Dune to Death Read online

  Joe, unfortunately, was wide-awake. He was uncomfortable, if not in pain, and extremely bored. The food was wretched and the nurses spent all their time sitting on their fat duffs gossiping and eating saltwater taffy. His doctors knew as much about modern medicine as Hippocrates. He’d called police headquarters back home to inform them of his accident and had not received an adequate amount of sympathy.

  “Woody wasn’t even there,” he complained, referring to his subordinate, the taciturn but kindly Officer Price. “He was off on some damned drive-by shooting. They ought to let Vice handle that crap,” he said in an unreasonable tone. “It’s all drug-related. Sometimes I think the Chief has his head up his…”

  “Gee, Joe,” Judith said quietly, trying to plump up the pillows behind his head, “aren’t you glad Renie came down? I am. She only complains about root beer floats.”

  “Or the absence thereof,” put in Renie, trying to pull the room’s second chair up to Joe’s bed without waking Jake Beezle. She failed.

  “Hey, sweetheart,” chirruped Jake, “you shrank! Did you bring the good stuff this time?”

  “Over here, Mr. Beezle,” called Judith. “That’s my cousin. She’s a teetotaler.”

  “Awwww…” Jake groaned as Renie scooted out of his line of vision. “Hey,” he yelled, jerking back the curtain, “you got any cards?”

  “Afraid not,” said Judith, trying to keep Joe from yanking on his pulleys.

  “Cards?” Joe stopped squirming.

  “I’ve got some,” said Renie.

  Aghast, Judith stared at Renie. “You do?”

  “Sure.” She delved into her enormous handbag and came up with two decks of Bicycle playing cards. “You know how Bill hates for me to read in bed because it keeps him awake. I read in the bathtub and if I run out of books on a trip, I play solitaire on the bathroom floor.” She slipped the red deck out of its box. “Oh!—these are for pinochle. That’s why I had so many red queens.”

  “Pinochle!” exclaimed Jake.

  “Pinochle!” cried Joe.

  “Pinochle!” moaned Judith.

  “Four-handed?” inquired Renie.

  Judith made a face at her cousin. “At nine in the morning? Are you nuts?”

  Jake had pushed the curtain aside and somehow managed to reach the edge of the bed. “You can clear off this here stand thing and one of you girls can sit behind it and the other one between the beds.” He patted his mattress and leered at both Judith and Renie. “Real close like, okay? Looks like Flynn over there and me will have to be partners, seeing as how we can’t move around so good. Deal ’em.”

  Renie did, wedged in between the wall and Joe’s combination table and tray. Judith hauled her chair over and glared at Renie. “I can’t believe we’re doing this,” she said between clenched teeth. “Haven’t I suffered enough from those cribbage sessions with my mother?”

  “Good game, cribbage,” said Jake, who had jammed an unlighted cigar in his mouth. “If those porker nurses hadn’t locked up all my money, we could play some stud.” He grinned around his stogie and jabbed Judith with an elbow. “Stud’s my game, stud’s my name. Get it?”

  “I already got it from Renie,” muttered Judith. “Bid or bunch.”

  “I’ll say two hundred,” said Joe, looking considerably more cheerful. “Hey, Jake, you got another cigar?”

  “I forget,” said Renie, who was never at her best before 10:00 A.M. “What’s a good bid for four-handed? Three-ninety, four hundred?”

  “Right,” said Jake, reaching under the mattress and pulling out a battered box. “Here, Flatfoot, have a cigar. Pity we can’t light ’em in this booby hatch.”

  For the next two hours, the foursome played three games, two of which were won by the men. Judith, whose back was giving her fits in the low-slung visitor’s chair, finally announced that she had to go fly a kite.

  “Mrs. Hoke brought us one,” she said, replacing Joe’s water carafe and trying not to knock over his IV stand.

  Jake stopped buzzing for the nurse to bring him a bedpan. “Hoke? Alice Hoke? Strange woman. Spooky. Haven’t seen her in years.”

  Judith felt like saying she wished she could be as lucky. “Mrs. Hoke is a bit different, but her beach house is charming. It’s the giggle that gets me.”

  “Giggle?” Jake made a scornful gesture with his gnarled hand. “I never knew that woman to smile, let alone giggle. She’s a real sourpuss.”

  “Whatever,” murmured Judith, bending down to kiss Joe good-bye. Seeing the bleak expression on his round, faintly florid, face, she was overcome with remorse. “Oh, Joe, this is such a rotten thing! In the fall, let’s fly down to San Francisco and paint the town red! Remember all our old haunts? We’ll stay at the Fairmont and go to the Top of the Mark and Fisherman’s Wharf and the Blue Fox and out to North Beach and…”

  Joe was looking pitiful. “How can I climb those hills on crutches? Just put me in a ground floor room on Mission Street and I’ll watch the bums beat each other up for a pint of muscatel.”

  Jake popped up from his pillows. “Muscatel? Somebody got some vino fino over there? Hey, you guys, pass it around!”

  Judith gave Jake a thin smile, then turned her attention back to Joe. “You’ll be fine in a few weeks. I talked to Dr. Scott this morning. Really, Joe, he strikes me as quite competent. And that intern, Dr. Lundgren, seems very dedicated.” She kissed him again. “Renie and I’ll be back this afternoon.”

  “Promise?” Joe was growing more wan by the minute.

  “Sure. I love you.” Her voice had dropped to a whisper.

  “Me, too,” said Joe, and closed his eyes.

  “Honestly,” said Renie when they were out in the parking lot, “men make the most dismal patients. I told Bill the next time he got a cold I was getting him a Do-It-Yourself-Last-Rites-Kit. Did I ever tell you about the time he hyperventilated in the middle of the night and I woke up to find him sitting there in bed with a paper bag over his head?”

  “Dan did that once,” said Judith, “but it was a grocery bag. He’d eaten all the groceries first. For the week.” She sighed and got into the car. “By the way, ditch those cards, will you? I’m not going to spend the week playing pinochle with Joe and that crazy old coot, Beezle. I was married too long to one semi-invalid to put up with that.”

  Renie jumped a little as Judith banged the car door shut. “I don’t know about that,” said Renie as Judith revved the engine with a vengeance.

  “About what?” Judith’s strong features were set.

  “It seems to me,” Renie said lightly, but with meaning, “that maybe you’ve been single too long. Could it be that you’ve forgotten what marriage—a real marriage—is all about?”

  Judith didn’t answer. But as they drove down 101, she was thinking very hard.

  The kite-flying was not a success. The cousins discovered that it took more than a good wind and a lot of strong string to fly the sophisticated kites of Buccaneer Beach. They wouldn’t give up, however, and decided that next time they’d find somebody who would teach them. Not, Judith noted, the curly-haired young man from the motel who still couldn’t get his green dragon off the ground. A more likely prospect was a ten-year-old boy with a kite shaped like a giant black and gold butterfly. His kite had soared, dipped, swooped, and circled with all the grace of a ballet dancer. Judith and Renie were duly impressed.

  “A lot of them are practicing for the annual kite-flying contest,” Judith explained over dinner on the bay at Chuck’s Chowder House. “It’s part of the July Fourth Freebooters’ Festival. That’s what all the banners are for along the main drag.”

  “That’s a week away,” said Renie in mild surprise. “We could still be here for that if Joe’s not out of the hospital.”

  Judith grimaced. “We’re only paid up through Saturday night. If we have to stay on, we’ll have to rent one of those cardboard boxes in the carport. I can’t afford another seven hundred bucks.”

  Renie was watching the waves an
d looking wistful. “I could pitch in. It wouldn’t be for a whole week, anyway. Unless I succumb to an attack of guilt over my neglected clients, we could be here for all the festivities.” She crumbled a handful of crackers into her chowder. “It might be fun. There I was, feeling sorry for myself, with Bill gone, and Tom and Tony running off on a sailboat, and Anne flying down to L.A. for the holiday. Buccaneer Beach would sure beat lighting sparklers for our mothers and letting them spell out insulting names for each other.”

  “Let’s just be thankful all four of our kids have jobs for the summer,” said Judith, referring to Mike and the three Jones offspring. “Joe’s daughter, Caitlin, may be coming back from Switzerland for Christmas.”

  “That’ll be nice,” agreed Renie as their waiter brought them each a shrimp Caesar salad. They waited for him to perform with the giant pepper mill. Chuck’s Chowder House was crowded, a large, noisy eatery where customers sat family style on benches. Judith and Renie, having returned from another round of pinochle at the hospital, had arrived shortly before seven. The line at Chuck’s had reached far into the jammed parking lot. The cousins had not been seated until just before eight, or, as Renie put it, about two minutes short of her demise from famine.

  But the wait was worth it. The salad was crisp, the creamy chowder lived up to its reputation, and the sockeye salmon steaks almost brought tears to Renie’s eyes.

  “Much better than green Spam, huh, coz?” grinned Judith over a Coffee Nudge.

  “You bet.” Renie smacked her lips. “And don’t you feel virtuous for entertaining Joe and Jake this afternoon?”

  Judith dropped her eyes. “I guess.” She paused, making circles with her forefinger on the smooth tabletop. “Maybe you’re right. In over four years, I got used to being single.”

  Renie inclined her head. “Joe was smart. He figured you needed time to know your own mind.” She regarded Judith with what her cousin called her serious Boardroom Face. “Even with Joe, it won’t be easy, coz.”

  “True.” Judith gave Renie a crooked smile. “We’re not exactly off to a carefree start.”

  “Maybe that’s just as well.” Above the rim of her Spanish coffee, Renie gave Judith a fond look. “You get through this honeymoon, and the rest will be easy.”

  Judith laughed. Renie was right. Nothing was ever easy. The combination of Renie’s company and the excellent meal soothed her soul. She gazed out over the bay where half a dozen pleasure boats headed for home in the gathering darkness. There was no sunset, for rain clouds had blown in with the afternoon breeze. Directly below the windowsill a little creek tumbled through large boulders, making its way to the sea. Several children, and almost as many dogs, scampered on the sands. Smoke from a beach fire curled up into the twilight. Judith watched the waves and felt at peace.

  A soft mist had settled in on the MG’s windshield when Judith and Renie reached the parking lot. The air was cool and damp, but the wind had died down. It was almost ten by the time they returned to Pirate’s Lair. To Judith’s relief, the house was dark, but she had remembered to leave a light on in the garage. The faint sound of music could be heard drifting from the We See Sea Resort next door. Judith decided they should build a fire in the cottage’s stone fireplace. The cousins gathered wood and kindling to bring inside. Judith noticed that more boxes seemed to be missing from the garage. She gave a mental shrug—if Mrs. Hoke were moving her belongings, that was fine—as long as she didn’t keep popping into the house itself. Maybe, Judith thought with a wry smile, she’d taken home a crate of dulcimers.

  Renie was already in the kitchen, flipping on the lights. “Have you opened the damper yet?” she asked, heading for the living room.

  “No,” replied Judith as Renie switched on a table lamp by the beige sofa that sat across from the fireplace. “Let’s make sure we do it right. I wouldn’t want to set off the smoke alarm.”

  The words were hardly out of her mouth when Renie set off her own alarm. A piercing scream brought Judith vaulting around the sofa and across the floor. Renie stood frozen, the kindling clutched in her arms like a newborn baby. At her feet was Mrs. Hoke, long arms and legs at awkward angles. At her side was the bright pink kite the cousins had tried to fly in vain that afternoon.

  And around her neck was the long, strong string. Her face was a ghastly shade of purple and the gray eyes bulged up at the cousins.

  Judith and Renie knew she was dead.

  FOUR

  MRS. HOKE, ALAS, was not the first body the cousins had encountered. After their initial shock, Judith volunteered to summon help. Unable to figure out if the area had 911 emergency service, she called both the Buccaneer Beach police and the Juniper County Sheriff. Still dazed, Judith replaced the phone and immediately questioned her own judgment.

  “Drat,” she groaned, slumping onto a kitchen chair. “Now we’ll have both the police and the sheriff here. What a mess!”

  “Let them sort it out,” said Renie, rummaging in the cabinets for brandy or some other calming source. “Jeez, coz, how could we possibly end up with another dead body?”

  Judith gave Renie a gimlet eye. “We live in violent times,” she murmured. Leaning so far back in the chair that she almost tipped it over, Judith swore in frustration. “Having Joe break a leg was bad enough, but now this! Why couldn’t that goofy woman get herself killed some place else?”

  Having failed to find anything stronger than orange juice, Renie poured them each a glass and collapsed at the table. “That’s a good question. Why here?”

  Judith blinked. “It’s also a callous one. I think marriage has turned me into a miserable crank.” She took a sip of orange juice and shook her head. “Poor soul. Here I’m carping about my honeymoon and she’s dead. Why don’t I just go rent a broom instead of a kite and fly back to Heraldsgate Hill?”

  Renie couldn’t sit still. She was pacing the kitchen, glancing out toward the cul-de-sac every time she went by the window. “Where’s her car?” asked Renie.

  “I didn’t see it.” In her mind’s eye, Judith pictured the scene as they approached the cottage. A van, a pickup, a beater, and a couple of compact cars had been parked along the road. But no Buick. “You’re right,” said Judith. “Why did she come here to get herself killed?”

  Renie stopped pacing and leaned on the back of a chair. “Maybe she was meeting the boyfriend here again.”

  Judith considered, then shook her head. “Unless Mrs. Hoke reserved this place for her assignations—and for all I know, she might—it seems pretty odd that she’d show up two evenings in a row when she knows we might be here or coming along at any moment. It would also be risky for whoever killed her. If we hadn’t had to wait so long at Chuck’s Chowder House, we might have been here an hour ago. Oh, dear!” Judith shuddered. “If we had, maybe we would have been in time to stop the murderer!”

  “Well, we weren’t here,” Renie declared. “You can’t beat yourself over the head for that.” She stiffened as sirens sounded in the distance. Then more sirens, coming from another direction. Renie grimaced. “Shoot, where will they all park?”

  “That,” said Judith, getting up, “is their problem. At least they aren’t pulling up in front of Hillside Manor and scaring off the clientele.”

  Through the window, the lights from the emergency vehicles flashed around the kitchen. Renie started for the back door but Judith heard a vigorous rapping at the front. Avoiding Mrs. Hoke’s body, Judith raced out of the kitchen to let in half a dozen police and firemen.

  “Sheriff,” said a tall, lean man in his late forties, barging past Judith.

  “Chief of Police,” said a short, stocky man about the same age rushing with Renie from the kitchen area.

  “Where’s the body?” The two law enforcement officers made a duet of the question, but it wasn’t music to anybody’s ears. Indeed, they had both stopped in back of the sofa, glaring at each other.

  “Who called you?” demanded the police chief, bristling.

  “What’s it
to you?” snapped the sheriff. “Take a hike, Clooney.”

  “The hell I will!” retorted the police chief, fists on hips. “We got called over here. This is my jurisdiction. You’re out of your league, Eldritch. As usual.”

  The sheriff loomed menacingly over the police chief. Eldritch had sunken blue eyes with deep hollows and a lantern jaw. “When was the last time you caught a perp, Clooney?”

  The police chief shoved his stomach at the sheriff. “The last time you let one slip through your knock-knees, Eldritch. I always get my perp, you twerp.”

  Judith and Renie exchanged dazed looks while the various emergency personnel milled around as if they were looking for canapés at a cocktail party. “Excuse me…” Judith shouted, but nobody heard her except Renie.

  “Hey!” yelled one of the firemen from the middle of the living room. “There’s a dead woman on the rug!”

  The argument between the sheriff and the police chief ceased. Grimly, the two men marched toward the corpse.

  “Hell’s bells!” breathed Chief Clooney. “She’s dead, huh?”

  “As a dodo,” agreed Sheriff Eldritch. “What color is that anyway?”

  “Puce,” snapped Judith, coming up behind the sheriff. “This isn’t an art exhibit; it’s a murder victim. Would you people please do your duty?”

  The two men turned surprised faces toward Judith. Eldritch seemed bemused; Clooney bristled a bit. “You the one who called me in?” the chief asked, hitching his belt over his paunch.

  “I called both of you,” Judith replied, her gaze avoiding the corpse. “I wasn’t sure who had authority in a small town. That’s why there’s such confusion. I’m sorry about that, but you’re lucky I didn’t call the State Police, too.”

  Chief Clooney didn’t look as if he felt so lucky, but at least he stopped bristling. His square face was flushed and he ran a beefy hand through the sparse brown hairs atop his head. “Okay, let’s get on with it. Looks to me like the lady’s been strangled.” He glanced quickly at his rival law enforcement official. “Well?”