Murder on Edisto (The Edisto Island Mysteries) Read Free

Months Later
    CALLIE CRUMPLED the legal envelope into her purse. Damn! Gift or nightmare, she wasn’t yet certain, but the surprise offer from her parents wasn’t in her plans. Not that she had plans.
    Eighteen-year-old Jeb drove them away from the Middleton subdivision with her folks, Lawton and Beverly Cantrell, three car-lengths behind. The Ford’s dash clock read noon. The June temp had already reached ninety-six degrees.
    Jeb turned the five-year-old Escape onto Highway 61. “What’s in the envelope?”
    “A deed.” Tension twisted her stomach. “Don’t follow so close behind that truck.”
    He stared wide-eyed. “A deed to what?”
    “Watch the road, Jeb.” Callie chewed the inside of her cheek and practiced slow breathing as she reconnoitered the road ahead. Kids eighteen and under comprised a large proportion of traffic accidents. “The beach house.”
    “The beach house,” he mimicked in droll fashion. “Like wow. Who gets handed a freakin’ house? Come on! Act excited!” He flicked her arm. “Now you’re stuck with me on the weekends, unless you want me to commute the forty-five miles each day between Edisto and college in downtown Charleston.”
    “Not when you’re driving like this, no.”
    He winked. “Dang, we own a piece of the beach!”
    “It’s not on the sand.”
    “I know where it is. You can still hear the waves, for Pete’s sake.”
    She sighed. “This was supposed to be a reflective summer, Jeb. You and I enjoying the ocean. Me deciding where to live and work.” Callie recognized her mother’s coup , anchoring them close, as permanent as she could.
    Callie grinned weakly at her son, loving him so much, wanting desperately to take him up on his offer to stay home when college started in August. But he deserved a new start, a new normal.
    Not that living on Edisto Beach was horrible confinement. Her childhood there held beautiful memories, and until classes started, Jeb could create some of his own. The soft breezes, pelicans, and rattling fronds of the trees supplied backdrop to shell collecting, kayaking, and making new friends while seated, kicking in tidal pools. Who couldn’t like that?
    She hoped he would develop his own close relationship with her old white-headed neighbor Papa Beach, too. The man was a pure Godsend.
    Papa had first called her three months ago from his place, asking her to visit Edisto. Her father might’ve prompted that first call, but the request beckoned her like cotton candy at the fair. She eagerly escaped the social rigidity of the Cantrells’ political lives to the healing voice of her childhood mentor. She’d spent hours chatting, sometimes sitting with him on the sand watching the orange and purple watercolor horizon. She went back three more times.
    Now eighty years old, Henry Beechum, Papa Beach only to Callie, had once soothed her little girl fears, no matter how silly. And now he’d convinced her to stay at Edisto to heal amidst the Lowcountry nature and low-key lifestyle. He said her life decisions could be better made in a peaceful environment. Papa never dictated. He suggested. He listened. And he let her cry.
    Callie tugged her sleeve down over the left forearm scar out of habit, then back up due to the heat. The surprise real estate gift from her father was noble, but panic seized Callie when he’d said the word deed . A deed made things complicated. Why couldn’t her parents let life evolve instead of forcing its hand? Why did they think she left home to start with?
    She hadn’t even thanked her daddy, because that represented gratitude, not the manic fear that crawled inside her.
    Callie massaged her neck. Electricity, insurance, taxes . . . in her name only.
    She’d tried to remain in Boston after John’s murder, working long, exhausting hours before rushing home to stand guard over Jeb, to soothe his grief while fighting to ignore her own. Jeb’s grades had faltered, and he avoided going out at night, harboring a