Milkshakes, Mermaids, and Murder Read online

  I sent back a quick e-mail saying that she didn’t have to meet me at the hotel. I’d mail her the imitation bag after my trip, and she could send me the real bag, but before I had taken two steps from the computer, it dinged with another message. It wasn’t a problem. Angela would be in Sandy Beach tonight, right on the beachfront road where all the hotels were, so she might as well bring the purse.

  I shrugged and murmured, “Well, if you insist,” as I put the box with the purse next to the snacks. I would like to get the real purse, and I wanted to meet Angela face-to-face. I wondered how much of her insistence on bringing the purse in person had to do with her desire to see Ben and how much it had to do with keeping a customer satisfied. Seeing Ben probably won out in that battle.

  Nathan came into the kitchen, his string backpack clinking along the floor as he dragged it behind him. “Mom, are you sure Uncle Ben will be there?” he asked, his chin tilted down and his dark eyes serious.

  “Yes. He said he would. He’ll be there. What have you got in here?” I asked, picking up the backpack. “It’s awfully heavy.” The string cut into my fingers and metal clanked as I lifted it from the floor.

  “Stuff I need,” he said matter-of-factly.

  I opened the flap and saw a jumble of about seventy-five Hot Wheels cars along with a scattering of various appendages of action figures sticking up through the metal. “Are you sure you want to take all of these? You have to keep up with them and you have to carry this backpack yourself.”

  He took the backpack from me and slung it on his little shoulders. “Yeah. Uncle Ben said he liked Hot Wheels.” He walked out of the kitchen and out to the van.

  I studied the ceiling for a moment, debating whether or not I should make him leave his cars at home. Odds were, he would lose some on the trip, which would cause much anguish and tears. And the backpack must have weighed at least ten pounds. I quirked my mouth to the side. Crying now or later? I blew out a sigh. I had to let him take the cars. He’d decided to take them, and he knew he had to keep track of them.

  Sometimes letting my kids learn responsibility was as hard on me as it was on them. Well, maybe he’d surprise me and keep up with everything and not complain about the cords cutting into his shoulders. Probably long odds on that one, I thought as I picked up my cell phone and dialed my brother’s number.

  He surprised me and answered on the second ring.

  “Oh. Hey, Ben. It’s Ellie. I thought I’d get your voice mail.”

  “Almost. I’m flight planning now.”

  “Okay. I’ll make it quick. Slight change of plans on our end. Mitch has been delayed, but the kids and I are driving down today anyway. Mitch will join us as soon as he can.”

  “That’s too bad. Where is he?”

  “Goose Bay.”

  “So . . . may be a few days.”

  “Looks like it.”

  “Well, I’ve heard they have good beer. There’s a German unit up there.”

  “Great. That’s just what I want to hear,” I said.

  “Aw, you know Mitch will get out of there as fast as he can.”

  “True. Okay, but you’re still good with meeting us tomorrow?”

  “Of course. This is my last flight and it’s local. I’ll be down in a few hours. I’ll see you guys tomorrow. I even got a few days of leave and a room at your hotel, too.”

  “Great! And you’re up for playing with Hot Wheels? Nathan packed every single one he owns,” I warned.

  “Sure. No problem. Tell him to bring his tracks, too.”

  “Oh no, I think the cars are enough.”

  “Spoil sport,” Ben teased.

  “Someone has to act like an adult this week, and I know how you get carried away with those tracks,” I said, thinking of how Ben had covered the entire floor of our living room and kitchen with his tracks and cars when he was a kid. “Remember how you ran the tracks over the dining-room table and broke Mom’s crystal candleholder?”

  “Hey, you’re not going to list everything I ever did wrong, are you? You know, as a life lesson kind of thing: don’t do this or you’ll grow up to be like your Uncle Ben.”

  “I think you turned out okay. Besides, you can do no wrong in Nathan’s eyes—that’s a big responsibility. Make sure you use your powers for good, not evil.”

  “Sure,” he said, and I could hear the laughter in his voice.

  “Oh—one more thing. Angela is coming by tonight, in case you have a chance to come early.”

  “What?” His voice changed and all teasing disappeared. “Did you say Angela?”

  “Yes, there was a mix-up about a purse I bought from her. She’s bringing—oh, it doesn’t matter. I just wanted to let you know if you want to see your girlfriend, she’ll be there tonight.”

  There was a beat of silence, then, subdued, he said, “She’s not my girlfriend.”

  “Okay,” I said slowly. “She sent me an e-mail, and it sounded like she was looking forward to coming to Sandy Beach. I got the feeling she was interested in seeing you.”

  “Yeah. Well . . . I won’t be able to leave until tomorrow anyway.” He finished up hurriedly and we said our good-byes.

  This was going to be awkward.

  “Here is your key to the beach boardwalk,” the desk clerk said. “And the complementary breakfast begins at six tomorrow.” She slid the packet containing our keys across the counter.

  “I hope I’m not awake for that,” I said as I hitched my large beach bag higher on my shoulder, pocketed the keys, and grabbed the handle of the rolling suitcase.

  “We serve breakfast until nine.”

  “That’s doable.” I turned to call the kids to follow me, but they were ahead of me. Typical. In a few short years, they’d gone from the toddler stage with their unsteady gates and wobbly legs to zooming ahead of me at a pace I could barely keep up with. Except this time, they weren’t running ahead. They both stood motionless at the threshold, their small rolling suitcases forgotten beside them as they gazed around the atrium of the hotel. Livvy scanned the fifteen floors rising above us, with greenery dripping from the ledges enclosing each floor.

  “Wow,” she whispered. Glass elevators skimmed toward the skylights. A waterfall burbled into a pool with orange koi flashing through the rocks. “It’s like Muffy’s house,” Livvy said, her tone laced with awe.

  I smiled at her reference to a character from Arthur, the children’s book about an aardvark, which had been made into a television show. Muffy lived in a mansion and had a chauffeur.

  “Yeah,” Nathan echoed, his chin tilted up to take in the huge palms and elephant ear plants towering over us. “Awesome,” he declared and gripped his suitcase handle. “I get to push the button in the elevator.” And we were off again.

  We dumped our suitcases in the room, slathered on sunscreen, and headed for the beach, toting beach chairs, shovels, and pails, not to mention our towels and sunscreen. I felt a bit like a pack mule. On our way back through the hotel, Livvy halted in front of a poster. “Look, Mom, it’s Suzie Quinn.” A young woman with a round, freckled face topped with dark curls smiled out from the poster. She wore a one-piece racing swimsuit in red, white, and blue with USA printed near the neckline. “She won a gold medal,” Livvy informed me, as if we hadn’t sat side by side on the couch and watched Suzie Quinn win several gold medals during the last Summer Olympics. An underdog, she’d pulled off two surprise victories and had spent her time since then endorsing everything from cereal to phones. Lately, news about her had revolved more around her personal life than her athletic abilities. She’d been dating Nick Ryan, a movie star with a bad boy reputation and a sexy British accent. I’d seen her photo on the cover of several tabloids while I waited in the checkout line at Target.

  “Never swim alone,” Nathan piped up, parroting the video she’d made to teach kids water safety. I’d been volunteering in Nathan’s class the day they’d watched it.

  Livvy read a line from the poster. “Meet Sandy Beach’s Gold Med
al Olympian at Green Groves Festival of Fireworks.” Livvy swiftly read through the dates and times of the appearances, then twirled toward me. “Mom, she’s going to be here, in Sandy Beach. Can we go see her?”

  “And there are fireworks every night, all week!” Nathan added.

  “We’ll see,” I said, thinking that the kids’ improving reading skills complicated our lives a bit. I guess we’d have to add the picnic at Green Groves to our list of things to do. The antebellum home was on our list of sites to see, but I hadn’t planned on visiting it during a “community-wide celebration,” which sounded a bit crowded. “Let’s hit the beach,” I said.

  Our hotel was located on a narrow peninsula that ran between the Gulf of Mexico and Sandy Bay. A road lined with hotels, restaurants, and shops sliced through the peninsula, more often than not veering close to the gulf. Beachside hotels along the road were the priciest and guests of those hotels could step directly onto the white beach. The nonbeach side of the road backed up to a mishmash of middle class neighborhoods that filled the narrow mile or so of land between the beach road and Sandy Bay. Many of the neighborhoods had been in place long before the hotels and tourists arrived to block the view.

  We were on the more “cost effective” side of the beach road and had to schlep across the busy two-lane road to the hotel’s special beach access gate, but the price difference made it worth the short walk. We navigated through the slow-moving traffic to the gate, then stopped at a shop selling beach paraphernalia so I could buy a pair of sunglasses. In the rush and excitement of getting on the road, I’d walked off and left mine on the kitchen counter at home.

  The glare of the sun was intense, and I was glad I’d made the stop. We’d only gone a few steps when Nathan spotted a fast food stand, The Shake Shack. He asked, and I succumbed. We were on vacation, after all. The kids picked their current favorite, chocolate milkshakes, and slurped them down as we walked onto a boardwalk over dunes covered with sprigs of sea grass. At the end of the boardwalk, I paused to pull off my flip-flops and glanced back at the kids. They were both staring at the wide expanse of water lapping onto the sand, the sea breeze fluttering their hair. Closer inland, a sea of sun umbrellas in a rainbow of colors flickered in the breeze. Kids kicked up sand as they raced around prone adults, who were reading or rubbing on sunscreen. And always in the background was the constant roar of the surf. “What do you think?” I asked.

  “Awesome.” Nathan shoved his empty milkshake cup into a trash bin and sprinted for the water, his plastic bucket banging against his leg as he ran. I smiled. Two pronouncements of “awesome” in one day. Pretty good. It was getting harder to impress the kids as they grew up. I wished Mitch could see their faces.

  The white sand was silky and hot between my toes and sent up a blinding glare. Livvy walked tentatively beside me with her flip-flops clutched in one hand and her pail in the other. She looked a little scared. I could see why. Water sports weren’t her favorite activity.

  “Let’s find a place,” I said, and headed for an opening near the waves. We staked our claim on a square of sand with our chairs and beach towels, then joined Nathan, who was hopping over waves, grinning in delight. Livvy held back a few minutes, but Nathan grabbed her hand and said impatiently, “Come on, I can’t swim alone.”

  I could see in her face she didn’t want to be the “scaredy-cat,” so she hopped into the clear water with him. I stood and watched them, the water swirling around my thighs. The water was amazingly clear. I’d heard that the Gulf Coast was beautiful, but I’d never seen water like this—so translucent that I could see the grains of sand being pulled back and forth over my toes as the waves came in. It was like looking through glass. I marveled as I watched a school of tiny fish dart around my legs, then reverse course in a flash.

  I splashed with the kids some, then went back to rummage in my straw beach tote for a book. I squished the sand between my toes and settled in to watch the kids over the edge of my book, thinking the only way the day could have been better was if Mitch were here, too.

  After a while, the kids came out of the water and set to work moving sand to create a sand castle. They didn’t notice a man in the red and white lifeguard T-shirt sprint parallel to the water, shouting, “Out of the water! Shark! Out of the water now!” The heavy sea breeze whipped his words away and they didn’t look up because they were arguing over where to put the moat.

  I stood and moved around the kids. I figured this was not the time to share one of the wonders of nature with them—not if I ever wanted them to get back into the water during the next few days. The words “shark” and “out of the water” spread along the beach as if they were wind-borne. People high-stepped out of the water, lunging for the sand, while other spectators on the beach, like me, edged cautiously toward the waves.

  I heard a shriek to my left. “There it is!”

  I squinted in the direction several people were pointing and saw the classic shark silhouette undulating through the shallows, slightly beyond the point where the waves broke and spilled onto the beach. The shark was small, only one, maybe two, feet long. A few people clicked off photos on their phones as it swam by, seemingly following the path of the lifeguard.

  People waited uncertainly on the beach, scanning the water for more dorsal fins. After a few minutes, a couple of brave—or reckless—souls splashed into the waves while others began packing their gear up. Nathan announced he was hungry, and I decided it was time to head back to the hotel. On our walk back, I vetoed requests for another shake and was glad of the distraction when Livvy asked, “Mom, do you think mermaids are real?”

  No easy answer here. Livvy had already discovered Santa Claus was make-believe, but she’d watched The Little Mermaid three times since we’d announced our trip to the beach. If she was enjoying imaginary singing mermaids, I didn’t want to be the one to pop that bubble. I took the coward’s way out. “What do you think?”

  She contemplated the sidewalk, glanced at Nathan, then lowered her voice so he wouldn’t hear. “Probably not, but I like to pretend they are.”

  Before I could confirm or deny, Nathan announced, “I heard you.”

  I hid a smile, and we debated the possibility all the way back to the hotel, which was fine with me. Hopefully, the more they thought about mermaids, the less they thought about sharks.

  Two hours later, the sand had been washed away, the kids had been fed, and we were in the hotel lobby. The kids were toting their small rolling suitcases and string backpacks. Summer arrived and swept into the lobby with her arms stretched wide and a huge smile splitting her face. “You’re here!” she said as she scooped the kids into a joint hug, then exclaimed over how much they’d grown.

  She turned to me and I said, “You cut your hair,” as I embraced her. Instead of her cascades of red curls, her hair hung straight and brushed her shoulders.

  She released me and rolled her eyes. “Why does everyone sound so tragic when they say that? You’d think I’d cut off my arm, instead of five inches of hair,” she said, but she was smiling and that took the sting out of the words.

  “Sorry. I like it. It’s a bit of a shock. You look very professional,” I said, taking in her sleeveless pale turquoise shell, black pencil skirt, and black heels. She’d obviously come directly from work. Quite a change from the last few times I’d seen her when she was sporting a bohemian chic style. I supposed she had little need for the berets in Florida, anyway.

  “Thanks,” she said and turned back to Livvy, who was gripping her hand. “Looks like you’re ready to go.”

  “We are. We’re making sprinkle cookies, right?” Livvy asked.

  “Of course!” She must have noticed that Nathan was hanging back and wasn’t as giddy with excitement as Livvy. Summer leaned down until she was level with him. “I’ve got lots of board games. I thought we’d have pizza for dinner, and if you don’t want sprinkle cookies, we might make s’mores in the fireplace, if it gets cold enough.”

  Nathan nodd
ed slowly. He liked the plan.

  “Since Mitch isn’t here, I was thinking I’d come with you . . .” I stopped at the kids’ disappointed chorus of aww. I’d called Summer during the drive down and told her Mitch was delayed so she knew the situation, but I hadn’t realized the kids might be opposed to my change in plans.

  “No? You don’t want me to come?” I asked them.

  “No,” Livvy explained patiently. “If you’re there, you and Aunt Summer will talk the whole time, and we won’t get her to ourselves.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “I see. Well, that’s probably true.”

  I glanced at Summer, and she said, “Didn’t you say you had a spa treatment scheduled?”

  “I do, but I’m sure I can reschedule it.” I’d planned on a trip to the spa and then a late grown-up dinner with Mitch.

  “You don’t have to,” she assured me. “Take some time on your own. We’ll be fine and you can have a break.”

  “Yeah, Mom,” Nathan piped up. “You need a break.”

  “You really don’t want me around, do you?” I teased.

  “Nope,” Livvy said, and pulled Summer toward the door.

  An hour later, I slid into a lilac-colored Adirondack chair and propped my sandaled feet on the matching ottoman. I flexed my toes, admiring my Seashell Pink toenails, and then surveyed the view from the hotel’s veranda. A tiny sliver of the moon hung in the navy blue sky, but even at seven, it wasn’t fully dark. The sun wouldn’t set for about another hour. The two-lane road was busy, packed with cars inching along and families trooping back from the beach or off to dinner. I placed a call to Angela and left her a message, saying I was in town, but didn’t expect to see Ben until tomorrow. I put the phone beside the not-a-Leah-Marshall-purse I’d brought down from my room and settled back to enjoy the view.

  It felt odd to sit with absolutely nothing to do. No kids to keep an eye on, no e-mails to reply to, no bills to pay, no dinner to cook. I perused the bar menu and ordered a caesar salad with the dressing on the side and a tall peach ice tea. I wanted to fit into my swimsuit at the end of the week, but I did splurge with a piece of chocolate cake for dessert. I figured with the salad and the cake it was a zero sum game, calorie-wise. Mitch called and we chatted. I relayed the kids’ reaction to the beach and their eagerness to spend time alone with Summer. Mitch said the part situation was unchanged, then he had to go—the guys were leaving for dinner and he wanted to go with the crew.