Deadly Dye and a Soy Chai: a Danger Cove Hair Salon Mystery (Danger Cove Mysteries Book 5) (19 page)

The remaining ten or so minutes of the play went on without a hitch. All of the wet sailors were rescued, one dropped to a knee in front of Maria Dolores to say, "Thank you, Maria Dolores for saving our worthless lives."

Maria Dolores pulled him to his feet with the words, "It's all in a day's work for the women of the Danger Cove Lighthouse."

Behind her, one of the other rescued sailors had taken the hand of her "daughter" who was giggling. I wasn't sure if that little romance was supposed to be part of the play or not, but the narrator stood up to announce, "And they all lived happily ever after."

I clapped enthusiastically and rose with the rest of the crowd to give the actors a standing ovation. The children formed a line and took a bow as they'd obviously been coached to do. Then they turned to where I'd seen their teacher/director in the wings and began chanting, "Mrs. Kerrigan, Mrs. Kerrigan, Mrs. Kerrigan." It took quite a bit of encouragement before she emerged from the wings, looking a bit flustered at so much attention. The teacher let herself get pulled out onto the stage for a brief curtsy before scurrying back out of sight, leaving the kids to soak up the remainder of the praise.

After a few more bows, the applause died down, and the kids raced out into the audience to find their friends and family. I wasn't needed any longer, so I headed for the rocky path that led to the lighthouse where Gil would be waiting for me. As I passed the farmers' stalls, I noticed that each one had an official-looking certificate identifying the owner and the farm where the products came from. The market manager might not have great people skills, but it looked like he'd put considerable effort into the planning and setup to ensure the visitors' safety. In addition to screening the vendors, he'd arranged for a first aid tent, easily identifiable with its red and white stripes, right at the beginning of the two rows of stalls. Across from it, the embarrassed pepper seller was still nowhere to be seen, although his stall was still set up, and his certificate identified the owner as Tyler Kline.

I didn't have time to really appreciate the various products on display at the moment, but I looked forward to checking them out on the way back from the lighthouse. In particular, there was a mouth-watering scent of apple fritters at the last stall before the hillside became too uneven and boulder-strewn to use for the market. As I emerged from the shadows cast by the stalls, I noticed that, while it was barely midday, not even remotely a dark and stormy night, a few clouds had gathered, and beyond the stiller waters of the cove, the ocean's waves were powerful and angry-looking. The lighthouse, even unlit and unoccupied, radiated a sense of security, despite its precarious perch on the rocky arm of land that hugged the outer edge of the cove.

Before tackling the final steep slope, I paused to admire the view. The lighthouse was six-sided and four stories high. The bulk of the tower was a white-shingled wooden structure, and on top was the glass-walled observation area that had once housed powerful lights. That section was painted a cheerful red.

At the base of the lighthouse was a shed-like structure that served as the entrance to the tower. That was where Gil should have been waiting for me, but she must have been delayed, because there was no one in sight.

The scent of disinfectant mingled with the much more pleasant salty tang of the air. A row of four porta-potties were tucked over to my right, discreetly out of casual view. As long as Gil wasn't waiting for me, I had time for a quick break.

The first three were occupied, so I continued to the end of the row. As I reached for the handle, I thought I caught a glimpse of movement on the ground beyond it, almost out of sight around the corner. I froze, convinced that some sort of wildlife was about to jump out at me. When nothing immediately roared or slithered or clawed out from the far side of the port-a-potty, my paralysis melted, and I was able to back up a step. I didn't need to use the toilet that badly. I might have come from tough and stoic stock, the sort that would rescue a dozen sailors from a deadly storm and dismiss it as just a day's work, but I'd never had to actually do anything like that, and I didn't intend to start now. Not at the risk of damaging the manicure I'd had done specifically for this trip. The color was a soft pink, just dark enough to be eye-catching without being too distracting, and the finishing touch was a tiny turquoise lighthouse decal on the pinkie nail. I doubted anyone would notice, but I appreciated the fact that my tank top was a perfect match to the color of the lighthouse.

I was turning to go back to the lighthouse path when I heard something that sounded like a human plea for help. Not the melodramatic, verbose calls of the young actors in the play, but a garbled, barely intelligible sound mingled with the wheezing of a person trying desperately and unsuccessfully to get a breath of air.

I did come from tough stock, after all, and if I'd grown up here in the lighthouse, I'd like to think I would have gone out to rescue drowning sailors if needed. I didn't have to do anything quite that brave right now. I just had to peek around the corner of the porta-potty, and if I wasn't just imagining the sounds, there were plenty of potential rescuers that I could call on for help. The medical tent was only about a hundred feet away, after all.

Bracing myself to turn and run away if the sound was coming from a wild creature, I peered around the corner. There on the ground was the market manager, struggling to crawl toward me. He was clearly having trouble breathing, and all around his nose and mouth, his face was covered with something dark red. Not blood, as I first thought, but more like something had been ground into his face. It was the color of a tomato, but the texture was different, more opaque, and less watery.

I started screaming, every bit as incoherent as the manager was, but loud enough to draw a crowd. He looked up at me, his eyes filling with relief that he'd been found. When I heard footsteps running in our direction, I stopped screaming and knelt beside the man. "It's okay. People are coming."

"Al," he said, barely more than a whisper, before the wheezing grew too labored for him to speak. He squeezed my hand. "Tell them Al…"

He dropped back to the ground just as someone grabbed my shoulders and pulled me out of the way. He was wearing a jacket with a red cross on it and carrying a bag with the same symbol.

I was only too happy to let him take over. I suspected my great-great-great-grandmother would have approved of my handling of the situation. After all, part of the reason she'd been so heroic was that there really hadn't been any other option. She and her family had been the only people available to help the shipwrecked sailors. If she was as much like me on the inside as she was on the outside, she would have much preferred planning and supervising rather than doing the actual rescue. If she'd been in my shoes today, she would have done exactly the same thing that I did: call for professionals to take care of the man in trouble.

Still, I couldn't help thinking that she wouldn't have left it at that. She would have stuck around to make sure the rescuers did their job right.

A KILLING IN THE MARKET

exclusively available

in the KILLER BEACH READS short story collection!