Spring Break Murder Read online

  I nodded and looked at Sally who, for the first time since we had arrived, seemed to be a little lost. This woman who was so used to being the head honcho wasn't sure what the next step should be. I took her by the elbow and waved goodnight to the Dolls who shouted their well wishes as the doors to the gymnasium closed behind them.

  Mandy couldn't have gone far. She and Bill were probably taking a walk or something to process her confrontation with Cindy. I just hoped they would be home soon so that Sally and I could have some peace of mind soon.

  Chapter Eight

  When morning dawned, Mandy was squished up beside me on the foldout couch bed. I had stayed up late into the night watching bad television while I waited for her to get home but sometime between when I fell asleep and now, she had found her way back. That must have meant that Bill was back too, but the door to the bedroom was closed so I assumed he was also sleeping.

  Looking at the clock on the wall, it was only 6am which was way too early for me, especially after my late bedtime. But I could also feel that I was not going to be able to get back to sleep. Somehow, my body had decided it was awake. Why didn't this happen on mornings when I had to get up for work?

  I crawled as delicately as I could out of the bed, trying not to disturb Mandy. The smell of coffee wafted over from the kitchenette and hit me full force. As I poured myself a cup, I could see Sally puttering around on the deck. I pushed the door open and walked through the sunroom, thankful that my pajamas were just a pair of sleep pants and a t-shirt since I didn't have anywhere private to change at the moment.

  "Good morning Darling," Sally said from her chair. "I hope you slept alright on that horrible couch bed."

  "Good morning," I said, sitting next to her with my steaming mug of coffee. "Yes, I slept just fine. I was so tired from everything we did yesterday! And I'm assuming by the fact that Mandy is passed out in bed that Bill must also be home?"

  "Yes dear," she said. "They both got home about three hours ago."

  We sat together sipping our coffees in silence. It was a beautiful, already warm morning. I just wanted to sit and soak up the sun without trying to dissect what happened the night before. Once Mandy was awake, I would pry the details out of her.

  "Are you alright if I go up to the pool for an early morning workout?" Sally said, standing up from her chair. I could see the strings of her swimming suit poking out the top of her shirt. "I like to go before anyone comes to bob so that I can do some water aerobics without anyone ogling me."

  "Yes, I'm fine," I said. "I can always grab a book to read or something. Really, I'm just glad to soak up some sunshine."

  Sally smiled at me with a wink as she grabbed a towel off of one of the other chairs on the deck. As I watched her walk up the street towards the Candy Cane Palace, I debated going in to grab a book but the sun felt so warm that I just couldn't make myself get up out of it. Instead I closed my eyes and thought once more about taking a vacation with Max to somewhere warm.

  Max and I had only made our relationship more serious in the last few weeks and since then, we saw each other every single day for at least a few minutes. Now I hadn't seen him in almost two days and I was missing him like crazy. It felt like when we were in high school and I would go to a church mission trip or he would go to sports camp. Even though I was having fun, I knew that if I let my thoughts dwell on Max the whole time the trip would drag on and on in an endlessly torturous way.

  But I couldn't help myself right now. I thought about us going to a resort somewhere warm. Max and I could swim in the ocean and lounge next to the pool. Maybe we could go scuba diving or on a dolphin excursion or something equally exotic. It wouldn't really matter what we did as long as we were somewhere warm and sunny together.

  Just as I was picturing a sunset dinner on the beach, a scream pierced the morning quiet. My eyes popped open and I glanced around, wondering if I had just been hearing things. It was so unexpected that I figured I had just misheard something. But another scream came and this time I was able to pinpoint that it was coming from the direction of the Candy Cane Palace.

  Sally!

  I jumped out of my chair just as the door from the sun room slammed open. Bill came out, his hair rumpled and wearing clashing red and yellow shirt and shorts that had obviously been thrown on in a hurry. I looked around for some shoes and spotted a pair of flip flops that I jammed my feet into.

  "That's Sally screaming," Bill said, his eyes looking around in a panic. He still looked half-asleep and hoping the scream had just been part of a nightmare. "Where is she?"

  "She just left for the pool," I said.

  I barely got the words out of my mouth before Bill leapt down the stairs and started running towards the pool. Mandy was nowhere in sight but instead of going in to wake her, I followed Bill's lead and took off behind him towards the pool. If something had happened to Sally, I knew that Bill would need someone there with him.

  Fighting my way through the bushes around the pool, I finally found the gate opening. It made it a lot easier to find when there were plenty of other residents streaming in to see what had happened.

  In his haste, Bill had thrown the gate wide open and it was stuck in the bushes. We were definitely not the only people who had heard the scream. Several residents were already going in the gate and more were coming behind me. Some of them I recognized from square dancing or just seeing them around the park since I had arrived, but most of them I didn't recognize at all.

  It was so early that I almost didn't recognize Cindy, who still had a head full of curlers instead of her signature hairdo. Cindy scowled at me as we both tried to squeeze in the gate at the same time and it took all that I had to not throw a scowl back at her.

  Once I was in the pool area, Sally was standing next to the pool soaking wet with her face buried in Bill's chest. She was loudly crying and I realized that she was not the only one. There were so many people milling around that I didn't really know what was going. All I could see was chaos. Some of the residents were clustered together crying while others walked aimlessly around the pool area. I still couldn't tell why Sally had screamed or what was making everyone cry.

  Suddenly, I felt a tug on my arm. Looking over, I realized that Cindy was starting to fall to the ground, grasping at the closest thing to her which happened to be my arm. Confused, I reached over and pulled her back to her feet but she refused to hold her own weight. I tried again, but she still just kept sliding down to the ground. Cindy's face was contorted into a look of horror, her mouth and eyes all wide open. I helped her slowly to the ground and as soon as she was settled, Cindy let out a loud, painful wail as she pointed to the pool.

  I looked over at the pool and realized that in my haste, I had missed the most important thing in the pool area that morning. Everything suddenly seemed to make more sense once it registered in my brain exactly what I was looking at. Floating face down in the pool was Hilda Brown.

  Chapter Nine

  After a moment I realized that Cindy was still sitting next to my feet, gut-wrenching wails coming from deep inside of her soul. It had seemed like Cindy only saw Hilda as an underling, but it was very apparent that she cared for her deeply as a friend. Hilda had been her only friend and now she was all alone in a place where she had only made enemies.

  I sank down until I was sitting cross-legged next to her, debating whether I should try to comfort her. It wasn't so much that I didn't want to make her feel better, but more that I wasn't sure she would let me try to help. Cindy's curlers bobbed back and forth as her chest heaved with sobs. I finally decided I'd rather comfort someone who didn't want it than ignore someone so obviously in pain.

  As I put my arm around her shoulders, she threw a glance at me. Her lips turned down just enough to tell me that she wasn't entirely pleased, but she allowed me to give her the slightest of hugs. Each time she took in a deep breath, it never seemed to be big enough. Cindy's sobs quickly became quieter, interspersing themselves with hiccups and sniffles.r />
  "Can I help you over to a chair?" I asked once I felt like the initial shock of seeing Hilda had worn off.

  "Of course," Cindy snapped. "Anyone with any brains would have already brought me over there."

  I gritted my teeth as I helped her to her feet and towards the row of chairs that sat around the perimeter of the pool. I refrained from making a comment about trying to carry her dead weight. After Peter had died and I was learning about grief, I learned that many, many different emotions can come with it. Some people will dive immediately into sadness, some will try to ignore their feelings, and others will lash out in anger. Apparently Cindy defaulted to anger.

  Cindy sank down onto the pool chair and took a deep breath while she looked at the pool once again. She quickly looked away, squeezing her eyes shut. I didn't blame her for wanting to forget the sight of her best friend's body floating lifelessly in the pool.

  "Can't someone get that poor woman out of the pool?" she screeched.

  Everyone who had been milling around the pool immediately fell silent and looked around, wondering who had said that. Cindy stood up and pointed her wrinkled, bony finger around the pool slowly.

  "I said, someone get her out of the pool," she screeched again.

  "Cindy, we can't," a man said. I recognized him as being the husband of either Karen or Kathy but just as I can't tell them apart, I can't tell their husbands apart either.

  "What are you talking about?" Cindy said. "Can't any of you swim without your stupid pool noodles?"

  "When we called the emergency dispatchers, they told us not to move the body," the man said. "It is very obvious that Hilda is dead. Getting her out of the pool at this point won't bring her back to life."

  Cindy let out another loud wail and sank back down into the pool chair. Sally made her way through the crowd to sit on the chair next to Cindy. Sally was wrapped in a towel and her hair was dripping wet.

  "Cindy, I did try to get her out of the pool," Sally said quietly. "When I came in and saw her floating in the pool I screamed, but then I realized I had to try to help her. I jumped in and I was pulling her with all of my might. But she was already gone. I kept trying but then whoever called the emergency line said to leave her because a crime may have been committed and she was already gone."

  "But you didn't have to leave her floating there," Cindy said in a whisper.

  "I didn't want to," Sally said with a sniffle. "Bill had to pull me out of the pool because I didn't want to leave her alone."

  Cindy reached over and took Sally's hand, squeezing it and letting go so fast that I almost thought I had hallucinated it. That tiny show of humanity was enough to touch me deep down in my soul, enough to bring up just a small amount of my own grief. A vision of Peter's face the last time I saw him floated through my mind before I shoved the grief back down. Now was not the time to deal with my grief. It would have to wait for later.

  "Thank you," Cindy whispered.

  Far away, I could hear the sirens of emergency vehicles getting closer. The sounds around the pool were getting a bit quieter as residents were floating away, both to distance themselves from death and to spread the story of what they had seen this quiet morning.

  "What happened?"

  I jumped as Mandy appeared through the crowd at my side. I had written her off as dead asleep when she hadn't come out with Bill. And I had to admit that with all of the craziness of the situation, I had kind of forgotten that she was still back in the camper.

  "What happened?" Cindy said. As soon as she saw Mandy, something inside of her changed. Cindy's face was raw with emotions, but now the grief had been replaced with pure rage. "You should know what happened. You did this!"

  Mandy looked around confused, obviously having missed the dead body floating in the pool just like I had. The rest of the hubbub was a bit distracting. I nodded my head toward the pool in as small of a gesture as I could manage. Mandy turned and her face drained of color as she saw Hilda's dead body floating in the pool.

  "What happened to Hilda?" Mandy said in a whisper.

  "What happened was that you shoved her in the pool and she drowned," Cindy yelled.

  "Hold on," Bill said, striding over from where he had been working crowd control by the edge of the pool. "You can't just go around accusing people of murder, Cindy."

  "I'm not accusing just anyone, Bill," Cindy said. She stood up, poking her bony finger at Mandy. "I'm accusing the woman who threatened Hilda and I just last night. And if you'd take a look at the pool, you would notice that your daughter left a big old clue right next to the body."

  "I didn't do this," Mandy protested.

  But I spotted something else floating in the pool that my eyes had glanced over before. Next to Hilda's body was a big yellow pool noodle that clearly had the name MANDY written on it in black marker. That didn't bode well for Mandy who had been loudly heard threatening the deceased and her friend just the night before.

  I walked back to where Mandy was still protesting, now trying to explain through tears that she had simply forgotten her pool noodle the day before and that she would never hurt someone. The entire time, Cindy's wrinkled face was drawn up like she had just sucked on a lemon.

  "Mandy, of course we don't think you did this," I said. "Why don't you tell us where you went yesterday after you left the dance and that should prove that you didn't do it. After all, this must have happened between the square dance last night and this morning when Sally came down here. If you account for your time, we will be able to prove for sure that you didn't do this."

  Mandy's face quickly darkened to a shade of red and she glanced at her father, who held her gaze. They were definitely trying to tell each other something but whatever they were communicating, I couldn't understand it.

  "You need to decide what to say, Mandy," Bill said after a moment. "I'll stand behind you either way."

  I shot a glance at Sally, but she looked just as bewildered as I was. What in the world had Bill and Mandy been doing last night while they were out so late? I had to get to the bottom of this, but I knew I wouldn't be able to do it here in public.

  "I don't owe her anything, especially any sort of alibi," Mandy said, narrowing her eyes at Cindy. "But I will say one more time, I did not do this."

  A group of police officers and some paramedics pushing a stretcher raced through the gate opening. Cindy hopped up out of her chair and yelled towards them.

  "Hey, come on over here," she said, waving her arms over her head. "This is the person who killed Hilda. Her name is Mandy and she is right here."

  Two of the police officers shot a look at each other before heading towards us. I had a feeling that this was not going to go well.

  Chapter Ten

  "Tell me one more time what happened last night," the police officer said in a monotone.

  Mandy's tear streaked face looked up at him as she once again told the very shortened version of what had happened. The problem, of course, was that her version still didn't actually contain any sort of alibi for the time of Hilda's death.

  "Well, we had a little confrontation at the dance," Mandy said as Cindy snorted her disgust in the background. "I got upset and left and my dad chased me. We were together until about three o'clock when we came back to the camper and fell asleep. I woke up and realized everyone was gone. When I went out on the deck to find where they went, I just followed the crowds who were headed this way."

  The two police officers nodded their heads. The one officer was extremely tall and had to bend down every once in a while when Mandy got quiet because otherwise his ears were too far away to hear her. His name badge said his last name was Mendoza. The other officer was the kind of person that completely blended into a crowd. There was nothing super distinctive about him versus any of the park residents who were around except for the fact that he was at least twenty years younger and currently dressed in a police officer's uniform. His name badge read Johnson, which was so mundane that it fit him just perfectly. Together, th
ey made an extremely odd pair.

  Mandy had told them this same story with varying levels of detail at least four times so far and each time they nodded at her and then looked at each other. I'm sure they were trying to figure out exactly what they should do. Mandy didn't have a complete alibi and unfortunately, there was evidence that pointed to her. Plus it didn't help that Cindy had spent the first two retellings of Mandy's story squawking that Mandy was the killer any time Mandy paused to take a breath. One of the police officers had finally escorted her out of the pool area under the guise of having her show him to Hilda's home.

  "Okay ma'am," Officer Johnson said. "Now I'm going to ask you to please give Officer Mendoza and I a moment to speak with each other in private while we consider our next steps. I'll need you to stay right here in this chair."

  Mandy nodded and the two officers stepped away, walking to the end of the kidney shaped pool where they were close enough to keep an eye on us but far enough away that we couldn't hear what they were saying.

  Bill and Sally were sitting on the lounge chair on the other side of Mandy. After helping the officers escort all of the lookie-loos out of the pool area, they had staked out their place next to their daughter as a show of support. Mandy looked like she wanted to cry, but I don't think she had any tears left in her. Her cheeks were wet with all of the tears she had already cried that morning.

  "What do you think they are talking about?" Mandy said. "What are they going to do with me?"

  "I'm not gonna lie," Bill said. "This isn't looking very good for you, Princess."

  He reached out and grabbed Mandy's hand. Sally reached out and took Mandy's other hand. I think if I had been with anyone else, I would have felt extremely awkward. But Bill, Sally, and Mandy were my second family and I wasn't surprised in the least when Mandy dropped her father's hand and grabbed mine.

  For a moment, love seemed to flow between all four of us and my affection for them grew even more. Even though we were sitting next to the pool on a warm, Florida mid-morning, I shivered a little bit. I had a horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach that our vacation was going to turn out to be not much of a vacation at all.