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  Death on the Beach

  Lily Gayle Lambert Mystery

  Susan Boles

  Published by Argent Ocean Publishing, 2021.

  This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.

  DEATH ON THE BEACH

  First edition. June 4, 2021.

  Copyright © 2021 Susan Boles.

  ISBN: 978-0999386828

  Written by Susan Boles.

  Also by Susan Boles

  Lily Gayle Lambert Mystery

  Death in Mercy

  Death of a Wolfman

  Cherry Cake and a Cadaver

  Death at the Midnight Dragonfly

  Death said the Gypsy Queen

  Death on the Beach (Coming Soon)

  Standalone

  Sins of the Mother

  Watch for more at Susan Boles’s site.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Also By Susan Boles

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Books By Susan Boles | Lily Gayle Lambert mystery series

  Romantic Suspense

  Historical

  About the Author

  Sign up for Susan Boles's Mailing List

  Further Reading: Death said the Gypsy Queen

  Also By Susan Boles

  About the Author

  CHAPTER ONE

  I reach over and turned the air conditioning as high as it will go and lean back in my seat to enjoy the flow of ice-cold air pushing my bangs back from my damp forehead and cooling my hot skin. Ah. So much better. These hot summer days get to me a lot more than they used to.

  I notice Dixie cut her eyes at me. She rarely takes her eyes off the road when she’s driving. “You having a flash?” She ask in an innocent tone.

  “Certainly not!” I answer her, leaning to reduce the flow of the blessed cool air. “I’m about to cook over here with the sun blasting through the side window.” I wave my hand in the bright beam in case she doesn’t understand what I was talking about. But since she still doesn’t take her eyes off the road, I can’t be sure she’s getting what I mean. And besides, there isn’t a blessed thing she can do about the sun shining into the car anyway.

  “I am not old enough to be having hot flashes.” I inform her in a huff.

  She grins, still watching the empty road ahead of us like a hawk. “You most certainly are.”

  I fume silently. Because, of course, she is right. Kind of. I will be turning fifty soon. And my mama, bless her, had suffered from early onset of ‘the change’. Which Dixie knew all about since we’ve been friends since we were born. The down side of a lifelong friendship is you can’t hide anything about your past. They were there experiencing it with you. Which is the upside of a lifelong friendship. Is that some kind of yin-yang life thing? I don’t know, but I’m surely grateful for Dixie.

  But, my mama going through ‘the change’ early does not mean that I am suffering from the same fate. I set about mentally preparing additional arguments in my own defense.

  "I believe we're lost," Dixie says, before I can get a good grip on what I want to say.

  Startled by her tone, I glance over. Only to see her fingers white knuckling the steering wheel.

  Uh oh.

  She glances down at the dash, then turns panicked eyes to me. "And we're about out of gas, too."

  Having her head turned in my direction instead of the road gives me a real good indication that a major panic attack is building.

  "Okay. Calm down.” I tell her in what I hope is a reassuring tone of voice. Truth to tell, her news has me a bit discombobulated as well. Sitting on the side of the road out of gas in who knows where Alabama is not my idea of a good start to our long overdue girls weekend.

  “I'm sure this road will get us to civilization. We just need to have a little faith." I say, gazing out the windshield at a ribbon of two-lane highway blurred with heat haze rising like ghosts and edged with a thick forest on both sides extending as far as the eye could see. I swallow hard against a sudden dryness in my throat. I need a big dose of faith myself right about now.

  I notice Dixie's fingers tightening on the steering wheel some more, turning them shiny against her early summer tan, and wonder for a moment if I’ll have to pry her fingers loose with a crowbar.

  That is food-for-thought later though. Right now, I have more important things to worry about. Like keeping her from panicking. Like, the two of us out here in the middle of nowhere, acting like a couple of crazy women on the side of the road.

  "Faith won't do us a world of good if we run out of gas out here in the middle of nowhere." Dixie says, interrupting my mental gymnastics. Checking the rear view mirror, she adds. "Not a car in front of or behind us."

  Which I have already noticed, thankyouverymuch, but kept my mouth shut. No point in getting her more upset than she already is.

  Before I can think of a soothing reply, there’s a jerk of the car and it begins slowing. With a yelp, Dixie steers to the side of the road, getting as far off on the shoulder as possible, and then switches the key off.

  Thick silence descends around us in place of the radio and road sounds. Well. This is a fine mess.

  "Okay. This is not the best way to start off our vacation." I say, eyeing Dixie to check for signs of imminent hysteria. None seem forthcoming, so I consider the possibilities.

  I check the road again. Forward. Behind. Still no cars visible in either direction. I haven't seen one since we got onto this two-lane highway. The voice on the phone had directed us right into the middle of this gigantic forest. So much for technology knows best. For a minute I wish we’d just used a paper map. Like in the old days when we’d traveled together. Did they even still make those paper maps that you could never get folded back into their original space saving form?

  All of that was moot at this point. Here we are, on a lonely two lane road somewhere in Alabama at the direction of the voice on the phone.

  Which seems an odd route to Destin, Florida. Wouldn't all the best roads to Destin be wide and fast to accommodate the hordes heading to the sand as fast as possible? Had Google maps somehow put us on a wrong road?

  Ugh. We should’ve been paying more attention to the road and our surroundings – or lack thereof – instead of talking our heads off.

  We’ve been to Gulf Shores in Alabama many times and that route is practically part of our DNA. Gulf Shores is the most popular beach destination for folks in our area being as how it’s the closest beach.

  But I’d had a yearning to visit the emerald waters and snow-white sands I’d heard about in Destin. Hence the need for instructions on how to get there.

  So – it could be extrapolated that this latest mishap, I mean adventure, could be laid at my door for having yearnings beyond the ordinary.

  Digging through the glove box, I rummage through a bunch of useless junk like sunglasses with only one lens snuggling with a dented box of tissues and unearth a ratty paper book containing maps of all the states. Eureka! Trust Dixie to never clean out her glove box. Who knew what other ancient treas
ures might lurk in there.

  I lick my finger and flip pages until I find the map for Alabama. Luckily it’s close to the front. Cause who knows what kind of germs I just injected into my system when I licked my finger a couple more times before I found the right state.

  I push those thought away. I have the constitution of a rhinoceros and rarely get sick. I manage to find the road we’re currently on and trace it to Florida.

  Hmm. While this road is certainly a more direct route than, say, the interstate, it was taking us through this huge national forest indicated by a big green swatch on the map. Which meant no gas station for a dang long way.

  I drum my fingers on the map trying to figure out the best course of action.

  Dixie sits facing forward, looking, as far as I can tell, at the long, straight stretch of road in front of us. From this angle her eyes look like they might be bugging out of her head just a little. A front view would possibly dispel that notion.

  "Let's not panic." I say hoping she’ll turn her head in my direction and dispel the uneasy feeling pooling in the pit of my stomach.

  "No panic here." Dixie replies, turning to look over at me. However, the look in her eyes belies the calm voice. Yep. Her eyes are definitely bugging out and her sarcastic, strained tone tells far more than her words.

  "What's there to panic about?” She goes on in that high, strained voice. “We're only several hundred miles from anyone we know who might be able to come pick us up."

  That was certainly the truth.

  "Let's put our heads together and come up with a plan." I say in a reasonable voice. "The good news is we have a cooler with food and water in it. Therefore, we aren't going to starve or die of thirst.”

  "Well, ain't that just dandy?" Replies Dixie still using the sarcastic tone.

  Since my reasonable response hadn’t had the effect I’d hoped, I roll my eyes. At this point the car has started heating up from all the sunlight blasting through the glass and I don’t want to steam in here like a couple of fresh caught shrimp.

  I push my sweaty bangs off my forehead and look out the window again. Like something would have changed in the last few minutes.

  Trees, trees everywhere but not a sliver of shade falling on the car. They’d not been allowed to grow close to the road so there was no shade anywhere in front of or behind us either. "Turn that key over far enough to get these windows down." I tell Dixie.

  Dixie complies and a bit of breeze stirrs through the car, ruffling my bangs and tickling my sweaty forehead. Marginally better. Hot air beats no air at all.

  "Now. Let's just wait a bit.” I tell Dixie.

  “Like we’ve got a choice about it.” She says, slumping down in her seat like a sulky child. She even crosses her arms.

  I ignore that. I’ve known her long enough to know better than to try and persuade her out of a mood before she was good and ready to act better.

  “Surely, somebody will come along this road. We can't be the only ones getting sent this way by the voice on the phone." I flip open the small cooler at my feet, extract two bottles of water and hand one to Dixie.

  "I guess we'll have to hope it's not an ax murderer that stops." Dixie grumbles, still in her bad mood. "I don't like this one bit."

  Banging a fist on the steering wheel, she says. "I should have been keeping a closer eye on the gas tank instead of jawing with you so much."

  Between the heat and her attitude, I am near to pitching a hissy fit myself, but it won’t help a bit. So, I break the seal on my water and take a deep drink.

  "Don't be so hard on yourself.” I say to her in my best soothing voice. “Who knew we'd be going through such a big national forest?"

  She gives me her patented ‘you’re a dang fool’ look, so I shut up.

  "I should have looked at the map closer instead of just blindly trusting technology.” She answers. “If we'd been using that paper map like the old days, I'd've seen this huge green area on the map and known to make sure we had plenty of gas."

  She bites her lower lip and looks around. “Or even if I’d looked over the whole route on the phone app ahead of time I’d’ve seen the green blob and made time to figure out what it meant before we ended up sitting here like bumps on a log right in the middle of it.”

  That was surely the truth. But, agreeing with her won’t change our situation one little bit. So, I hold on to my fake chipper mood as best I can.

  "Done is done. Stop beating yourself up over it." I try to distract her with a candy bar I drag out of a baggie in the cooler, but she isn’t having any of it.

  "I don't like the idea of accepting help from some random stranger traveling this road." Dixie says rolling her eyes and waving the candy bar away.

  I unwrap the candy bar and bite into it. The chocolate melts on my fingers and I lick them, enjoying every bite in spite of Dixie’s sour look.

  I raise my eyebrows, daring her to say something. She is a demon about messing up her car. Which is why her fifteen year old Taurus looks so good.

  "Doesn't Ben have some law enforcement friends in Alabama he can contact to come help us out?" She asks. Ignoring my challenge to start an argument.

  "Weeeeeell." I put the now seriously melting candy bar back into the wrapper as best I can and place it back in the cooler. Then lick my fingers thoroughly. Kind of yuck, but no one but us is going to be digging in the cooler anyway. Besides, what else could I do? Otherwise, I’ll have melted chocolate all over Dixie’s car and that would be another issue to deal with.

  I fiddle with the cap to my water bottle, as I go over possibilities in my mind. Having been in law enforcement his whole career, my cousin, Ben has friends in police departments all over the Southeast.

  "I think maybe he does.” I say. “However, I'd rather not contact him. I don't want to hear his lecture."

  "Are you serious right now?" Dixie explodes, twisting around in her seat to face me. "You'd rather sit out here possibly all day or risk some crazy person stopping than face a little well-deserved lecture from Ben?” She flings her hands around indicating the empty road and woods around us.

  “Don't you know it's the twenty-first century where women like us get abducted and sold into a harem somewhere?" Dixie's hands shake as she lifts her bottle of water from her lap, splattering water everywhere. I don’t dare say a word when she is in this kind of mood. Besides. I know she is right – even if I don’t want to admit it.

  "I swear, Lily Gayle Lambert, just when I think I've heard it all from you, you come out with a new, totally nuts excuse for something."

  "I think we're a little long in the tooth to get sold into a harem." I say, trying to lighten the mood a bit.

  Dixie screams loud enough to scare some birds out of the nearest trees. She scares me, too, and I spill some of my own water.

  "You get on your phone right now and call Ben and get us some help." She insists.

  Well, geez! What a tizzy. I dig my phone out of my purse, look at the screen and then at Dixie.

  "I don't have any bars."

  "Give me that!" Dixie says, snatching the phone out of my hand. "Well, crap!" she says when she sees that I was telling the truth. Tossing the phone into the center console, she slumps down in the driver’s seat.

  "Hey! Be careful. This is a brand new phone." I pick up my phone, turning it front to back to look for any damage.

  "Well, it's not doing us a bit of good right this minute."

  Digging into her own purse, Dixie scrabbles around in the ever-present mess, and pulls out her own phone. With a grin of triumph, she shows the screen to me. "Two bars. Take it and call Ben."

  "It's your phone."

  "Will you stop being such a child before I drag you out into the woods, strangle you with your purse strap and bury your body where it'll never be found?" Dixie holds out the phone.

  I know I’m being unreasonable. My cousin, and only living family member, iss over protective to the point that I sometimes, like now, act in a way that isn't in m
y own best interests.

  Taking a hard look at the long, empty road stretching in front of and behind us as I wipe some more sweat from under my bangs brought on by the rising temperature of a July afternoon in Alabama, I sigh. Knowing Dixie won't actually carry out her threat, but giving in to needs must, I take the phone and press Ben's number in the contacts.

  "What has she done now?" Is Ben's greeting when he answers his phone.

  "She hasn't done anything." I respond using my best sarcastic voice.

  "Lily Gayle?" Ben says in a puzzled tone. "Why are you calling on Dixie's phone?"

  "I haven't done anything, but there is a problem." I pause at the deep sigh from Ben. Then go on. "Uh. We're out of gas in the middle of some big national forest in Alabama."

  I wait, watching Dixie watch me. And then, the lecture starts. From long experience I know better than to interrupt, so I just let him roll.

  "Yes. Ridiculous. Yes. Irresponsible." I say, replying to Ben's rant for the benefit of my friend – and because I’m completely unable to let someone lecture me with no response at all.

  Dixie winces.

  "If you're done stating the obvious," I say sarcastically, "We're wondering if maybe you have some friends hereabouts. Law enforcement, or not, who might be willing to bring us some gas and get us going again."

  Ben sighs and I hear a rasping sound. He must be rubbing his hand across his chin – his favorite tell when he is holding on to his temper – and the rasping must be coming from his five o’clock shadow. He has to shave twice a day to keep a clean face. When we were younger he wore a beard to save himself the trouble.

  "Let me make a couple of phone calls.” He says. “Sit tight."

  "It's not like we have any other option." I respond.

  "Knowing you two it's not outside the realm of possibility that y'all will take it into your heads to start walking."

  "If we were going to do that, we wouldn't have called you." I comment, staring into the endless forest around us, wondering what animals might be hiding in there. The land looks as though it might be a bit swampy.