A Deadly Cliche (A Books by the Bay Mystery)

painting on the wall. “What cliché? What did you see?”
    “Olivia.” Flynn waved his hands in an attempt to gain her attention. “Are you free to stay awhile?”
    She turned to him, her deep blue eyes nearly black in the dim light. “Not tonight. I need to go home and think.”
    And with that, she strolled out of the bar and through the swinging door into the kitchen. The door had a small, rounded window and was marked by a sign that said “Staff Only, Please.” Olivia knew Flynn wouldn’t follow her into the restaurant’s inner sanctum.
    It would be like chasing a dragon into its cave.

Chapter 11

    On life’s vast ocean diversely we sail,
Reason the card, but passion is the gale.
    —ALEXANDER POPE

    O livia carried the Bounty Hunter on her shoulder as though she were a lumberjack heading into the forest for a day’s work. Haviland bounded out in front, splashing in the surf, his brown eyes burnished gold by the earlymorning light.
    It wasn’t difficult to find the spot where the body had been buried in the sand. There were still multiple sets of tracks leading up to the dunes left by either the police or, judging from a scattering of empty beer cans, curious locals. Olivia switched on the metal detector and frowned.
    “I know it’s pure hubris to believe I could find a buried clue when a dozen cops, not to mention one of the area’s finest K-9 units, could not,” she confessed to Haviland. “But I hate standing idly by.”
    Slowly, deliberately, she began to sway the metal detector’s disc over the sand. She started where she believed the body had been and moved up the beach toward the dunes. Her machine was unusually silent and failed to signal the presence of useless pieces of metal like soda can tabs or bottle caps. The display screen was also lifeless.
    Olivia completed a wide semicircle and began to repeat the process in the opposite direction, heading toward the water’s edge. Again, the Bounty Hunter had nothing to offer and she set it aside, keenly disappointed. Kicking off her shoes, she sat down, curling her toes in the moist sand just shy of the ocean’s watery fingers.
    “You sent me signs last time someone I cared for was hurt,” she whispered, reaching out to touch the frothy ridge of a wave. “This man was a stranger to me, but someone must be missing him. Someone will want him to be at peace. You were the only witness. What secrets do you carry?”
    The water gently bubbled and hissed and then Haviland was at her side, nudging Olivia with his nose before racing off again to chase a gull. Though the poodle was a threat, the bird flew just out of Haviland’s reach, as if enjoying a game with the canine.
    When Olivia looked back down at the sand, she noticed that it was pocked with fiddler crab holes. Recalling a trick from childhood, Olivia pierced the sand next to one of the holes with a twig and the crab darted out of the burrow. Olivia followed the creature’s progress, which was made slightly awkward due to the one large and fiddle-shaped claw. The crab scuttled several yards away from the water line and immediately began to dig a new hole. Olivia had watched the crabs do this hundreds of times before, but she still loved to sit and wait as the tireless creatures produced a tidy ball of sand in the process of creating a new home.
    “Not a very exciting existence,” she mused aloud. “You dig yourself a hole—” She stopped and glanced up the beach. “Dig yourself into a hole. That’s the cliché Rawlings figured out at The Boot Top.” She stood, brushed sand from her pants, and whistled for Haviland. “Felix Howard wasn’t the first person to suffer violence at the robbers’ hands. They’ve killed before. They committed premeditated murder right here !”
    Reclaiming the metal detector, Olivia switched it on, ignoring Haviland’s plaintive look. “I know you’ve had enough, but I can’t quit yet. Just pick a spot and start digging. I’m going to sweep this entire perimeter once again. There must be something here.”
    There wasn’t.
    Tired, hot, and frustrated, the pair set off for home.

    Olivia spent the afternoon critiquing Millay’s chapter. Her phone rang once, but she was so engrossed in Millay’s fantastical world that she allowed the answering machine to pick up. It was Flynn, asking that she return his call as soon as possible. “Otherwise I’m going to have to turn to another smart, no-nonsense woman to help me out,” he teased.