Stiff in the Sand Read online

  Stiff in the Sand

  Cape Hope Mysteries

  Winne Reed

  Contents

  Stiff in the Sand

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Excerpt: Corpse in a Crate

  Chapter 1

  Afterword

  Stiff in the Sand

  Cape Hope Mysteries Book One

  New jobs can be murder…

  At least, that’s what it seems like to Emma Harmon of Cape Hope. She’s got a new job blogging about food and she’s super-thrilled to be traveling to a new resort to sample the fare and meet local celebrities. One of who is First-Kiss-Robbie. The first boy to kiss her, he’s a famous chef now.

  She finds out her photographer is a hot guy with a major chip on his shoulder. More like an iceberg, considering the way Deke treats her.

  She’s not so thrilled when she discovers a body in the sand dunes. One with a knife sticking out of him. A chef knife. Robbie’s chef knife.

  She’s even less thrilled when she makes the mistake of handling the knife.

  Now, she’s under suspicion and Detective McHottie’s got his eye on her—and not in a good way.

  Can she find the real killer before she becomes his target?

  Chapter One

  The thing about living in a Quaint-with-a-capital-Q beachfront town was the assumptions people made. Figuring life lived by the beach in a town filled with adorable gingerbread-style Victorian homes must be nothing but fun and sun all year long.

  People made plenty of assumptions, most of which were eye-roll-worthy. No, my life was not chock-full of charm and romance, no matter how beautiful the area in which I’d grown up. And it was beautiful, no doubt. In no way did I take for granted the stunning architecture, the history, the colorful characters who could afford to live in some of those stunning homes.

  Because let’s face it, people with that sort of money could afford to be colorful, too. The rest of us would just be called kooks if we walked around the way they did.

  Another assumption, growing up working in my mother’s café made me the luckiest kid in the entire world. Because how hard could it be to run a café and chat up the customers, right?

  Wrong. Very wrong. Even years later, long after I’d stopped doing anything more than filling in on the occasional day when Mom didn’t feel up to working—which was an extremely rare occurrence—I couldn’t sleep past five in the morning. Waking up early became a habit deeply ingrained in my psyche, one which tended to irk the living daylights out of my boyfriend.

  Or, ex-boyfriend. Speaking of assumptions, I had assumed he would be faithful to me and only me.

  Hadn’t I learned by then that it was no good to assume things? That just because something looked a certain way didn’t make it so? Just because Landon was perfect on the surface—like a three-layer sour cream chocolate cake with whipped ganache frosting, tall and majestic and tempting—didn’t mean he wasn’t dry and crumbly on the inside.

  The one thing a sour cream chocolate cake was not supposed to be.

  The one thing a live-in, practically-ready-to-pop the question boyfriend wasn’t supposed to be. Unfaithful, that is. Not dry and crumbly.

  I was never great with analogies.

  And that was unfortunate, seeing as how my new job would require me to come up with a few clever turns of phrase.

  “It’ll be just like writing your blog,” my sister assured me, sitting down with a pair of blueberry muffins at a table by the window looking out over Main Street. “Just, you know. With more words.”

  I picked at one of the plump blueberries and popped it in my mouth, savoring the sweetness as it burst open. Mom always made a point of using the highest-quality ingredients, and the many blueberry farms within driving distance of town made these particular muffins my favorite of all her baked goods.

  I’d mixed them up and baked them enough times to know the process by heart. I might even have been able to pull it off while blindfolded. The trick was tossing the berries in flour before gently stirring them into the batter. This helped them stay uniformly distributed throughout the final product rather than sinking to the bottom of the muffin cups.

  “Yeah. More words. You’re a genius, Darce.” I couldn’t help but roll my eyes at my well-meaning but somewhat clueless sister. What would she think if I told her there was nothing to running a bookstore but keeping the books dusted and making sure people paid before leaving?

  Darcy eyed me over the rim of her coffee cup, the steam fogging up her glasses. Behind those glasses was a pair of kind, knowing, sky-blue eyes I had always envied. Mine tended to vary between gray and light blue depending on what I wore.

  Hence my penchant for blue clothing.

  “It’s just that I didn’t need a blow to my ego right now,” I reminded her. Two years older and every ounce the big sister, I had been coming to her with my problems for as long as I had them. Granted, this was a lot weightier than complaining about the boy down the street who stole my favorite Barbie and wouldn’t give her back.

  I doubted I could send Darcy after Landon to beat him up. No matter how much I wanted to. And it wasn’t like she could hand me back my bruised, broken heart, either, which was what he’d stolen. Along with my trust and three years of my life.

  “Three years when you could’ve been working on grandchildren for me.” It was like the woman read my mind. Sylvia Harmon—she hadn’t changed her name back after the divorce from Dad, since her name was connected with everything café-related—breezed in from the back with a tray of fresh scones. “He took that opportunity away from me, the philanderer.”

  “Mom.” I folded my hands, pleading. “Tell me you don’t randomly talk about my personal issues with customers. Please, I beg you.” The café wasn’t open yet and wouldn’t be for another ten minutes, so at least nobody but the three of us had heard that little quip.

  “Me?” Her eyes widened, reminding me of an owl. Which was how I knew she had, in fact, told the entire town my personal business the minute I’d called after kicking that no-good jerkface out of what used to be our apartment.

  “Wonderful.” I sighed. It had been two weeks since I’d returned home after filling in for Darcy at the bookstore which adjoined the café to find my would-be fiancé—I’d been so sure a proposal was coming up, I wanted to smack myself for being that naïve—entertaining a girl from his office. In our bed.

  News could spread pretty far in three weeks. Heck, it could spread in a day in a town as close-knit as Cape Hope. Especially when one of the parties involved was the daughter of two of the town’s most beloved personalities.

  The other personality being my father. Detective George Harmon, one of the town’s finest, somebody who’d devoted his life to keeping everybody safe. I wished one assumption were true, that when a girl had a cop for a father, he would do mean, horrible, terrible things to any fool who decided to cheat on her.

  “Maybe taking a job which involves travel isn’t the best idea for you right now,” Mom mused from behind the cou
nter. “You need to be close to home at a time like this, Emma.”

  Darcy and I exchanged a glance. She knew how I felt about this.

  The fact was, before Landon’s roll in the hay with his bimbo coworker, I’d been considering turning down the chance at working for Haute Cuisine, a publisher with magazines and online publications based all over the country. They published pieces about new restaurants, food trends, up-and-coming chefs and hot spots from coast to coast, along with the typical recipes, kitchen product reviews, and other food-related articles.

  In other words, I’d been reading their work since I was old enough to grab Mom’s discarded magazines from the coffee table and make sense of what the pictures meant.

  The job came with travel, which when I thought I was on the verge of getting engaged was a no-no. I couldn’t have imagined being without that creep. No wonder he’d urged me to take it. More time without my hanging around, messing up his fun.

  Now? The thought of not being out of town and away from him and his new girlfriend turned my stomach. I couldn’t stand that kind of humiliation.

  But considering the fact that my mom hung around Cape Hope after Dad started dating somebody closer to my age than Mom’s… It was best to keep my thoughts to myself.

  “The first assignment is practically right up the road,” Darcy reminded her, stepping in before I had the chance to embarrass myself or our mother. “Remember? The resort they’re opening in Paradise City. The one Robbie’s Executive Chef for.”

  “Of course!” At the mention of Robbie Klein, her beloved former apprentice, Mom’s face lit up. “Sweet Robbie. Please, give him my love. I can’t wait to take the drive up there someday soon and see how far he’s come.”

  “I’ll let him know,” I promised, glad my sister’s deft engineering had turned the conversation toward more pleasant things. When Marsha, my new editor, had offered me the task of covering the resort opening I’d jumped at the chance. Writing about Robbie’s food would be a pleasure, since he’d been wowing me in the kitchen since we were teenagers.

  Including the one time we smooched in the walk-in, but nobody needed to know about that besides the two of us. That was a wow-worthy experience.

  “I bet your editor loved the personal angle you can bring to the piece,” Darcy observed, standing and brushing crumbs from herself and the table before taking her plate and cup to the counter.

  “Uh, I didn’t tell her about the personal angle,” I confessed, twirling a strand of hair around my finger and trying to look innocent. We all shared the same shade of honey-blonde, all the Harmon girls.

  “Why not?”

  “I was afraid she’d take the job away if she knew. I’m supposed to be objective. And honestly, it’s the perfect first assignment to get my feet wet. Not thirty minutes up the road, writing about a friend in an area I’m already familiar with. I didn’t want to lose the chance.” I blinked. “Do you think I was wrong?”

  The thing about having a sister like Darcy was knowing I never had to think very much over the right or wrong of anything. She would tell me, sure enough.

  “Not super wrong,” she decided. “But marginally.”

  “Thanks,” I muttered before taking a huge bite of muffin. Nothing like sugary carbs when I was unsure of myself.

  Darcy hurried next door to finish prepping First Edition, the bookstore she’d owned for the last two years, for the morning’s customers. Having a bakery/café and bookstore sitting side-by-side made all the sense in the world. Her patrons would often bring their new books into Sweet Nothings, and so long as they promised not to spill all over the place, my sister allowed paper coffee cups into the store.

  Only once had anybody tripped and sploshed coffee all over a row of books, and they’d been gracious enough to purchase each damaged copy. Somebody out there owned a dozen copies of the same pulpy murder mystery. Lucky them.

  “I could use a little help back here this morning,” Mom prompted. “You know how it is. Everybody likes to get the last day of the work week moving with a caffeinated treat.”

  My smile was tight. “Mom. You know I normally would, but I’m sure everybody knows by now. I don’t think I can face the whole town or even part of the town this morning.”

  “What? Nobody knows anything, sweetheart.” My mother, sweet lying soul she was, made a sign of the cross over her chest. “If they do, they didn’t hear it from me.”

  I was almost sure nothing could be further from the truth.

  Chapter Two

  “Emma! Back from the dead, I see.” Mr. Hutchins, old ladies’ man that he was, dropped me a wink as he slapped his newspaper on the counter hard enough to make me twitch. He had a habit of doing that. I was pretty sure it had to do with failing hearing and not realizing how loud he was.

  “Rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated.” I handed over a cup of coffee. Black, strong, nothing fancy or foamy for an old Marine who informed anybody who’d listen that he still walked five miles a day.

  He looked me up and down, clicking his tongue in mock dismay. “Don’t know what was wrong with that boy’s noggin,” he muttered mournfully.

  I was going to kill my mother.

  I pretended not to know what he was talking about, then encouraged the next customer to step forward. If it wasn’t for Mr. Hutchins’ broad shoulders, I would’ve seen Mrs. Merriweather’s impressive confection of a hat and known she was next.

  I had to hand it to her. The lady had style. Her husband had served on the city council for decades before being voted mayor. Gertie Merriweather had been trying to raise money for a statue in his honor ever since his passing a year earlier.

  “How’s the statue fund going?” I asked, pulling out a sheet of waxed paper so I could fetch her customary blueberry muffin. I could vouch for their goodness.

  “Better every day!” She was maybe the most optimistic person I’d ever known, and her hats reflected that optimism. Today’s was a doozy: straw, wide-brimmed, wrapped in butter-yellow tulle which hung down in a veil in the back. On the crown was perched a bluebird nestled in silk daffodils and bluebells.

  “That’s good to hear.” I rang her up and handed her the change, which she generously dropped into the tip jar.

  “I was so sorry to learn of your unfortunate situation with that Landon fellow,” she whispered loud enough to be heard down the street. “I hiss at him whenever I see him on the street.”

  “Oh, please. You don’t have to do that.” But she was already chatting with Mom, who was in the process of wiping down one of the pastel-colored tables.

  “I told her,” Mom said like I wasn’t listening, “with this new job of hers and all the travel she’ll be doing, there’s bound to be a new man in her future.”

  That was roughly the point where I wanted to die. Maybe I’d find a previously undiscovered hole in the floor and fall in and never come out. “I thought you weren’t telling anybody my private business,” I called out in a singsong voice when Mom walked past with a dishpan filled with plates and cups.

  She only waved a hand. “Oh, Gertie doesn’t count. She’s practically family.”

  That was the problem. In a town where Mom’s café had been the central point of gossip for a quarter century, everybody was family. At least it seemed more people than not were on Team Emma.

  I hadn’t even known until that morning that there was a Team Emma.

  When the morning rush had calmed to a slow trickle of folks wandering in and out, I removed my apron. “I’d better head home. I have to get ready for tonight. I don’t even know what I’m going to wear.” Was anything in my closet worthy of the grand opening of a new resort?

  Mom eyed me up and down. “Be sure to look your best, no matter what you end up in.”

  “Gee, thanks. I’ll keep that in mind.”

  “I’m just saying, you never know the sort of men who attend these events…”

  “Mom. Please. I just got the bleeding to stop not that long ago. Give my heart
a little time to heal now, okay?” I kissed her cheek, taking in a blend of scents I would always associate with her: powdered sugar, coffee, chocolate, vanilla. If anybody ever made a perfume out of that combination I’d buy stock in the company.

  She meant well, all of her digging into my personal life. Complaints about grandchildren aside, it hurt her to know I’d been hurt. Maybe because she understood better than most what it meant to hand so much of her life over to somebody and have that investment of time and trust turn out badly.

  Through it all, she was a hopeless romantic. I couldn’t help but respect her refusal to give up on love.

  Main Street was its usual splash of color on an otherwise gray day, the shops and art galleries lining both sides of the thoroughfare showing off their striped awnings and lush potted plants out front. I hoped the weather would hold out for the opening of the resort—from the conceptual art I’d already studied in prep for the night, I knew there was a huge outdoor space which overlooked the beach. It would’ve been a waste to not have it decorated and ready to be enjoyed on opening night.

  But what did I know? This was my first assignment.

  Assignment. Like the journalist I was always supposed to be. At least, according to the degree I was still paying off. It sounded so official. I had an assignment.

  I had a job, full-stop. Finally, something my parents could agree on; how important it was for me to have a real job. Blogging wasn’t a real job to either of them, even if it had provided comfortably enough for me over the years.