Murder Stalks a Beloved Child: A Mystery

Contents

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

EPILOGUE

MURDER STALKS A BELOVED CHILD

A Mystery

Copyright © 2008 by AnnieMae Robertson

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This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and

dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

ISBN: 978-0-595-48165-1 (pbk)

ISBN: 978-0-595-60259-9 (ebk)

Printed in the United States of America

This book was written for my daughter

Metta,

Warrior/survivor.

She knows first hand the effort that went into its writing.

And my gratitude to all my children for their continued patience.

TOGETHER THEY ARE MY SURVIVAL AND MY LOVE.

CHAPTER 1 

My name is Georgette Anderson Deegan. I like to say that, since it took me a while to remember it again, and even to remember my darling Michelangelo. He and I had finally tied the knot, to the delight of my three grown children, two daughters and a son. They had been pushing hard enough to force an elephant through a needle’s eye—much harder than a camel. I can remember all of that now.

I know our hesitance to marry was fear of unsettling the wonderful relationship we had established all by ourselves. It was a union that had been welded together by the shared drama of several murders we had worked to resolve in the years since the day I arrived at work to find my boss dead at his desk and myself as the leading suspect. Michelangelo, who had been head of company security at the time, had saved my butt then and continued to do so periodically since. I have always had an inclination for getting myself in trouble.

As I said, I am Georgette Anderson Deegan—Georgie Deegan. Georgie is a comfortable name that evokes an image of a solid, sexy young woman prancing home from the factory in her rolled stockings and high-healed shoes, her curls bouncing in rhythm to her strut. And in truth that was very much the nature of my Aunt Georgie who grew up in Passaic, New Jersey during the big war, but hardly describes her namesake.

I have forever worn my light hair cropped very short. And even at this point in my life when it is totally gray I do nothing with it that anyone would define as sexy. Michelangelo even described me as looking like a cute Peter Pan in drag the first time he ever saw me. I don‘t know which annoyed me the most, being depicted as cute or as Peter Pan-ish. I haven’t worn one of those pinch-waist cotton dresses since. I think Michelangelo missed that look. But he was too sweet, or cowardly, to ever let me know.

I want to tell this story from whatever bit of memory I still have intact and work my way out to the beginning and ending, since I’m not sure where the beginning is, or the ending come to think of it. So much is still drifting around me like a circular apparition of people and places, but I hope everything will clear as I go along.

I’ll begin with the day I first saw Jessie down on the rocks. But wait—that image immediately reminds me of other things before Jesse, things that had some bearing on all of this. For instance, shortly after our wedding, Michelangelo’s and mine, one of my daughters died and that shattered me—shattered all of us. Michelangelo, to cheer me up, bought us this house near my childhood home at the beach. He knew it had been my dream forever to retire there one day. And the move helped, it really did, though his being there and caring that much was the thing that helped the most.

The house was decidedly a fixer-upper, but better than I could have hoped considering how long it had been rental property languishing there on the coast. And considering it was within our price range. Any property so near the ocean, or even the bay, was pricey so we were lucky to have spotted it as soon as it came on the market. Almost too coincidental to be coincidental. In retrospect I believe Michelangelo had been in contact with the realtors in that town much sooner than I realized and offered a bit extra if they let him know when anything suitable was about to be available.

The fact that the place was ready for occupancy was frosting on the cake, if you consider beach glitz ready for anything more than a sandy hot July weekend. The seller had left us everything, the old wicker furniture with canvas-covered cushions in a faded green stripe—the metal edged kitchen table and its bright yellow oilcloth cover—two iron double beds with somewhat respectable mattresses on top of the squeaky springs and slats—two dressers—an alarming assortment of teetering table lamps and the teetering tables they sat on—and two floral chintz bedspreads with matching drapes. I felt like I had become my grandmother and thought Michelangelo was going to go into ‘forties retro-overdrive.

We arrived on Labor Day weekend intending to clean the place up before the movers followed in a few days with our worldly goods. That was not the most convenient time to move in, with the tourists entering and leaving town in droves. Labor Day had always been one of the biggest moneymaking weekends of the season. When I was a kid the whole town resembled a huge block party with everyone making the most of the final festivities of summer. But that was back then, before they replaced the amusement park with those view-destroying high-rises. What a sad change that was.

When we came down to look the house over before buying, I missed seeing the old wooden roller coaster that for so many years had been the first structure visible when you rounded the corner on the final approach to the beach. Having spent my childhood in the shadow of that classic ride I could still hear the sound of it in my mind, the way it click clicked up that first hill before the big drop on the far side. It was like a phantom pain after a limb is severed.

So much had changed in the years since. The buses still arrived to unload their cargo of people but it was not at the back door of the park, since the park was no longer there. I remember how superior we felt when I was a kid watching from my parents’ front porch across the street. We didn’t need to drag all that beach paraphernalia: folded wooden chairs—umbrellas—coolers—towels, down to the beach. We just needed to move our lazy butts off the porch rail and run barefoot to the end of the block. Everyone—rich or poor—had access to the sand and the sun back then when even beach parking lots were free. Now you need an annual forty bucks to park, or ten for one day if you are from out of town.

The day Michelangelo and I moved in we watched a pack of young bikers ride by on their Suzukis and Hondas. They were every bit as loud as their dads and granddads had been on their Indians and Harleys. Maybe not everything had changed that much.

We opened all the windows, welcoming the breeze that moved the flowers in their pots on the sills. The air was musky, smelling of the mud flats on the bay, and salty from the wind off the oceanfront. I inhaled gratefully. It was almost enough—but I missed the carnival smells. Where were the sweet aromas of hand rolled sugar cones, cotton candy and saltwater taffy? And the metallic scent of the rides, the taste of graphite that left a slick feeling on your tongue? My throat felt thick with remembering, heat building behind my eyes. There’s always such melancholy in memories.

Michelangelo, sensing my change in mood I guess, crossed and put his hands on my shoulders, allowing me to lean back against him. You okay, Honey? he asked.

Just overdosing on being here.

Was this a bad idea?

I turned, feeling so fortunate to have him in my life. It was the very best idea—the very best. I’m just tired—and you must be too.

Then let’s leave everything as it is for now. He steered me toward the living room where we flopped down on the couch. We watched a housefly play hide-and-seek around an overhead light fixture, neither one of us ready to get up and seek, or swat it down. Live and let live, I was thinking as I fell asleep.

Sunday we unpacked our personal items and Monday morning the moving van arrived with our big stuff—our furniture and god knows how many cartons. We replaced the left things, iron beds and canvas-covered wicker, with our newer things, taking the time to place each item in just the perfect spot. The movers endured the shifting and re-shifting of every chair and box while I made up my mind. When we had the major pieces situated satisfactorily the men accepted a couple of cold beers and shared a huge pizza before leaving us to contend with the remaining mishmash of cartons and plants and clothing containers. After additional hours of sorting, and alternately relegating the decisions on what goes where, we felt miraculously settled in.

Monday Labor Day was over. If it had been in the early sixties the belching buses would have stopped arriving and there would have been no more families loaded with beach gear and no more lines of cars honking through the crowds. Across the street in the deserted park all the rides would have been hanging as limp as closed umbrellas. Even as it was, without the amusement park to so visibly shut down, the town seemed settled—quieter, and I was very glad to be there.

Then it was Tuesday, the day I first saw Jessie. Michelangelo slept late, taking advantage of the cool air coming through the windows. I let myself out without disturbing him, and walked down the hill to lean against the rail embedded in the break wall. So much had changed. The parking lot was pushed further out than I remembered, the town fathers apparently opting for additional parking spaces. Unfortunately it seemed that there would be little room for spreading blankets and beach chairs on the sand when the tide was high. I groaned my irritation.

Bridal Rock Beach had once been the most beautiful white sand beach on the whole northeast coast. In spite of the parking lot encroachment it was still beautiful, a five mile curve along the eastern edge of a narrow peninsula that jutted north toward Boston Bay. A short distance to my right, where the peninsula joined the mainland, the rocks had tumbled from the cliff edge to form a natural jetty out into the water. As a further infringement on one of my favorite childhood haunts, a staggering of condos replaced the old gray clapboard house that had once stood on top of the cliffs.

Moving down the stairs close by, I slipped out of my thongs and walked gingerly across the hot sand toward the rocks. I had just reached the base of the cliff front when I spotted Jessie. I don’t know why my mind was so drawn to her, but it was—enough to know she was in some kind of trouble. It might have been because she was climbing toward a particularly dangerous ledge above, one with a nasty history of accidental or intentional fatal plunges down the face.

She paused for a moment and leaned in against the rocks, possibly having second thoughts about climbing there and pausing before she made her way back down. Thank you, God, I sighed with relief. But before I could get too comfortable she started upward again. I had that awful feeling she knew all about that ledge and had, in fact, selected it for her own distressed reasons. My reaction was not intended, it just happened. I shouted at her. Hey there, stop! In retrospect I realize that my interference by itself could have been risky, but my mouth spit the words out before my brain had a chance to intervene.

She did stop. At least that was accomplished. Then she turned and looked down at me. Leave me alone! she shouted.

Those rocks are too slippery! They’re dangerous!

Go away! she shouted back, hardly words that would deter me. I started up, placing my feet carefully, trying to summon up old skills from when that place was my challenge. God knows what I intended to do once I reached her. Certainly a struggle in that place wouldn’t lessen the danger. But what choices did I have?

Fortunately before I got very far she shifted direction and scrambled across the face of the rocks to where there was a dip revealing the fence at the lower edge of the condo drive. She was quickly gone from view and I was left to cautiously inch back down. I wanted to smack her for conning me into taking such a risk—which was pretty stupid since I was the aggressive one. I never had learned to mind my own business. It would have served me right if I slipped and fractured a vertebra, god forbid. By the time I finally stood on flat ground all my underused muscles were quivering like loosened bowstrings.

After all the years away, I knew only a few people in town. One was our neighbor Emily Walsh who had been so helpful to us when we were buying the house. She had been a contemporary and friend of my parents. When I was a child, her front porch was as welcome to me as my own. On my way back up the road I stopped at her place, supposedly to let her know we were unpacked and settled, but in reality to see if she knew anything about the girl on the beach. If anyone would, she would.

Ms. Walsh had always been a large woman. When she moved it seemed as if there was a moment before the outer layers of her flesh decided to go along. But once she hoisted herself out of her rocker, she moved easily and energetically into the kitchen to get us something cool to drink. And, possibly because of the early fall in the air, very little perspiration beaded on her face and neck, or glistened along the steel gray braids twisted into a knot on the top of her head.

As I followed, I thought about the hundreds of times I’d crossed into that kitchen as a kid and sat at her table for cookies and milk. I had always been in awe of her size, with a child’s suspicion that there was something not right about it. My mother had usually referred to her as poor Emily in hushed tones that implied not only was I too young to understand but that her problems went beyond her cumbersome size, and were even the cause of it in some mysterious way.

You spoke to her? she asked over her shoulder.

I shouted up at her, actually.

I think I know the one. Her name is Jessica. She poured a large glass of cola and handed it to me. "Just moved into Mary Lennon’s place. You wouldn’t know Mary Lennon. She bought the rooming house behind your folks’ place after you left. Always takes in the strange ones like some folks adopt all the stray puppies. Probably because she had such a tough time herself, a long stretch in an iron lung when she was a kid, then with her legs in braces all these years since. She doesn’t go out much, but I’m amazed at her energy. Raised a number of foster children. So taking in another stray isn’t surprising.

The girl showed up with no luggage and Mary even had to loan her some of her daughter’s things to tide her over until she can get some of her own.

Isn’t that a bit risky?

I suppose, but life is risky. I’m sure the girl will be company for her. And knowing Mary she’ll still be tiding her over three years from now.

Moving back onto the porch she settled into the rocker, the wood of the chair seeming to give and then enfold her ample proportions as if it were alive. I was amazed at the woman. I hadn’t seen her for years—yet, her aging was only visible in the additional white hairs in her coiled braids.

Well, Georgie, she said in her easy conversational way, this is the first chance we’ve had to talk since you moved in. Goodness knows just seeing you dredges up so many memories. Granted you’ve grown some from that little tyke that used to drag sand up onto my porch. And it seems somebody finally taught you to wear shoes. But seems natural to have you sitting here. Her rocker thump-thumped on the irregular old porch boards. Appears you’ve found you a nice man this time around.

Michelangelo is the best.

A Greek boy?

Irish actually. He said his mother named him Michelangelo so she could call him her little angel for the duration of her life. The name suits him. Most people just call him Mike. I was straddling the wide porch rail, my feet dangling on either side as though I were still an eight-year old. The town has changed.

"Things do. Can’t stop that from happening. The noise level is down some—and it’s a bit harder to see the ocean with these huge condominiums blocking everything, but you’ll see it’s still the same town nonetheless. Everybody knows everybody’s business. The whole town knew you folks bought the house even before the sold sign was on the grass. Would ‘a made your folks happy to see you settle down here.

I miss them, ‘specially your dad. He had such a difficult time after your mother passed. He’d come and set right where you’re setting, feet over each side same way, and we’d talk on for hours. They were nice folks. She nodded her head slowly as if she was spreading old memories and examining them like yellow photos in an album. The years go too fast.

I know, I mumbled. I had no argument with that.

Heard you lost one of your own. That’s a sadness. She paused to let that comment clear before going on. The girl is no townie. And my guess is she’s in a passel of trouble. Though what sort I’d be hard pressed to say. In our day good chance it was an unwanted pregnancy, but nowadays kids have a wider choice of ways to mess themselves up. Mary says she’s not like the others she’s had there. Seems mighty unhappy. Says she’s wearing a wedding band so it might be she’s hiding from an abusive husband. Though if that was the case it’d seem the ring would be the first thing I’d get rid of. She wiped at the moisture on her neck. Hate to see summer go, but wouldn’t mind a bit of cool.

I couldn’t wait to share my morning adventure with Michelangelo even though I had to watch his eyebrows do their contemplative gyrations as I talked. His reaction was far kinder than I deserved after all the times I’d dragged him into risky situations. But my involvement wasn’t going to go beyond momentarily whetting my curiosity this time, so he was safe.

She pretty much ignored me, other than telling me to get lost, Michelangelo, so I’m sure she won’t become a problem, I reassured him.

Um, seems I’ve heard that before.

I’ll probably never see her again. His eyebrows peaked doubtfully. Emily Walsh suggested that she might be a young wife running away from a bad marriage.

She said that did she? How did she arrive at that?

She said the girl wears a wedding ring.

Umm, maybe she’s newly widowed—lost a husband in Iraq, or in an accident.

But, Michelangelo, why would she have arrived here with no luggage and half dressed?

We are going to get involved in this aren’t we?

Michelangelo!

Michelangelo, what? he grinned. Georgie, I know you so well. Just promise me you’ll be careful. Don’t overreact, okay?

So I promised I’d not overreact. As if I could control that. But I did mean it when I said it. And I almost managed to do it. But when I was down on the beach a couple of days later, with the sky that artificial blue and the waves frothing in explosive towers above the jetty, my promise meant nothing.

Struggling with my paint box, trying to get it level, I pretty much forgot everything except getting those spindly legs pushed into the sand. When I finally got the thing anchored down and somewhat stabilized, I locked the canvas to the easel attached to the top. The box was a wonderfully inventive, spidery looking apparatus that worked well on most days. But that day, in the wind, the canvas took on the personality of a sail and threatened to tumble the whole setup, canvas over leggy box, across the sand.

I was not aware of Jessie until she flung her words in my direction. Why have you come here? Why are you spying on me? She was standing directly to my right on a small shelf of stones. Her long blond hair was whipping across her face so she had to hesitate speaking to pull some of the stragglers out of her mouth. She was barefoot, her jeans rolled to mid-calf the way I had always rolled mine to keep them dry when I waded along the water’s edge. Stay out of my life!

Now that did