A Deadly Cliche bbtbm-2 Read online

  A Deadly Cliche

  ( Books by the Bay Mystery - 2 )

  Ellery Adams

  While walking her poodle, Olivia Limoges discovers a dead body buried in the sand. Could it be connected to the bizarre burglaries plaguing Oyster Bay, North Carolina? At every crime scene, the thieves set up odd tableaus: a stick of butter with a knife through it, dolls with silver spoons in their mouths, a deck of cards with a missing queen. Olivia realizes each setup represents a cliché. And who better to decode the cliché clues than her Bayside Book Writers group?

  Chapter 1

  There are some things you learn best in calm, and some in storm.

  —WILLA CATHER

  “Storm’s comin’,” the fisherman said, stroking the pewter whiskers of his beard. He glanced at the small television mounted above the espresso machine, squinting at the green radar image of circulating clouds.

  Olivia Limoges followed his gaze. She looked at the irregular shape of the low-pressure system forming in the Caribbean, listening closely as the meteorologist showed the storm’s projected path should it gather strength and become more than a tropical disturbance. The slick-haired weatherman assured his viewing audience that although the storm was likely to organize and grow in force, it would remain out at sea, allowing for a perfect Labor Day weekend for those heading to the beach.

  “Jackass,” the fisherman’s voice rumbled like distant thunder. He rubbed a calloused, leathery hand over his lined face as though he could wipe away the other man’s erroneous words. “Don’t matter how much fancy equipment these boys get. They don’t understand a damned thing’bout balance. We’re due for a big one and we’re witnessin’ her beginnin’ right here and now on that TV screen. I feel it in my bones. It’s a comin’.”

  Olivia nodded in agreement, for she and the man beside her shared an understanding. The ocean lived inside them. Like the merfolk of legend, their blood seemed to be mixed with salt water and their hearts filled with cresting waves. There was a rhythm, like the pull of a tide, within their souls. Since birth, they’d been schooled to respect the currents and the shallows and the cold depths where no light penetrated. As adults, they were still awed by each powerful swell and surge.

  In return for their reverence, the sea offered them gifts. The fisherman, whose name was Fergusson, had been granted three decades of nets brimming over with brown, white, and pink shrimp. With every haul, the captain counted his blessings. The ocean fed his family and gave him purpose. He was a man satisfied with his lot in life. Olivia had been given trinkets, pushed onto shore by frothy wavelets, and a fresh start, white and gleaming as a strip of sand in the moonlight.

  She and the taciturn shrimp boat captain had been the first customers in the casual eatery. At six thirty in the morning, they’d taken black coffees and bagels with cream cheese to a café table to talk business over breakfast. Olivia had met Captain Fergusson over the summer, and after serving his shrimp to the patrons of her five-star restaurant, The Boot Top Bistro, she would order from no other shrimper. Not only did his catches taste as fresh as the moment they’d been lifted from the ocean, but the captain was also a sharp businessman who treated both his crew and his customers with equal fairness.

  The grizzly fisherman and the tall, elegant restaurateur launched into a round of pleasant haggling. Olivia’s standard poodle, Captain Haviland, slept at their feet, his belly replete with a breakfast of eggs and bacon made especially for him by the doting coffeehouse proprietor.

  An hour later, their business complete, the two residents of Oyster Bay, North Carolina, sat together in comfortable silence. Slowly, other residents of the small coastal town trickled in, followed by a few bleary-eyed tourists who’d just discovered that the kitchen in their costly vacation rental home lacked a working coffeemaker.

  A man sporting a Yankees cap and a fresh sunburn complained to Wheeler, the octogenarian owner of Bagels’n’ Beans, as he ordered several complicated espresso creations. “I’m shelling out five grand a week for that freaking house! Do they expect me to drink that instant crap they left in the pantry?”

  Wheeler issued a noncommittal grunt, scowling slightly as he skimmed the foam from the surface of the pitcher of steamed milk. Olivia knew the old man resented having to make what he referred to as “girly drinks” for his customers, but he knew enough about profit margins to realize he couldn’t have turned the slab of concrete behind the store into a cozy eating area without the revenue generated by tourists such as this one.

  “I know better than to order bagels this far away from New York, so I hope you’ve got something else I like.” The man scrutinized the selection of baked goods and then pointed at his hat. “You guys just don’t have the right water. That’s the real difference.” Adopting a splayed-leg stance, he pointed at the pastry display. “I’ll take those caramel apple turnovers off your hands. They don’t look too bad.” His eyes gleamed as he watched Wheeler slip the sweets into a brown bag. Unconsciously rubbing his formidable paunch, he told Wheeler to add a few chocolate chip cookies as well.

  “He ain’t gonna live to see seventy,” Captain Fergusson muttered as the tourist stuffed one of the cookies in his mouth. While the vacationer chewed greedily, he stirred six sugar packets into his mocha latte.

  “Might not see tomorrow,” Olivia agreed. “If he comes to The Boot Top tonight, it will seal the deal. Michel’s specials for this evening include lobster-stuffed ravioli in a vodka cream sauce and an almond and Parmesan crusted salmon steak in a lemon-thyme sauce. Most of my patrons will need to be rolled out the door on dollies.”

  The pair smiled at one another, picturing bloated tourists being wheeled down the restaurant’s handicapped ramp.

  As they cleared the dishes from their table and brought them to the counter, the tourist turned to them. “You were brave enough to eat the bagels, huh?”

  Fergusson barely held his sneer in check. “Everythin’ Wheeler sells is good.”

  The man snorted and brushed away the cookie crumbs clinging to his chin. “You gotta be a local. Everybody knows you can’t eat bagels, pizza, or cold cuts this far south.” He scrutinized the seaman, his red, fleshy face dismissive as he peered at Olivia over the shrimper’s shoulder.

  “You don’t look like you’re from around here,” he told her, his gaze traveling down her body, examining her black sundress and silver sandals. “You look like a city girl.”

  Olivia narrowed her eyes at the man. “I grew up in Oyster Bay. I left for a time, but I came back. This is my home.”

  He gaped at her over his coffee cup. “Why the hell would you come back? Woman with your looks? You could have snagged yourself a rich husband and been set up in style in New York or Palm Beach. Anywhere but here! This place is okay for a week, but that is it.” He sidestepped the fisherman. “If you were my gal, you wouldn’t have to lift a finger. You could sit around all day watching soap operas.”

  Olivia gave him a frosty smile. “What a tempting offer.” She then gestured at his wedding ring. “Your wife is a such a lucky woman.” Her smile became genuine as she said good-bye to Fergusson. At the snap of his mistress’s fingers, the sleeping poodle detached himself from the shadows beneath the table and leapt to his feet, barking once to illustrate that he was fully awake.

  “What the—” the tourist spluttered and coffee dribbled onto his shirt.

  Fergusson grinned, displaying a mouthful of tobaccostained teeth. “Look out, mister. That dog’s a black devil. He’ll bite your hand off if you take another step closer to Olivia. You’d best keep your distance.”

  Olivia smiled, pausing at the fixings bar near the front door. The tourist turned to Fergusson, mistakenly assuming that Olivia had left the café when, in fact, s
he had decided to add another splash of cream to her to-go cup.

  “What does she do in this podunk town?” the tourist asked, his back to the door. “A fine woman like that?”

  “Owns most of it,” Fergusson replied, knowing full well that Olivia was listening. He then pivoted away from the man and began to converse with Wheeler about the storm.

  However, the tourist refused to be ignored. “That harmless front isn’t heading in this direction at all. Why worry about it? Didn’t you guys listen to the weather report?”

  Fergusson put a lid on his takeout cup. “Oh, it’s comin’ all right. Too bad you’ll be gone.”

  Wheeler tried not to smile as the seaman headed for the restroom. The tourist stared after him in befuddlement and the slightest tinge of anxiety. “Pffah! He’s nuts. What are they going to do? Run out and buy batteries and bottled water?”

  “Not Fergusson,” Wheeler answered as though the question hadn’t been laced with sarcasm. “But Miss Olivia will prepare.” He winked at Olivia over the tourist’s head. “Chances are she’ll be good and ready for any storm. Wouldn’t be like her not to have a plan.”

  Again, the dismissive snort. “Come on! What would a woman like that know about weathering a major storm?”

  Pausing in the act of drying a mug with his dishtowel, Wheeler gestured at the television. Once again, the channel featured a radar image of the tropical disturbance. “She knows plenty, my friend. A hurricane is gonna form while you’re lyin’ on the beach this weekend. I know of one that started just like this one.” He lowered his voice, but the words seemed to burn their way into Olivia’s ears.

  “It came through Oyster Bay when Miss Olivia was a little girl. That storm was a monster.” Wheeler was lost in the memory. “It kicked and screamed and howled and when all was said and done, a child had lost her mama. A few other folks got killed too. Most of ’em died ’cause they didn’t respect the storm.” He finished drying the cup and picked up another. “I s’pect this one’ll claim her share of lives too. That’s the way of things ’round these parts. You either bend to nature’s power or she’ll force you to your knees.”

  Mumbling under his breath that the local population was made up of inbred lunatics, the tourist gathered his pastries, his coffees, and his impenetrable arrogance and left.

  He walked right past Olivia without realizing she was still standing there, trying to fit the lid on her cup with trembling fingers.

  Olivia and Haviland walked three blocks south to the hardware store. The streets were crowded now. Female vacationers in swim suits and sheer cover-ups shopped for sunscreen and folding beach chairs while their husbands hunted for newspapers and ice for their coolers.

  Hampton’s Hardware had occupied a prime spot on Main Street since Olivia was a toddler. Back then, when there were no parking meters and a horse-drawn trolley shuttled people from the two downtown churches to a parking and picnic area near the docks, Hampton’s also housed the town’s only post office. With the recent influx of cash into Oyster Bay’s municipal coffers, however, a new post office had been built at the end of the block and Hampton’s began stocking souvenirs instead of stamps. Cheap T-shirts, plastic sand toys, tacky postcards, salt-water taffy, and plaster replicas of the local lighthouse filled the large front window and the area surrounding the checkout.

  At first, the townsfolk regarded Hampton’s new wares with a critical eye, but he displayed the brightly colored trinkets so creatively that they’d not only grown used to his Made in Taiwan section, but had even come to anticipate what he’d do next to sell his cornucopia of mass-produced items.

  In celebration of the new school year, Hampton had built a trio of giant, wooden apples and had rigged the tops with mechanical pulleys so that they opened like treasure chest lids, revealing the rotund faces of Cabbage Patch dolls. Each doll brandished a souvenir perfect for stuffing a child’s new backpack. From rulers and lunchboxes decorated with beach scenes to pencil cases and hemp purses stamped with the slogan, “I got an A+ in Beach Bumming,” the plump dolls seemed to be daring each shopper to grab a school-related item from an apple.

  Hampton’s Labor Day weekend display had certainly caught the interest of a pair of toddler boys. One had a pudgy fist clamped onto the arm of a Cabbage Patch girl with auburn pigtails as he attempted to wrestle an iridescent pencil from her grasp. The second boy, a mirror reflection of the first, was doing his best to climb into the apple already occupied by a Cabbage Patch boy dressed in denim overalls and a red baseball cap. The wooden lid on the apple was just about to clamp down on the toddler’s head of wild brown curls when his mother rescued him.

  “Oh, Olivia!” The young woman smiled as she pulled her son out of the apple. “Hi, there!”

  Her lovely face flushed with exertion of having to hold one wriggling child while yanking his brother away from the apple filled with thousands of colorful pencils, Laurel Hobbs shot Olivia a look of apology. “Let me just buckle them into the stroller, then I might actually be able to speak in complete sentences to you.”

  “By all means, strap away.” Olivia eyed the three-point canvas belt system that seemed similar to a parachute harness. Haviland gave an impatient whine and sniffed the nearest Cabbage Patch Kid. He issued a disdainful grunt.

  “They have the look of mutated mushrooms about them, don’t they?” Olivia stroked the poodle’s head. She watched in amazement as her petite friend wrestled her twins into the double stroller, handed them each a snack bag of cheese crackers, and then fastened her long, wheat-blond hair into a perfectly smooth ponytail. Sighing with relief, she put her hands on her narrow hips, looking exactly like the high school cheerleader she once was, and waved for Olivia to follow her down the tool aisle.

  “I am so behind in critiquing Harris’s chapter!” she exclaimed and then dropped her voice. “One of my neighbors was robbed and I’ve been a mess ever since! I feel like I need to buy a big knife and keep it under my mattress.” She touched one of the teeth on a shiny handsaw and then hastily withdrew her fingers.

  Not so long ago, Olivia wouldn’t have been the slightest bit interested in Laurel’s trials and tribulations, but over the past few months, the oak-barrel heiress and the stay-at-home mom had become friends. In fact, Olivia counted all four of the Bayside Book Writers as friends. She was still trying to get used to the experience.

  “Was anyone hurt?” she inquired as they walked deeper into the store.

  Laurel pried a hammer out of Dermot’s hand. Or was it Dallas? Olivia couldn’t tell the two boys apart and she’d forgotten which child tended to wear shades of green and which one favored blue. “No, thank heavens, but they took everything of value. Jewelry, silver, art, electronics.”

  Olivia placed several battery-powered lanterns in her cart. “Do your neighbors have a burglar alarm?”

  Laurel nodded. “Yes. Most of the people in my neighborhood do.” She chewed her lip for a moment. “It might not have been turned on though. I mean, this happened in the middle of the day! I don’t put mine on to run out to the grocery store. And these guys must have been real professionals. There was no sign of a break-in and they didn’t even make a mess. Left some food on the kitchen counter but that’s it.” She glanced at Olivia with admiration. “I bet you never get scared, even though you live out on the Point all by yourself.”

  Haviland whined petulantly.

  “Oh! I wasn’t even thinking!” Laurel’s hands fluttered over her mouth as she received a withering stare from Olivia’s poodle. “Of course you don’t need to worry with such a magnificent guard dog watching over you!”

  Appeased, Haviland resumed his thorough examination of the scents lingering around the battery and flashlight end cap.

  “It’s just that Steve goes out of town all the time for dental conferences and seminars and I keep thinking about being alone in the house. The only weapon I know how to wield is a nail file.”

  “Do your sons have wooden blocks? I bet they’d make excellent projecti
les.” Olivia selected several packages of batteries. “Seriously, though. If you’ll feel better about having company, ask your in-laws to stay over. I’m sure they’d be delighted.”

  Laurel rolled her eyes. “I’d rather be attacked by burglars.” Her pale blue eyes gleamed. “Actually, this topic gives me an idea for my next chapter.”

  Olivia arched her brows. “Your duchess is going to be ravished by a handsome highwaymen?”

  “No. I’m trying to avoid clichés, remember? But what if she’s captured by someone of the wrong class and grows to love him? A rogue with a Robin Hood complex. Things could get very complicated and very steamy.”

  It was always a delight to see how animated Laurel became when she spoke of her writing. Olivia smiled. “And what of the poor, cuckolded duke?”

  “He shouldn’t have taken his wife for granted!” Laurel declared heatedly and Olivia couldn’t help but wonder if they were still discussing a fictional couple or if the conversation had suddenly entered the realm of autobiography.

  One of the twins crushed a cracker in his fist and scattered orange crumbs across the floor. “Now we won’t get lost,” he told his brother, who immediately followed suit.

  “Boys!” Laurel balled her fists in frustration. “Mommy has told you not to leave trails when we’re inside.”

  Olivia could see how the little boys might view their surroundings as being similar to an enchanted forest. They were in an aisle at the back of the store where the overhead lights failed to successfully illuminate the space. As a result, shadows hid in the crevices between lines of lawn rakes, brooms, shovels, and mops. From the perspective of the small boys, looking up into the steel and plastic rake tines and the bushy mop heads must have been akin to glancing up through the branches of a strange, magical wood.

  Grabbing two glow sticks from her cart, Olivia cracked them until they radiated a phosphorescent yellow light and handed one to each twin. “These work better than breadcrumbs,” she whispered conspiratorially. The boys accepted the gift and stared at her in awe.