Sand, Surf and Slaughter

  A Seaside Bed & Breakfast Cozy Mystery

  by Tracey Quinn

  Sand, Surf and Slaughter

  copyright 2021 by Tracey Quinn

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination and not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

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  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 1

  My name is Teri McAfee, formerly a school teacher from Ohio and currently “sitting on the dock of the bay wasting time,” as they say in the song. Actually, I was sitting next to the Gulf of Mexico on the dock of glitzy tourist trap Golden Happiness Isle waiting for the ferry, although I had been here for an hour and I was starting to feel like I really was wasting my time. My Aunt Samantha owns a bed and breakfast on a small island off the Florida Keys called Admiral Archibald's Falls, and she had invited me to stay with her for a couple of weeks before starting the hunt for a new teaching job. The island is too small for an airport and there's no bridge from the Keys, so the only way to get there is the ferry from Golden Happiness Isle.

  I got out my phone and looked up the number of the ferry service that Aunt Sam had given me and dialed it. After several rings, a voice said, “What?”

  “I'm at the ferry station and I'm still waiting for you to pick me up,” I said.

  “Sorry,” the man answered, “ but this isn't a good time. I'm out on a fishing trip right now. Why don't you call again tomorrow?”

  “But I was told that you offer ferry service 24/7.”

  “That's true, but I'm the one who decides which of the 24/7 the ferry runs and I choose tomorrow at 6 pm.”

  I could hear someone ask him if he wanted regular iced tea or sweet tea with his crab burger.

  “But my aunt told me that you'd send someone to take me to Admiral Archibald Falls anytime I called, day or night,” I persisted. “She also said she paid you in advance.”

  I heard a sigh. “Please tell me you're not that Ohio person, so I can just call you an obscene name and hang up on you.”

  “I'm that Ohio person.”

  “Okay, I'll have one of the guys pick you up in about 30 minutes.”

  I spent the next two hours alternating between sitting on a wooden bench in the 92 degree heat and walking to a nearby kiosk to buy another $5 bottle of water. I began to question my decision to come here in the first place. I seemed to have made a lot of bad decisions in my life recently and I hoped this wasn't going to be another one.

  I had been an art teacher in a high school in a small town in northern Ohio when I made my first bad decision and I fell in love with Walter Morgan, the football coach. After we had been together for almost a year, Walter had an opportunity to coach football at a junior college in Arizona so he asked me to go with him. He said we would get married after we got settled in there. Of course I agreed, but when we got there I discovered that none of the schools had an opening for an art teacher.

  I finally located a high school that already had an art teacher, but they were in need of a home economics teacher. I explained to them that I had never studied home economics and I didn't think that I would be qualified to teach it, but it was two weeks before the school year started and they were desperate so the principal said, “You're 32 years old. I'm sure you know how to cook.” I was also desperate because it was two weeks before the school year started and I didn't have a job, so I raised my eyebrows with what I hoped was a haughty “I can't believe you even asked that question!” look and I told her that, of course, I knew how to cook.

  Regrettably, that was a lie. My culinary style is called fast food and microwave. I guess I could learn to cook, but that wasn't going to happen in a couple of weeks. On the first day that I went in to teach Home Economics to a roomful of teenagers I was so nervous my hands were shaking. I had rehearsed a speech about the value of Homes Economics in the students' lives and to the community in general when I noticed them nodding and their eyes glazing over. I was as tired of my boring lecture as they were, so I stopped and said, “Does anyone here have a favorite food they like to make?”

  A girl in the front row, who appeared to be more awake than the others, put her hand up. “I like grilled cheese,” she said.

  “Great! Why don't you demonstrate it for the class?”

  “Are you gonna make enough for us to eat?” a boy asked.

  “Sure, why not?”

  Pretty soon the class was going as well as anything with a group of teenagers and hot stoves can go, and I was feeling a lot better about my new job. They say a teacher can often learn things from their students and that turned out to be especially true for me, since I new nothing about what I was supposed to be teaching. Over the course of the first few months I learned that fried bologna on white bread spread with mustard is quite tasty, and that a person can put a lot of chocolate malt balls, ice cream and milk into the blender and end up with a great malted milk shake, and that Spaghettios topped with a whole lot of Parmesan cheese is darned good. One student named Kevin came up with a sandwich consisting of cream cheese, peanut butter and banana on honey wheat bread. I ate two of them myself. Kevin should patent that stuff.

  But although things were going well in Home Ec class, I couldn't say the same for life with Walter. After we had been in Arizona for a few weeks he started acting differently and coming home late most nights. He told me that a football coach has to put in long hours at the office, and I believed him at first, but just after the Christmas break I discovered that he was spending a lot of those long hours in the company of the instructor of the school's cheer leading squad. She had been a cheerleader herself about 20 years ago and she was apparently still pretty good at shaking her pom-poms. I finished out the rest of the school year living in a hotel room, then flew home to Ohio.

  My parents were glad to have me back home and I was glad to be there at first. However, after a few days with my Dad telling me how lucky I was to be rid of Walter and my Mom patting my hand and shaking her head, I was wishing I could be anywhere else. And so, I was overjoyed when my Aunt Sam invited me to visit her at her bed and breakfast in the Caribbean.

  Waiting in this ferry station was making the joy fizzle out fast, but then I looked out in the distance and saw a small white boat heading towards the dock. Since I hadn't seen any other boats heading this way I had to assume that it was the so-called ferry. All the ferry boats I had ever seen were large enough for cars to drive on them, but this appeared to be a fishing boat.

  The boat pulled up to the dock in front of me and a man got off and sauntered over. He was tall, buff and tan and his shaggy blond hair stuck out from under his weathered baseball cap. He was “smoking hot” as in incredibly handsome, but I barely noticed as I was “smoking hot” as in incredibly furious after sweating through my clothes for the last two hours waiting for him to finish his lunch, which must have been a 12 course meal.

  “Excuse me, miss,” he said, “but have you seen an old lady around here? I'm supposed to pick her up but it looks like she's wandered off.”

  “An old lady?” I asked.

  “Yeah, some snowbird. She's a retired school teacher. Probably had to use the restroom over there in the Crab Shack. You know how old people are.” He took off his sunglasses revealing two blue eyes that I would have liked to punch. “Say, why don't we go over there and I'll buy you a drink? We could catch her when she comes out of the john. In fact, how about if you put your phone number in my phone and I'll put mine in yours in case we get separated? Then we can call each other if we see her.”

  “Or you could get me to Admiral Archibald Falls Island as soon as possible so that I have time to post my first dozen negative Yelp reviews about your service before I die of heat stroke.”

  “Oh, crap. You're the school teacher.”

  “Yes, the only person sitting on the dock with a suitcase next to her; actually the only person sitting on the dock at all.”

  “You don't look like a school teacher.”

  “You mean because I'm not an incontinent old lady?”

  “Something like that,” the man said. He took my suitcase and helped me onto the boat. “So what do you teach? Yoga, jazzersize, modeling...?”

  “Home Economics.”

  “Home Ec? Really?”

  “Yes. I spent the last year pretending to teach Home Economics.”

  “So you can cook and sew and you know how to dust the coils on the back of the refrigerator?” he asked.

  “I don't think you picked up on the word 'pretending',” I said. “By the way, do refrigerators really have coils somewhere?”

  “Yeah, I found that out when I lost a $900 security deposit because they were dusty.”

  “$900 worth of dust or a crooked landlord?”

  “The latter, plus I was 19 and it was my first apartment,” he said, as he started the boat. “My name is
Nick Delaney in case you need it for your Yelp review. But in my defense I never guessed that you came from Ohio. I thought you were from Tennessee because you're the only ten I see.”

  I cringed inwardly. “Good Lord, you have to get out in civilization more often. How long have you been marooned on the island?”

  “I'll be polite and ignore that insult. I've lived there about six years. What's your name anyhow?”

  “Teri McAfee,” I replied. “And speaking of rude, why did it take you two hours to eat a crab burger while I was sitting on a wooden bench in the hot sun waiting for you to pick me up?”

  “It wasn't just a crab burger,” said Nick. “There were sides.”

  After about 15 minutes of sailing I could see a small island in the distance.

  “Is that Admiral Archibald Falls Island?” I asked.

  “Yes, if you look straight ahead you'll see my dock. We'll be there in less than five minutes.”

  “It looks as if you have about a lot of boats parked there. Business must be good.”

  “Yes, it would look that way.”

  When we got to the dock Nick tied up the boat and we headed down the pier to the parking lot. Next to the parking lot was a two story building with a large sign in front that read “Fishing Trips, Live Bait, Ferry Service 24/7, Captain Nick Delaney, Voted #1 Fishing Trip Captain for the past 10 years.”

  “I thought you said that you've been here for six years and your sign says 10. Why is that?” I asked.

  “I rounded up,” Nick replied.

  There was a red motorcycle parked right in front of the building. Nick went over to it and began securing my suitcase to the rack behind the seats.

  “A motorcycle?”

  “Very good guess. A 2007 Yamaha Road Star to be specific.”

  I looked around. The only other vehicle in the parking lot was an old truck that had the hood up and some wires attached to a portable battery charger. I resigned myself to my fate.

  Just then a large heavy-set man appeared from the other side of the truck. He had a lot of curly black hair, a thick mustache and beard, and wore a tie dyed t-shirt and oil-stained chinos.“Hey, Nick, y'all don't have to use the motorcycle,” he called. “This here battery will be fully charged in about 15 minutes.”

  “That's what you told me yesterday afternoon,” Nick said. “Teri McAfee, this is Brody Hicks, my partner. I bought the boat shop from him.”

  “Don't listen to him, Miss McAfee,” said Brody. “I'll have that there truck going in a few minutes and you can ride up to the B&B in comfort.”

  I could see the stuffing sticking out of the front seats of the truck and the body looked as if the only thing holding it together was rust.

  “Thanks for the offer, Mr. Hicks,” I said, “ but the motorcycle will be fine.”

  It turned out that the motorcycle was fine, but the road wasn't. Nick managed to avoid all the pot holes, which meant we were riding at a 45 degree angle almost half the time. I decided that it would be best if Nick concentrated on his driving and wasn't worrying about my threat of a negative review, so I said, “I'm not really going to Yelp you.”

  “What?” he yelled.

  I shouted, “I'm not really going to Yelp you!”

  “I wish you would,” Nick shouted back as we jumped a pothole.

  “But it was going to be negative.”

  “Yeah, but it's free advertising and I don't have any competition. Don't forget to mention the live bait.”

  Drat! Could this creature be more irritating? Yes, he could. When he dropped me off in front of Aunt Sam's B&B, he put my suitcase on the sidewalk then pulled off his sweaty t-shirt and handed it to me. “All my contact info is on here; email, web site, fax, cell, whatever. Give me a call if you want to have some fun while you're on the island,” he said, and he roared off on the Yamaha before I could say anything.

  As I was thinking about how infuriating he was, the front door of the house opened and a young woman came out. She had light brown hair in a long braid and she had on a white shirt, yellow shorts and yellow Crocs. She said, “Hi, there. You must be Teri. What do y'all think of the place?”

  I took a moment and looked up at the large yellow country-style house. It had porches both upstairs and downstairs with white carved wooden railings and gingerbread trim. Wicker chairs and tables lined the first floor porch and there were breezy lounge chairs on the second floor. Colorful blossoms adorned the bushes and trees that shaded the front of the house and the effect was breath-taking.

  “I've never seen anything like it,” I said. “It's really beautiful.”

  “It really is, isn't it? I'm Dodie Watters and I work for your Auntie Sam. She's on the phone right now but she'll be down in a minute. Why don't y'all come on inside and I'll fix you a nice sandwich and some iced fruit tea. I'll bet you're pretty hot by now. We were expectin' you about two hours ago but your Aunt said you was probably doin' some shoppin' at one of the fancy stores they have over on the big island. I don't mind a bit of window shoppin' myself but the prices are way too high for most of us who have to work for a livin'. I'm glad you took some time to look around over there though.”

  Dodie never stopped talking as she led me into the house. “Now this is the main hallway,” she said as we entered the foyer. “Isn't this a lovely stairway? Hand carved mahogany. And to your right is the livin' room. That's where we check the guests in. You'll want to take some time when you have a few minutes and look at all those antiques. Some of them came with the house when your Auntie Sam bought it and then she added more of her own that she's picked up on her travels.

  “Now the front room to the left of the hall is where guests come to eat. Of course, they don't have to eat here if they want to try out some of the restaurants on the island. Here on the left at the end of the hallway is the library. It's facin' east so it's on the shady side in the afternoons and a person can sit and read or just look out through those big windows at the beach or the swimmin' pool. And over to the right is the kitchen, so come on in and sit yourself down while I fix that sandwich I promised you. Just leave your suitcase in the hall.”

  The kitchen was very large and surprisingly modern. I sat down at the long kitchen table and Dodie went straight to the counter and started making a chicken sandwich, still talking all the while.

  “I was workin' upstairs,” she said, nodding toward the back staircase, which sat just inside the kitchen door, “and when I heard Nick's motorcycle I looked out the window and, sure enough, there was the two of you headin' this way. I thought to myself, 'Well, don't them two make the cutest couple!' you both being blonde like that, him with straight hair and you with all them blonde curls.”

  I reached my hand up and touched my hair. I have curly hair and I spend a lot of time using a flat iron trying to keep it straight. Apparently all the perspiration added to the mist from the boat ride had undone my efforts and my shoulder length straight hair was now a mass of curls. Rats! I always thought that straight long hair parted in the middle gave me a very sophisticated look, whereas curly hair made me look like an aging Shirley Temple. It was then that I realized that my flat iron was in my overnight case which I had left on Nick's boat.

  “Excuse me a minute, Dodie,” I said, “I left my overnight case on the boat. I'd better call Nick and see if he can bring it to me.”

  Dodie laughed. “Sure, honey, I guess all of us gals has done that one time or another, leave something behind so you get a chance to see a good-lookin' guy again. I can't say as I blame you though; when he pulled off that shirt I almost had heart palpitations myself! I do believe that man's muscles have muscles.”

  I started to explain to Dodie that I was more interested in seeing my flat iron again than I was in seeing Nick, but I didn't think she'd believe me, so I said nothing and dialed his number.

  “What?” Did he always answer the phone that way?

  “It's Teri McAfee,” I said. “I left my overnight case on your boat and I was wondering if you or Mr. Hicks could bring it to me.”

  “Sure. How about tomorrow at 6 p.m?”

  “I have some things in there that I need today. I'll be happy to pay you for your trouble.”

  “Not necessary, I'll be there in five,” he said and hung up.