Cover art by Richard Stroud
ISBN 1-59088-792-1
I've finally finished my manuscript Hurricane House.
Here's a short synopsis: A hurricane hits a Florida fishing village with a serial killer at large, and MacLynn Larson--a claims investigator--fears the man she has fallen for--Sean Redmond--might be a murderer.
Here's a short excerpt:
Paradise Isle
Dolphin, Florida
July 3
Prologue
He knew he could get busted, hauling Tara on the beach before nightfall. “Hurry up and go down,” he whispered to the sun, now a red ball perched on the horizon.
The Weather Channel had reported the hottest day on record for Florida’s Panhandle. He believed it. The white sand burned his feet through his flip flops as he walked toward the Gulf of Mexico.
He’d worn swim trunks for the occasion and tried to appear relaxed. In truth, he felt tighter than a hangman’s knot. His hands trembled around the handle on the ice chest containing Tara’s body.
He stopped to watch the sun drown in the Gulf and bleed into clouds shaped like angel wings. As usual, thoughts of his mother intervened. “Don’t stare at the setting sun,” she used to say. “You might go blind.”
The poor woman never enjoyed anything. If she were alive today, she’d still be trying to dictate what not to do.
No doubt she’d hate his super-duper ice chest with wheels. A wise investment, he thought. Otherwise, he wouldn’t dare take Tara to his special spot between two sand dunes covered in sea oats. Gulf waves kept the sand cool there. He could hardly wait.
He wiped his sweaty brow, blew out a heated breath and continued walking with Tara in tow toward his destination. The shoreline resembled white glass washed in the blood of the sunset, a breathtaking frame for the skull-and-cross-bones sailboat gliding by.
He sat on the wet sand and opened the ice chest for a beer. Lucky for him, the beach was deserted, except for a flock of seagulls and a squawking blue heron.
One of Tara’s blonde hairs had wrapped around his beer can. He meticulously wiped the hair off before popping the top and taking a long drink.
The icy liquid gave him chills, even in the oppressive heat. He emptied the beer in six gulps, crumbled the can in his hand, and then crammed it back inside the cooler for recycling later.
Two hours passed before the red clouds from the bleeding sunset turned to crepe-paper black. In the darkness, he felt secure enough to withdraw the taping device from his swim trunks and press RECORD.
“Ma-vis Rapier, twenty-nine, IBM account executive, drop dead gorgeous,” he whispered into the machine. “Kar-en Lov-ett, thirty-two, multi-million-dollar Realtor, violinist, concert master; Tar-a Bax-ter, twenty-two, Miss Florida, dancer, petite, beautiful, hot to trot.” He patted the cooler containing Tara’s body. “No more, my dear, no more.”
Paradise Isle
Dolphin, Florida
July 4
1
MacLynn Larson felt her heart hammer with fear the moment she stepped outside. She had no idea what sparked her anxiety attack on such a lovely night. A full moon bathed the beach in a silver halo. It looked like heaven.
So why did she feel afraid? She’d vacationed on Paradise Isle in Florida’s Panhandle since she was knee high. She’d always felt safe here.
Until now.
Her mom used to say, “No need to lock the doors. Paradise Isle is paradise.” In aerial photographs, Paradise Isle looked like a white thumb, surrounded by green water: the Gulf of Mexico, Dolphin Harbor, and the Boat Pass.
Mac closed the door to the townhouse and took deep breaths of the warm, salty air. She glanced at the North Star and whispered, “Star light, star bright, first star I see tonight. I wish I may, I wish I might, have this wish I wish tonight…Heal my heart and take away my fear.”
A Gulf breeze brought back memories of sunburned summers with her mom, dad, her sister Kari Ann. Not to mention her first time with Adam.
If only she could follow Kari Ann’s advice: “Live in the moment and forget the past.”
At least the temperature had dropped. Thanks to the rain blowing over in time for the fireworks.
Paradise Isle swarmed with tourists. Mac had never seen so many boats anchored along the shore. They honked like mad geese, impatient for the first layers of electric dandelions and long-legged spiders on steroids to explode in the heavens.
The noise reached a crescendo when the fireworks began at 9:00 p.m. Rather than watch them, she went for a jog.
The flashes of light and rat-a-tat-tat followed her, as if orchestrating her run, not easy on the soft sand. She hadn’t jogged in months. Her toes kept cramping. She thought she’d never reach her mile marker, where she tossed off her shoes and waded into the Gulf.
This time she hoped to conquer her fear of sharks. But no such luck. Her heart pounded like a spastic rumba the moment the warm water reached her calves.
Disgusted with herself, she retreated to dry beach and plopped down in one of the wooden loungers, owned by a local beach service. During the day, the loungers had comfortable cushions and were rented out. At night the cushions rested in the white boxes behind her.
She sat back and watched the angry waves slap the jetties (a string of boulders stabbing the water). The jetties helped to protect Dolphin’s boat pass from the Gulf’s relentless attempts to rearrange the beach, but no boulders in the world could keep tons of sand from shifting when a hurricane hit.
From her position on the lounger, the jetties looked like a giant black snake slithering into the Gulf. Mac twisted the engagement ring and remembered the last time she and Adam tried to fish from the jetties. The edges of the boulders kept breaking their lines.
Two years since Adam’s murder, time enough to heal, but time hadn’t done its job. She still yearned for him, though she tried to forget and watch the fireworks.
She found herself focusing instead on the old Dolphin Mansion, three-hundred feet away. Sooty black mold grew over the exterior. Beach erosion threatened to topple the seven-foot-tall wall encircling it.
Why hadn’t someone restored this landmark? The artist who painted the dolphins, for which the town was named, had lived and died in there.
Mac shuddered when she saw a light flash from one of the porthole windows. She closed her eyes and opened them to stare at the building again. The light she thought she saw had disappeared.
Shaking her head in disbelief, she stuffed her feet back inside her Nike’s and walked toward the jetties. Negotiating the uneven boulders would be tricky, but worth the trouble if it kept her from sinking deeper into depression.
The waves seemed higher than she expected. They smacked her relentlessly during her precarious walk.
When she reached the end, she sat on a chair-shaped boulder and dangled her feet in the water. She felt as though she could reach out and touch the fireworks. They were fired from the Dolphin Bridge directly in front of her. She could watch them in the air, see their reflection in the Gulf, and hear the syncopated beat of the music from several boats anchored in the canal.
For the first time since Adam’s death, she found herself caught up in the moment. The waves doused her, but she didn’t care. They felt lovely and refreshing.
Unfortunately, she didn’t anticipate the giant breaker that slapped her on the back and tossed her into the Gulf. A swift current carried her away. She was a strong swimmer but no match for the undertow, pulling her down.
She somersaulted. Her ears popped. She couldn’t see anything but black. Her head hit a bed of sand. She knew she couldn’t hold her breath much longer.
Her fingers touched something large and slimy. A shark, she thought.
Panicking, she flailed her arms and kicked her legs. In her state of terror, she swam in the wrong direction and collided with the Gulf’s sandy bottom again and again.
Eventually, she pushed against the sand and tried to swim toward the vibrating noise of what sounded like honking boats. Her only hope, she knew.
She’d almost given up when she miraculously found the surface, gulped for air, and grabbed onto the first floating thing she saw: a woman’s nude body. Holy Mother of God. The woman appeared bloated. Obviously dead and she’d lost one of her feet.
While observing the dead body, Mac began to tremble uncontrollably. A shark must have taken the woman’s foot, Mac thought. A fisherman caught a three-hundred-and-fifty-pound bull shark near the jetties last year. Another bull killed a young girl riding a boogie board.
She heard a boom box blasting I’m Proud to be an American from one of the boats in the Pass. “Help, help,” she shouted, but no one came to her rescue.
The waves pushed her and the dead body toward the jetties, near where she sat before she got tossed in the Gulf. Soon, she and the body collided with the boulders. Mac pulled herself up, and unzipped her waist pouch to withdraw her cell phone. The pouch was waterproof, but after her near drowning, she didn’t expect the cell to work when she punched in 911.
A woman’s voice answered, “What’s your emergency?”
“I’ve found a…dead body…in the gulf…near the jetties,” Mac stuttered and shut her eyes against her state of panic. You’d think from the way she acted she’d never seen a dead body before, but she’d seen several in her line of work as a catastrophe insurance investigator, or CAT, as they were called. She’d dealt with victims of floods, tornadoes, hurricanes. Adam used to say she was like an ant carrying four times her ninety-eight pounds in courage.
“Calm down,” the 911 lady said. “What’s your name and location?”
Mac’s voice quivered, “My name is MacLynn Larson. I’m thirty-five. I’m in Dolphin on Paradise Isle at the end of the jetties, near where they’re exploding the fireworks. I’m wearing white shorts and a white top. I’m five-one, have short red hair, and I’m the only one out here on the jetties.”
“You said you found a body?”
“Yes, a woman.”
“And she’s dead?” the operator asked.
“Yes, dead,” Mac snapped. “From the look of her, she’s been dead for…some time now.”
“I’ll stay on the phone with you,” the operator said, her voice low and soothing.
“No, no, don’t, I’m okay,” Mac said, though she felt anything but. “I just need someone out here now. Hurry, please.”
After Mac closed her cell phone, she studied the dead woman. She wore a necklace with a gold pendant in the shape of a crown. It reflected in the moonlight and looked familiar. Too familiar, like the one Tara Baxter had worn the afternoon Geneva VanSant invited Mac over for wine and finger sandwiches.
Tara had won the Miss Florida contest, and Geneva had received an award for an article about a female hitchhiker. The party was to celebrate both events.
After the get-acquainted hellos, Mac noticed the crown necklace, “Lovely. Appropriate for your title as Miss Florida.” Mac lifted her glass of red wine to Tara in a toast. “Here’s hoping you become the next Miss America.”
“From your lips to God’s ear,” Tara had said and sipped her drink.
“Is that necklace something the winner gets?”
Tara chuckled and said. “No, MacLynn, my mother had it designed for me.”
Mac didn’t want to believe the dead body was Tara. She was apparently in pain when she died. Her face was scrunched up in agony, her hands fisted in fighting mode. On her right hand was a heart-shaped pinky ring. Tara had worn a similar ring, Mac remembered.
What was taking the responders so long? She wondered. The fireworks had ended. The crowd on the beach was moving on. The waves kept crashing the jetties, smacking Tara’s body into the rocks.