The Haunted Beach (Tropical Breeze Cozy Mystery Book 4) by Mary Bowers

looking for clothes. He picked up a tee shirt from the top of the dresser.
    “That’s mine,” she told him.
    He put it down and rubbed his eyes.
    “Breakfast you say? Have whatever you want. I already ate. And showered and dressed, in case you didn’t notice. Now I’m going to take Porter out to potty, and then I’m going to pack.”
    “Make sure you pack my H-or-H jumpsuit in case we do some filming. The sleeveless one. It’s gonna be hot down there.” He walked out of the room in his underwear.
    “And you’ve been working on your biceps,” she mumbled.
    She gazed at Porter, who looked back adoringly. “His momma didn’t raise him right,” she said. “One of these days I’m going to go all feminist on his ass, and he’s going to learn how to pack his own suitcase.”
    “I heard that,” he called from the kitchen.
    “Listen and learn,” she called back.
    Porter jumped down, gave Lily’s ankle a lick and trotted out of the room, hoping good things were about to fall off the kitchen counter.
     
     

Chapter 12
     
    “Does your wife often go for an early morning walk on the beach?” Detective Bruno asked.
    Parker Peavey was pop-eyed. “Never! When she wasn’t beside me in bed this morning, I figured she was in her office, working, and I just went and got myself some breakfast. She does that. Goes in and works on her books in the middle of the night. She gets ideas, and she has to go write them down or they’re gone. I do the same thing, but she does it more often. I never worry if I wake up in the night and she’s not there.”
    “And this morning . . . ?”
    “At first I didn’t think anything of it, but after a while I realized I wasn’t hearing her in there. Usually she comes out and says good morning when she gets to a good point to take a break. I went to look and she wasn’t there. She wasn’t anywhere. I don’t know where she is.”
    Parker had ushered them into his house through the back door. Once inside, he had drifted to the breakfast bar and since then he had been talking continuously, tightly grasping a coffee cup and staring at the refrigerator. He took a sudden loud slurp from the cup and stared at them with his mustache dripping. The detectives had followed him to the counter and stood beside him, Bruno placidly gazing and Carver writing.
    “What kind of work does she do, Mr. Peavey?”
    “She’s a writer. Like me. We’re novelists, but in different genres. Her office is the front room on the east side. Want to see?”
    “If you don’t mind.”
    He led them to the prim little room with rose-colored walls, fresh white plantation shutters and a rose-toned oriental carpet. The furniture was painted white, with an orderly desk bearing stacks of paper arranged around a computer. As Parker went around the room opening the shutters, Detective Bruno went to the desk and gazed down at a paper headed, “Dramatis Personae.” Below it were listed improbable names with titles and extra vowels fore and aft, and minute descriptions of her characters right down to moles and freckles.
    “She writes Regency romances,” Philip said.
    “Anything unusual been going on in your lives lately?” Bruno asked.
    “Unusual how?”
    “Any bad news from her family? Kids okay? Have you been getting along?”
    “Of course we’ve been getting along,” he said testily. “We always get along. And we don’t have any kids. Our families are just fine.”
    “So nothing unusual is happening in your lives. She just walked out in the middle of the night and didn’t come back. Did you happen to notice what time it was when she got out of bed?”
    He thought hard, then shook his head. “Some time in middle of the night. I woke up about three o’clock and she was gone, but I didn’t think anything of it. She’s always getting up to write something down, or just go into the office and work. She tries not to wake me.”
    “Does she have any friends she confides in, or sometimes goes to stay