so does my grandson Jordan. And they’ll get the real estate. But I’ve been thinking things over, and I’ve decided to make some changes in my Will. And you know, Taylor, that I’ve always admired your work with animals. Since you’ve some to Tropical Breeze, the lives of thousands of strays have been saved. I won’t be around forever to throw fundraisers and help out financially when you need a new air conditioner and so on, so I want to leave you a little nest egg for the shelter.”

  “Oh, that’s very generous of you, Miss Vesta,” I said, nonplussed, but grateful.

  “Nonsense. It’ll help me rest easy, when I cross the river and walk with my father again. He’ll be so pleased. And of course, my mother, and my grandfather, Kingsley. He was an archeologist, you know,” she began, and Michael stiffened. She’d be off again with tales of her grandfather’s swashbuckling adventures in Egypt if he let her.

  I didn’t mind. It’d give me a minute to assimilate what she’d said, and I usually enjoyed her talks about her grandfather, but Michael gently turned the meeting back to business.

  “So you’re thinking of making a Codicil?”

  She swept a hand through the air. “I want a completely new Will. I have other legacies in mind, and a Codicil won’t get it done. I have some notes here that I’ve been working on for weeks. Now, where are they?”

  She dug into her huge leather purse and pulled out a clutch of papers, all different sizes, lined and unlined, some with notes in pencil, some in ink. Apparently she’d been jotting odd ideas down on whatever was at hand and then shoving them into her purse any old way. I took them and handed them over the desk to Michael without looking at them, then took another note that she’d found underneath her wallet.

  “Any more?” she muttered to herself, looking through her purse. “No, I guess that’s it. Anyway, Taylor, dear, I wanted you here when I told Michael about it, because of course I won’t be here when the Will is read.”

  She said it with a little smile, and Michael and I both started talking about all the years she had to come, and how she wasn’t that old – whatever it is you say to somebody who’s talking about their own death.

  And now, barely a week later, she was gone. I could see that it had hit Michael hard.

  Vesta had been more than a client to him. He told me several times how beautiful she had been when he was a boy and she was the town’s preeminent hostess. Michael had always talked about her as if she’d been something magical dropped among us by accident, like a flower tumbling out of the hand of God. The truth was, he’d been a worshipful boy when she’d been a debutante and he had never gotten over it. Smitten. That’s it – he was smitten. In a lovely, innocent, old-fashioned way.

  “How is Graeme handling it?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “About like you’d expect. The only reason he’s been living out there in middle of nowhere is that his mother needed him. He’s her only child; there wasn’t anybody else. Myrtle wouldn’t be any good in an emergency. Loyal as a war dog, of course, but not much younger than Vesta herself. That reminds me,” he said suddenly, “Diana said she has already started sorting through Vesta’s things.”

  “What? What’s the hurry?”

  “She said she was so upset by Vesta’s death, she needed to keep herself busy.”

  “Uh huh.”

  Since he was talking about a client, he was being discreet. I didn’t need to do any such thing, and I let my skepticism show. It was indecent, clearing Vesta’s things out of the house within hours of her death.

  Michael went on quickly. “So she’s already gone through some of Vesta’s things and has chosen some items to donate to charity. I suggested your resale shop, Girlfriend’s.”

  “Well, thanks for putting a good word in for us. I still don’t like the feel of this, though.”

  “I know. But better it goes to Girlfriend’s than someplace else, right? I think Vesta would’ve wanted it that way.” A little sheepishly, he added, “Do you think you can round up some volunteers to go over to Cadbury House today?”

  “Today? Really, Michael, what’s the hurry? Don’t they have a funeral to plan?”

  He shrugged. “You know they always bury their dead in the family cemetery at Cadbury House. It’ll be private.”

  “Not even a memorial service?”

  “We haven’t talked about it yet. Look, it’s Diana, not Graeme. And it’s not like this is sudden; they knew it could happen at any time. About the donation, you’d better wait to go out there until she’s had her swim. I wouldn’t put it past her to make your people wait until she’s good and ready. So, say about 3:00?”

  “Sure. It seems a little disrespectful of the dead, but I’m not going to take the chance that she’ll change her mind and send the nicer things to some antique shop in St. Augustine. I’ll muster some people up, and I’ll go myself if we’re short-handed.” I shied around for a moment, not wanting to seem greedy, but for the sake of Orphans, I had to ask. “Listen, Michael, about our meeting with Vesta last week. I suppose there was no time to draw up the new Will and get it executed?”

  He shook his head. “I’m sorry.”

  I nodded. Oh, well. We’d kept the shelter afloat this long. That money would’ve meant a lot, though.

  I stopped and gazed into his eyes, trying to gauge his mood. Lawyers can be so irritatingly discreet. But on some level they’re human, like everybody else.

  “Are they satisfied? You know, Dr. Fleming, and the police? She just –“ I raised my hands expressively – “died in her sleep?”

  He gave me his patronizing grown-up look, and I was sorry I’d brought it up. When Michael had finished making lawyer’s disclaimers and generally being no help at all, I said, “Sorry. Just forget I asked. I’d better get on the phone and pull some troops together for this afternoon.”

  Chapter 4

  I only managed to find two volunteers on such short notice, but they were two of my best workers, and one of them was bringing her boyfriend and his truck. Jackpot! I told them all to meet me at Girlfriend’s, our resale shop.

  Girlfriend’s is one of our fundraising strategies. It’s in downtown Tropical Breeze, right in the heart of the business district, and we could never have afforded the rent if it hadn’t been for love.

  The landlord’s a tough customer, but it turned out he had a weakness for Schnauzers. A neighbor of his had had one when he’d been a kid, and he’d desperately wanted to have one all his own, but he couldn’t. His family lived in a no-pets apartment. It had left a hole in his heart that had never healed. Well, we had an especially pitchy little Schnauzer at the shelter when he came in to talk about our possibly using his vacant retail space. I had my sob story all ready, and was
only hoping for a reduced rental for a temporary set-up until he could find a “real” tenant when he was hit by a pair of big brown eyes and a voice like a tornado siren. All Schnauzers are expressive, but this little female was operatic, and he was struck dumb in the middle of a sentence when he saw her. I thought he’d had a stroke.

  But no, it was only love, and in the heat of the moment he made us a sweet deal, as long as we’d name the shop after his new dog. Yep, he named her Girlfriend. He had the name all ready to go, and probably had been thinking about adopting a dog for years but had never gotten around to it. A shrink might find his choice of name interesting, but I didn’t care; he made us the deal of a lifetime. The incomparable little Schnauzer passed on years ago, after a lifetime of pampering, manicures, occasional pink dye jobs and a constant shower of baby talk. But I guess he still thinks of us as a public memorial, because he’s never raised the rent, and we’d never dream of changing the name.

  Pulling up in the alley behind the shop and parking my SUV, my mind was already halfway down the road to Cadbury House. I was busy making a mental list of stuff to bring (clip board, paper – should I get iced coffees for the helpers? – maybe cookies?) so I was unprepared for what was waiting for me in the back room at Girlfriend’s.

  It was that cat. The black one from the depot.

  Now that I’d had time to think about it, I’d been wondering vaguely how it had managed to get up on top of that trailer. I mean, cats are agile, and they can perform feats of levitation a dog can only dream about, but unless it had been skipping over trailers like stones in a pond, I didn’t know how it had gotten on top of that particular one. It wasn’t near pallets or boxes or anything else the cat could’ve used to get up there. And then, of course, it had just . . . disappeared.

  I got three feet inside the back door of Girlfriend’s and stopped dead, staring. Luminous green eyes looked back at me, cold and arrogant, as if I’d kept her waiting. She never broke eye contact, and neither did I, until Florence came in from the shop.