A Deadly Cliche (A Books by the Bay Mystery)

book on coastal North Carolina and rapidly turned the pages to the section containing a group of maps.
    “The charter boat captain told me to save my money. For a few bucks, he’d make some calls on his radio to determine the ship’s destination. Sure enough, the Ritaestelle was headed back out to sea. The captain said to expect it to dock in Okracoke in three days’ time.”
    Olivia traced an imaginary line from Oyster Bay over the Pamlico Sound to the shores of Okracoke Island. The distance was approximately fifty miles.
    Even in a storm, half out of his mind and choking down whiskey, my father could have navigated that distance .
    “Are you going to be there when she docks?” Olivia asked Will.
    Will’s next words were a surprise. “I’m actually calling you from the island. If the envelope is on its way then your father might actually be here. I thought I’d find out for myself, but the locals are a tight-lipped group. I’m going to pose as a vacationer and keep my ears open until the Ritaestelle returns.”
    Olivia was pleased with Will’s doggedness and told him as much, but after she’d hung up the phone, anxiety began to surge through her body. As she stared at the skinny green smudge that was Okracoke on her map, she had a powerful feeling that her father was there, that he’d been there all along.
    “So close,” she murmured, experiencing a fresh bout of grief and resentment. “If you’ve been this close all these years . . .” The possibility was too painful to acknowledge and Olivia slammed the book closed.
    Haviland joined her in the living room, but he ignored his mistress and headed straight for the door leading to the deck. Olivia followed him outside. She sat in one of the deck chairs and let the burgeoning light wash over her, wishing that it held the power to burn all her memories away.
    As she sat there, breathing in the salt-tinged oxygen and releasing her anger with every exhalation, her thoughts eventually turned to yesterday’s writers’ meeting. She went inside, poured herself some coffee, and returned to the deck chair.
    “The dolls,” she said to the waves. “The thieves must have felt the dolls’ eyes on them. Why would they care? Do they feel guilty about stealing? Over having committed murder?”
    The water rushed to the shore.
    “No.” Olivia shook her head as though the ocean had disagreed with her. “They killed a man and buried him on the beach, leaving him naked to the elements. It’s not a moral dilemma, so why did the glass-eyed stares of the dolls bother them?”
    As she ruminated, Haviland trotted up the dune path, his black fur covered in wet sand. He politely shook himself off at the bottom of the stairs, but his long nose and forehead were still caked with sand. Olivia grabbed a dishtowel from inside and brushed him off, smiling at how odd he looked with his mask of gritty white. The poodle stayed quite still until she was finished and then jerked away in order to take up an eager stance by his dinner dish.
    When Olivia didn’t come back indoors, Haviland barked to signal that he was ready for breakfast, but his mistress was staring down the beach toward the area of the Point where they’d discovered the buried body.
    “It’s something physical, I’m sure of it,” she said, rushing back into the house and picking up the phone. “They don’t like to be on the receiving end of stares, but why?”
    Rawlings answered his cell phone immediately and listened as Olivia presented her theory. “Something like a birthmark or burn scars?” he asked rhetorically. “It might explain the connection between the victims. Perhaps the children ridiculed our thieves at an athletic event. I’ll have to find out if anyone who came in regular contact with the families had some kind of physical deformity.”
    “Did Laurel bring you the lawn-service flyer from the Howard residence?”
    “Yes, and we moved on the information immediately,” Rawlings assured her. “Each victim received a similar flyer over the course of the summer. However, the name of the lawn service and the overall appearance of the flyer were altered. Every family had been given a unique flyer.”
    Olivia considered the implications of this statement as she put Haviland’s breakfast in the microwave. “The thieves put in some serious effort to get to these families. What were the other names of these lawn service companies?”
    “Green Thumb Lawn Care, Down the Garden Path Landscaping