Short Stories from Wing's Authors.

Mysterious Mermaid

by

Nancy Gotter Gates

Emma Daniels approached the life-sized mermaid sand sculpture in awe. Eyes closed as if in sleep, arms folded across its fish-scale hips, tail curled slightly in repose; it was remarkable. Struck by its beauty, Emma wondered who the talented sculptor could be. She walked Crescent Beach near Sarasota every morning and she’d never seen anything like it.

Even the rancid smell of red tide could not keep her from seeking the sculpted mermaid out again the next day. She realized, with sadness, it couldn’t possibly last long. Sand sculptures were always vulnerable. She couldn’t imagine putting so much time and effort into something which would inevitably be destroyed.

That night a ferocious storm came ashore. The roar of the wind and waves kept Emma awake most of the night since her bedroom in the high-rise condominium faced the Gulf.

At dawn the next morning she took off down the beach, which was strewn with seaweed and driftwood, hoping against hope the sculpture had somehow made it through. As she approached it, however, she saw wind and rain had washed away the details and left nothing but a mound of wet sand.

Then she noticed something else. Good God! Was that a human arm exposed? Closer yet, she saw bright colors peeking through what was left of the mermaid. With a shudder of horror, she realized it was a flowered dress covering a human form. What she thought had been the stench of red tide was worse now. Overcome with nausea, she rushed into the sea oats where she lost her breakfast before racing back to La Hacienda, her condo building, to call 911.

The same evening she was stunned to learn the body inside the sculpture was Moira McIntyre, a resident of her building. Though Emma had returned to the beach to meet the police, she hurried back home after they questioned her, unwilling to wait for them to completely uncover the body. What she’d already seen had been bad enough.

The next day the halls of her building were abuzz. Almost everyone knew Moira because she was the only one not of retirement age. She had inherited the condo when her elderly mother died six months earlier, although the by-laws specified at least one tenant in each unit must be fifty-five or older and Moira was only thirty-seven. She’d lived in the condo for three years as her mother’s health declined, and she’d made many friends at La Hacienda. Since she’d given up her home and job in West Virginia and had no other place to go, the Board members voted to allow Moira to stay.

No one could imagine why anyone would want to harm her. She’d not been seen for three days, but her next-door neighbors assumed she’d finally made the trip to Key West as she’d often mentioned how much she yearned to see the Keys.

The morning paper reported Moira had been strangled. She was wearing a flowered shift, but no shoes. The Medical Examiner placed the date of death around Tuesday, which meant she was probably killed soon after her neighbors last saw her. Otherwise, there seemed to be few clues. Or else the police weren’t talking about them.

“She was so full of life,” Catherine Sellars, a neighbor, told Emma. “So sweet.”

“Tell me about her,” Emma said. “I only knew her to say hello to. Who were her friends? What were her interests and hobbies?”

“Until her mother died, Moira didn’t have time for much else except taking care of her. But after the funeral, she got involved in things. Every afternoon she would go out on the beach where she’d meet up with a bunch of kids to make sand sculptures. She always regretted she didn’t have children and loved working with them.”

That explained why Emma had seen new sand castles each day not far from La Hacienda. She walked the beach so early every morning she’d never run into Moira’s group. And then when the sand castles stopped, the mermaid sculpture had appeared. Whoever had created this monstrous work must have done it at night since Emma had walked the beach with a friend the evening before it appeared and had seen nothing. The fact it could have been sculpted under cover of darkness made it all the more curious and remarkable.

Over the next several days, there was little news about Moira’s death. Evidently the police were making little progress in solving the case.

Emma noticed sand castles began appearing again, this time endowed with bougainvillea or hibiscus blooms. A cross on the wall of one castle was fashioned from seashells. She guessed the children were making a tribute to Moira in the only way they knew how and she decided to go out on the beach in the afternoon in hopes of meeting them.

It took a while before she found them. There were six children, two boys and four girls all under ten or so, working on a new sculpture. It was so poignant it brought Emma to tears. They’d  sculpted a big heart and underneath they had created raised letters saying “We love you Mo...” A little boy, the smallest of the bunch, was busily forming the “i.”

She squatted down beside the group. “Hi there,” she said. “Are you the ones who made the sand castles with Moira?”

The little boy who was working looked up at her. “Yeah. We miss her.”

One of the older girls asked, “Who are you?”

“I’m Emma. I live in her building.”

A tear edged out of the girl’s eye. “She was such a neat lady. Why would anybody want to hurt her?”

“I wish I knew.” Emma sat down and patted the sand, inviting the girl to join her. “Tell me about your group. How long have you been doing this? What do you guys talk about?” She didn’t think she’d get any important information from these children. She simply felt the need to do something.

The girl flopped down beside her. “Uh, we started in September,” she said. “I remember because school had just started. Moira was out on the beach making a sand castle and she saw me walking by and asked me to help her. Then every day more kids joined in.”

It would have been six months ago.

“What’s your name?” Emma asked.

“Madison.”           

“Has it been the same bunch all this time?”

“Naw. Kids come and go. Joey there’s my brother. We come most of the time. Other kids get tired of it after a while and stop. But I loved being with her.” The child reached up to brush away another tear.

“I’m sure you did, Madison.” Emma decided this conversation only served to make the girl sadder. She stood up. “I appreciate...”

“We even had one man in our group,” Madison blurted out.

 Emma sat down again. “A man?” she repeated.

“Yeah, he lives in that building over there.” She pointed up the beach toward Jacaranda Resort.

“Tell me about him.”

“Well, the guy is blind. But he’s so cool! He helped us with our sand castles just by feeling them.”

“How did he get in the group?”

“He came out with a lady one day. I think it was his mom. When she saw what we were doing, she asked if he wanted to help us. I thought it was so weird, but he was really good. I mean I think it’s his business or something.”

Good heavens, thought Emma, a blind sculptor. Just the type of person who could create a lifelike mermaid out of sand in the dark.

“What was his name?”

“Larry. But he never told us his last name.”

Well, it didn’t matter. Thanks to Madison, Emma knew where he lived. She asked the next question head on. “Do you know if Moira and Larry became good friends? I mean do you think they might have gotten together when they weren’t making sand castles?”

The girl shrugged. “Don’t know. He might have asked her to go someplace. I don’t think she was his girlfriend though.”

Emma thanked Madison and left. As she walked along the water’s edge toward her building, a plan formed in her mind.

At home she dressed in hose, heels and a business-like skirt and blouse. She knew Larry couldn’t tell what she was wearing, but if he lived with his mother, she would know.

She took along a yellow legal pad in an old briefcase she had and drove down Midnight Pass Road to Jacaranda Resort. In the lobby the security man sat behind a desk reading a magazine. She flashed her friendliest smile and said, “I’m from the Siesta Key Weekly. I’ve been told a blind man who’s a talented sculptor lives in this building. I‘d love to interview him for a feature article, but all I know is his first name is Larry. Can you help me out here?”

“Oh, sure. You must mean Larry Campbell.”

“I understand he lives with his mother.”

“They live next door to each other.”

“Do you suppose it would be okay to go knock on his door? I need to make an appointment with him.”

“Yeah, sure. I haven’t seen him go out today. He’s in 304.”

Emma thanked him and took the elevator to the third floor. She knocked on the door of 304. When it opened, Larry Campbell said, “Yes?” He was a tall man, handsome in a rugged way with big shoulders and muscled arms. His dark wavy hair hung to his shoulders. The way he stared over her right shoulder was somewhat unnerving. His eyes seemed normal except for the lack of recognition in them. It made her realize how much eye contact meant in bonding with someone else.

“Mr. Campbell?” she inquired.

“Yes.” His gaze moved toward her face in response to her voice.

“I’m Marie Sanchez. I hope you don’t mind I didn’t call in advance. I’m a reporter for the Siesta Key Weekly and when I was out this way, I got a call from my editor asking if I could stop by and interview you about your work as a sculptor. We’re up against a deadline or I would have made an appointment.”

He opened the door wide and gestured her inside. “Please do come in. So how did you find out about me?”

Emma seated herself on a sleek blue couch. “I’m not really sure. My editor said he got a call from someone who raved about your work. Have you had any shows in town?”

Larry, who moved about his living room with ease, sat down in a striped chair opposite her. “No. I moved here only recently. Perhaps someone who knew of my work in Philadelphia recognized me on the street or the beach. I had a number of shows there.”

Continuing her interrogation, Emma hoped she sounded like a bona fide reporter. She was glad he couldn’t see her hand tremble as she scribbled notes on a legal pad so he would hear the scratching of her pen.

After about fifteen minutes she couldn’t think of another question.

“Larry,” she said, “I’m embarrassed to ask this, but I’ve been on the run all morning, and I need to use the powder room. Would you mind?”

“No, of course not. Right off the bedroom down the hall there.” He pointed in the general direction. “I’ve not been a very good host,” he added. “Can I make you a cup of coffee?”

“That would be wonderful,” she said, knowing an extra dose of caffeine could send her nerves, already zinging, right over the top--but it would get him to the opposite end of the condo.          

Her stomach in knots, Emma picked up her briefcase and walked down the hall. Glancing behind her, she saw Larry head toward the kitchen. She closed the bedroom door as softly as she could, sure his hearing was acute. Rather than go to the bathroom, she went immediately to the closet, hoping if Larry came to the bedroom door and found it closed, he’d think she was sprucing herself up.

She fished around in the dark bowels of his closet. There was no light bulb since he obviously didn’t need one and after a moment she found them; a pair of sling back pumps. It was possible they belonged to someone else, but who would that be? His mother lived next door and would keep her shoes at home. She’d learned during the interview he hadn’t lived on Siesta Key long. If he had some kind of a relationship with a woman, it wasn’t obvious. No other feminine items could be seen.

This is what brought her to Larry’s condo. When Emma read about the murder, the article said that Moira was dressed in a floral sheath but was barefoot. She certainly wouldn’t have gone out dressed up and shoeless, but had doubtless taken them off and carried them to walk in the sand. Emma reasoned the murderer had taken her shoes with him, perhaps as a souvenir of his ghoulish deed. She handled them carefully by the straps alone and, reaching into her purse, pulled out a plastic bag and carefully wrapped the pumps and crammed them into the bottom of her briefcase. She needed to preserve Larry’s fingerprints which would surely be all over them. Although she knew she was playing a dangerous game, she was sure her “theory” would never have been enough to convince the police they should get a search warrant.

Relieved she had accomplished her goal, she went into the bathroom, flushed the toilet and ran the water.

As she came out of the bedroom, she was startled to see Larry standing in the hall, his sightless eyes seeming to bore holes into her. Her stomach lurched. Was he on to her?

“I just came to say I hope you could find a clean towel. I sometimes forget to change them,” he said.

She could only pray he couldn’t hear the pounding of her heart, which sounded a drum beat in her ears. “Everything was fine,” she said, managing to sound normal.

She followed him to the living room where Larry had brought the cups of coffee and put them on the coffee table. “Cream, sugar?” he asked

“No thanks,” she said. “I take it black.” She wanted to get out of there so badly she practically gulped the coffee down. Finally she said, “Well, I’ve got a deadline to meet and I must run. I certainly do appreciate your letting me interview you without notice.”

“Glad to oblige. When will it be in the paper?”

“Uh...next week’s edition. I’ll see you get a copy.” With that she fled the condo and drove directly to the Sarasota police department on Ringling Boulevard. She told the woman at the front desk that she needed to see someone in the homicide department. It wasn’t long before she was ushered upstairs.

A Detective Rubenstein introduced himself. “How can I help you?” he asked.

Emma reached down into her briefcase and pulled out the shoes wrapped in the plastic bag. “I believe these belonged to Moira McIntyre. I heard you found her shoeless.”

Rubenstein took them from her and set them on his desk. “What makes you think these were hers, and where did you get them?”

Emma related the story of Moira’s castle-making and the child who told her about Larry. As she told him about her visit to his condo, Detective Rubinstein listened soberly. “You should have called us instead. You could have been in a very dangerous situation.”

“I didn’t think you’d be impressed with my deductions. In fact I thought you’d laugh at me.”

“Ms. Daniels, we do not laugh at citizens who try to help. And we don’t want them to take action on their own.”

Properly chastised, she shook his hand and left. Driving home, she thought about what he’d said. She decided they might not have laughed in her face, but she probably would have been the butt of some jokes later. In any case, she felt really proud of herself for what she’d done.

Later that evening Detective Rubinstein called her. “Campbell confessed. I thought you’d like to know. It seems he took quite a shine to Ms. McIntyre. They went to a beach-front restaurant, then took what he hoped would be a romantic walk on the beach. She took off her shoes and carried them. They sat down together and he made a pass which she rebuffed. Evidently some harsh words were tossed back and forth, and he got into a rage and strangled her.”

“Oh, how horrible!”

“So how can a blind man get rid of a body?” he continued. “The only thing he could think of was to make a sculpture around it. At least it would buy him some time. And I guess his creative urge got the better of him. He had it all done and was leaving when he stumbled over her shoes. He heard people coming his way, so he hid them under his shirt and ran home. No sense in hiding the body if you’re going to leave the shoes in plain sight.”

“Just as I thought.”

“You did a good job, Ms. Daniels. But my advice to you is to call us the next time you get another bright idea.”

“Sure, Detective.” As if she would ever find herself involved in a murder case again.

The next afternoon, with the help of lots of sun screen and a big hat, Emma went out in search of the children who had worked with Moira. She wasn’t much of a sculptor, but at least she could help them make their castles. Maybe it would help them remember the good times they had with their friend and diminish memories of her tragic end.

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