“So much for keeping out of it and letting me handle things,” Ryan said, as they sped out of the Wagner’s yard.
“Oh, but look what we found! A connection between Wren and Julian.” Excitement flushed Liz’s cheeks. After Mrs. Wagner brandished her knife at Liz, she was led out of Wren’s bedroom and ordered to come clean in front of her husband about the true nature of their visit. After Ryan filled them in and showed them his P.I. license, the Wagner’s didn’t seem too surprised that their daughter was possibly involved in a murder investigation and had left town. Mrs. Wagner had allowed Ryan, not Liz, to take the box of letters if he promised he’d return them. As they’d stepped off the porch, heading to the car, Mrs. Wagner called out, “On second thought. You can keep the letters. It will save me from going through them year after year to see if we could have done anything differently. I know now we couldn’t. And it’s time for us to let go of the guilt.” Then she’d waved, turned, and walked into the house. Her posture more upright, her steps more sure than when they’d first seen her.
“Don’t forget what we didn’t find. Wren/Renee Wagner,” Ryan said.
“Glass half-empty, Mr. investigator? Elder Jay was the leader of Wren’s rehabilitation program. An apparent cult leader one minute, fake white witch the next. I bet Wren was blackmailing him with the true nature of his phony Sunshine Wiccan Society so she could become part-owner of the water company, threatening to spill the beans to Dorian about Julian’s checkered past.”
“Left. Make a left to the highway,” Ryan said, pointing, “remember we have to pick up Betty at the airport. If Wren was blackmailing Julian, then why would she poison him?
Liz thought for a moment. “Because she got what she wanted as in the SWS water company, then simply killed him because of what he’d done to her at the camp. She spoke of abuse. A good motive in my humble opinion. In her mind it could also have been an altruistic way of saving Dorian from being married to him.”
“From the short time we spent with Wren’s parents,” Ryan said, “Wren didn’t come off as altruistic.”
“True. I take back that theory.”
It was a thirty-minute drive to the airport. The Blue Bomber kept up with the other cars going eighty in the seventy-mile-per-hour speed limit, but there was no chance for conversation. “Can’t wait to tell Betty everything,” she shouted. Her scarf was long gone, her hair whipping against her face. “I’m so glad the Wagner’s let us take that box of letters.”
“What?”
“Never mind,” she shouted back. They took to their own thoughts. Puzzling out Wren’s motive for killing Julian. Revenge for her work camp service and wanting to be sole owner of the Sunshine Wiccan Society’s water company, seemed the best theory. The Sunshine Wiccan Society was now a party of zero. Maureen Wagner had explained that Renee had gotten in trouble right after graduating from high school when she was seventeen and was sent to Sunshine Serenity Springs, a type of boot camp rehabilitation center. Mrs. Wagner hadn’t disclosed what her daughter had been arrested for, only that drugs and theft were involved. The Wagner’s only option had been to send her to the boot camp, the other choice would have been juvenile detention. “We didn’t have the money for a fancy place,” Will Wagner had said sadly. “Farm life isn’t easy.”
Maureen had told them that parents who’d sent their children to Sunshine Serenity Springs were only allowed visitation once every three months for an hour. When Mr. and Mrs. Wagner went, they didn’t see anything wrong, and hadn’t believed their daughter’s complaining because Elder Jay had been so charismatic, giving them a tour of the produce fields, gardens, and natural spring. It wasn’t until Wren/Renee’s letters started arriving that they looked into it further.
Their daughter claimed that Sunshine Serenity Springs was far from serene, more of a cult-type work camp with corporal punishment run by Elder Jay for the sole purpose of turning them into slave labor in order to support Sunshine Serenity Spring’s booming produce and flower stand outlets. Other parents got together and told the Wagners that their children were complaining about the conditions at the camp. That’s when they saw the camp for what it really was.
Then, a local paper got a hold of the parents’ allegations and plastered Elder Jay’s, aka Julian Rhodes’, face all over the press in Jacksonville. That would explain why Julian didn’t want Ashley taking pictures of him on Queen of the Seas.
Wren/Renee was sent to serve six months in an Indian River Juvenile Correctional facility because her parents didn’t have the money to send her to a dual-diagnosis rehab. From that time on, she blamed her parents for her time spent inside. She’d cut all communications with her family until a few months ago, when she’d called all chirpy and happy things were turning around for her. She even asked if they needed money.
“Next exit,” Ryan shouted, breaking into her thoughts.
When Liz pulled up to the baggage claim exit, eighty-three-year-old Betty Lawson was sitting on a bench next to two large suitcases. She knew one of her suitcases held only research materials for book two in her London Chimney Sweep mystery series. Her white, shiny hair was in a chignon and she was dressed as elegantly as ever in a turquoise long cotton tunic, topped with a strand of coral beads. White capri pants and red ballet flats completed her timeless look. Liz hoped she looked as classy when she reached Betty’s age.
After hugging her hello and having to be told to release her grip, Liz loaded the suitcases into the Blue Bomber’s trunk. Betty didn’t ask why Ryan was sitting in the back seat, just gave him a hug and a kiss, and got in the front. Then they took off for home.
The first ten minutes in the car, Liz did a quick recap of everything she and Ryan learned. It was the first time since Liz knew her that Betty seemed speechless.
When they stopped at the railroad tracks for a train, Betty chided, “Wow! I leave for a couple weeks and look what happens. Told you, no murders without me. I need inspiration for my next book.”
“You should have enough inspiration for a lifetime,” Liz said. “I don’t know if Sherlock Holmes would have had fun at the séance we had yesterday, or what he’d make of that jar of razor blades and barbed wire Dorian was clutching to her breast last night.”
“Pshaw. I think you’d be surprised to know that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, author of the Holmes tales, was very into mysticism. Especially in his later years. Even attending séances and trying to commune with the dead.”
“Ugh. Why did you have to say that?” Ryan whined from the backseat. “He was a physician, wasn’t he? Can’t believe he was into ghosts and spirits.”
The lights stopped flashing and the crossing rails raised. A few minutes later they were flying over the causeway above the Indian River Lagoon. On Fifth Avenue they passed restaurants, beach shops, clothing and toy stores, and Island Books.
Once they hit A1A the wind had picked up, the charcoal sky matching the color of the Atlantic’s towering swells.
“Maybe you should pull over and put the top up,” Ryan shouted from the backseat. “You two have the windshield for protection, I’m a sitting duck, soon to be drowned duck.”
Lightning flashed over the water, followed by deafening thunder.
“Too late!” Liz shouted. “I’ll slow down and try to lower the top while we’re moving.”
“What?’ He asked, as the first torrent of rain hit.
Liz pushed the switch on the console. Nothing. She tried again.
“Ryan, hand me an umbrella. There should be one under the passenger seat,” Betty called out.
He passed her an army green umbrella. Betty opened it, then, resembling a sea turtle, she crouched low in the seat.
With the wipers on high and rain sluicing down her long bangs, Liz could barely make out the road. They were probably only a half mile away from the Indialantic. She tried the button for the top again. Not even a groan. “I’m going to pull into the old abandoned Sebastian Beach Inn and try to do it manually.”
She made a left into the parking lot filled with hills of sand and chunks of broken blacktop, finally stopping on a section of cement. The nose of the car faced a wood-railing fence. Beyond the car was the ocean and a sheer drop to the rocky beach below. A few more feet forward and they could reproduce the ending scene to Thelma and Louise.
Keeping the car running, she and Ryan got out, each grabbing one side of the frame to raise the canvas top.
“Betty! Push the button!” Ryan shouted.
They watched a hand come out from under the umbrella, then there was a groaning sound. They tugged on the frame until it finally started to move upward. When the top met the latch at the windshield, they heard Betty securing it from inside.
As Liz fought her way back to the driver’s door, wet sand that felt like specks of sharp glass stung her bare legs. She reached for the door handle just as a huge gust of wind pushed her bangs off her face. In front of her, parked next to a bright green industrial sized dumpster was a car.
A red Kia Soul with a bumper sticker that read, I Watch for Motorcycles.
Liz sprinted toward it, fighting the elements, even slipping a few times in the muddy sand.
Wren. Why was her car here? Liz opened the driver’s door and looked inside. Empty. Just a bunch of gum wrappers littering the passenger seat. She felt someone behind her and whipped around.
“Ryan! You scared me to death” Liz screeched.
“I scared you!” He shouted. “I couldn’t understand where you were running to. But now I see. This is Wren’s car.”
Betty joined them. “Who’s car?”
“Wren/Renee Wagner’s,” Liz answered.
Betty’s long hair was glued to her cheeks, mascara ran, making her look like Farrah the masked Ferret. Betty pointed and shouted. “Look over there! There’s a section of broken railing.”
Liz grabbed her hand, then Ryan’s, and they slowly made their way to the gap in the fencing. Glancing down at the beach they saw Wren’s body. She was laying on her back, her head resting on a boulder like it was a pillow, her torso in repose. There was no way she could have fallen from where they were standing and land in such a position. It was obvious by the amount of birds and carrion surrounding her body, and the sand covering the same dress Wren had worn at brunch yesterday, that she’d been there for a while. Liz’s first thought was of Mr. and Mrs. Wagner. She felt frozen, unable to jump into action.
It was Betty who said in a calm voice, “Call 911. It’s too late for anything else.”
As another bird landed, Liz gladly turned away.
This wasn’t the first murdered body Liz had seen on the beach, but she prayed it would be her last.