Dana Mentink - Finny's Nose 01 - Trouble Up Finny's Nose Read online

  Spyglass Lane Mysteries presents:

  The Finny Series

  Book One

  Trouble Up Finny’s Nose

  By

  Dana Mentink

  Copyright 2012

  Spyglass Lane Mysteries

  Smashwords Edition

  Discover other Spyglass Lane titles at SpyglassLaneMysteries.com.

  Published in association with MacGregor Literary Inc., Portland, Oregon.

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Scripture taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 Biblica. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.

  We grow accustomed to the Dark— When Light is put away—

  As when the Neighbor holds the Lamp

  To witness her Good-bye

  —Emily Dickinson

  Prologue

  The view from up Finny’s Nose was amazing, breathtaking even. According to the guidebooks, it offered an “uninterrupted panoramic of the majestic Pacific Ocean and its pristine coastline.”

  Frederick Finny admired the coastline for a different reason. While aiming for a secluded nook in which to unload his Canadian rum for the parched victims of Prohibition, he ran aground in the treacherous California riptide. The only hope of escape for his vessel was to empty hundreds of barrels of premium liquor into the ocean.

  After every precious drop was dribbled into salty oblivion, the vessel remained stubbornly wedged. The ship was lost, but Finny old-timers elevated to legend the exploits of a gaggle of drunken crabs that wove their way to the beach and marched in dizzy circles for hours.

  Finny slogged ashore and made the best of his misfortune, changing careers from rum smuggling to beekeeping, eventually settling at the top of the steep bluff that looked, for all the world, like a tremendous nose.

  In the afternoon sun, through squinted eyes, the town of Finny was straight out of a postcard. The residents and buildings alike seemed to age gently into a condition just shy of shabby with enough quaintness sprinkled throughout to make the town a charming little stop for tourists looking for that perfect coastal escape. Not the overnight, weekend getaway, but more along the lines of a lazy morning stop on the way to the larger towns like Carmel and Monterey—places less shabby and more chic.

  On this day, except for the peeling paint on the Finny Hotel and the dead man propped on his head in the Central Park fountain, the town was definitely postcard material.

  Alva Hernandez walked his entire route along the foggy main street before he finally stopped to chat with the upside-down man in the fountain. Eventually, he put down his remaining newspapers and whacked on one of the protruding muddy boots. Scratching his grizzled hair, Alva removed his teeth, inserted a lemon drop, and sat down to await further developments.

  Chapter One

  “Oh no!”

  She slammed on the brakes and skidded to a stop inches from the squad car. “I get a parking ticket for an expired meter, and this guy can park his cruiser practically in the middle of…” Her words trailed off as she noticed the cowboy boot sticking out from under the open car door. “Ohhh. This is not good.” Ignoring the pinging of the keys- in-the-ignition warning, she slid out of the car.

  The cop was facedown in the gravel, one arm stretched toward the radio, which rested just out of his reach in the dust.

  “Are you all right?”

  Really smart question, Ben. People commonly lie facedown on the road if they are fit and perky. Especially cops. Trembling, she knelt down and patted his shoulder.

  “Ummmm. . .sir? Officer? Can you hear me?” She patted some more. With shaking fingers she felt for a pulse under the prickly brown hair just below his throat, recoiling at the stickiness left on her fingertips.

  “Ohhh boy. Calm down. Think what to do. Get your cell. . .no!” The phone sat on her kitchen table, recharging. “Think! People used to do charitable deeds before cell phones. Okay. Radio.”

  As she fumbled in the gravel for the receiver, a mustard-colored sedan pulled out of the copse of trees and began backing up. Stopping about fifteen yards from where she crouched, three men got out.

  She felt her body go cold as she struggled to breathe. Frantically, she pounded the prone figure on the back. “Please wake up, Mr. Officer. I think this is what you would call a situation.”

  She squeezed the button on the radio. In a cracking sotto voce tone she quavered, “Help me, please! I am Benjamina Pena. I am with, er, a really big cop, and he’s unconscious. There are three nasty-looking men on Old Highway One just past the breakwater. I think they’re gonna kill us. Ten-four, uh, over and out, oh no!”

  Praying her message had been received by someone— a truck driver, crop duster, anyone—she peeked over the top of the driver’s side door. The three men had slowed to a stop a few cautious yards from the car, peering into the windshield and under the front license plate.

  “Hey, lady. What you doin’ to that cop? He ain’t no business of yours.”

  Desperately, she fumbled with the fastener on his gun belt. “Yeah? Well, I don’t reckon he’s any business of yours, either.” That sounded pretty close to the John Wayne movies she’d seen.

  They laughed. One said, “She has a streak of somethin’, eh? We goin’ to have fun with you.”

  With a jerk, the catch finally gave way. She yanked the gun out and stood up so quickly it made her dizzy.

  “Okay. Now you listen up, you troglodytes. Any one of you comes a step closer and I’ll drop you right where you stand.”

  That brought them up short. After a second of shocked silence, they relaxed. “A trogla-what?” said the skinniest one.

  The tallest one with the bandanna tied like a sausage casing around his head interrupted the laughter. “Well, well. Ain’t she a tough girly. I guess we got ourselves here a Jane Wayne.”

  Their eyes widened as she released the safety on the semiautomatic.

  Aiming at what she took to be their midsections, midway between the bandannas and underwear poking out of oversized pants, she croaked, “I don’t know what your problem is with this cop, but I will shoot you if you take one more step.”

  Later she tried to recall if they had actually stepped or just realigned their slouching, but somehow she pulled the trigger. The recoil knocked her over, slamming her shoulders into the gravel.

  Lying on her back, shoving the hair out of her eyes, she watched the thin man grab his ear and howl in pain. The others hoisted him by the pants and hauled him up the road to their car. They roared away in a shower of loose gravel.

  Benjamina watched the dust settle.

  She flopped back onto the gravel. “I can’t believe I just did that.”

  Ruth rolled the papers into a tube, clutching them to her breast. “What is this?” she stammered. “What is going on here?” The story, this novel, whatever it was, had hit her blindside. Phillip was supposed to be writing memoirs or something, a collection of stories from the life of a country vet. What in the world was this thing?

  She had discovered the small pile of papers in the file drawer, next to the information on her funeral plot. The bizarre surprise threw her completely off balance, compelling her to read and reread before tearing the file cabinet to
pieces looking for more. By the time she returned to what was left of her senses, she had missed her morning hair appointment by an hour.

  By now, Felice was boarding a plane to Fiji. Ruth felt like crying.

  It was not just a matter of vanity. Ruth was not, nor ever had been in her forty-seven years of living, a beautiful woman. Nevertheless, she refused to be wandering around town looking like Miss Havisham. When Phillip was alive, he made a point of taking her to lunch after her monthly salon appointments.

  “You look like a million bucks,” he would say. Her cheeks would warm every time.

  Rescheduling with another hairdresser was simply out of the question. Ruth would die with numerous sins on her conscience, but committing infidelity to her long- time hairdresser was not one of them. She would just have to endure the three weeks until Felice returned.

  The striking of the clock made her start. She felt guilty, as if she had been caught reading a teenager’s diary. “Oh, for goodness’ sake,” she muttered. “It’s not like he’ll catch me reading it.”

  Phillip had been gone for almost two years, and she still expected to see him around every corner like the Ghost of Christmas Past.

  She stuffed the papers back into the crammed file drawer and sat in the chair, listening to nothing. There was only a faint rustling from her flock of handicapped seagulls and terns outside and the ticking of the clock inside to break the silence. Ruth looked around the space she had lived in for twenty years and wondered why the furnishings seemed strange to her, as if she were an insect that had just flown through the window to reconnoiter. She folded her hands to pray. “Dear God,” she began. After a minute more of silence, she gave voice to the thought that grieved her most. “Where are You?” There was no answer, only that endless tick.

  She looked down to see what she had put on in the middle of the night when she mistook it for morning. Faded denim stretch pants and a ragged crocheted sweater the color of a rusty scouring pad. Now that it really was Monday morning, she felt as though she hadn’t slept at all the night before. She sat as the silence squeezed in on her with the inexorable pressure of a glacier, until she couldn’t stand it any longer. After a quick check of her backyard gaggle, she set off.

  The cold morning air left her breathless as she crested the bridge of Finny’s Nose. She figured it was an enterprising sweatshirt manufacturer who spread the rumor that California was one warm sandy beach from Canada to Mexico. Though the drive along the rugged coastal cliffs bordering Highway 1 provided spectacular views of secluded beaches, the sun had to wait until the fog evaporated to make an appearance. She had sold many a photo of this amazing scenery to travel magazines. It was quaint, poetic even, and colder than a well-digger’s toes. All in all, it was the kind of sleepy little town that fine postcards are made of. The kind of place that, at one time, spoke to Ruth’s soul. As she plodded along, her mind replayed scenes from her late husband’s. . .novel.

  Lost in her own thoughts, she murmured a hello to Alva Hernandez seated on the edge of the Central Park fountain and passed by. Then it hit her. A quick double take dispelled the notion that she was hallucinating. There was definitely a pair of ragged boots protruding from behind Alva’s shoulder. A few moments of closer examination convinced her that she wouldn’t need her rusty CPR skills.

  “Alva. Are you. . .all right?” she asked.

  “Yep,” he said around a mouthful of yellow candy.

  “Oh. Good.” She fiddled with the zipper on her jacket. “You know there is a man in the fountain, don’t you?”

  “Sure do.” He stuck a finger deep between cheek and gum to dislodge a sticky ball.

  “Well, he—he doesn’t seem to be all right,” she proposed gently.

  “Nope. Ain’t moved a bit. Never seen anyone hold their breath that long.”

  Marveling at the sheer ludicrousness of the situation, she suggested to Alva that perhaps they should have a go at removing the upside-down man from the lazily bubbling water.

  “Sure thing. I’ll get the starboard side,” Alva said cheerfully.

  It was as if she were watching from outside herself as they each grabbed a handful of the slippery figure. The man was heavy and uncooperatively stiff. Fighting the bile rising in her throat, Ruth clasped the slick boots, and with Alva tugging vigorously on the man’s overalls, the pair hauled the body onto the grass.

  The dead face seemed surprised to be looking up into the two live ones. He was cold and slimy, like celery left too long in the vegetable crisper. Ruth leaned back on her heels, nauseous, and then noticed several people hastily making their way over to the damp trio. A few chilled tourists clapped their hands over their mouths in astonishment. The slippery dead man was definitely not part of their mental postcards.

  “Ewwww,” cried a woman in an I Went up Finny’s Nose sweatshirt. “Is he really dead?”

  “Yep,” said Alva. “Pretty much.”

  By this time, Bubby Dean had emerged from the nearby High Water Pub and ducked his head back inside to call for help. The small crowd grew. Two middle- aged women stood with their hands fluttering over their mouths. A well-dressed man with a speckled bald head talked on a cell phone.

  Ruth sat down on the edge of the fountain, suddenly overwhelmed by the outrageous events of the day. The novel. The man in the fountain. Felice in Fiji.

  Alva patted her head and said gently, “It’s okay, chickie. I got somethin’ here for you.” He fished around in his pocket and handed her a sucker. It looked as if it had been licked a few times and rewrapped.

  The police arrived to find a huddle of tourists, a sticky old man asking bystanders for change, and a middle-aged Ruth Budge, laughing until the tears ran down her chin.

  Chapter Two

  She passed a solitary half hour reading and rereading the posters on the police station wall later that morning. Officer Katz sat behind his desk, chin resting on his hand while he waited patiently for someone on the phone. He’d been holding for ten minutes so far.

  Her head whirled at the bizarre turn her life had taken in the past twenty-four hours. Ruth Marylyn Budge was not the sort of person who happened upon secrets and found dead bodies languishing about. Excitement did not visit her often, maybe not ever, except that day in December when a deer found its way into her upstairs bathtub and destroyed two chairs and her hair dryer during its crazed rampage. Her reflection in the mirrored door reminded her that she was basically square—rectangular actually—with a wide brace of collarbones, a thick middle, and short serviceable legs. Solid, reliable, built from sturdy farm stock.

  So here she was. A nice, square woman who had recently discovered a dead husband’s secret novel and a corpse. She looked down at her hands to see if there were any telltale marks of her strange activities. The entry door popped opened and Maude Stone billowed through, her bun bobbing along behind her.

  “He did it again!” she bellowed to no one in particular. “He does it on purpose. I want him arrested immediately.” She was a tiny woman with a voice intended for a much larger vessel.

  Officer Katz glanced up, covering the phone still stuck to his ear. “Good morning, Maude. Is that fog lifting any yet?”

  Her eyes widened into saucers and a flush mottled her face. “I do not want to discuss the weather, Nathan Katz. I want you to arrest Alva this minute.”

  Nate cleared his throat. “I’ve told you before, Maude, we can’t arrest someone for accidentally stepping on your primroses.”

  “Accidentally! He does it on purpose. He brings my paper to the door and intentionally ruins my flowers.”

  Maude lived in the second house down on Whist Street, and the children nicknamed her the Wicked Witch of Whist. Often, on her way to the beach in the wee hours of the morning, Ruth witnessed Alva delivering Maude’s paper and zestfully treading on each and every flower with precision.

  “Well, I am not going to let you ignore me, Officer.” With that, she hiked herself onto his desk and folded her arms defiantly across her stri
ped sweater, like the King of Siam. “I am going to stay right here until you deliver some justice.”

  In her youth, Maude had been a contortionist in a traveling circus, so it did not surprise Ruth that she made the jump onto Officer Katz’s desktop without even rustling his Post-it notes. It didn’t seem to surprise the officer, either.

  At that moment Nate’s colleague Mary Derisi came into the office. She shot a look at the woman standing on Nate’s desk. “Hi, Maude. Hi, Ruth. Nate, if you don’t stop borrowing my stapler, I will be forced to glue it to my desk.”

  “Sorry,” Nate said, reaching around Maude and handing Mary the stapler.

  “So, Ruth,” Mary said, flipping her short braid behind her shoulder, “I hear you had quite an experience at the fountain. How are you doing with all that?”

  “Oh, well, okay, I guess.”

  “Good. The weird thing about dead bodies is they look so lifelike, apart from the not breathing thing.” She tapped the stapler against her muscular thigh thoughtfully. “Jack is ready to see you now. I’ll walk you back.” She left the room without a backward glance at the woman atop the desk.

  Officer Katz was still holding.

  “Do you see this?” Maude yelled to Ruth. “Do you see how these people treat me?”

  Ruth nodded, making a mental note to bake some cookies for Nate and Mary before her next hair appointment.

  The door to Detective Denny’s office opened and Alva shuffled out, a crumpled bag of M&M’s in his hand. “Your turn, chickie,” he croaked.

  “Thank you, Alva. Do you need a ride?”

  The detective spoke up. “Officer Katz will be escorting him home.”

  “On a motorcycle?” Alva’s bushy brows zinged upward hopefully as Nate walked up behind Ruth.

  “Sorry, Alva. We don’t have any motorcycle cops in this department. The car is nice, though. You’ll have a comfortable ride.” He tried hard to hold the corners of his mouth steady. “Thank you for your time. We’ll call if we need any more information.”