Cover Copy
National bestselling author Kathleen Bridge presents a delightful new series set on a barrier island where waves meet sand—and mayhem meets murder . . .
The Indialantic by the Sea hotel has a hundred-year-old history on beautiful Melbourne Beach, Florida, and more than a few guests seem to have been there from the start. When Liz Holt returns home after an intense decade in New York, she’s happy to be surrounded by the eccentric clientele and loving relatives that populate her family-run inn, and doubly pleased to see the business is staying afloat thanks to its vibrant shopping emporium and a few very wealthy patrons.
But that patronage decreases by one when a filthy rich guest is discovered dead in her oceanfront suite. Maybe this is simply a jewel theft gone wrong, but maybe someone—or many people—wanted the hotel’s prosperous guest dead. Only one thing is sure: there’s a killer at the Indialantic, and if Liz lets herself be distracted—by her troubled past or the tempting man who seems eager to dredge it back up—the next reservation she’ll book could be at the cemetery . . .
Death by the Sea
A By the Sea Mystery
Kathleen Bridge
LYRICAL UNDERGROUND
Kensington Publishing Corp.
www.kensingtonbooks.com
To the extent that the image or images on the cover of this book depict a person or persons, such person or persons are merely models, and are not intended to portray any character or characters featured in the book.
LYRICAL UNDERGROUND BOOKS are published by
Kensington Publishing Corp.
119 West 40th Street
New York, NY 10018
Copyright © 2018 by Kathleen Bridge
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Lyrical Underground and Lyrical Underground logo Reg. US Pat. & TM Off.
First Electronic Edition: April 2018
eISBN-13: 978-15161-0520-5
eISBN-10: 1-5161-0520-6
First Print Edition: April 2018
ISBN-13: 978-1-5161-0523-6
ISBN-10: 1-5161-0523-0
Printed in the United States of America
Dedication
To my firstborn, Joshua Evan. Thanks for all the encouragement and LOVE.
XO, Mommy
And this was the reason that, long ago,
In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
My beautiful Annabel Lee;
So that her highborn kinsmen came
And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulchre
In this kingdom by the sea.
—Edgar Allan Poe
Chapter 1
“I curse you, Barnabas! May your undeath haunt you through all eternity. I’d rather die a mortal than live year to year preying on innocent blood, watching those I love buried in hallowed ground. You will not take me with you!” She jerked the knife toward her chest and fell to the floor.
After a few beats, Aunt Amelia opened her eyes, cracked a smile, then pulled herself up with the help of a sturdy piano bench. For a minute, Liz feared her eighty-year-old great-aunt had fractured a hip.
“Bravo! Bravo!” Barnacle Bob called out.
Liz applauded. Her great-aunt performed a deep bow, the tip of her bright red I Dream of Jeannie ponytail grazing the threadbare Persian carpet. When she stood, her sea-green eyes gleamed under black liner that extended from the corners of her eyes in true sixties style. “Enough theatrics,” Aunt Amelia said, adding a schoolgirl giggle. “I must talk to Pierre about dinner.” She wrapped a neon-pink scarf around her neck, kissed Liz on the top of the head, and exited the music room.
Amelia Eden Holt, Liz’s favorite—and only—great-aunt, had starred in three seasons of the 1960s vampire-themed television soap drama, Dark Shadows. “Starred” might be an exaggeration, because she’d only had a small part as a Collinwood maid. However, that was what Liz loved about her paternal great-aunt; she was bigger than life and more colorful than the tail feathers on Barnacle Bob, Aunt Amelia’s thirty-year-old macaw.
“Drama queen... Showboater... Diva,” Bob squawked.
Her great-aunt adored Barnacle Bob. Liz just hoped Aunt Amelia never heard the parrot’s two-faced comments. “Hush, BB, that’s not nice.” Liz took a seat next to his cage, inhaling Aunt Amelia’s signature scent, L’air du Temps.
When Liz was five, after her mother passed away, she and her father came to live with Aunt Amelia in the old family-run hotel. At one time, the Indialantic by the Sea Hotel was Melbourne Beach, Florida’s premier ocean-front resort. Unfortunately, the monikers “premier” and “resort” no longer held true. The Indialantic sat on a barrier island sandwiched between the Indian River Lagoon to the west and the Atlantic Ocean to the east. Last fall, Liz’s father invested a sizable percentage of his attorney fees from winning a class-action lawsuit into the coffers of the hotel. With Aunt Amelia’s and the staff’s hard work and dedication, along with the rent coming in from the new shops, the establishment was finally inching its way toward the black, affording them one more year to stave off the bank and real-estate predators.
Aunt Amelia insisted on adding to the old hotel’s name by calling it the Indialantic by the Sea Hotel and Emporium. The name was a little long-winded for Liz’s taste, but no one dared cross Aunt Amelia.
In 1945, a fire had destroyed the entire midsection of the Indialantic Hotel, and the north and south parts of the resort had been made into two separate buildings, with a large courtyard in between. The south building was the hotel, and the north building housed the emporium shops. The shops consisted of Home Arts by the Sea, a women’s lifestyle collective; Deli-cacies by the Sea, a gourmet deli and coffee shop; Sirens by the Sea, a women’s clothing boutique; and Gold Coast by the Sea, a rare coin and estate jewelry shop. It had been Liz’s
