Page 1 of Murder on the Boardwalk

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Living in a small town wasn’t perfect. No town could ever pull that off. But as the milestone approached that had brought Brogan Cole this far, she began the month of October convinced Pelican Pointe felt more like home than anywhere she’d ever lived. She didn’t expect perfection—had never considered that an option. But sometimes fate had a way of messing things up for the better.

A year earlier—after her father died—she’d needed her best friend. It was Lucien who had found this small, quaint coastal town and began carving out a new life for himself. She’d followed him here mere months after he’d settled into a routine and started building furniture. Little did she know then that the community would open its arms to both of them. Who knew she’d end up falling in love with the country vibe as much as he had? Every day she made more friends. Not fake or phony friends like the ones she’d had in Malibu. People here were down to earth and shared her interests. There were places to shop, little out-of-the-way stores that made her feel like she was browsing through some Mediterranean open-air marketplace, picking out locally grown vegetables or shopping for wine and cheese. A stroll through the farmers market reminded her of a Tuscan walkabout. Who needed Rodeo Drive when she could meander through the shops along Ocean Street or peruse the businesses downtown? Living here, she felt like part of the community.

It wasn’t hard to put a smile on her face and venture into Murphy’s Market, pick up a piping hot pizza at Longboard’s, or stop in at Vanilla Bean Machine for a quart of homemade ice cream. For the most part, people were friendly here. Sure, there was the odd grump at the gas station bitching about gas prices or the fed-up DIYer at the hardware store who couldn’t find what they needed to finish patching a hole in their roof. But overall, people went out of their way to make life a little better, offering a good word here and there when it mattered. Scattering kindness came with a willingness to help a neighbor in need. If word got out that someone needed a bag of groceries before their social security check arrived, Murphy would pack up a bundle of eats and deliver the groceries along with a note. It was probably that kind of thing that kept getting him elected mayor. The same was true for any number of businesses. If someone needed their car fixed and lacked the ready cash, Wally Pierce let them pay out the repairs over time. But it didn’t end there. Nick Harris, the bank manager, was known to approve mortgage applications in record time using a special fund the town had set up to get people into their own homes. That designated fund began with Nick and continued with Logan Donnelly’s help. Their kind of generosity—people helping people—usually didn’t happen elsewhere, at least not in Brogan’s experience. It was the key thing that set Pelican Pointe apart from anywhere else.

Maybe that was why she couldn’t wrap her head around the forty-five-year-old murder mystery Brent Cody had dumped in their lap the night before. The police chief’s announcement surprised everyone. Recommending them for the job was huge. The man didn’t make a habit of tossing cold cases around, much less letting websleuths take a crack at solving one, even if it fell in that tricky black hole no one wanted to touch.

Could a Jane Doe case be resolved after such a long time?

Brogan wanted to believe that as difficult as it sounded, it wasn’t impossible. But with scant details to work with, her positive attitude had changed overnight. She realized it was a daunting task.

As she walked from one plant to the next with her watering can, giving each a generous drink, she thought about the unidentified teenager—a girl the town had dubbed Gidget Jane Doe. In 1978, someone had ended Gidget’s short life by strangling her, then had left the girl on the boardwalk, in plain view of anyone who’d passed by the pier.

So maybe the town hadn’t always been a welcoming place to call home, she mused as she picked up the bottle of Neem oil and sprayed her large bird of paradise leaves before wiping off the excess with a microfiber towel.

Lazing in front of the window, the greyhound Stella soaked up the sunlight and rolled toward Poppy the Bichon. Poppy crawled on her belly to snuggle next to Stella.

Brogan captured the moment on her phone. “You guys have such a great life, sunning yourselves like a couple on the French Riviera.”

“There you are,” Lucien bellowed as he walked into the solarium they’d dubbed the sun porch. It was a bright room blessed with floor-to-ceiling east-facing windows and a skylight that captured the early morning rays. Originally designated as a music room, the location made for a perfect indoor place to grow fussy orchids and other humidity-loving plants. Brogan kept so many of her larger tropical houseplants in here that it became a running joke—the vining jungle, a labyrinth of greenery—climbed all the way to the ceiling. Monsteras battled for space alongside a hugeRhaphidophoratetrasperma, which, in turn, crept up the walls next to a mass of trailing philodendrons. A pair of towering Norfolk Island pines in the corner anchored the various species of giant Dracaenas.

“I told you at breakfast that I had to water plants this morning,” Brogan countered. “You don’t listen.”

“I found you, didn’t I?” He glanced up at the skylight where one of the vining plants had gotten caught between two rafters. “Besides, you could spend an entire day in here getting lost behind any number of trees and no one would ever find you.”

“Ha. Ha. Like I’ve never heard that one before. I love these plants and love watching them thrive indoors. Sue me.”

“Hmm. You’re not a plant lover. You’re more of a plant hoarder,” Lucien charged, glancing at a strange-looking, wiry cactus spilling two feet over the rim of a hanging pot. “What is that thing?”

“Disocactus anguliger, known as a fishbone cactus or zig-zag cactus. One of the buds opened up for the first time last night. See all the other blooms on its stems? Doesn’t it smell wonderful in here?”

Lucien leaned over and gave the pale yellow flower a sniff. “Smells like vanilla. Makes the whole house smell like we plugged in one of those scented air fresheners.”

She frowned. “Fresh flowers and blossoms are much better than any canned air freshener. Why were you looking for me? What did you want?”

He plopped down on the loveseat next to an overreaching, six-foot-tall ponytail palm, its leathery leaves cascading halfway down the trunk. “If Brent wants us to begin a genealogy hunt for Gidget’s identity, and we have to wait on the court order exhuming her remains, why don’t we put the time to good use? Since we don’t have any real experience tracing family roots, we could practice on ourselves using our family trees.”

She stopped wiping off leaves long enough to stare at him. “Really? Have you ever been curious enough to sign up on any of those websites and upload a sample of your DNA?”

“No, but I thought it would be a good place to start.”

“You want me to spit into a cup?”

“Experts recommend swabbing the mouth instead. I found a private lab facility in San Sebastian that does it all. They handle the upload from start to finish once we drop it off there. Their fee comes with a genealogy map that promises to trace our family trees. Come on. It’ll be fun.”

“Did you ever consider the possibility that we’ll discover something in our ancestry we don’t particularly want to know?”

“Yeah. But I look at it this way. Every family has good and bad in it. Might as well discover the scoundrels along with the saints.”

“Not a bad way to look at it, I suppose. It’s like meeting the ghosts of the Sutters and Coles. Speaking of ghosts, I saw Scott Phillips this morning out past the orchard.”

“Where exactly?”

“He was standing on the footpath about midway between the dunes. Scott was looking up at the house.”

“That’s weird. I haven’t seen him for weeks. You seem to see him a lot more often.”

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