Blown Away Page 2

  “He’s over there.” I pointed to the rocks, the tide now far enough out to have exposed the body fully. The sheriff stepped on the rocks, then without changing his expression, muttered a few words into his radio before turning to me.

  “Help me turn him over,” he said.

  “Me? I—”

  He’d already leapt down from the rocks and knelt at the body’s side. “If there’s a chance he’s alive, I’ll need your help.”

  I gulped and crawled over the rocks but kept a few feet away from the body. Instinct told me there was no reviving him. The sheriff laid a hand on the body’s neck, then shook his head. Gently, with one hand on a shoulder and another on a hip, he rolled the body faceup.

  My breath froze in my throat, but I couldn’t look away. The blood in my ears roared like the surf. The dead man couldn’t have been much older than I—late twenties or maybe thirty. He wore a sand-incrusted T-shirt and jeans, but his feet were bare. His curly brown hair stuck to his skull, and tattoos formed sleeves on his arms. What seared me deepest were his eyes. Wide open and blue. That, and the three-inch gash in his chest.

  “Oh my God,” I gasped.

  Sheriff Koppen studied the body dispassionately. He murmured a benediction in a language I didn’t understand, then said, “Miles Logan.”

  Miles Logan. Miles. Where had I heard that name before? My brain had turned to sludge.

  “Looks recent.” The sheriff squinted toward the ocean. “With the tides, this must have happened last night. The medical examiner will say for sure.”

  Still unable to speak, I shivered as I thought of the man’s body buffeted all night in the sea. While Dave and I had laughed and talked by the bonfire and Avery slept off a headache, this man’s life was taken, and he was dumped off a boat to wash up here.

  The sheriff stood. “You called this in?” Behind him, another Suburban, this one red and topped with a siren, rumbled up.

  “Yes,” I managed. “I’m Emmy. Emmy Adler. I live up there.” I pointed up the bluff to the house.

  “The Cook house,” he said. “You’re the owner of the new kite shop, right?”

  I nodded, still breathing erratically.

  “I’ll come see you soon. Right now I have other things to attend to.” He turned back toward the body.

  * * *

  While the sheriff and paramedics worked on the beach, I climbed back to the house, my breath coming faster than it should. A dead body. I’d found a body.

  Inside, Avery still slept. Not surprising, considering it was barely seven o’clock and a Saturday, at that. I considered waking her but decided against it. After all, she hadn’t been feeling well, and she had an efficient morning crew at the coffee shop. I’d fill her in on the drama later.

  I wandered the house, Bear at my heels. Breakfast didn’t sound good, and there was no way I could settle down and read the newspaper. I left a brief note for Avery, then grabbed the first thing I could find—the sweater my mother had given me—and left the house. I’d go to Strings Attached and get ready. With the annual sand-castle competition and the unofficial opening of tourist season, it was sure to be a big day. Besides, anything would be better than staying at home while the sheriff worked on the beach below.

  It was barely half a mile to the center of town on quiet roads, so I rode my bike. The clouds had dispersed, and it was shaping up to be an unseasonably fine day for June. Anyone else—say, a visitor staying in one of Rock Point’s guesthouses, or one of the year-round residents readying a fishing boat—would breathe the fresh, piney-salty air and proclaim the day downright beautiful. But none of them had started the morning with a corpse.

  I pushed my bike up the steps of the shop and leaned it on the porch while I unlocked the door. Strings Attached was in the lower level of a Victorian house just a block from the beach. The building’s owner, Frank Hopkins, had an apartment upstairs he used from time to time during the summer, as well as plenty of other real estate in town. He’d leased me the whole ground floor, with a retail space in front and space for a kite workshop in the old kitchen in the rear. I wheeled my bike to the workshop and leaned it out of the way against the entrance to the stairwell that used to connect the building’s floors.

  I surveyed the front of the shop with pride. Vibrant rows of kites dangled from the ceiling. Extra line, kite parts, and kits waited on shelves that lined the room. One of the glories of renting a storefront in an old house was that I had hardwood floors and panes of stained glass in the front door.

  I sighed. Two hours until opening and nothing to do but obsess about the dead body. I needed something else to pass the time. Maybe I’d brainstorm kite designs. With a pencil in my hand, I could lose hours completely absorbed. Plus, I had an idea for an asymmetrical kite that would be tricky to keep airborne, and I wanted to flesh it out.

  As I turned to the workshop to get my sketchbook, I heard a sharp rap on the front door. Curious, I threw the bolt and cracked the door open, then opened it wider. A jeans-clad woman with long gray hair and an elegant figure stood on the porch.

  “Good morning,” she said. “I couldn’t help but see you come in.” Her smile was warm, welcoming. “I’ve been eyeing those gorgeous kites through the window for the past few weeks, and I simply must meet you.” She stuck out her hand. “Stella Hart.”

  “Oh,” I said abruptly. After the morning’s shock, I wasn’t feeling overly friendly. The woman’s smile amped a few watts, and I relented. “Emmy Adler,” I said. “This is my shop.”

  She waited. She glanced up at the kites, then back at me.

  “Would you like to come in?” I asked.

  “Why, thank you.” Stella stepped over the threshold and audibly drew in her breath. “Astonishing! Those, there on the left. Inspired by Matisse cutouts, are they?”

  “Yes, they are.” I was surprised. Most people think my kites are simply “artsy,” and they never expect they’ll fly. “I adapted his dove design, so the tail is aerodynamic. It was one of my first appliquéd designs.”

  “And this one could be drawn from a midcentury Picasso.” The woman touched the edge of a sky-blue, rounded rectangle with a lily on it.

  “I hesitated to make it blue since the sky is blue—”

  “But the sky is mostly gray here.”

  “Exactly what I thought,” I said. The woman’s cheekbones were strong, and the skin drawn taut over them was nearly translucent. A pink glow—not makeup, because she clearly didn’t wear much—infused her complexion.

  “Ms. Hart, would you like a cup of tea? It’s still early, but today is Strings Attached’s first day, and I was too excited to wait at home.” I let it rest at that.

  “Call me Stella. Please,” she said. “And yes, I’d love a cup of tea, if you don’t mind. I see that you’re an artist, and I’m an artist myself. I’d love to see more of what you’ve done.”

  I invited her to my workshop, and we christened my first day with a hot cup of Darjeeling and a discussion of kites and art. It turned out that Stella had been a schoolteacher during the day but had painted at night. After she retired, she’d turned to painting full time, and now her work was shown in galleries along the coast and in Portland and Seattle. Her husband died a few years ago, and she’d moved to Rock Point not long after to “be near beauty,” as she put it. Now she was painting during the day and greeting guests at the Tidal Basin at night “for stimulation.” I felt entirely comfortable with her. Before the pot of tea was finished, I was telling her about the body I’d found that morning.

  “Sheriff Koppen, huh?” she said. “A good man. Part Clatsop Indian, you know. Catches a lot of flak because of it among some of the less open-minded. But I don’t know anyone who complains about how he’s done his job.”

  She was sensitive enough not to ask me a lot of questions about the body, and I was reluctant to talk too much about it yet. “I couldn’t really
get a read on him.”

  She seemed not to hear me and turned to stare out the window. “Something’s changed in town lately. Bad feeling is going around. I can’t quite figure it out.” She tapped a finger absently on the table. “Not that I ever expected this. A body . . .”

  A body. I pushed the teapot away and took a deep breath. “I know.”

  “I’m sorry, darling.” Stella reached across the table and laid a thin hand on mine. “Don’t let this ruin a special day for you. Congratulations on Strings Attached.”

  “Thank you.” I tried to appear composed. At some point the sheriff would show up and start asking questions. His emotionless face flitted across my mind.

  “One more thing. It’s a small town here. There are sure to be a lot of wagging tongues. Don’t pay them any mind.” With a smile, she was gone. I watched her trim figure head up the street and disappear around a corner.

  Strange. She hadn’t even asked who the dead man was.

  * * *

  Alone in my shop once again, I glanced at the clock, an old hand-wound mantel clock Avery had found at a rummage sale and insisted would be perfect in the room. As usual, she was right. The serious lines of the clock set off the front room’s antique molding and complemented the more frivolous waves of kites. It was still barely nine thirty, and the shop wouldn’t open until ten. I drew a deep breath. What the heck. It wasn’t like the morning could get any worse. Why not go see old man Sullivan and his kite shop and get it over with?

  I grabbed my keys, and, on second thought, the lumpy sweater my mom had given me, and set out up the street. Rock Point teemed with tourists during the summer, but now, early in the season, the town felt cozy and small. Sullivan’s Kites was only two blocks away, in a stand-alone storefront on the town’s main drag, past Martino’s Pizza and the tiny sheriff’s office—was he there now, or still on the beach?—and a block below the street where Avery’s café, the Brew House, stood. I took a chance that someone would be readying Sullivan’s Kites before opening. This was a big day, and people would be driving in from up and down the coast to build sand castles and, hopefully, fly kites on the beach.

  I rapped on the glass front door.

  “Come in,” I heard from within the store.

  I pushed open the door and passed into the place I remembered so well from my childhood, the store that had inspired my love of kites. Above me, rows of kites—many more than I had at Strings Attached—danced in the faint breeze I had stirred. Unlike my fanciful kites with chiffon tails and unusual shapes, these were practical sport kites and traditional designs. I moved toward the back, where I remembered the counter being.

  Behind the counter stood a man I’d never seen. Believe me, I’d remember if I had. He was tall with thick brown hair brushed behind his ears. He swept it back with one hand. His eyes were gray and velvety as a tabby cat. On the customer’s side of the counter was a woman, her back to me.

  “Can I help you?” he asked.

  “Yes. I, uh—” I started. The woman turned to me now. She was probably originally a mousy brunette, but she’d dyed her hair blond and hyped the effect with a prairie-style sundress with the top two buttons undone. “I’m looking for—” I bit off “old man” and simply said “Mr. Sullivan.”

  “I’m Mr. Sullivan,” the man said.

  The blond gave a shuddering sigh. “Jack. I just don’t know what to do . . .”

  Flustered, I backed up a step. “I’m sorry. I seem to have arrived at a bad time. I just wanted to say that I’m Emmy Adler, and I’m opening a new kite store today, Strings—”

  “Attached,” he finished. “I’m Jack Sullivan. Pleased to meet you.”

  He proffered a hand, and it took me a second to snap out of my daze and shake it. “But I thought—”

  “My grandfather started the shop. I’ve been running it for a few years now, since he died.” He nodded toward the blond. “This is Annabelle Black. I’m afraid she’s just had some bad news.”

  This was old man Sullivan? No wonder Avery and Dave had been smirking when my dad called him that. They’d pay for this, one way or another. They were probably yucking it up even now.

  “My—my friend is dead.” Annabelle hitched her breath. “They found his body this morning.” She broke into sobs. Jack kept his distance.

  My stomach dropped. She had to be talking about the body I found. “I’m sorry to hear that,” I ventured.

  “Murdered,” she added.

  “Oh,” I said. Inadequate, but it was all I could muster. “I’m so sorry.”

  “You couldn’t possibly understand,” she said. “Don’t even try.”

  Harsh. I took a step back and reminded myself that she was still in shock. “I’m so sorry,” I repeated.

  “Do I know you?” Annabelle asked when her sobs subsided. Her eyes were surprisingly dry. She let her gaze pass over me. “Nice sweater.”

  I looked at the lumps of gray wool. “It was knitted by blind Guatemalans.”

  “Blind, huh?” Annabelle said.

  “I’ve seen your kites through the window,” Jack said. “They sure are, uh, colorful.”

  What was that supposed to mean? “I studied art, but I assure you they’re—”

  “I didn’t mean that,” Jack said. “I’m sure they fly fine, especially if you’re more interested in how a kite looks than in performance.”

  Good grief. I’d just dropped in to say hello, not be double-teamed with animosity. “Maybe I’d better go now. I’m interrupting your talk.”

  “I loved Miles,” Annabelle cut in, apparently eager to get back to her tragedy. “We were meant to be together. Sure, he took up with that coffeehouse woman, but that was only a fling, a reaction before he came back to me. Sometimes you just know. I knew.”

  And at last I knew, too. Miles Logan. The chef at the Tidal Basin. Avery’s last boyfriend, and the man whose body I’d found that morning.

  chapter three

  The morning at Strings Attached passed surprisingly quickly. It seemed that only moments after I flipped the sign to “Open,” customers appeared. Many, lattes in hand, were simply window-shopping, but I appreciated their compliments on my kites, especially the kites I’d designed myself. Among these wanderers were also a few serious customers.

  A Matisse kite sold to an out-of-towner who also made kites. We talked about the difficulty of appliquéing ripstop nylon as I carefully rolled the kite and slipped it into its protective canvas bag. I sold a few of my more practical beginner kites, too. Maybe one of them would spark a love of kites like my own.

  Mostly, though, I feigned an upbeat attitude and thought about Avery and Miles, her ex-boyfriend. They’d broken up a while ago—not long after the new year, if I remembered right. Avery had never seemed too serious about him, but she’d be shocked, all the same.

  I was picking up my cell phone to call her when the front door’s bell rang to let in Frank Hopkins, my landlord, carrying a grocery sack.

  “I hear you found a body,” Frank said.

  It had started. Stella had warned me that I’d be getting curious visitors, but most of my customers this morning had been tourists in town for the sand-castle competition. They either didn’t know or didn’t care about the dead chef. Frank Hopkins was the first local—if you wanted to call him that. He owned enough property in town to be important, but rumor had it he spent his winters in Palm Springs. If his brand-spanking-new Land Rover in the garage was any indication, he was doing pretty well.

  “Unfortunately,” I said, and turned to the cash register, hoping he would get the hint.

  “I heard it down at the market. I was out of town for a few days, wanted to restock the fridge.” Frank truly did look sympathetic. “I’m sorry. It’s a rough way to kick off your grand opening. I brought you some flowers.” He drew from the grocery sack a dozen tulips in white and lipstick pink. “Congratula
tions on the store, and don’t let it get you down. All the hullaballoo about the body will be over soon, so don’t get too caught up in any of the gossip about your roommate.”

  “Gossip about Avery? What does she have to do with it?”

  “I shouldn’t have said anything. You know how people talk. In any case, I’m sure it was just an accident.”

  It could hardly have been an accident, not with a gash that size on the chef’s chest. My throat tightened at the memory. “It’s only been a few hours since I—” I paused. “You know. What are people saying about Avery? Tell me.”

  He set the sack on the counter. “You’re new here, so you may have never met him, but the body you found was Miles Logan. He was kind of a minor celebrity around here—a tremendous chef, too, the Tidal Basin won’t be the same—and, well, you know about him and Avery.”

  “Sure. They dated. A long time ago.”

  “Like I said, people talk. I wouldn’t listen, if I were you.”

  I forced a smile. I’d been planning to order a sandwich from next door and keep the shop open, but this was an emergency. “Thank you so much for the flowers. I’ll just clean up here and close for lunch. A bowl of soup at the Brew House would be perfect about now.”

  * * *

  Still shaken by Frank’s hints about “gossip,” I pushed open the Brew House’s oak front door and took a moment’s comfort in the warm scent of coffee and hiss of the espresso machine. Like Strings Attached, the Brew House was in the ground floor of an old house, only this one, a block off Rock Point’s main drag, had been built as a guest house in the 1920s and had the wide, low porch and arts-and-crafts details to prove it. Wooden tables surrounded by mission-style oak chairs dotted the main room. The coffee bar dominated the back, where a teenaged girl was ringing up a to-go latte for a tourist.

  Dave waved from a center table. With relief, I joined him.

  “Where’s Avery?” I asked.

  Dave nodded toward the kitchen, beyond the coffee bar, and stroked his beard anxiously. Avery was toward the rear, talking with Sheriff Koppen. She was turned away from us, and the sheriff’s face bore the implacable expression I’d seen that morning.