A Ghost in Time (Destiny Bay Cozy Mysteries Book 3) (15 page)

Barely able to breathe, I pulled out my cell, and dialed. “Pick up, pick up, pick up!” I was getting desperate. And then.... and on the third ring she did. 

"Oh, Jill, thank God. I was so worried..." Then I stopped. 

She wasn't talking on the other end. There was just breathing. Heavy, hard breathing.

"Jill?"

A husky, bizarre sounding voice came through the speaker. "Your little friend was poking in where she didn't belong."

I gasped. No words were coming out. I needed to shout. I need to threaten him. I know cops. I'm a detective myself. He can't just--

Heavy air breathed down on my neck. A voice whispered right in my ear.

"Boo."

I screamed so loud I'm sure the windows of M4M shook. Somebody dropped a plate, and everybody turned to look.

I turned, too, and saw grinning Jill there behind me, her phone in her hand.

"So totally worth it."

"Jill!" I shouted, clouting her. She kept laughing.

"I did it!" she said, her eyes dancing with pride.

I caught my breath, resolved to completely friend-divorce her later.

“I did the car stuff, too.”
 

“Did you find anything?”

She shrugged. “How do I know? I found what was there.” She sighed. “There was no gun, and I looked hard for that one. It was pretty boring, actually. There wasn’t that much stuff.”

“Did you jot down notes?” I asked, not sure how she had planned this out. She’ll have to read my book.

“Of course not.” She pulled out her smart phone and waved it at me. “I made a little movie of every item in the car.” She pressed a button and began to play it on the little screen.
 

“You’re a genius,” I told her, laughing. Sure enough, I could see everything and if I needed to, I could zoom in and get details.
 

“Well look at that. A car rental agreement.” I squinted at the data. Sure enough, he’d rented the car, right there in town, the afternoon of the day Star was killed. Karl had been telling the truth. “And what’s that?” A pencil, a matchbook, a wad of gum wrappers. “Looks like Spearmint.” I looked up at Jill. “There was a spearmint wrapper at the scene!”

“No kidding.” She blinked at me. “Is that good?”

“Uh…” I was getting a little confused. “I don’t know.”

“Do you think he was involved?”

“I’m beginning to wonder.”

So… What would a private detective do next? Question Jason? Seemed logical. But I didn’t even know where he was staying.

“What direction did he go in when he left here?” I asked Jill.

She looked at me blankly. “I don’t know. I was serving customers.”

What now? I could spend an hour calling motels in the area or I could….
 

For some reason, the accident site was calling to me. I know I’d just been there that morning and hadn’t found anything, but I just had this feeling that I needed to be there. Maybe it was finely honed detective instinct, or maybe Hawaiian magic. Whatever it was that was calling me, I listened. So I went.

Chapter Seventeen

The fog was starting to burn off. As I snaked slowly up the winding road to Star’s area, I tried to take in everything, hoping for a breakthrough. I came around that fateful corner, staring at the mirror, heart beating as I came around and knew I was where Star had been hit, just days before. I pulled my car over and got out. I could see the apprentices’ house just over the rise. I knew Danny had left town, but what of the other two? The house looked dark, cold and lonely.
 

And so did Star’s house, up the hill.
 

And then I noticed a black cat, sitting at the edge of the eucalyptus trees, washing his paws.
 

“Sami?” I said quietly, not wanting to startle him and make him run away. “Is that you?”

He looked up and seemed to sigh, then stood and started to scamper toward me, tail high.
 

“Sami!”

I was thrilled. It
was
him!

“Where have you been? Bebe is almost crazy with missing you, you little jerk.” But I was so happy. I went toward him and then crouched when he was a couple of feet away, holding my hand out to him so that he could check out who I really was. Cats are so suspicious of imposters.
 

He came close enough to rub his cheek against my hand, then turned and bounded toward the slope that went down the hill on the opposite side of the road from where the apprentices’ house sat.
 

“Meow,” he said, turning back and calling to me. “Meow!”

He obviously wanted me to follow him, so I did. Nary a qualm. I would do anything for Sami, now that he was back. And—bottom line—I was going to take him home with me and hand him to Bebe and there would be some smiles in our house again. Guaranteed.

I was getting excited about that and I forgot to pay attention to what was going on around me. When Sami meowed again and dashed out into the brushy area, I followed him. A little further, and I saw a little shed very much like the one on the other side of the road where I’d found the letters. Hidden by the bushes, I hadn’t seen it until I was almost on top of it.
 

There was no padlock on this one. Sami had stopped right in front of it and it seemed he wanted me to look inside. I reached out and pulled the wooden door open. Inside there was a pile of parts to a smashed wooden chair, a big blue rain tarp, and a stack of bungee cords.
 

I stared at it. Sami meowed. I reached down to scratch behind his ears. “Well, Sami, what do you suppose we have here?” I said to him.
 

I was surprised when he darted away, but I still jumped when a male voice responded, saying, “An example of why someone like you should just mind her own business, that’s what I’d say we have.”

I whirled. There was Jason Moon and he had a gun pointed right at me. I gasped.
 

“Will you please not aim that gun at me?” I said in a moment of pure terror.
 

He grimaced, coming a little closer. “I’d like to accommodate you, sweetheart, but I’m afraid you’ve made that darn near impossible.” Now he was just a few feet away. “You just couldn’t leave it alone, could you? You had to stick your nose in and try to put pieces of the puzzle together. I just can’t let you do that.”

My heart was beating so hard, I could hardly hear what he was saying. I’d never been so frightened. He’d come out of nowhere—with a gun. This was so not good.
 

“Hey, listen,” I said, stumbling over my words. “I don’t know what your problem is. I just came to….”

“I know what you came for. The question is, do you know what I came for?”

I shook my head. “No. I have no idea. So if you’ll just let me go, I’ll go back up to the parking area and get into my car and drive away. I won’t come back. Honest.”

“Fat chance.” He waved the gun and gestured toward a stand of small, brushy trees further down the slope. “Let’s go down there, shall we? Find a place where we can have some privacy.”

He was planning to kill me. I knew it. I could tell by the slight crazed look in his eyes.
 

“Come on, move,” he said more harshly, and I started to move in the direction he’d indicated. But I had to do something. Once I got out of the view from the road, even if someone came looking for me, they wouldn’t see me. I knew I couldn’t let him herd me down to where the trees would hide everything from view.
 

“Faster. Let’s go. With your hands up.”

He was closer now and I was afraid he was going to hit me with that gun if I didn’t follow orders. I had a quick idea. If I could just get to my smart phone in the front pocket of my hoodie, it was set up to record. All I had to do was touch a button. At least then, someone might be able to find out what had happened to me—once they found my body.
 

Ugh. That was not a cheery thought. But it was a plan. I started down the slope, hands held high and wondering how I was going to get anywhere near that cell phone.
 

“See, I knew you were trouble from the first night I came back when I followed you on Bay Watch Drive,” he said from behind me. “There was just something perky about you that caught my eye.”

Well, that was something, anyway. Now I knew I had been right about being followed that night. Too bad I wasn’t going to be able to tell anyone about it.
 

“Look, I don’t know what you think I’m doing here, but….”

“I know what you’re doing. You’re trying to find out what actually happened to Star. That would be okay if you just wanted it for academic speculation. Trouble is, I know very well you’re friends with that cop. And I can’t let you spill the beans to that guy. That would ruin me.”

I turned to look at him. “What if I promised….?”

His mouth twisted derisively. “Save your breath. I’m not that easy to fool.”

Okay, the thing was, I wasn’t even sure what he’d done or what he thought I thought he’d done. It seemed like we ought to get that clear. Maybe he would change his mind once he knew I didn’t really know anything.
 

“What exactly are you trying to hide?” I asked him. “I know who you are, but for the rest, I don’t know why you’re angry with me or what you want me to do…”

“Quit playing dumb. I know you think I caused Star’s death.”

Okay, that was true--now. But it hadn’t been before. What exactly had he done?

“Why don’t you tell me what you’re talking about? Maybe we could figure out a way….”

“No. There’s no way to fix this.”

“But if you actually have good reasons for what you did, why don’t we discuss them?”

“Good reasons?” He grinned at me coldly. “Oh, I had my reasons alright. But you won’t like them. And anyway, I didn’t really cause her death. She mostly did it to herself.”

“What do you mean?” I said, but I wasn’t really paying attention to him anymore. I had my plan to execute. I glanced around, realizing I hadn’t seen Sami since Jason had scared him off. That was okay. I didn’t have to worry about Jason taking a pot shot at him at any rate.
 

The slope was really steep here. We weren’t going very fast, but once you started to slide on these things, it was hard to stop. I saw a pile of loose stones ahead and I stepped deliberately into them. My feet began to slip beneath me and I began to fall.
 

“Hey!” he yelled. “Keep those hands up!”
 

But there was obviously no way I could do that when I was catapulting down the side of a very steep slope.
 

“Watch your head!” he yelled, racing after me. “You could kill yourself!”
 

As I rolled I reached into the kangaroo pocket of my hoodie and clicked on my cell phone’s recorder. I had my hand back out in a flash and I looked to see if he’d caught the move. Luckily, his mind was on keeping me alive. Imagine that.

“Careful!” he yelled, racing after me.

I straightened my legs and brought my slide to a stop, and he was right there when I looked around, a bit dazed, still sitting on the ground.
 

“You okay? Nothing broken?”

I nodded, pretending to be too stunned to answer. In truth, I had a few bumps and bruises. I could tell I was going to pay for that move. But I didn’t have time to deal with that now.
 

He shook his head, more worried than angry. “For a minute I thought…. Lady, you’ve got to be more careful.”

“Yes,” I managed to grate out. “I’ll be more careful from now on.”

He stood a few feet away, holding the gun on me. I was scared, but I was also ice cold. If he was going to kill me, there was nothing I could do to stop him. Was there?

I didn’t want to get up. We were still visible from the road. What I wanted to do was to keep him talking and hope someone else would show up. Kind of a thin reed to base my survival on, but I didn’t have a lot of choice.
 

“Get up,” he ordered.

“I will.” I pretended to be in pain. “Give me just a minute, okay?”

He hesitated and I went on.
 

“Listen, I just don’t get it. What were you doing here, anyway? I mean, did Star know you were coming?”

“Nah.” He liked to talk and he got caught up in it right away. “I ran into some financial trouble in Alaska. I kinda wanted to get out of town, if you know what I mean. So I called some people I know down here and asked how things looked for my prospects in the area. I wanted to know what Star was up to. And I heard she was going around town saying she was making plans to go to the Caribbean and live on a yacht. I thought—what the hell! Then I heard about the apprentices.”

He shook his head. “That was a new one on me. That she was saying she was going to give them the farm. Well, that was just plain crazy talk. I wasn’t about to stand around with my thumb in my mouth while that sort of thing was going on. So I took a plane down here on Tuesday, thought I’d spend some time getting the lay of the land before I made my presence known. I finally headed up to Star’s place late
 
Wednesday afternoon. She was getting ready for a party at the country club, but I wanted to have it out with her, tell her I wasn’t going to let her hand the farm over to some stupid apprentices. I mean, after all, I helped build this business back in the day. I deserved a piece of any action she had in mind.”

“Sounds reasonable,” I encouraged.
 
I was still sitting on the ground.

“Yeah.” He sighed. “Sadly, our reunion was not a joyful one. I was pretty upset by what I’d been hearing and when she couldn’t refute it, when she just laughed in my face and told me there was nothing I could do about it, I got pretty mad. Did some yelling. You know how it can be.”

“Sure.”

“She told me I was out of luck. Things had changed. Then that Bebe—I think she’s your aunt?--she called and Star told me to hush while she talked to her, but I didn’t even like the way she treated the poor woman. It was obvious she was taunting her and trying to manipulate her to come on up here. And it worked. With Star, it usually does.”