Shadows on the Sand Read Online Free PDF Page B

Daddy,” he said.
    The party was a raging success, at least in Greggie’s young mind. Ginny had a hard time making the candles stay upright in the Pop-Tarts, but Greggie hadn’t cared. He had sugar like Daddy.
    As Ginny poured the Count Chocula into the kids’ bowls, she’d shrugged. “At least the milk is good for them.”
    Greg knew that not facing a cereal bowl was ridiculous, as foolish astrying to drink away the pain had been. Still, he came to Carrie’s every day and ate eggs.
    He stepped away from his stool. “I gotta go. I have to evict a guy named Chaz Rudolph over at the Sand and Sea.”
    “Sounds like a fun day,” Clooney said. “Want help?”
    “Yeah.” Mr. Perkins sat up as straight as his arthritic back would allow and held out his hand in a gun. “Go ahead, punk. Make my day.”
    Greg had to laugh, something he still didn’t do much. “Listen, Dirty Harry, I appreciate your offer. You too, Clooney, but I think the constable and I can manage on our own.”
    “I know Chaz Rudolph.” Andi leaned on the counter beside Carrie. “I don’t like him.” She wrinkled her nose.
    Greg didn’t like him either. “How do you know him?”
    Something in his voice must have alerted Clooney, who went as still as a hunting dog on point.
    Andi shrugged. “I met him in here.”
    If Andi met Chaz here, that was okay. No danger. All kinds of people had to eat, even scum like Chaz. As Greg relaxed, so did Clooney. Were all adult males as twitchy about their young female relatives? Would he have been such a guard dog with Serena? With all he’d seen as a cop, probably worse. Oh yeah, much worse.
    He walked to the cash register and paid Carrie for his eggs.
    She handed him his change, her smile warm and encouraging. “Hope it goes okay. See you tomorrow?”
    He nodded, still amazed and appalled at his little dissertation on Carrie’s strengths. He hadn’t thought he knew her at all except as a pleasant blond woman with pretty blue eyes who ran a nice café. Generic stuff. When had he discerned all those character traits and qualities, and why was he so sure he was right? Not that it mattered, of course.
    He exited the café and walked into the sea-scented air. He loved living on a barrier island sandwiched between ocean and bay. The Atlantic always calmed him, always soothed him, even when it raged in a nor’easter or a hurricane, even back on his worst days, when he walked for miles along the tide line regardless of the weather. The sea was consistent, dependable in a world gone mad. The tides ebbed and flowed in an eternal pattern. The waves rose and broke, whether gentle in the summer sun or raging, spume flying, in a storm.
    And on the other side of Seaside, the bay spread like a blue magic carpet on which he could float in his old, dinged Starcraft, suspended over a teeming, unseen world. He could lie back on the seats and watch the herons soar gracefully overhead, long spindly legs trailing, or wonder at the patience of the cormorants as they spread their wings to dry, or laugh at the gulls screaming at each other as they fought over a scrap of food.
    There was no place he wanted to be except Seaside.
    As he drove his pickup the two blocks to the rental units located in the block behind the boardwalk, he sighed at the thought of the cocky, scrawny, nasty kid he hoped had left of his own volition.
    He hated evictions.
    No, wait. What was he thinking? He hated everything about his property manager’s job. It was an honorable job, a worthy job. Many were challenged by it, enjoyed it. It just wasn’t for him. But what was?
    He’d had his dream job, but his awful circumstances had killed it. He’d known from the first night in his ghost-filled house that he was no longer emotionally stable enough to be a cop.
    “God, why?” he’d cried as he stood by Serena’s bed with its Pepto-Bismol pink quilt pulled up over lumpy sheets. “She was my little girl, my princess!”
    In Greggie’s room he stared at