Sea-Devil: A Delilah Duffy Mystery Read online

  Published by Jessica Sherry

  www.jessicasherry.com

  Copyright © 2015 Jessica Sherry

  2nd Edition

  The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without by monetary gain, is investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and is punishable by up to 5 (five) years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000.

  Names, characters and incidents depicted in this book are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of the author.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author.

  All rights reserved. Published/Printed in the United States.

  ISBN: 978-0-9962941-0-2

  Mystery

  To Joe, the hero of my story.

  Table of Contents

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter One: Turtles

  Chapter Two: Starfish

  Chapter Three: Hermit Crabs

  Chapter Four: Pet Snakes

  Chapter Five: Possibility

  Chapter Six: Family

  Chapter Seven: Ghost Crabs

  Chapter Eight: Racing

  Chapter Nine: Sperm Whales

  Chapter Ten: Damselfish

  Chapter Eleven: Signs

  Chapter Twelve: Piers

  Chapter Thirteen: Conches

  Chapter Fourteen: Octopus

  Chapter Fifteen: Calm

  Chapter Sixteen: Graveyards

  Chapter Seventeen: Seahorses

  Chapter Eighteen: Tsunamis

  Chapter Nineteen: Sand Dollars

  Chapter Twenty: Hagfish

  Chapter Twenty-One: Sleep-breathe

  Chapter Twenty-Two: Delicate

  Chapter Twenty-Three: Small

  Chapter Twenty-Four: Dealing

  Chapter Twenty-Five: Tools

  Chapter Twenty-Six: Sponges

  Chapter Twenty-Seven: Music

  Chapter Twenty-Eight: Puffer Fish

  Chapter Twenty-Nine: Intimacy

  Chapter Thirty: Stonefish

  Chapter Thirty-One: Locks

  Chapter Thirty-Two: Football

  Chapter Thirty-Three: Pirates

  Chapter Thirty-Four: Plunge

  Chapter Thirty-Five: Clownfish

  Chapter Thirty-Six: Hair

  Chapter Thirty-Seven: Sea Cucumbers

  Chapter Thirty-Eight: Low

  Chapter Thirty-Nine: Sea Snakes

  Chapter Forty: Renaissance Women

  Chapter Forty-One: Dinner

  Chapter Forty-Two: Whales

  Chapter Forty-Three: Serenade

  Chapter Forty-Four: Sand

  Chapter Forty-Five: Shades

  Chapter Forty-Six: Lightning

  Chapter Forty-Seven: Pipsqueak

  Chapter Forty-Eight: Busted

  Chapter Forty-Nine: Order and Method

  Chapter Fifty: Dragons

  Chapter Fifty-One: Constructive Waves

  Chapter Fifty-Two: Pieces

  Chapter Fifty-Three: Off the Record

  Chapter Fifty-Four: Marlin

  Chapter Fifty-Five: Crushing

  Chapter Fifty-Six: Priorities

  Chapter Fifty-Seven: Marina

  Chapter Fifty-Eight: Wake

  Chapter Fifty-Nine: Lingering

  Chapter Sixty: Light

  Chapter Sixty-One: Currents

  Chapter Sixty-Two: Drowning

  Chapter Sixty-Three: Safe

  Chapter Sixty-Four: Remembering

  Chapter Sixty-Five: Schooling

  Chapter Sixty-Six: Beaten

  Chapter Sixty-Seven: Waterspouts

  Chapter Sixty-Eight: Mystery

  Chapter Sixty-Nine: Cookiecutter Shark

  Chapter Seventy: Post-Storm

  Chapter Seventy-One: Near-Life

  Chapter Seventy-Two: Church, Part Two

  Chapter Seventy-Three: Gulf Stream

  Chapter Seventy-Four: Shoals

  Chapter Seventy-Five: Breakers

  Chapter Seventy-Six: Sirens

  Chapter Seventy-Seven: Sea Devil

  Chapter Seventy-Eight: Weightless

  Epilogue: Treasure

  About the Author

  Acknowledgements

  Thanks to Joe, Ethan, and Abby for calling me a writer, even when I couldn’t.

  Thanks to my mom and dad, who took me to church to find God and to the beach to get to know him better.

  Chapter One

  Turtles

  Highway twelve stretched in front of me dotted with tourist traffic. I’m not a tourist, technically. Still, I’ve made two touristy mistakes so far: traveling to Tipee Island on a Saturday morning in June, when all the rentals open up for their weeklong bookings, and leaving the top down on my Jeep Wrangler so I could be beachy-cool. The sun is planting its kisses in interesting places, burning the backs of my ears, the bridge of my nose, and even my cleavage, what little there is.

  My name is Delilah Duffy, and I know a lot about making mistakes. Not just the garden variety Clark Griswold or Amelia Bedelia sort. More like the King David or Hester Prynne kinds, the ones that shake your whole world. I needed a place where my mistakes wouldn’t catch up to me, and if they did, wouldn’t hurt so many people.

  I inhaled the salty air, and gave Willie, my golden lab, a playful rub on his head. We’d been racing through tiny North Carolina villages and beachy meccas for over an hour to be halted less than a mile from the prize – Tipee Island. We were dead stopped in traffic. To our left, a wall of sand blocked the ocean, like a white sheet over a masterpiece. To the right, a shield of thickets ironed down by the ocean’s winds hid the Cape Fear River. The island treasures were being kept from us.

  Willie groaned and flashed me his begging eyes. His paw nudged my arm. He had to go.

  Sand flew back in my face as Willie bounded up the dune.

  “Hold on, Willie,” I called, but Willie couldn’t wait. He pulled me to the top and quickly marked his territory among the sea oats.

  The ocean drew me in. I’d missed it.

  A sign declared that the beach was a sanctuary for nesting sea turtles; loggerheads, leatherbacks, and green turtles are just a few that nest here, and all are endangered. At night, female turtles trek up the beach, dig their holes, and bury over one hundred eggs each. Then, they skedaddle back to the sea. Even the turtles are tourists on these beaches.

  Unlike the turtles and the traffic, tourism isn’t for me. I’d turned in the keys to my one-bedroom apartment and teaching career to become an islander and bookstore manager – a brave, new world to replace the one I’d ruined.

  Failing here would be devastating. It would mean moving back home with my parents and finding yet another career (the third in a short time). I loved teaching, but can’t go back to it again. And frankly, I have no idea what else I could or would want to do, except work at Ruby Tuesdays because I love their salad bar.

  Short wooden fences marked off turtle nests and Willie poised himself to start digging. I tugged him away. He accepted the rejection, sniffed the air, and took off on a new mission. I gave him the leeway he needed, and averted my eyes as he did his other business.

  The ocean called to me like an old friend, but I don’t swim. When I was six years old, I nearly drowned. I tripped into a tarped pool at a friend’s house, sinking into the water while tangled in the plasti
c. Sometimes, I can still feel myself choking, wanting air but not being able to find it… not until my friend’s dad breathed it back into me. My life wasn’t taken, but two other things were: my adventurous spirit, and my mother’s permission to go to friends’ houses.

  Still, I know how to swim. Dad insisted. Born and raised on Tipee Island, he couldn’t stand the idea of his daughter being anything less than a great swimmer. My accident only convinced him more. So, he taught me, with exceptional patience, to first enter the water (the hardest part for me) and then to master moving in it. I was seven when I suffered through months of tortuous lessons. “You’ll learn to swim if it kills me!” Worst summer of my life.

  I swam again the summer I was sixteen. Best summer of my life. I lived with my grandparents and shadowed my Aunt Candy. I wanted to be just like her – beautiful, smart, sophisticated. Six years older, she took me to parties, forced me to wear my first bikini, let me try my first beer, and gave me the confidence to go after what I wanted. I swam one day the entire visit, and that was only for the attention of a gorgeous boy. It had been like a baptism.

  The appeal of swimming isn’t lost on me, but submerging into what you can’t see is frightening, like walking into a strange, black room. Anything could be in there, waiting, lurking. The poet Dylan Thomas wrote, “Do not go gentle into that dark night” about death. But, he could’ve meant dark water, too. I’ve always been haunted with nightmares of tidal waves, a double serving of fear – water and darkness – swallowing me up. My stomach mimicked the rough chop of the waves just thinking about it.

  Willie barked as if reading my thoughts.

  “Ma’am?” a voice said behind me.

  I jumped. A wimpy scream eked out.

  A police officer had climbed up the dune behind me. His sunglasses reflected my face, like a funhouse mirror. Disturbing.

  “We have two problems,” he said. He pointed down to the road. Traffic was moving! Car horns blared. Angry faces shot up at me. I was blocking a whole line of hot-tempered tourists!

  “Oh, crap!” I said, starting my descent back down the hill. The officer stopped me.

  “Hold on,” he said. “You have to dispose of the dog’s excrement.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “I’m holding up traffic,” I reminded him. “Isn’t the poop the lesser of two evils here?”

  “Move your vehicle onto the shoulder,” he said, taking Willie’s leash from my hand. “And then you can return to clean up the mess and retrieve your animal.”

  I flushed with embarrassment and frustration. No time to argue. I huffed and skirted down the hillside. Halfway down, I tumbled, and skidded the rest of the way on my bottom. Sand ended up in some uncomfortable places. I tried to shake it out while passing by the flashing Dodge Charger. Another policeman laughed and shook his head as I scooted by.

  My stomach knotted as I kicked the Jeep into gear and edged it onto the sandy shoulder. I got back out and waited to cross the street as the traffic moved passed me. Honking horns, raised middle fingers, and plenty of stink-eyes targeted me as they sped by. My mind skipped back to Durham. So far, things here weren’t so different.

  My heart pounded as I climbed the sand again. The grains burned my skin and matted against the sweat on my legs.

  “One problem solved,” the officer said, “now on to number two.” He grinned.

  “I don’t have anything to clean up the number two with,” I told him. “Can’t I just bury it? He had to go. There was nothing I could do.”

  “The law states that any defecation made by a pet on the beach must be collected and disposed of to avoid citation,” he recited, peering at me over the rim of his sunglasses.

  Crystal blue eyes, so light they’re almost not even blue. A sudden wave of recognition danced over me. Uh, oh.

  My mouth dried up. Still, I managed to stammer out, “How m-much is the citation?”

  He smiled. “Fifty dollars.”

  I knew him. He was the gorgeous boy. His nametag confirmed it. S. Teague. Thirteen years ago, I spent a summer thinking of little more than Samuel Teague, and years healing from the pain of his rejection. Please don’t remember me… please don’t remember me.

  “All you need is a plastic bag,” Teague said, demonstrating with his hands. Half-listening, the urge to kick him popped into my mind almost simultaneously with the urge to jump into his arms. I needed a serious mental makeover.

  “I don’t have a plastic bag,” I snapped back. “My whole life is in that Jeep, and believe me, I weeded out everything disposable.”

  “I have one, unless you prefer the citation?”

  I rolled my eyes and shook my head. He handed me the leash and returned to his police car. Willie panted, smiling up at me as if we’d made a new friend.

  “You’re a sorry judge of character, Willie,” I told him sharply.

  As much as I love Willie, this was not a chore I appreciated, especially with Teague lording over me.

  “That wasn’t so bad, was it?” he asked.

  “No worse than being the poop police, I suppose,” I threw back. I wanted to say something really clever (maybe even mean), but that was the best I could do with my frustration level.

  Teague grinned widely. “My job won’t seem so bad, once you start yours, Delilah.”

  My heart skidded. “W-what do you mean?”

  “Going to be an uphill battle,” he said, “facing off against your aunts and the whole town. It won’t be easy.”

  His mirrored sunglasses showed me my puzzled face. I wished I’d worn more make-up.

  “Don’t worry,” Teague added quickly. “As long as you go in charging, even uphill battles can be won.”

  He smiled encouragingly. He’d changed over the years. Grown taller, broader, more handsome. His blond hair was trimmed short, not the shaggy surfer look I remembered. Still, the smile was the same. I came close to smiling back.

  “You’ve lost me,” I puttered out finally. “I don’t know what-”

  “Yo, Teague,” his partner called. “We’re up!”

  Teague took a step down the dune, but stopped and extended his hand. “Need help down?”

  I could still feel the scratchy grains of sand in my underwear, so I nodded. Taking his hand felt awkward only because it didn’t really feel awkward at all. I wanted it to. I reminded myself that he was a police officer and this kind of thing – getting cats out of trees, helping young ladies and their dogs down sand dunes – well, this was his job and why it felt so normal.

  Safely at the bottom, I snatched my hand away and muttered a quick, “Thanks.”

  He smiled before dashing to the passenger side of the police car. “Where we headed?”

  “111 Starfish,” his partner answered.

  “Wait! That’s where I’m going. That’s the store!” I belted out.

  “Meet you there,” Teague said. He ducked into the passenger seat and the Charger raced away as if it were the only car on the road.

  Willie and I jumped into the Jeep. I fumbled with the keys.

  “Looks like the battle’s started without us, Willie. Better start charging.” I peeled off the shoulder, earning a well-deserved honk from the tourist I cut off. I clenched and unclenched the steering wheel.

  “Welcome to Tipee Island! We tipee our hats to ya’ll!” read the sign entering town. I huffed. Traffic. Teague. Tacky puns. Plus, whatever police situation that awaited me (if it wasn’t all over and done with by the time I arrived, slow tourists!). Maybe the female turtles had the right idea!

  Chapter Two

  Starfish

  Starfish aren’t starfish anymore, but sea stars. The name change came about because, simply, they aren’t fish and calling them star echinoderms wouldn’t have the same charm. So, sea stars are going through an identity shift, which is fitting since their identities can change anyway. Sea stars don’t give up easily. They regenerate. Chop off an arm, and sea stars grow a new body. Even though
starfish are now sea stars, Starfish Drive remains. My own regeneration didn’t look promising as I squealed tires turning left onto Starfish Drive.

  Beach Read Books, Gifts and More caps off a short strip of stores like an exclamation point. I jerked the Jeep into the side lot behind Aunt Candy’s convertible. What looked like dark colored streamers hung limply from the store’s blue and white awning.

  But, they weren’t streamers.

  Dead snakes. Their bodies drooped over the sidewalk and blood drizzled onto the concrete in polka dots. Snakes littered the light fixtures, even the doorknob. Dozens of gross snake bodies spanning types and sizes.

  It looked like a demon’s welcome home party.

  Medusa and her snaky hair, Voldemort’s evil pet, and of course, the devil in the Garden of Eden all came to mind, along with words from Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings.

  “There is some new devilry here, devised for our welcome,” I sputtered out.

  “So, you know about the curse?” Teague’s partner, Officer Williams asked.

  “Actually, I was quoting Tolkien,” I said. “What curse?”

  A distinctly rotten death smell filled the air. Some of the snakes were in later stages of decay with bones emerging from their slimy bodies. Hanging upside down, one snake’s skull poked through its head. A serious shiver shook me.

  “Found it like this,” Candy reported. “You’re late, by the way.”

  “Sorry, I had a poop issue,” I returned.

  “Your stomach again?”

  “Not me. Willie,” I corrected. “Why would anyone do this?”

  Williams said, “Used to hang dead snakes from trees to bring rain.”

  “I’ll call it in. We’re going to need pictures,” Teague decided.

  Williams pushed back the growing crowd and sectioned off the sidewalk with yellow crime scene tape. Teague made calls into his walkie-talkie and started filling out paperwork on a clipboard. I stood with Candy, feeling helpless, creeped out and downright homesick (for no home in particular).

  Candy texted away as fast as her tangerine fingernails would let her. My shoulders slumped. The warm welcome I’d hoped for (and needed) vanished in Candy’s apathy.