Waltz Macabre Page 4

  Chapter 5

  There was a hunk convention in Santorini Drive when I pulled up to the gate and punched in the secret code. As the gate slid aside, the two men turned their gazes upon me and I had to steady my hands on the wheel as I pulled forward. Both Teddy and Dan were younger than me, (Teddy early thirties; Dan fifty-something), but there’s still that little reaction that trumps reason when something pretty suddenly pops up in front of you.

  As I stepped out of the SUV, Porter rolled up, unleashed and ignored by Teddy.

  “Teddy, what is this?” I said, furious, pointing at the dog that I might have easily hit with my car.

  He gave me the predictable dopey answer. “That’s Porter. Don’t you remember him? I know you see a lotta dogs over there at Orphans Under the Rainbow, but wow.”

  “I know it’s Porter, and it’s Orphans of the – oh, never mind – hi, Dan. What’s Porter doing running around loose when cars are coming down the street?”

  He looked around. “What cars?”

  “MINE!”

  “Oh, yeah. Ed’s not home.”

  I’d remembered Teddy’s self-absorption, but I’d forgotten about the non-sequitur storm that bogs down any conversation with the man. He got me so rattled I almost blew it and told him I knew very well that Ed wasn’t home because he was in Tropical Breeze doing a top-secret investigation that we were going to hide from him, Teddy, but I caught myself in time.

  “Actually, I’m here to see Porter. And you. I heard the bad news. How are you doing?”

  Dan Ryder had evidently found out everything he cared to know about Teddy’s love life, and he took the opportunity to move away. Nodding good-bye, he headed down the main drive to the beach. He’s one of those guys who steps out onto the sand on a glorious morning, ignores the view, puts his head down and runs until he looks like he’s about to die. You wonder if they know the ocean is there at all. Anyway, he keeps himself in pretty good shape, and whether he knows it or not, he comes back from his run looking like something that just fell out of bed in a red-hot romance novel. All sweaty and breathing hard and overcome with the wonder of her.

  I’d have to see if I could time it so I was back in the driveway when he came back. Not that I was interested in him that way, but anything to brighten my day.

  As I had been imagining Dan Ryder glowing and breathless, Teddy had been telling me his troubles. I swerved my mind back to him and tried to concentrate.

  Teddy has eyes of a very strange color. Depending on whether or not people happen to like him, I’ve heard them described as “misty limeade,” “velvet sage,” and “moldy green.” It’s striking, whatever it is, and when he’s talking, I sometimes find myself gazing steadily into his eyes and losing track of what he’s saying. “Hypnotic.” That’s another description I’ve heard. From him. On the television, they seem to glow, but that’s probably just the lighting. He has suspiciously black hair and a rich tan. I’m pretty tall, especially for a woman, but I still have to look up a good five inches to go eye-to-eye with him.

  There. I’d lost it again. Hadn’t heard a word he’d said while I’d stared at his weird eyes and tried to analyze their color. But I hadn’t missed anything; he hadn’t changed the subject.

  Lily’s desertion had been abrupt, sudden, cruel.

  He had thrown his heart at her feet and she’d hopped right on and clog danced.

  She hadn’t even given him a reason why.

  I was nodding sympathetically and looking interested (I think), working on keeping myself vertical while 60 pounds of Bulldog tried to climb my leg.

  When he finally came to a stop, I said, “No reason? You don’t even know why?”

  “Not the real reason,” he said indignantly. “Not something I could believe.”

  “Uh, huh. Why don’t we go into the house,” I suggested, since he hadn’t, “and you can give me some coffee. Have you fed Porter?”

  He looked down at the dog as if he’d just oozed out of the ground. As if Porter hadn’t been stomping all over our feet for the last fifteen minutes.

  “I don’t even know,” he murmured in a tortured voice.

  “Well, let’s give him some food and see if he wants it.”

  He would. If he’d already been fed twice that morning, he’d eat whatever we gave him and turn it straight into muscle.

  * * * * *

  I got myself some coffee, and while I was at it, I gave Teddy a cup too.

  He hadn’t stopped brooding and grousing for a single moment. He came straight in, sat himself at the table in the breakfast nook and went on and on and on while I fed Porter and scrounged around Ed’s kitchen for something to feed Teddy besides peanut butter. Ed lives on peanut butter. I won’t bore you with his lecture on “the perfect food.”

  I could tell Teddy had lost weight. Poor man, he looked like a wreck. He’s a muscular guy who spends hours in a gym polishing himself up and watching himself in a mirror, and he was still pretty buff, but he’d lost a bit of the beefiness I’d noticed back when I’d first met him. I figured he was one of those men who thicken and round out in middle age, but instead he looked a little wasted.

  When I set a plate of buttered toast in front of him, he ate automatically, not aware enough of what he was doing to thank me.

  I sat down, drank my coffee, nodded my head and listened.

  And listened.

  And listened.

  I didn’t really learn more than Ed had told me the day before, but I figured it was doing him good to talk. Basically, Lily had rejected Teddy’s marriage proposal and abruptly turned around and said she was leaving him, just like that.

  Meanwhile, I thought things over. The man really needed a distraction. He was on a downward spiral. Wallowing in your own sorrows can become addictive, until the pain actually starts to feel good. Righteous, almost. I needed to redirect him. What a shame the investigation at The Bookery was out of bounds; it would have been perfect.

  Needless to say, Porter had not suffered in any detectable way from Lily’s departure. He liked Lily, but then, he liked everybody, and since he only noticed whatever was right in front of him at the moment, he probably hadn’t noticed that Lily wasn’t around anymore. The “squirrel!” factor was particularly strong with Porter, and in his world, just about anything qualified as a squirrel.

  So the only basket case in the room was Teddy. Weeding around in his anger at Lily, I realized she must have actually tried to let him down easy. It sounded to me like she’d been planning on leaving the show (and him) for a while, and he just hadn’t caught on. She very decently stayed on to supervise the post-production work on their last few episodes, after Teddy had gone into a screaming fit and told her she couldn’t quit, she was fired.

  What to do, what to do?

  Well, there was that woman whose body they had found on the beach after the hurricane in October. The storm hadn’t killed her; it had uncovered her. She’d been shot and buried in the dune.

  There was no mystery about who she was. She was a townee, a native Breezer. Her name had been Alison something. I’d never met her, but she lived in the heart of the town’s residential district, close to a friend of mine, Rita Garnett. I could talk to Rita, find out a little more, then dangle it in front of Teddy and tell him there had been strange, possibly paranormal activity on the beach where her body had been found.

  No. No more night beach patrols for me. Been there, done that, not fun. On second thought, I could claim her house was haunted. Then I wouldn’t find myself going up and down the beach in the middle of the night looking for ghosts. It would be much nicer to be indoors, where the January nor’easters wouldn’t blow me down.

  Better ask Rita where Alison-the-Breezer had lived – condo or house? Hopefully it would be one of those jaunty old houses up and down the streets of Tropical Breeze that had seen plenty of tenants and lots of angst. Bring Teddy into a strange house after dark and he’d see a ghost anywhere. Maybe there would actually be one. Wouldn’t that be a k
ick in the pants?

  Meanwhile . . . .

  “Lily didn’t even leave me for another man. That’s what I thought it was at first, and of course she’d lie about it, so I checked it out. Nothing. Nada. She isn’t seeing anybody, as far as I know.”

  “Wait – are you having her watched?”

  “Of course not! What do you take me for?”

  I knew exactly what to take him for, but these days you don’t have to have anybody watched to find out what they’re doing, or even what they’re thinking. You just check their social media. Still, I liked Lily, and I decided it was more important than ever to give Teddy something else to think about.

  “Do you think she’d come back if I just call her? After all, she’s had a little time to cool off.”

  I made a noncommittal shrug.

  He went back to reiterating things he’d told me two times already, and I went back to my own ruminations.

  I needed to be careful how far I took this little game of mine. Did I want to get Teddy so interested in a ghost hunt that he’d bring the whole Haunt or Hoax crew down on our heads? Not really.

  I asked him if he wanted another cup of coffee, and he looked dismally into his empty cup and said he didn’t remember drinking the first one.

  “Have you been working out?” I asked him. “You look a little shriveled.”

  He seemed gratified, and gave me a brave smile. “I’m trying. I was just about to go for a run with Dan when you showed up.”

  “Well, I’m not much of a runner, but why don’t we go for a walk on the beach? We could take Porter.”

  In a tone of voice that conveyed that nothing much mattered anymore, he said, “Okay,” and got up and walked straight out the front door, leaving me to leash up Porter and follow as best I could.

  At least we met Dan coming back from his run, so I could see his sweaty tee shirt clinging to his taut body. His blood was up, his face glowed with health, and his blue eyes were electric. He huffed a breathless “Hi,” in a gritty baritone.

  “Is Dan seeing anybody?” I asked when he’d passed on by.

  “Not that I know of.” Teddy immediately went back to his own troubles and forgot about Dan.

  What a shame, I thought. As far as I knew, Dan was a nice guy. And, lord above, he was a hottie. He seemed so lonely. He seemed so sad. Who did I know . . .?

  “I remember when I first met her – she was out of work and about to lose her apartment . . . .”

  I went up and down the beach with him and he allowed me to clean up after Porter, completely ignoring the situation.

  After our walk we went back to Ed’s house and dropped off Porter. I quickly cleared the breakfast table, tidied Ed’s kitchen, then I took Teddy out for lunch.

  Every now and then, I checked my watch and tried to imagine how things were going with Ed and Barnabas. By the time I had Teddy back at Ed’s house, I figured I’d racked up enough points in heaven for one day. I told him I had stuff to do, patted him on the head and left. Oh – and I gave him my diagnosis of Porter’s state of mind. Gazing into the dog’s maniacally grinning face, I said, “He’s holding pretty up well, all things considered. You’d better keep an eye on him, but I don’t think he’ll need any therapy sessions.”

  “Huh?”

  I didn’t bother to push the charade any further. Teddy didn’t seem any happier when I left him than he’d been when I’d gotten there, but I hoped to give him other things to think about, once I talked to Rita about the dead lady on the beach.

  Chapter 6

  Rita was looking lovely that day. That’s how I started Problem #3 all by myself.

  Problem #1, of course was Barnabas’s ghost, and Problem #2 was Teddy. I had nobody but myself to blame for Problem #3 – The Rita/Dan Juxtaposition. Yep, I thought that one up all by myself.

  Rita’s a retired FBI agent, and she bought a historic mansion right in the heart of downtown Tropical Breeze, on Palmetto Street, one block north of the business district. Her family had been in the habit of renting it for summer vacations back when she’d been a kid, and when it came up for sale year before last, she bought it. So she’d been coming to Tropical Breeze all her life, and everybody treated her like a local. She was generous about opening her house for community events and house walks, and everybody liked her, including me.

  Rita’s a blond with light brown eyes, and she’s only recently adopted more casual clothing than the New England Socialite dresses she had arrived in when she’d bought the Whitby House. (She had dressed like a New England Socialite because she had been one, FBI notwithstanding.) Presumably she was armed and dangerous, but she didn’t look it. The history of the Whitby House included a couple of suicides, a murder, and the quiet death of an elderly lady who, if Ed is correct, has not yet figured out that she is dead. She walks, as they say, but Rita doesn’t seem to mind. These FBI agents are ready for anything.

  “Taylor!” she said when she opened the door. “I was just thinking about you.”

  “Oh?”

  She invited me in and brought me back to the kitchen for coffee. Along the way, I looked around and was pleased to see that she hadn’t redecorated. In the interim between vacation rentals and Rita’s purchase, the Whitby House had been done over as a bed-and-breakfast, and it had been beautifully furnished.

  “Why were you just thinking of me?” I asked, once I was seated and she was pouring the coffee. “We haven’t seen one another in a while.”

  “I just heard that Teddy Force was in town, or at least, down the road. Don’t take this the wrong way, but whenever I hear something about Teddy, I think of you. And Ed, of course. They say he’s staying with Ed?”

  I nodded. “Who is ‘they?’ I know the Tropical Breeze grapevine is fast as lightning, but I only just found out myself last night that Teddy was staying with Ed, and I haven’t told anybody. Oh. Myrtle. Did she send out a red alert?”

  She sat down opposite me at the little breakfast table and grinned. “Pretty much. She texted her sister Florence, who went to The Bakery for coffee and a Danish and was talking about it as I was going in the door for muffins. The man’s a celebrity, Taylor. Of course it’s big news around here. The mayor is probably planning a soiree for him as we speak.”

  “More likely she’s warning people not to let him in the door if he shows up with a videographer.”

  “Are they doing another episode of that show in Tropical Breeze?”

  “No. He’s crashing with Ed because he’s got a broken heart and he needs a place to curl up in a ball for a while.”

  “I didn’t realize that Ed and Teddy were such good friends, as well as being co-stars.”

  “No comment. Listen, Rita, he’s actually the reason I wanted to see you today. The man’s a wreck. The woman who left him was not only his fiancé, she was the one who held the production team together for his show. He’s pretty upset, and I don’t think he even realizes yet how this is going to affect him professionally. Lily kept that show going. I was hoping to figure out something to distract him.”

  “Oh? Like what? I’m not interested in dating him, if that’s what you’ve got in mind.”

  “Why not?” I blurted it before I could stop myself. I hadn’t been thinking of hooking her up with Teddy, of course, but still. “Are you with somebody?”

  “No, and I don’t have to be. I’m happy just as I am. Don’t forget, I’d just gotten a divorce before I moved here.”

  “It’s been a couple of years.”

  “And I’m not interest in men yet, at least not that way. Don’t think I ever will be again. Right now I’m interested in building another career. I’m a private investigator now.”

  “I heard. With your background, you’re going to be good at that. Anyway, that’s not why I’m here – you just surprised me with that. I’m here to ask if you know of anything going on in town that might interest Teddy and take his mind off his troubles.”

  “You mean hauntings? Something he can use as material for his s
how? Let me put it this way: I can’t think of anybody that would appreciated his services right now.”

  “What about that body they found on the beach? She lived here in town somewhere, right? Has there been anything unusual going on around where she lived? What are the neighbors saying? Where exactly was she living, anyway?”

  Rita’s eyes became hooded, and her manner changed. She sat back, caressed the sides of her coffee cup with the fingertips of both hands, looked at me speculatively and said, “Why?”

  “Like I just told you: I want something to distract Teddy. An unavenged murder could result in a haunting, couldn’t it?”

  “She was found on the beach. Why do you want to know about her house?”

  “Because I don’t want to go ghost-hunting on the beach. I want to be in a nice, warm house. She had a house? Is it for sale?”

  The hooded look had faded and now she smiled. “You aren’t really chasing ghosts, here, are you? You’re manufacturing a story to distract him.”

  I shrugged. “You got a better idea?”

  “Let me work on that. Unfortunately, I can’t go into Alison Wickert’s murder with you. I’m investigating it for a client.”

  “Who’s your client?” I asked quickly. When she just sat there and gazed at me, I said, “Oh, right. Confidentiality. Well, at least can you tell me where she was living?”

  “I suppose so. It’s not exactly a secret. She lived in a house over on the next block, Redbud Street.”

  “And her body was found on the beach. Had she been dead a long time when they found her?”

  “Depends on what you consider a long time. She’d been missing for over a month. I’d been trying to locate her. After her body was found . . . .” She got cautious.

  “Your client kept you on the job to find out who killed her. Obviously. Could she have been kept somewhere else until she was dumped on the beach before the storm? Maybe when we got the mandatory evacuation order, her killer got nervous that her body would be found on his property if it was damaged by the storm.”