Dipped to Death Read online

  I was just happy not to read anything about me, for once. Local reporter Pat Butts and her sidekick, photographer Tam See, were always popping up at the most inopportune times to record my misfortunes, mostly with dead men.

  I tossed the rag aside and grabbed my mystery book. Behind me, Dolly continued happily gnawing away at her ham bone. A little breeze kissed my cheek as I opened the paperback and began reading, trying to distract my mind with the details of a whodunit. With my bare feet dangling over the pier, splashing in the cool water, I concentrated on the mystery, barely noticing as birds sang and long strands of leaves waved and hissed from the ancient olive tree and the willow trees on the far side of the pond. It was a perfect afternoon.

  At least for a few minutes . . .

  Conk-la-ree!

  A stiff breeze blew. Slender leaves in the olive tree chittered in the wind and the boat bumped against the pier. I reached up to grab my hat before it sailed away. Something kur-thunked from the side of the pond with a splash. Dolly’s bone clattered on the boards as she dropped it to listen. Looking up from my book, I shielded my eyes with my hand, squinting through my Jackie O glasses to see.

  Was it a frog? Trout?

  Over on the marshy side of the pond, I heard a chorus of bullfrogs burping and grunting, reminding me of sounds my two sisters and I used to make when we’d plucked rubber bands wrapped around old tissue boxes, our homemade “instruments.”

  There was another kur-thunk. Dolly looked up again.

  “It was a frog, Dolly.”

  She went back to her bone.

  Even under my hat, the afternoon sun was bright and felt blistering hot on my skin. Returning home earlier that summer after eighteen years up in New England, I still wasn’t acclimated to my hometown’s sultry climate. The preposterous heat, coupled with the unexpected problems that came with Dex’s arrival, plagued me . . .

  I dropped the book. Reaching into the picnic basket, I pulled out the tube of sunscreen. Opening the tube, I slathered the goo on my face, chest, shoulders, and arms, careful not to get it on my baby blue swimsuit. I was tanned, but with my fair skin and my love for the outdoors, I worked hard not to burn. I had my share of freckles; I didn’t need any more.

  I secured my hat with a tug and went back to my book, flipping to a new page as a puffy white cloud crossed overhead, blocking the bright sun. From the yard up the hill, I could hear noisy blue jays squabbling from moss-covered limbs in the live oak trees. The long, pointed leaves of palmetto trees in the yard twisted in the wind as I got a whiff of Daphne’s flowers. The cloud moved on, releasing the glaring sun again. Then a smaller shadow crossed my legs. I looked up to see a buzzard circling slowly overhead.

  Looking for field mice.

  The breeze blew ripples across the pond. Next to me, the red dinghy bobbed in little waves, nudging the pier.

  Thunk. Thunk.

  The buzzard flew off just before a brown pelican dropped like an arrow from the sky, splashing straight down into the black pond water where it disappeared. A moment later, the big bird emerged from the pond, flying up and then soaring off with a small trout in its bill. Dolly woofed and wagged her tail as she watched the pelican.

  “C’mon, Dolly. That bird’s got the right idea. It’s too hot to just sit here. Let’s go for a row.”

  I dog-eared a page and tossed my mystery book inside the basket. Dolly released her bone with a clatter and galloped down the pier. I reached down and scooped her up in my arms.

  “Omigosh! Dolly! You weigh a ton.”

  Cradling Dolly felt more like I was cradling a cinder block. Squirming in my arms—with brown button eyes, floppy ears, a long tail curled over wavy black fur on her back—she whimpered excitedly as she licked my face.

  “Dolly, your breath is terrible!” Ix-nay on the ham bones, I thought. Sheesh. “How can you be so fat, Dolly? I hate to put you on a diet. I barely feed you as it is!”

  With porky Dolly pressed tight against my chest, I carefully slithered down from the wooden pier into the tiny boat bobbing in the wavelets below. No more than five or six feet long, the dinghy rocked furiously back and forth as I stepped down inside, trying to balance with Dolly in my arms.

  Dolly wriggled free and jumped down—landing with the athletic prowess of a log—to stand panting between my legs in the bilge. A puff of wind worked its way across the pond, wrinkling the water as I slipped the tie line off the pillar at the dock. With Dolly in the stern, I settled to face her on the middle seat. I flipped up the chocks on the gunwales and dropped an oar into each. Then, slicing the water with my right oar, I pulled it hard, spinning the little dinghy toward the center of the pond. Dolly ducked under my seat and scuttled to the bow, where she looked out ahead, panting and sniffing, standing up like a sentry with her front paws on the gunwale.

  Eyes half closed, I rowed lazily out into the pond, going nowhere, really, just idly paddling around and around, relaxing, attempting to empty my mind and catch a breeze to cool my skin. I gazed down into the water, trying to catch a glimpse of a fish or two. No luck. Even with my sunglasses cutting the glare, the murky pond water appeared almost black, with little sparkles of sunlight dancing on the tops of the wavelets.

  C’mon, Eva, you’ve got to deal with Dex.

  Finally, I slipped the oars up, out of the water, and across my lap. Looking skyward, I leaned back, closed my eyes, and inhaled as the flowery breeze kicked up again. The little boat turned in the wind, and I heard tiny waves licking the rocking hull. Then a gust blew from the other direction. The boat briskly spun around and pitched side to side as Dolly scrambled toward the opposite side of the bow, sniffing and whimpering. With one hand over the oars in my lap, I grabbed the gunwale with my other hand and steadied myself, still with my eyes closed, still determined to bask thoughtlessly in the sunlight. I inhaled the scents of sugary flowers from Daphne’s garden behind my cottage mingled with the wet, earthy detritus around the pond. A shadow crossed over us as the buzzard circled overhead.

  That’s when I began recounting the night before.

  “Can you believe it, Dolly?” I said. “There he was. Dex. Standing in the house where I’d grown up. Grinning at me, like we were still friends. Like nothing had ever happened between us. Like it hadn’t been sixteen or seventeen years since we’d last seen each other. As if he’d never . . . Oh, never mind.”

  I remembered how Daphne’d told me that Dex had specifically asked to sleep in my old bedroom. Of course, not having any idea who he was, or that he’d even known me before stepping onto the plantation that day, Daphne had happily assigned him my old room. Why wouldn’t she?

  Eghh.

  “Ironic how after I’d left him, I’d never run across him during all those years in New England. I’d never even thought about him. Then, I’m back home no more than a couple of months, and bam! Here he is. Out of nowhere. Like a bad penny. My worst nightmare.”

  I groaned. Dolly sniffed the air and yipped.

  “Why did Dex come to Abundance, Dolly? I never wanted to see him again. Surely, he must know that. And why are he and the others calling themselves ‘bird-watchers’? I recognize every single one of them. Bird-watchers? Really?”

  Hardly.

  Dolly barked. I opened my eyes just as she jumped upright, knocking the dinghy around, placing her front paws on the gunwale. Looking across the water, she barked again.

  And again.

  “Shhh, Dolly!”

  Squealing and shaking excitedly, with her attention focused on the far side of the pond, Dolly would not stop barking. I sat up.

  “Dolly, stop!”

  Bark. Bark. Bark.

  “What is it?”

  I tried to follow her gaze. She kept barking and whimpering, scratching at the side of the skiff. And then, finally, I saw something. It was way across the pond. In the tall weeds.

  “What is
that, Dolly?”

  Afraid she’d jump out of the dinghy, I grabbed my pup and pulled her back between my legs. I slid my oars into the water, spun the boat around, and started rowing toward the brown clump in the weeds on the other side of the pond.

  “Is that fur?”

  Dolly barked again.

  The wind blew, and the brown thing bobbed, making ripples in the water. I squinted to see. Still, I couldn’t make it out. So I rowed faster. Honestly, if Dolly hadn’t barked and put on such a fit, I’d never have noticed whatever it was. At first, it looked just like a brown patch of thatch.

  Cattails?

  No . . . I decided it looked just like a clump of random weeds. Then, not so much. As I rowed closer, the random weeds began to look more like fur.

  “A beaver? Groundhog?”

  Is it moving? No . . .

  “Ugh. Must be a dead animal.”

  Dolly squealed as I pulled the oars harder and faster through the water, spinning to look over my shoulder as we neared the floating blob.

  Dolly made a shrill whining noise, yeee-ow, yeee-ow! Her tail wagged furiously.

  “Are there beavers around here?”

  That made sense, I thought. A beaver. No. A dead beaver. That explained the buzzard.

  Gross.

  I pulled the oars through the black water again. And again. And again. We closed in on the brown thing. I rowed on. Pulled harder. Still between my legs, Dolly was near frantic. A hard knot grew in my stomach as I rowed nearer to the brown clump.

  Something isn’t right.

  Squinting, looking over my shoulder again, I slowed my rowing as we drifted nearer to the mass in the weeds and grasses. I pulled hard on the right oar, spinning the skiff around to see . . .

  In a barking frenzy, Dolly shot from between my legs. At the same moment, with a terrible start, I yelped. Instinctively, my body flew up and backward. My hat flew off. The oars slid from my grip and into the water. I almost fell out of the rocking dinghy.

  Finally, I had a clear view of the brown clump.

  Floating in the tall weeds was a mass of hair.

  On a man’s head.

  Drifting faceup, with chiseled features and eyes as black and lifeless as the murky water around him, the man with fine, sun-bronzed skin was most definitely . . . naked.

  And, most decidedly, dead.

  Worse still, I recognized him.

  Once upon a time, we’d been engaged.

  CHAPTER 2

  “Eva, what do you mean, you were engaged to him once? Babydoll, this isn’t your Boston weatherman . . . is it?” His low, sotto voce voice was smooth as silk, with a distinctly Southern drawl.

  Standing on the end of the pier, tanned, tall, rock of a man Sheriff Buck Tanner was calm but clearly puzzled as he stared at me from behind his dark aviator sunglasses. In his late thirties, Buck raised a big farmer’s hand, raking strong fingers through his close-cropped dark brown hair. Even in all that summer heat, he looked cool as a cucumber.

  Buck’s white, short-sleeved, button-down uniform shirt precisely fit his immensely muscled chest and shoulders. On one shoulder he wore a large patch and bars that denoted his rank. Small gold pins with the letters “ACSD” embellished his lapels. A gold badge with an encircled star was pinned to his right chest pocket. A heavy-looking black belt with pouches all around holstered a large gun over his hip. Buck’s mouth was tight as he shoved his phone back into his uniform pocket.

  The dimples weren’t smiling. Buck was all business.

  I looked away, scanning the scene as blue and red lights flashed from vehicles up in the yard—SUVs, ambulances, fire trucks. Parked down at the pond, there was a truck with a trailer that had carried the small boat that’d been launched into the water to retrieve the body. It’d seemed a bit over the top to me . . . I mean, from where the body’d been, a tall person probably could’ve reached him with a pair of waders. Or certainly, they could’ve used my little rowboat for retrieval. But no. Apparently, this type of water retrieval doesn’t happen much in Abundance County. The rescue team must’ve been eager to use the new aluminum rescue boat that a Samaritan had donated. All around the little pond, people in uniforms hustled about, barking orders, writing notes, taking photographs, measuring . . .

  Watching the scene from the top of the hill near my cottage were three men and one woman, all about my age—in their late thirties or early forties. I recognized each one of them: pinched-looking, blonde Claudia Bacon Devereaux; geeky, spectacled Spencer Andover Fisk; burly, bearded John Cabot “Wiggy” Wigglesworth; and boyishly handsome Norcross Cooper “Coop” Tarbox the Second.

  The rest of the crowd from Boston.

  Outfitted like a crew from the L.L.Bean catalogue, they were all friends of the deceased and, like him, all worked for the Perennial Paper Company in Boston. Ostensibly on vacation, they were dressed in brand-new hiking clothes and were wearing binoculars around their necks. Returning from their guided nature walk somewhere off the plantation, the group remained up on the hill after the deputies cautioned them about coming any nearer to the pond. I looked down at the water.

  “Eva?” Buck asked again.

  A soft breeze made little wavelets on the pond. Standing alongside Buck, I got a whiff of the warm, honeyed scent of his skin mixed with something powdery and soft with spice, sandalwood and a hint of patchouli. His scent was comforting and familiar. Safe. And something else. My mind flashed to the last time he’d touched me—kissed me, with quite a bit of gusto, I might add—right here at the plantation, just a few weeks earlier. Thinking about it, the back of my neck flashed hot and got a little tingly.

  Still, where’d Buck been lately?

  I felt my cheeks flush.

  A vehicle door slammed somewhere in the yard. I looked up to see Buck staring at me, waiting for an answer.

  “No,” I sighed. “It’s not Zack Black . . . the Boston weatherman,” I said finally. “And he wasn’t my weatherman,” I added sarcastically.

  My sensational broken engagement to the popular weatherman Zack Black months earlier had been tabloid fodder all summer long. I’d become known all over the country as the kooky jezebel who’d run off from Boston’s—the nation’s, really—best-known and beloved celebrity weatherman on our highly publicized wedding day. Then after I’d ditched my wretched ex-fiancé, he and his TV station PR pundits had dredged up and publicized my runaway bride “history,” making it look like the wedding-day blowout in Boston had all been my fault. Since I’d ditched another fiancé at the altar eighteen years earlier, I—the chronically disturbed runaway bride—was the problem, not Zack Black, everyone’s favorite weatherman.

  Of course, it was all bunk. I’d had good reason to run from Zack. Regardless, I couldn’t match the television station’s PR machine, and by week’s end, the bad publicity about me had ruined my reputation as well as my PR business in New England. Not long after my aborted wedding day, with no clients and no income, and no place to live—note to self, never share a condo with your fiancé, because if it doesn’t work out, you’ll get locked out and lose all your stuff—I ended up hightailing it back to my hometown of Abundance, Georgia, after eighteen years away and plans to never return.

  Never say never.

  Then, right after I’d returned home, I’d had to face, for the first time in eighteen years, the first man I’d ditched at the altar.

  Sheriff Buck Tanner.

  That had been awkward, to say the least.

  Then, there was a murder at our plantation. And then, a man suffered a heart attack and died. And then, there was another murder.

  Now this.

  I glanced over at the other side of the pond. What happened to Dex? Then the realization hit me.

  I’m going to have to tell Buck the truth. All of it . . .

  Like the other two times that I’d been engaged—before D
ex to Buck, and after Dex to Zack Black the weatherman— I’d broken my engagement to Dex suddenly, and then I’d run away. It’d made perfect sense at the time. To me, anyway. Looking back on it, I should’ve handled it differently.

  All of it.

  Regardless, unlike the other two very public wedding-day routs with Buck and the weatherman, this broken engagement, the second of three, was something that no one knew about. Except for a few people from Boston—Dex’s closest friends—no one had even known that I’d been engaged to Dex in the first place, including my family. I hadn’t even told Daphne that I knew Dex when I’d discovered him and his cronies seated at the dinner table up at the big house the night before. My two older sisters and my dad were bound to be shocked and hurt about all the history that I hadn’t shared with them.

  And now, making things worse, those few in the know from Boston were standing on the knoll next to my cottage. Staring down at me. And they were pretending, for some unknown reason, to be bird-watchers. Here in Abundance.

  And Dex was dead in my family’s farm pond.

  I looked up at the small gathering on the hill.

  I felt sick.

  Someone was approaching from the other side of the pond. Tall, slim Deputy Pierce. I recognized the young, hazel-eyed deputy from the last murder investigation. He ambled over to his boss and whispered in Buck’s ear. Something about Dex’s eyes. And then something about Dex’s clothes. Buck nodded, without taking his eyes off me. Or at least I thought his eyes were on me . . . I couldn’t see Buck’s gorgeously chocolaty peepers because they were concealed behind his dark aviators.

  “Go on, Eva,” Buck ordered as his deputy took out a notepad. “You were telling me that you were engaged to the man you found in the pond?”

  Deadpan. He could’ve been ordering a pizza.