“Auntie wanted me to ask if you’ve seen Iris. She’s disappeared.”
“No, sorry. I haven’t seen her.”
She and her father talked for a few minutes longer about her new covert assignment. After saying good night and shutting the door, Liz burst out laughing. She could only imagine what the tabloids would say if they ever got a photo of her doing what her father had just asked her to do. Liz took out her penlight and followed the cement sidewalk until she met the sandy path leading to the ocean. The moon peeked out from behind the clouds and helped to light her way. This stretch of the island was wild and untamed, backing up to the thirty-four-acre Barrier Island Sanctuary Center. On any given day, you might see huge blue crabs side-winding their way along the shoreline, endangered turtles laying eggs, snakes, owls, bobcats, and even the occasional panther on the prowl. Luckily, tonight the only creature she encountered was a screech owl with a pair of beaming yellow eyes. It whinnied and trilled as she passed.
Chapter 5
Before taking the crushed-shell path to her beach house, Liz stepped onto the sandy trail leading to the hotel’s planked boardwalk that overlooked the ocean. At one time, the boardwalk followed the shore for the entire width of the original Indialantic by the Sea resort, but after decades of storms and hurricanes, the boardwalk had been reduced to a tenth of its original size. She stood at the railing and looked out across the dark ocean, the sound of the waves soothing and tranquil. She reveled in the sensation of the gentle wind caressing her face and felt a trickling of the desire to write. Maybe she’d write something less heavy than Let the Wind Roar, something with humor and a touch of romance—but just a touch.
April in Florida was Liz’s favorite time of year, and she felt happy to be home and at peace with her surroundings. Through the mist, a ghostly lit cruise ship headed southeast toward the Bahamas. Liz had grown up with stories of sunken ships filled with treasure, none of which were fairy tales. In 1715, an entire fleet of Spanish ships carrying gold, silver, and decorative pottery sank in a storm off the Sebastian Inlet, ten miles south of where Liz stood, close to Regina’s father’s estate, Castlemara. A hurricane hit the shoreline in the mid-1950s, exposing a survivors’ camp from the ship El Capitana. Soon after, a large cache of treasure was discovered. To this day, usually after a hurricane or storm, salvagers could be seen excavating odd pieces from El Capitana and other lost-at-sea vessels.
On Liz’s tenth birthday, Aunt Amelia had given her a metal detector. The morning after a tropical storm slammed the island, Liz and her great-aunt hurried to the beach where the El Capitana survivor camp had been discovered, pretending they were shipwrecked from the S.S. Minnow. While they sat on the beach drinking Pierre’s lemon-limeade and eating peanut butter and mango sandwiches, Aunt Amelia reminisced about her days on the set of the television show Gilligan’s Island, where she’d met Mel Blanc, the man of a thousand voices. Mr. Blanc had been doing the voice-over for Gilligan’s parrot and had given Aunt Amelia an unprompted montage of his most famous cartoon voices, including Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Tweety, Sylvester, and Liz’s favorite, Yosemite Sam. He’d ended his performance with a Bugs Bunny, “Eh, what’s up, Doc?”
Aunt Amelia had also confided in Liz that the actress Tina Louise, aka Ginger, wasn’t anything like the ditzy character she played on the show. Soon after her guest appearance, her great-aunt dyed her hair what she now called Tina Louise Red. It was no wonder Liz had become a writer. There was so much rich material to draw from, living with Aunt Amelia.
Liz did find treasure that day on the beach, not a gold coin from a shipwrecked Spanish galleon, but a 1926 Morgan silver dollar—from the same year the Indialantic by the Sea Hotel had been built. Liz still had the coin in a small trunk at the foot of her bed, where she kept her childhood keepsakes, including things that had belonged to her mother.
Regina Harrington-Worth’s father had also found treasure near where the El Capitana was shipwrecked, reminding Liz about their irritating new guest. Regina’s mother had died decades ago, and now, with her father’s recent death, Liz wondered why Regina wasn’t staying on her daddy’s yacht while waiting for Castlemara to be torn down. Anywhere but the Indialantic.
The fog off the ocean was getting thicker, but Liz could still see the light of the moon reflected off the rolling waves. It was low tide. Soon that would change and the water would reach the bottom step, sometimes going farther inland, right up to the cyclone barrier fence that protected the twenty-foot dune. Down the shoreline, she observed two figures; one short, one tall.
Liz crept down the steps, then shined her tiny light on the damp sand. It was unusual for someone to be out on this stretch of the beach so late at night. She continued toward the couple, who seemed to be arguing about something, their voices carried on the wind in angry, broken syllables. She couldn’t see their faces in the mist. The smaller female pushed against the man; he pushed back. As Liz reached in her pocket to dial 911, the man pulled the woman into an embrace and they fell to the sand. Liz turned, embarrassed by the passionate scene. She headed back up the steps, then hurried to her beach house. She retrieved the key from under an orchid pot, opened the French doors, and stepped inside her cozy haven.
Six weeks ago, when Liz had come home to Melbourne Beach from Manhattan, her father and great-aunt had surprised her with the beach house—they’d even taped a huge, pale aqua bow on the front door. Not only had her father invested
