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  Grave Expectations on Dickens’ Dune

  Seaview Cottages Cozy Mystery #3

  Anna Celeste Burke

  GRAVE EXPECTATIONS ON DICKENS’ DUNE

  Copyright © 2019 Anna Celeste Burke

  http://desertcitiesmystery.com

  Independently Published

  All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced without written permission of the publisher except brief quotations for review purposes.

  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 by Anna Celeste Burke

  Photo © Miraswonderland | Dreamstime.com and © Jo Ann Snover | Dreamstime.com

  Books by USA Today and Wall Street Journal Bestselling Author

  Anna Celeste Burke

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  A Dead Sister Jessica Huntington Desert Cities Mystery #2

  A Dead Daughter Jessica Huntington Desert Cities Mystery # 3

  A Dead Mother Jessica Huntington Desert Cities Mystery #4

  A Dead Cousin Jessica Huntington Desert Cities Mystery #5

  A Dead Nephew Jessica Huntington Desert Cities Mystery #6 [2019]

  Love A Foot Above the Ground Prequel to the Jessica Huntington Desert Cities Mystery Series

  Cowabunga Christmas! Corsario Cove Cozy Mystery #1

  Gnarly New Year! Corsario Cove Cozy Mystery #2

  Heinous Habits! Corsario Cove Cozy Mystery #3

  Radical Regatta! Corsario Cove Cozy Mystery #4 for preorder now in Summer Snoops Unleashed: 14 Furr-ocious Mysteries and Cozy Crimes. Available as a standalone in November 2019.

  Murder at Catmmando Mountain Georgie Shaw Cozy Mystery #1

  Love Notes in the Key of Sea Georgie Shaw Cozy Mystery #2

  All Hallows’ Eve Heist Georgie Shaw Cozy Mystery #3

  A Merry Christmas Wedding Mystery Georgie Shaw Cozy Mystery #4

  Murder at Sea of Passenger X Georgie Shaw Cozy Mystery #5

  Murder of the Maestro Georgie Shaw Cozy Mystery #6

  A Tango Before Dying Georgie Shaw Cozy Mystery #7

  A Canary in the Canal Georgie Shaw Cozy Mystery #8 [2019]

  A Body on Fitzgerald’s Bluff Seaview Cottages Cozy Mystery #1

  The Murder of Shakespeare’s Ghost Seaview Cottages Cozy Mystery #2

  Grave Expectations on Dickens’ Dune Seaview Cottages Cozy Mystery #3

  Lily’s Homecoming Under Fire Calla Lily Mystery #1

  Tangled Vines, Buried Secrets Calla Lily Mystery #2 [2019]

  DEDICATION

  To Charles Dickens’ wishes for us all: a heart that never hardens and a yielding spirit that when bent and broken takes on a better shape.

  Contents

  Acknowledgments

  Cast of Characters

  1 Grave Matters

  2 Of Trails and Trials

  3 Heavenly Compassion

  4 A Better Shape

  5 A Heart that Never Hardens

  6 Self-swindlers

  7 A Secret to Each Other

  8 An Uncommon Man

  9 An Innocent Man?

  10 Bah! Humbug!

  11 Unexpected Tears

  12 Friends with Chocolate

  13 More Surprises

  14 Enemies

  15 On the Evidence

  16 A Little Key

  17 The Rules of Vengeance

  Recipes

  Amish Tomato Pie

  Sour Cream Coffee Cake

  Earl Grey Doughnuts with Brown Butter Glaze

  Rainbow Antipasto Pasta Salad

  Barramundi with Pineapple Citrus Salsa

  Crème Brûlée

  About the Author

  Acknowledgments

  This book, like all the others, could not have been written without my husband’s input and support. I ask him dozens of questions while I’m writing, ranging from big issues about how to resolve a plot dilemma to small ones like the choice of which word to use in a sentence. He’s always helpful, supportive, and patient. Thank you!

  Thanks to my wonderful editor, Peggy Hyndman who tackles the first round of editing on the manuscript with a directness I appreciate, with thoroughness, and amazing speed. I’ll never know how she does all that she does for me and so many other authors fortunate enough to have her support.

  I’m also grateful to Ying Cooper for her input on this manuscript. She never lets me get away with a thing—checks the references to famous people, places, songs, and books. She finds the sneakiest missing word and even extra spaces that slip in.

  Acknowledgments would never be complete without thanking my readers for their ongoing support. That’s especially true for my “ARC Angels” who read imperfect versions of my books before Peggy & Ying get to them. I’m blessed to have their feedback and I’m grateful for their support.

  A special thanks to Judith Rogow for lending her name to an imaginary character in this story.

  Cast of Characters

  Dear reader, if you’d prefer to be surprised as each character is introduced please skip this section!

  GRAND OLD LADY DETECTIVES:

  Miriam Webster, who lives in Hemingway Cottage, was a bookkeeper, is a talented baker, and her fur baby is a Dalmatian, named Domino.

  Penelope Parker lives in Brontë Cottage, is a member of the Seaview Cottages Walkers Club, and has a Jack Russell Terrier, named Emily. Penelope prefers to be called Charly in honor of her favorite writer, Charlotte Brontë, and is a retired criminology professor.

  Cornelia “Neely” Conrad lives in Christie Cottage and is a self-proclaimed night owl who loves to read. Neely is retired and was an actress, turned costume designer and makeup artist.

  Marty Monroe lives in Fitzgerald Cottage and is a member of the Seaview Cottages Walkers Club. Before retiring, Marty spent decades working as a buyer for high-end department stores.

  Midge Gaylord lives in Austen Cottage and is a member of the Seaview Cottages Walkers Club. Midge is an ex-Army trauma care nurse, with ties to the local medical community.

  OTHER SEAVIEW COTTAGES RESIDENTS AND EMPLOYEES:

  Carl Rodgers lives in Steinbeck Cottage and is the former manager of a collection agency.

  Joe Torrance, who lives in Chandler Cottage, is a retired auto dealership service manager and mechanic.

  Greta Bishop lives in the Garbo Cottage. She used to be the resident Realtor and a Seaview Cottages HOA board member until legal issues led to her resignation.

  Robyn Chappell is dating Joe Torrance. She lived in the Shakespeare Cottage and just purchased the du Maurier Cottage.

  Alyssa Gardner and her husband who live in the Potter Cottage are snooty residents at the center of lots of gossip in the community.

  LAW ENFORCEMENT:

  Darnell Devers is a Deputy Sheriff for whom the locals have various pet names due to his “do as little as possible attitude.”

  Henry “Hank” Miller is the personable and competent lead detective with the County Sheriff’s Department. Assigned to the Criminal Investigations Bureau, he and his colleagues are tasked with investigations of major crimes against persons and property.

  Eddie Vargas was a detective from outside the local area who worked with Hank Miller on a case related to the trouble at Shakespeare Cottage.

  Officer Denver Clemons is an officer with the County Sheriff’s Department who works undercover.

  Harold is Charly’s friend and an investigator from the U.S. Treasury Department.

  SECO
NDARY CHARACTERS:

  Judith Rogow is Charly Parker’s friend. She hires G.O.L.D. to solve the mystery of her ex-husband’s disappearance and alleged murder—a cold case that’s decades old.

  Allen Rogow is Judith Rogow’s ex-husband who police suspected had met with foul play on Dickens’ Dune. The case went cold when they never found his body.

  Leonard Cohen is an ex-convict who makes a startling deathbed confession.

  Wendy Ballard is a young woman who Allen Rogow met in drug treatment.

  Nick Martinique is a friend of Wendy Ballard’s who also has drug problems.

  Chelsea Glen is Neely’s friend and contact at the resort in Pismo Beach.

  Elizabeth Stockton is the nurse at the hospital to whom Leonard Cohen made his deathbed confession.

  Ginger Winger is Leonard Cohen’s ex-wife.

  Jimmy Dunn is an acquaintance Miriam’s husband, Peter Webster, knew before he died.

  Ricardo Cantinela is a high-powered lawyer.

  Mark Viceroy is an Army buddy who served with Allen Rogow during the Vietnam War.

  1 Grave Matters

  “There's more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!” ~ A Christmas Carol

  ∞

  Grave hunting is no job for a woman on her own. Not that I was entirely alone. Domino, my Dalmatian, was with me. At almost a year old, she’s a sensitive creature, sweet and friendly, and far more alert to signals that something’s not right than I am. When she began to whine anxiously, I should have turned back.

  Dickens’ Dune beckoned, however, and my curiosity drove me on oblivious to Domino’s initial wariness. Rising out of the sand the hill ahead towered over the surrounding scrubby bluffs, rolling dunes, and sandy beach beyond. Although everyone refers to it as Dickens’ Dune, it isn’t a dune at all. It’s an outcropping of rocky granite deposited along California’s Central Coast during some ancient movement of a receding glacier. Over the years, sand had covered the rocky surface completely, giving it the appearance of a super-sized dune on the side facing the Pacific Ocean.

  As Domino and I drew closer, the looming hillside cast shadows on the trail we’d taken from the parking lot at the entrance to Dickens’ Dune Seaside Park. At seven in the morning on a weekday, the lot had been almost empty. A car had pulled in not long after I did which wasn’t at all unusual. Summer visitors would begin to fill the lot as they roused themselves to start a lazy vacation day along this gorgeous stretch of the blue Pacific Ocean. The gulls were already awake and screamed overhead.

  When we were close enough that the shadows from Dickens’ Dune engulfed us, the trail split. The path ahead continued down to the beach. A breeze rippled on the frothy waves as they rolled into shore, causing sunlight to sparkle as it skittered across the surface of the water. I breathed in the salty air, relishing the potpourri of scents that had become familiar since Domino and I moved here. The citrusy fragrance of pale lavender verbena blooms dominated the heady mix of scents this morning.

  Off to my left, the path wandered for miles through the sandy expanse of dunes back to the beachfront cottages crammed full of summer guests on California’s so-called “American Riviera.” The area around here isn’t as glamorous as Santa Barbara, which is farther down the coast. Most of the beachfront cottages are even older than the ones in our Seaview Cottages active adult community that sits across the roadway and up above on high bluffs overlooking the ocean.

  Our cottages are comfy but modest, especially in comparison to The Blue Haven Resort and Spa a few miles south of us that aspires to the grandeur befitting an American Riviera. Pricewise, they’ve achieved their aspirations. On my right, the path inclined upward as it wound around behind Dickens’ Dune. That’s where Domino and I were headed. I hesitated for a moment at the prospect that the trail led to the scene of a murder.

  “If Leonard Cohen’s deathbed confession can be trusted, Domino, all that happened decades ago, though, right?” Domino woofed, although she didn’t pull me ahead as she often does on our walks along more familiar trails. A sign posted nearby reminded us to stay on the trail which, here on the backside of Dickens’ Dune, was a narrow rocky ridge climb with lots of switchbacks. “Let’s go, girl. If we can locate that old bunker, that’ll be enough for today.”

  Domino woofed again and took off, yanking me forward. The trail’s incline soon had me breathing hard at the pace we set, despite the loose gravel underfoot which I’d slipped on twice. When I’d lost my footing, Domino had done her worried, clumsy-human check, slowing and anxiously looking over her shoulder. She picked up the pace once I reassured her that I was okay.

  Fifteen minutes later, after negotiating another switchback on the zigzag trail, a quick look down the slope below revealed how much elevation we’d gained. As I raised a water bottle to my lips, I glimpsed movement in the parking lot. Standing beside a car, a man scanned the hillside with a pair of binoculars. The hair on my arms stood up when his exploration of the area stopped. I could have sworn his gaze was fixed on us.

  Domino must have sensed my discomfort and stepped closer to me. She growled and then barked. Maybe he heard her or realized I was staring at him. In any case, he focused his binoculars onto the trail that led back toward the summer cottages. When he waved an arm in that direction, I breathed a sigh of relief. From my higher vantage point, though, I couldn’t see a soul anywhere on that leg of the trail. When I shifted my gaze back to the parking lot, the car was still there, but the voyeur with the binoculars was gone. Perhaps the person he was waving at had parked in another lot and wasn’t on the trail at all but closer to him.

  “Come on! Your Momma’s becoming paranoid in her old age. I do have my reasons, though, don’t I?” Domino wagged her tail and nuzzled my palm, which I took to mean she agreed with me. A dead husband’s secrets and two recent episodes of murder and mayhem had taken a toll on my Midwestern predisposition to believe in the trustworthiness of the people I met.

  “Where do you suppose that guy went?” I muttered as I took one last glance over my shoulder while moving up the trail again. “You know what, Domino? We’ll get the best views of what’s going on below from the summit of Dickens’ Dune. Are you game to go all the way to the top?” She didn’t stop but woofed and wagged her tail. I hadn’t planned to climb to that point so I couldn’t remember how much farther the summit was from the abandoned bunker.

  At the next switchback, I searched and glimpsed a dark hollow in the rock above us. A little too regular in shape to be Mother Nature’s doing, it must be the site of the old observation point that had been cut into Dickens’ Dune. At one of the highest elevations along this part of California’s Central Coast, it had been built during World War II and was used as a lookout for Japanese ships and submarines.

  A small slit on the front side of the hillside was virtually invisible from offshore or the beach below. Soldiers, on duty twenty-four/seven, kept watch. If they spotted a ship, they’d signal their colleagues. Fitted with a battery of big guns at an artillery post overlooking the Pacific Ocean from a promontory near Steinbeck’s Cove, it was their job to prevent intruders from moving north to the San Francisco Bay Area or sending anyone ashore. The guns were all that remained and were on display in a memorial near the cove.

  “What do you think of this?” I asked Domino when we reached the bunker about ten minutes later. I had to restrain my curious pooch, who would willingly have tried to slip under or through the gates that prevented access to the open bunker. She whined and whimpered as she strained against my hold on her leash.

  “No, Domino, we’re not welcome. How about a treat?” I asked as I slipped a baggie from the fanny pack I wore. Domino’s a sucker for my homemade peanut butter doggie biscuits and scarfed it down in the blink of an eye. I poured water into the hollow of a nearby boulder, and she lapped it up while I examined the area, trying to view it in the context of the circumstances that had sent me here this morning.

  Judith Rogow, a new client, had hired us to in
vestigate her ex-husband’s disappearance in the early 1980s. She’d recently been told that Allen Rogow was murdered and buried somewhere on Dickens’ Dune. As soon as I’d begun to snoop, the old bunker jumped out at me as a place where Allen Rogow’s killer could have done the deed without being observed. There were plenty of places nearby to conceal a body. Shivers slid up my spine as I imagined the hollow eyes of a skull peering at me from remains hidden between boulders.

  While it was off limits now, the bunker had still been open when Allen Rogow vanished. From what I’d read it was sometimes used as a hangout for hikers during the day back then. At night, most of the visitors were local high school kids who used the place to hide and smoke or drink. Drugs changed all that, though, and after several unsavory incidents, the drumbeat began to sound, urging authorities to close off access. In the mid-eighties, the gates went up, along with the no trespass signs.

  A stream of light illuminated the interior. That had to be coming from the opening facing the ocean, which the soldiers had used during their watch. What I could see of the interior from the helter-skelter lighting conformed to the pictures I’d found online. Cement walls marked with graffiti surrounded a cracked cement floor littered with dirt and debris. In places, the cement had begun to crumble and had become part of the litter.

  Most of the graffiti that I could read was initials, but a few words were scrawled here and there. Some of it was crude and reminiscent of the stuff I’d seen on bathroom stalls when I was much younger. There were odd ramblings and symbols like the all-seeing eye inside a pyramid, a lightning bolt, hearts, and stick people. Perhaps they were related to popular songs or slang that was too dated or too hip for me to recognize. They also called to mind photos I’d seen of cave paintings or petroglyphs.

  I tried not to look too closely at the disgusting mix of cigarette butts, beer bottle caps, fast food wrappers, and castoff clothing that was strewn about on the floor. A filthy old cushion like a camper might use under a sleeping bag or on a cot was leaning on its side in one corner. It was hard to imagine hanging out in there. Even harder to conceive of anyone camping out overnight or, heaven forbid, staying in the bunker for longer than that. I felt claustrophobic just looking at the space. As my inner sleuth perked up, I could envision it as a place to hold someone against his will, although not for long with teens nosing around.