A Deadly Cliche (A Books by the Bay Mystery)

little reed, bending to the force of the wind, soon stood upright again when the storm had passed over.
    —AESOP

    B y Monday night, Ophelia had spent her wrath. Her winds were no longer roars, but whispers. The raindrops no longer slammed sideways against windows and rooftops, but dropped reluctantly from the sky, as though exhausted from the effort of having to detach from clouds impatient to be on their way.
    It was dark by the time the world finally fell silent. Olivia stepped out onto the deck, feeling like she was in the middle of starless space. The only illumination within miles came from the lighthouse, whose beacon swept the ocean and provided an illusion of normalcy.
    She couldn’t see how far up the beach the water had come, but the hiss of incoming waves sounded closer than usual. The sea was still swollen, and though it no longer seemed boiling with violent surges, it was not yet at rest.
    Olivia’s house had weathered the storm, but she couldn’t stop wondering how others had fared. How were the rest of the Bayside Book Writers? And what of Dixie, who lived in a pair of doublewides haphazardly attached by a covered breezeway? She refused to think how Rawlings had spent the past twenty-four hours, pushing away the image of him standing in her kitchen like a big, wet bear.
    The night passed slowly. Olivia let Haviland out to stretch his legs, but she knew the terrain had become altered in the storm and it would be unwise for her to venture forth in the dark. She continued to work the mammoth jigsaw puzzle of the Sistine Chapel, the radio her only companion.
    Ophelia still held the media captive. Reports were given every fifteen minutes on the effects the weakening hurricane was having over central North Carolina and southern Virginia. Around ten P.M., a sound bite provided by a representative from the Coast Guard told of their failure to locate the fishing trawler missing since Sunday morning. “At this point, it is unlikely that any of the five men aboard were able to survive,” the man stated grimly.
    Olivia looked down at the puzzle section she’d just completed. It was Michelangelo’s rendition of God dividing the waters. She stared at it a long time, her thoughts fixed on the missing fishermen. She imagined the crew members being hurled into the water, fighting for air until their lungs burned and they surrendered their last breath to the ocean. She pictured their souls being pulled from their lifeless bodies by a pair of powerful yet tender hands, lifted up, up out of the cold and the wet, beyond the rain bands and the noise of the wind.
    Running her fingers over the surface of the puzzle, Olivia touched the fine cracks where the pieces met and then switched the radio to a smooth jazz station, hoping to turn her thoughts to other things. But she found the music too upbeat, almost mocking in its vivaciousness, so she turned the radio off. She completed the section showing a portrait of Daniel and decided to call for Haviland and go to bed.
    “Captain!” she shouted into the night air and waited for him on the deck. The poodle loped up the stairs, his fur slick with moisture and his tongue lolling in happiness. Envying him his freedom, Olivia took him into the kitchen, dried his coat with a towel, and kissed his damp nose.
    “I’ll have a major case of cabin fever if I spend another day inside,” she told him later as she folded back the duvet cover on her bed. “Tomorrow we’ll check out the cottage and then take a drive to see what’s happened to our town.”
    Lying down, she curled around a spare pillow and looked out the window at the fathomless sky. “And to our friends.”

    Olivia was awake at first light. She dressed quickly, brewed coffee, and ate a cereal bar and banana for breakfast.
    “One of Grumpy’s Florentine omelets would sure hit the spot,” she said, feeling energized by the rays of sun tentatively lighting the horizon. Pulling on her rain boots, Olivia and Haviland walked down a soggy path through the dunes. The tide was out and the ocean was a stretched canvas of Fourth of July sparklers.
    “Glad to see you back, old friend.” Olivia strode to the water’s edge and inhaled a lungful of crisp air. When she entered the cottage, her delight quickly turned to dismay as she saw the brown stains around the baseboards. In every room, water had crept in and made itself at home. The carpet in the conference room and the hardwood flooring in the remaining three rooms