The Turquoise Shroud: A Seth Halliday Novel Read online

  Praise for author Bobby Underwood

  LOVERS’ TIDE

  “Each of the stories is very well written - each one a portrait of a mysterious love that transcends all boundaries. This is a very good anthology - a good read late at night, or on the airplane, or anytime! — Kurt Johnson, Amazon Reviewer

  GROVER’S CREEK

  “Grover’s Creek is like comfort food for the soul. It leaves the reader longing for the simple pleasures of a bygone era. I highly recommend it for those who enjoy nostalgia and the romance of the past.” — Wanda L. Pyle, Author of Windborne, and The Stone House Legacy

  THE TURQUOISE SHROUD

  “The Turquoise Shroud launches the reader at high velocity down a twisting, turning road of adventure, intrigue, murder and romance that will keep you breathlessly on the edge of your seat until the explosive conclusion. Move over Travis McGee, Seth Halliday is in the driver's seat now!” — Doug Little, Goodreads Reviewer

  “This may be the breakout series for this prolific writer. Seth Halliday is a sympathetic but likable character with just the right amount of flaw. The descriptions are masterfully crafted to place the reader in the heart of the action.” — Wanda L. Pyle, Author of Windborne, and The Stone House Legacy

  “I won this book in the Goodreads FirstReads competition. It is very hard to put down and when you do it’s not long before you are back to the book. I would definitely recommend this book to readers who are fans of crime books.” — Sophie Narey, Goodreads Reviewer

  “The Turquoise Shroud grabs your attention in the first paragraph of chapter one and doesn’t let go until the end. I enjoyed reading this intriguing mystery as it unfolded.” — Sandra Jackson, Author of Promised Soul

  THE TRAIL TO SANTA ROSA

  “It was a wonderful story and the genre/setting was almost secondary to me as the story arc is character driven. It was exceptionally well written and wonderfully descriptive at times with the author Bobby Underwood really getting to the soul of his characters.” — Danni, Goodreads Reviewer

  THE SAPPHIRE SEA

  “Though I really liked the first (The Velvet Sea) and third (The Gentle Tide) books of the series, I did find this to be the most powerful book to date!…Matt is in a race against time to save those he loves, and the entire bio-organic population of the Earth. But this fight will cost him more than he could possibly imagine, and take him down roads he never knew existed!” — Kurt Johnson, Amazon Reviewer

  WHERE FLAMINGOS FLY

  “Primarily set in post World War II Miami, the story is rich with atmosphere and geographic detail of the era. For all those who are lover’s of the noir genre of 1940's & 50's movies, 'Where Flamingo's Fly' is an exciting tale of murder and romance that also reads like a great screenplay.” — Doug Little, Amazon Reviewer

  “It’s a fun book, both a stroll down memory lane to an earlier time, and a salute to the gang busters of yesteryear…if you like noir fiction, then give this book a chance, you’ll be richly rewarded for doing so.” — Kurt Johnson, Amazon Reviewer

  AFTER CLOSING TIME

  “It's a nice book to read on a quiet night, when everyone else in the house is asleep and workaday world is so far away. I liked Night Run the best, but all three stories were great.” — Kurt Johnson, Amazon Reviewer

  PASSAGE TO TOMORROW

  “The writer has a knack for making you feel the emotional depth of his characters. They come alive on the page and you actually feel like you are a ‘fly on the wall’ of this couple’s second honeymoon of sorts.” — Kirsty Wenn, Author of Harriet Greer

  You may check out these offerings and others at this link — http://www.amazon.com/Bobby-Underwood/e/B00931OC4C/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_0

  As with all works of fiction, the characters in this story live only in the author's imagination. Any resemblance to any persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. Some real locations were used for atmosphere only, and while they exist, the people do not. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic or mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the author. I assert the moral rights to be identified as the author of this work.

  The Turquoise Shroud

  by

  Bobby Underwood

  For all the Romantics

  Two Graves

  The nightmare hardly came at all anymore, but it always seemed so real, this unconscious and agonizing moment of vivid remembrance. It was that sweet and trusting voice that haunted her. A voice she would never hear again, except in dreams. They had been sitting at a corner cafe in Madrid.

  "I want to see a castle, mommy."

  She smiled. "I know, honey. We'll rent a car and go for a drive this afternoon. So my princess can play Cinderella."

  "Who's Cinderella, mommy?" It was a game they played.

  "She was a princess," she said with love, "who wasn't as pretty as my princess."

  Celia beamed.

  She took out some foreign bills she'd exchanged for US currency and handed two of them to Celia.

  "You can buy mommy lunch."

  Always eager to be a big girl like her mommy, Celia ran to the counter located just inside the open doorway. She returned with the change, proud of herself.

  She took Celia by the hand and they made their way through the busy bistro where they began to cross the boulevard. Two steps from reaching the other side of the street she realized she had left her sunglasses on the table.

  "I'll get them mommy!"

  She had hesitated.

  "Please mommy? You can stand right here and watch me. I'll look both ways, I promise."

  She gave in. How could she resist her? "Okay. But you watch me for the signal to come back across, okay?"

  "Okay, mommy."

  And she was off. Celia looked both ways as she'd promised her. The glasses were still there. Celia smiled and waved, holding them in her hand. Celia took a step and the world disappeared.

  Time stood still. She didn't realize there had been an explosion for several moments. The force of the blast had been so powerful that it sent her flying, the back of her head slamming against the concrete. She was dazed. People were screaming from somewhere far away. No, they were much closer. Why were they screaming? Where was she? She lifted her head with great effort. Her blouse was covered in blood and debris. She remembered. Celia!

  She scrambled to her feet, her head nearly exploding with pain. She ran towards the cafe, but came to an abrupt stop. Where had it gone? Only a hole existed where the bistro had stood. Sirens wailed and anguished cries reverberated in her ears. She stood stunned, frozen in time, staring at the carnage.

  She began to run again, her legs shaky, her head throbbing, fear reaching into the pit of her stomach and making it difficult to breathe. Pieces of...people littered the street like gruesome confetti. She walked in a desperate dance of fading hope beside others also searching, unwilling to accept that their world had changed in an instant. A man who had no chest lay in the rubble. Someone's grandmother wailed in an unfamiliar language for her daughter and son. The old woman had been late joining them. A man who had gone to get the morning paper stood gaping at the charred table where only moments ago his wife had sat.

  She looked down at the rubble and something inside her died. She fell to her knees, a marionette's puppet whose strings had been cut. An agonized cry of pain came from some deep and primitive place she had never known existed. Even police and rescue workers momentarily halted their desperate search to look her way. A tear ran down a policeman's face as he watched her shaking and sobbing. Sh
e doubled over, her tormented cries joining the chorus of sirens and yelling, adding another note to this melody of death.

  A policeman rushed over and mercifully dragged her to her feet, leading her away from hell. He glanced down and winced at the scorched sunglasses she clutched so tightly in her hand. Wrapped around the one remaining lens were two small, bloody fingers that had once been a little girl…

  She woke up bathed in sweat and terrified, her heart racing, her screams still echoing against the four walls of her bedroom. The dreams were always the same. But they came less and less lately. For six months she had been numb, walking through life like a zombie. Twelve people had been killed in the blast, including two children. Guilt was her constant companion. Guilt at having carelessly left her sunglasses behind, guilt at allowing Celia to go back and get them alone, guilt that she had not died with her child. But in every way that mattered, she had died that day with Celia.

  On the one-year anniversary of the still unsolved bombing, families of the victims were interviewed in a special news segment. She had been asked to participate; they even offered to fly her to Spain for the interview, but she declined. Parasites, all of them. It reminded her of that Don Henley song, Dirty Laundry. They sent her a tape of the show but weeks went by before she could work up the courage to pop it into the machine.

  Nine families had accepted. Nice, normal people from various walks of life. Their stories were heartbreaking. Celia's name was mentioned and a solemn comment by the piece's main commentator that she had declined to talk about the tragedy. Mentioned in the same breath were the mother and father of an eighteen-year-old boy who had been backpacking through Europe before attending college. His parents had given them their blessing to experience life abroad before returning to attend classes at Stanford. A decision so painfully regretted that like little Celia's mother, they could not bear to discuss it.

  But the show made no mention of the other family who had refused to be interviewed. She called the Madrid news station and once it was clear who was calling, the producer of the tearful show informed her that one woman killed in the blast had never been identified. She had been staying at a hotel under a false name, and since no prints were available now -- for obvious reasons -- and no one had ever come forward, she had remained unidentified. After hanging up the phone, she had begun to wonder. No terrorist organization had ever claimed responsibility for the Madrid bombing. No one had. What if only one person who died that day mattered to the bomber? A random act of terror was incomprehensible, but what if there had been a reason? To destroy so many lives just to kill one person crossed the boundary of murderous into the realm of evil.

  As she considered it, she felt the numbness she had grown so accustomed to being replaced by purpose. Revenge. She would not rest until she discovered the identity of the unknown woman. Then she would know who had killed her Celia…

  One

  Depending on whether you were a glass-half-full or glass-half-empty sort it was either very late at night or the wee hours of morning as I cast my line into the aquamarine waters of Cozumel and saw her head sticking up out of the low tide about twenty yards to my left. Someone had taken great care to bury her upright in the sand, leaving only her head above water so that she would see the turquoise shroud enveloping her at high tide, unable to escape it.

  I laid the rod down next to my tackle box and walked slowly toward her. The closer I got the more heartsick I became. By the time I reached her I was moving so slowly it could hardly be called walking. And then I just stood there looking down at her, and the longer I looked, the more it hurt.

  Her name was Nancy. She was a sweet kid, about seventeen. Most of her generation had a callous disregard for anyone other than themselves, their hedonistic excesses like a fingerprint from which they could be easily identified. Generation X,Y, or Z, or whatever they were calling themselves now. Nancy was different, too kind and decent to fit into that world yet unable to fit into the world outside of her superficial peers, filled with equally superficial adults. I'd only known her about a week and a half, but sometimes that's all it takes. She wasn't the kind you had lustful thoughts about despite a lovely body that deserved them. She was the kind some very lucky kid ended up with after all of his playing days were over and he got smart.

  If it is possible to remain innocent in today's world, then Nancy had succeeded. It was as though she'd stumbled into a time machine and ended up in the wrong era. She was Karen Carpenter in a world that had long moved past the shock of Madonna to revel in the angry misogynous lyrics of rap "music" and the outrageous behavior of the Lady Gagas. Nancy had been hurt and she was running from someone, and maybe just the world in general. We had that in common; I was hiding from the world, too.

  Cops aren't supposed to kill people, but in a world a hundred years ago yet only yesterday I had killed Emilio Escobar. He was, or had been, a heavyweight drug dealer, a smug, amoral son-of-a-bitch who thought he could murder a nice young Columbian woman who was to testify against him, then pay me to look the other way. It was an arrogance borne of experience and prior successes. It hadn't worked partly because I was on the dead up-and-up but mainly because I'd seen Maria's body. Her tongue had been cut off and shoved down her throat, her nose taped over with duct tape. She had choked to death on her own blood and tongue, unable to scream for help. Like Nancy, she had died frightened and alone.

  Girls like Maria and Nancy were a world removed from the two leggy and silicone-endowed bimbos, one blonde, one brunette, both high-priced, who were stretched out by the kidney-shaped pool on either side of Escobar the day I came to give him his answer. I watched from a distance and waited for my opportunity. Escobar finally got careless, sending his bodyguards away for privacy. When the two call-girls ducked inside to shower and change, and probably gargle, I made my play. Catching movement out of the corner of his eye, Escobar was quick enough to grab the gun on the small table next to the lounge, but not quick enough to get off a shot.

  The official line on Escobar's violent death was that it was the work of an unknown player in the traffic, perhaps a rival looking to move in on his $100 million dollar-a-year business, or a relative of the witness from Columbia. No one in Dade really worked too hard on it, figuring one less scumbag like Escobar in the world was a good thing. The fact that Dade could never prove Escobar had ordered the murder of Maria didn't exactly light a fire under them either. Justice had been served, but it came with a high price tag. I had put three bullets into Escobar's body, but from the moment it was over, there were three dark stains on my soul. I had shattered the image I had of myself as the tough 5' 9" sandy blonde white-knight standing for truth and justice, and I needed to rebuild that image into something I could live with.

  A month into my efforts to find someone recognizable in the mirror I received a package. It was full of dead Presidents' pictures, and numbers ranging from 20 to 100. Altogether it came to $250,000. There was a business card which simply read: Attorney at Law. No name. A Columbian number was handwritten underneath. I had to drive around Miami a half hour before finally spotting an old-fashioned phone booth. A line no one would be tracing.

  "Hello?"

  "Mr. Seth Halliday." A statement, not a question.

  "Yes."

  "I take it you have received the package."

  "Yeah, I got it. What's the angle?"

  "No angle, Mr. Halliday. Maria's family simply wished to express their gratitude."

  "She worked as a maid."

  "Yes, I understand how that might raise your suspicions. I am her family's attorney, names are unnecessary. Suffice it to say, although estranged from her family in Columbia, they loved her very much. They are quite wealthy, and simply wished to express their gratitude for your interest in her…tragic demise."

  "What kind of wealth?"

  "Pardon? Ah, I see. I was told you were a man of principal. I am glad that information is correct. I believe 'Old money' is the expression you Americans use. It does not come from the c
hosen profession of Mr. Escobar, I can assure you. The paths of Maria's family and Mr. Escobar would never have crossed, though both would have heard of each other."

  A far-away hum saturated the line because of the distance. His accent was very faint, his diction perfect, as if he'd studied at Harvard or Yale a couple of decades ago. Maybe he had.

  "So what happens now?"

  "We go our separate ways, Mr. Halliday. You are free to do as you wish, and we will have no further contact."

  There was silence on both ends, except for the hum.

  "Tell the family I'm very sorry. Tell them she died quickly and never knew what happened."

  A short pause. His voice was less business-like when he answered, his accent a tad more pronounced. "I will tell them, Mr. Halliday. I'm certain her mother will find some small comfort in your white lie."

  "So you know? It wasn't in the papers."

  "Yes, but her parents never shall. It would be too much to bear, don't you think?"

  "Yes, it would."

  I could hear the sound of him taking a deep breath and letting it out very slowly. "There will be no further contact, but you may use this number should you in the future find yourself in need of…influence. Goodbye, Mr. Halliday."

  A year had passed since that call. I knelt down beside Nancy in the wet sand and touched her face. It was soft and cool from the sea which had drowned her. The bottom three inches of her ponytail floated behind her, as if trying to run from her fate. Her face was pointed upward, towards the sky, towards heaven. Maybe she'd been searching for peace in those last moments, watching apprehensively as the beautiful turquoise shroud got closer and closer.