Smile Beach Murder (Outer Banks Bookshop Mystery, Band 1) - Hardcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Before authoring the Outer Banks Bookshop mystery series, Alicia Bessette worked as a reporter in her home state of Massachusetts, where her writing won a first-place award from the New England Newspaper & Press Association. A pianist, published poet, and enthusiastic birdwatcher, she now loves living in coastal North Carolina with her husband, novelist Matthew Quick.

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1

I ran for Smile Beach with the tangs of summer in my nose and an ache in my heart. The parking lot smelled like sunscreen and cedar trees and French fries. I breathed it all in, trotting past the burger truck parked in the shade, past the rows of cars steaming in the sun, and onto the sand-strewn ramp. Overhead, purple martins somersaulted against an impossibly blue sky. I heard the tling-tling of a bicycle and, farther south, the bellow of the ferry as it bumped the rubber-edged dock in the harbor.

Cattail Island.

My mother had loved it.

I wanted to love it too.

"Hey, ma'am!" A dad was passing me on the ramp, leading his cute family to the burger truck. "It's called Smile Beach," he said to me as he pulled a T-shirt over his furred belly. "Not Frown Beach!"

His kid's floppy hat cast a pink glow on her single enormous front tooth. She erupted in giggles when the mom tickled her. The mom then shot me a smile like the one I'd seen on many a summertime visitor over the years. A smile brought on by chilled wine and vitamin D absorption. "Is this place paradise or what?" she asked.

"Paradise," I said.

"It's just like that old chamber of commerce slogan. What was it? Cattail—the isle worth your while."

"Something like that." It was actually the downhome isle that's worth your while, but I didn't feel like getting into it, so I gave the woman a friendly little wave before turning onto Smile Beach. The gentle curve of it suggested a half-moon or a crescent—or a smile, which is what the founding Cattailers went with. I slowed to a walk so I wouldn't kick sand onto the families as they sprawled on towels and reclined in beach chairs. Parents held tablets above their faces. Teens took selfies. Kids became entirely encrusted in sand.

Cattail Island is known for its beaches. The east-side ones evoke the covers of summer escape novels—windswept dunes sloping to fine sand and, beyond, the vast gray Atlantic. The west-side beaches, including Smile Beach, feature the shallow, gentle waves of the Pamlico Sound. Unless, of course, there's a storm.

It wasn't the first time I'd wondered what it would have been like to go on a beach vacation with my parents. To have rubbed sunscreen onto my mom's shoulders. To have tossed a football with my dad, whoever he was. To have dozed so hard I forgot my name, then galloped for the water like a wild Outer Banks mustang.

I walked toward the old Smile Beach fishing pier, which sagged ten feet above the Pamlico. The sad old thing had missing railings and crooked pilings and looked as though the next stiff breeze would send it toppling into the chop. That didn't stop anglers from casting out, trying their luck for speckled trout or bluefish or flounder.

Past the pier, the Elder Tree came into view, its branches beckoning as if wind had blown them into that shape. And wind had, over the centuries. At the northernmost point of Cattail Island, the live oak's trunk measured fifty feet around. Shade engulfed me as I followed the path curling from the beach into the woods.

I could still climb like a local. Scaling the queenliest tree on Cattail involved making use of a rotten fence remnant. Hopping, I grabbed the pickets and crept up until I could hook an arm around the giant branch paralleling the ground. My fingertips caught the lip of a teardrop-shaped cavity. I wriggled and grunted and heaved and soon was seated, legs dangling. Sweat trickled down my temples, my back, my shins. I must have sweated away my sunscreen, because my skin felt like rugburn.

If heat had a sound it would be waves crashing and insects clicking and leaves stirring in undetectable breezes and, from someone's portable speaker, Carrie Underwood snarling about taking a Louisville Slugger to both headlights.

This barrier island, nine miles long, is shaped like a cattail, whip thin except for the wide part, three miles across. The wide part's where most of the dwellings are, bungalow-style rental cottages and modest cedar-shake stilt homes. The southern end of Cattail Island curves slightly westward, allowing a glimpse of the lighthouse even from where I sat in the Elder Tree. All these years later and the sight of that hometown landmark poking above the treetops still made my chest hollow, as if someone had taken an icy scoop and cored out my heart.

I shifted so that a clutch of Spanish moss blocked the lighthouse from view.

In addition to its beaches, Cattail Island is also known for being difficult to access. No bridges touch its shores—which means a long drive no matter what direction you're coming from, followed by a long wait for the ferry.

Whenever I visited home, I felt marooned.

"How's the job search going?" a voice boomed.

My uncle appeared on the path. He peered up at me, his beard like pine shavings springing out in all directions, his sea-green eyes twinkling.

I took him in—his dusty overalls, his cannonball belly, the water bottle in his big hand. A nugget of confusion knocked around inside my chest. I wanted to throw my arms around him and hightail it back to Charlotte. Back to my old life. My adult life. My real life.

"How'd you find me?" I asked him.

"Drove around for miles looking for the only person crazy enough to go for a run at high noon." Hudson was one of the hundred or so remaining Cattailers who still spoke what was known as the Outer Banks brogue, in which miles sounded like moiles and high came out hoi. It was strange and charming, a southern drawl lilting with an English accent.

"I needed to get outside," I said. "I might be in a tree right now, but the past couple days I've been all over this glorified sandbar, looking for work. I won't be living in your loft for the rest of my life. And I won't be staying on-island very long either. That, I can guarantee."

"Cattail really is a prison sentence to you, isn't it?"

"Please don't take it personally." I slid down from the branch and landed hard, knees crackling.

"You do realize it's two-thirds of the way through June. Seasonal work's been arranged for months. What's your plan? Go back to waiting tables at the diner? Vacuuming rental cottages on change-over days?"

"What do I look like, a college student?" That was who got those jobs. Not thirty-eight-year-old laid-off newspaper reporters with crackling knees. "I'll find something," I said.

"Obviously the Cattail Crier isn't an option."

"Obviously." My complicated history with the editor in chief made working for the local weekly an impossibility.

"What about the MotherVine?" my uncle asked.

"The bookshop?" I pictured it. The tall windows and pine-plank floors. My mother, curled in her favorite armchair, an open book in her lap . . . "Not my speed," I said.

Hudson stepped closer. His hair stuck up in tufts as if he hadn't bothered brushing. Because he hadn't. He smelled like lumber and Irish Spring soap. "Your mother loved that bookshop. You did too, at one time."

The air was suddenly too thick, like paste in my lungs. He handed me the bottled water, and I took a few ice-cold sips. Then I squeezed some water over my head, yelping from relief and shock.

"It's been twenty-five years, Callie," he said.

"Twenty-six."

"The way I...