Murder on Edisto (The Edisto Island Mysteries) Read Free Page A

phobia about coming home to his mother being gone, too. They ate dinners in front of the television, watching anything but police dramas that brought reality into their living room.
    Her daddy had coaxed her back to South Carolina after that long painful year in Boston. Seven times mayor of Middleton, he’d been elected under the delicate yet crafty oversight of his wife with a poli-sci major from Columbia College—in South Carolina, not New York. What Beverly didn’t have in sheepskin prestige she made up for in a dynamic crusade to keep Lawton Cantrell in power. The woman held a master’s degree in manipulation.
    One month turned into two as Jeb acclimated and regained his fun-loving self after Callie’s extended leave of absence. At that point, Callie hadn’t the heart to drag him back to Massachusetts, so she enrolled him in high school. After six months of watching him thrive, she resigned from the Boston PD. Jeb was healing.
    She was not.
    Callie’s head slumped against her palm. She wanted to remain untethered. Scholarships and a childhood college fund established by her parents covered Jeb’s tuition. John’s insurance money and pension investment would cover them for a few years, but eventually she had to consider a job. But not yet. Just not yet.
    She ought to feel lucky with a house dropped in her lap. So why didn’t she?
    An hour later, Jeb pulled the SUV off Jungle Road, the Cantrells easing up in the BMW behind him. He parked in the drive and opened the car door. “How awesome is this?”
    Callie stared at the house that hadn’t changed a nail in the thirty years she’d known it. Raised fourteen feet off the ground by pilings embedded ten feet deep to protect against hundred-year floods and hurricanes, the three-bedroom house welcomed visitors with teal shutters and beige-painted stairs set against creamy siding. Not huge, but tasteful, with simple class.
    Her fingernails bit into the seat, as she conceded that the house was probably the best logical choice for her at the moment. Damn you, Mother .
    “Mom?”
    She feigned a smile at Jeb and whispered, “Give me a minute.”
    He studied her like a textbook. “You need something?”
    Callie shook her head. Then she quit rubbing the scar on her forearm and gripped the door handle as she looked up at the porch. The wind caught the teal and peach sign hanging atop the entrance’s twenty steps. It swung on tiny chains without a care in the world, like the beach child she used to be.
    Her mother had named the cottage Chelsea Morning, after the Neil Diamond song. Callie knew every word to every one of the singer’s tunes, songs that had served as her lullabies and the background music to her adolescence. Slow, cleansing breaths. She played Holly Holy in her head.
    Then she heard it: the gentle call of the surf, a distant rush and draw as rollers churned against the shore only to be sucked back into an immense ocean that never slept. A rogue seagull hovered over her head, calling once, then as he flew away on the salty current, she inhaled.
    Three blocks from the water, the place held just enough privacy to deter heavy seasonal car traffic, but sat close enough for salt to devour the paintwork. The view out back, however, would later see a tired sun sink all haze-hot and liquid orange into the marsh, setting the tips of the reeds on fire before darkness swallowed the day.
    Fire .
    Sunsets, dusk . . . fire. The time of day John died. The sun’s last rays dancing with licks of flame that shot her husband’s ashes into the New England air.
    Callie shut down the thought before the nightmare of Boston surged back.
    Jeb knocked on her window, his brows raised. He cut a glance over his shoulder at his grandmother, who waited with a suitcase in one hand and a blue orchid in the other.
    Callie exhaled and exited the car.
    Her father appeared with a box in one arm, offered the support of his other, and escorted her up the steps. Jeb bounded inside. Beverly