Diamonds Teak and Murder: A Crystal Coast Case (Crystal Coast Cases Book 1) Read online

  Copyright © 2019 by A.M. Ialacci

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Cover Design: Spellbinding Design

  Editing: Amabel Daniels

  Formatting: Tadpole Designs

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Note From The Author

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by A.M. Ialacci

  To Mom

  For giving me the idea.

  And for saving my very first book, “TOM WIT OWT” (Tom Went Out), in all its stapled looseleaf and crayon stick-figure glory.

  You made me believe I could.

  Chapter One

  Ty climbed the stairs to the deck of the vintage yacht to see if he could find out where the sound and light originated. Someone had to be aboard The Sunset Lady, and there were too many valuable art pieces on it for this to be something random. He called out. No response. Definitely someone who wasn't supposed to be aboard. After heading past the pilot house and into the main living room area and noting that nothing was out of place, he slipped down the stairs to the cabins below. Two cabins and a bathroom were to his left. Again, he saw all was in order. As he turned toward the crew cabins, something came swinging at his head. His attacker grunted, and Ty ducked out of the way just in time to see a figure dressed in black. Ty scrambled up the stairs. Who was this? His pursuer was hot on his heels as he tore through the living room and onto the deck of the bow. Ty turned around to see the dark form barreling straight at him. He paused a second too long, and the intruder ran directly into him, hitting him in the head with something hard and pushing him into the railing, banging his head against the metal so that he saw stars.

  "What the hell?"

  His attacker said nothing but regained his footing and crouched to attack again.

  "What the hell are you doing here? Who the hell are you?" Ty yelled. The only response was a low rumbling sound from the throat of his pursuer who lunged again, this time, knocking him onto his back. This guy wasn't big, but he was strong and had the element of surprise on his side. His face was darkened with something, making him unrecognizable. Ty realized how close he was to the edge of the forward deck and decided to stop fucking around. This jackass needed to be tossed. He tried to get up, but his pursuer was pushing him toward the edge. As he scrambled to get his footing or a hand-hold on anything that would stop his progress, he began to panic when all he met were smooth surfaces designed for easy cleaning.

  "Wait— Stop," he yelled as the person continued to grunt and push. "Stop!" He frantically grabbed at anything within reach. His hands found his assailant’s hat and ripped it off. “What the…?” he whispered.

  His attacker paused, giving him the chance to scramble to his feet. “You?”

  With one last growl, the attacker spun backward and landed a powerful kick to Ty’s chest. The look of surprise never left his face as he sailed over the side of the boat and landed in a crumpled heap on the dusty ground below.

  Chapter Two

  Allie woke to the still-unfamiliar sound of the landline phone. It was pitch-black out and unnaturally still. She glanced at the clock. Three AM. Why on earth was anyone calling her at this time of night? No one knew her home number, and Ryan was asleep in his bedroom.

  Ryan. She panicked at the thought that her brother had gotten out of the trailer somehow, and had run into some kind of trouble. She wrestled with the sheets until her feet hit the floor and stumbled around the coffee table. Five hurried steps to his room, but he was right where he should be, sleeping through the racket from the phone. The ringing stopped and then started again. She gently closed the door and sprinted back to the kitchen, hurrying around the counter to grab it.

  “Hello?” Her voice cracked with sleep.

  “Allie? I’m so sorry to bother you at this hour, but it’s… It’s Ty. I mean, this is Neil, but something has happened to Ty…” Something had to be really wrong if her boss was calling about his son, the yard foreman, at this hour.

  Still trying to get her bearings, she said, “Neil? What’s happened?”

  “He’s had an accident. He fell off one of the boats in the yard.” He paused. “He’s… dead.”

  “What?” she said, still not comprehending.

  “Ty is dead,” he repeated, emphasizing each word. “The Sheriff’s Department is here, and I need you to… I need you to come down to the yard.”

  Allie hesitated. What could she do about Ryan? She separated the blinds a bit so she could see the neighbor’s trailer and saw with relief that her lights were on. Peg was a night owl and wouldn’t hesitate to come over to keep an eye on things.

  “I’ll be there as soon as I can,” she said and hung up.

  Peg walked briskly across the small space between their trailers, her knitting bag in tow. Despite her salt-and-pepper pixie cut, most people were surprised to learn she was in her early seventies. When she came through the door, she asked, “You don’t mind if I watch the TV on low, do you? I’m in the middle of a program.”

  Allie nodded and said, “Sure, whatever you need.” The white hair elastic she pulled from the pocket of her skinny jeans had a shocking number of strands of her long chestnut hair entwined around it, but there was no time to untangle the mess. She smoothed her hair as much as she could, pulled a ponytail through the elastic, and snatched her green hoodie from the back of the chair. “Thank you so much for doing this. I still don’t know what’s going on, and I’m not sure how long I’ll be. Ryan is still asleep.”

  “Not a problem, honey. You know we’ll be just fine. You go do what you need to do.” The fine features of Peg’s face relaxed into a soft smile. “I used to do this for your parents from time to time. Of course, not in the middle of the night, but I don’t mind at all. And Ryan and I get along great, you know that. He’ll probably never know I was here,” she reassured, her piercing pale-blue eyes twinkling. “It was Neil that called you?”

  “Yes, he said his son Ty fell off one of the boats in the yard and is... dead… I just can’t imagine… Boats are second nature to Ty.”
Allie remembered Ty’s patience when he first took her clamming, showing her how to drag the rake in the sand and later teaching her how to use her toes to find the clams. She also remembered his quiet smile at her excitement each time she found one and dug it out herself.

  “Sounds suspicious to me. The sheriff is there? Fill me in when you get back,” Peg said, settling her petite frame into a recliner.

  “I will,” Allie promised absently as she grabbed her keys. She was still trying to wrap her brain around what she was going to walk into at the boatyard.

  She had never seen the yard like this, lights blazing in the middle of the night, with the gate wide open, and ten to fifteen people milling around. They were focused on the stately, polished-wood yacht called The Sunset Lady, twenty feet high in its braces, and she guessed that was where it had happened. Every step she took kicked up dust from the ground, and the blue lights from the cruisers swinging around the scene only added to the surreal quality of the picture. The frogs and insects that would normally be in full chorus were silent, fearing the humans who had invaded their space. The sailboats and pleasure cruisers perched on blocks, waiting their turns for repair along the perimeter of the yard, seemed to look on at the scene in the center. There, bright lights atop poles that seemed far too skinny to support their weight illuminated what looked like a pile of rags from this distance. A chill went through her as she realized that those “rags” were likely what was left of Ty Guthrie.

  Avoiding the spectacle, she walked up the steps to the office and pulled on the door. The fluorescent lights overhead seemed harsher in the middle of the night, and it was quiet enough to hear their buzz over the hum of conversation from Neil’s office. As she approached the open door to Neil’s office, she could see him at his desk with his head in his hands, while his wife, Vicky, leaned on a dented file cabinet, looking at the plastic clock on the wall. Across from Neil sat Chief Detective Bishop from the Sheriff’s Department. She hadn’t seen him since April, when she’d had to identify the bodies of her parents.

  “Neil,” she started.

  “Allie!” he said as his head snapped up. Chief Detective Bishop nodded to her briefly.

  Vicky also turned to greet her with a slight glare, quickly masked. “Allie. We are so glad you are here.”

  “What happened?” Allie asked, gripping the back of the chair. The grief on Neil’s face, the quiet of the office, and the image of the “pile of rags” in the yard began to coalesce as the finality of Ty’s death settled into her brain.

  “We don’t know,” Neil said, glancing at Chief Detective Bishop. “To my knowledge, all the staff had left yesterday evening—it was Monday, right?—by about 5:30. The next thing I know, it’s the middle of the night, and I get a call from the Sheriff's Department that our alarm company had called them when we didn’t respond to the alarm going off. I guess the company called my cell phone, but I keep it on mute at night. Some deputies got here about an hour ago and called me on the landline when they found Ty.” He put his hand to his forehead. Vicky placed a reassuring arm around his shoulders.

  The gesture of comfort reminded Allie of happier times. Neil had been friends with her father, once upon a time, and it still struck her as odd. Even at the age of eleven, she could tell that her dad and Neil were very different people. Then, Neil had been a lanky, tan, preppy man with a shock of dark hair in contrast to her father’s stocky body, fair complexion, and work boots. Nowadays, Neil was a little paunchy, a little pink, and had a head of mostly gray, wavy hair. He was nice enough, but when his temper took hold, his face turned bright red and his voice boomed. His second son, Zack, seemed to get him most riled, but anyone could set off that hair trigger, especially family. Ty had tried to stay in the yard as much as possible.

  You could tell Neil had money, and always had, unlike his second wife, Vicky. His expensive clothes seemed like a second skin, but no matter how much jewelry dripped from her fingers, wrists, neck, and ears, you would never mistake Vicky for Old Southern Money. Maybe it was her constant expression of wariness, or the way she always stood slightly behind Neil. Maybe it was the dye job that never seemed to cover her darker roots, or the way her clothes from the expensive department store in town never looked quite right on her frame. She had married Neil eight years before Allie’s family had moved to the area, but she still seemed uncomfortable with his wealth. And in spite of the money, she was a sour person, as if her life had not panned out the way she had hoped. Even though she would flash a smile and holler a “Hey, y’all!” in greeting, as expected, as soon as the formalities were over, her face fell naturally to a frown.

  Allie realized Neil was speaking to her. “I need you to help the Chief Detective with whatever he needs,” he said, gruffly.

  She nodded, glancing at Bishop.

  “And it’s going to be pretty crazy around here for a while.” He rubbed his forehead. “Between law enforcement, the press, and the boat owners…” He closed his eyes. “We’ll just need you to keep things under control.” He couldn’t sit still, cradling his head in his hands one moment and straightening his back to look at the clock the next while Vicky chewed her lip and sighed. She was probably thinking about how her son Zack would be affected by all of this. Where was Zack, anyway?

  “Does Zack know?” Allie asked.

  Neil’s gaze slid to Vicky. “We tried to call him but couldn’t reach him,” Vicky said, wringing her hands. “We’ll try again in a bit. I would hate for him to have to learn about his brother from someone else.”

  “Chief Detective?” Allie said, motioning to the outer office.

  “Hey, Allie,” he said, following her. “I know this is a shock. Are you doing all right?”

  “I guess I’m okay,” she said, her mind betraying her for a moment and remembering the young Ty, the one who had taken her clamming and flounder gigging when she was just a girl. Once they were out of earshot of Neil’s office, she said, “I just don’t understand how this could have happened.”

  Bishop made sure the back of his uniform polo was tucked into his crisp dark dress pants. His badge and gun hung off his belt, and his oxfords had been recently shined. He smiled at her. “I haven’t talked to you in a while, since your parents’ accident. How are you and Ryan making out? Have things settled down a little bit for you two?”

  “I suppose so,” she answered carefully, not wanting to drag up the memories. They were dangerously close anyway, with death in the air. “He’s adjusting, and so am I. It’ll take some time, I think.”

  “Of course, it will. Your lives have changed so much. Has he started talking again?”

  “No, not yet. A word here and there, but the doctor says that’s the grief, not the autism.”

  “And what about your grief?”

  Allie blushed. “I haven’t had time to grieve.”

  “If you need anything, anything at all, please call me,” he said, putting his hand on her shoulder.

  “You know I will, Chief Detective Bishop.”

  “Charlie, please. This ain’t the big city here,” he reminded her with his ready smile.

  “Can I ask you something?”

  “Of course,” Charlie said.

  “You’ve been here for at least an hour. And you’ve seen one boatyard, you’ve seen them all. Why did you tell Neil you needed my help?”

  He puffed out his barrel chest as he lifted his waistband. “Well, I’m gonna let you in on a little something. The techs are out there with one of my detectives, and we’re not sure this was an accident.” His fingers traced his silver mustache that matched his close-cropped hair.

  Allie let that sink in for a minute. It definitely made more sense than Ty falling off a boat. While Ty had been careful about his public persona, one to one, he could be less-than-charming, lighting into the yard crew over the tiniest of issues or ghosting a string of paramours. She became aware of Charlie watching her reactions to the news.

  “It’s a possibility,” she said.

  “I
know you didn’t deal with dead bodies as a fraud investigator in Chicago, but I thought you’d sense something wasn’t quite right here. Of course, we have to wait for the autopsy, but we’re looking at all possibilities, and one of them is that there was someone else here who caused him to fall. I assume Ty was living somewhere close by?”

  “He’s been living on his sailboat in the yard since this spring, just about our only live-aboard in the yard, I think,” she answered carefully, reaching over the front of her desk to move some papers around.

  “I wondered if that was the case. I had heard a bit about him and Barbie breaking up. Well, the first thing I’ll need is a list of employees, and then…”

  She handed him the employee roster.

  The door swung open and Mike Gillikin walked in, concern on his face. He was the yard mechanic and looked out of place without his coveralls. Fully dressed in jeans and a rumpled, long-sleeved shirt, he stifled a yawn and ran a hand through his eye-length honey-blond hair. His dark-blue eyes had a difficult time staying open until they found Allie. He made right for her.

  “Are you all right? What happened?” he asked, taking her hands in his. They felt rough, warm, and dry, and Allie didn’t want to let go.

  She said, “I’m fine, but Ty had some sort of accident and fell off the deck of The Sunset Lady. He’s dead.”

  “Neil just said there was an accident in the yard and I needed to come in! I had no idea…” He looked at Charlie as if seeing him for the first time.