Free Cozy Mystery: Life's a Beach by S. Y. Robins Page A

looking woman, I was often told I was quite pretty.
    I was four inches short of being six feet tall, a fact that often relieved my mother. At six foot tall, my mother was a giant and she’d often told me how growing up as such a tall woman had impacted her life. I had my father’s auburn hair, my mother’s hazel eyes, and a distant ancestor’s olive complexion. Both of my parents had been pale creatures but I often turned bronze with only a little sunlight. A little fluffy, as Amber called it, I wasn’t extremely overweight but I wasn’t underweight either. Pretty average in most things, really.
    Not like Amber who was tiny and blonde with huge breasts and a tiny waist. Topped off with Amber’s light blue eyes the woman was a true stunner. I could match her in the breast department but the rest of it? Not even close, Amber was a beauty inside and out. Amber worked for a non-profit group fighting domestic abuse and providing shelters to women and children escaping bad relationships. She’d actually done a lot to help me when I finally kicked Jace out, just through our conversations.
    Amber was married with two children, and still managed to always look perfectly put together. Her husband, Mark, was keeping their two and four year old for the week and then Amber would go home. Mark would then go on his own vacation and she’d care for their babies until he came home. Then they’d go back to being a unit. I wished my marriage had been that good but it just wasn't meant to be.
    I was putting all of that behind me though, Jace anyway, and focusing on my friends. Raven-haired, tiny little Tina with her petite body entered my thoughts as I pushed the others away, her steely grey eyes, a beauty in her own right, the dark to Amber’s light, with her always optimistic smile. Oh this was going to be a wonderful trip.
    Amber and I lived close enough that we saw each other at least once a week or so, with me often travelling out of Atlanta to visit with her, but Tina had wandered down to Florida with her man. We hadn’t seen her in three months and Amber and I were both anxious to see our girl. Changing lanes one final time I took the exit that would lead to the beach house with a grin on my face. It was time to let it all go for a few days and relax!
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    I felt the warm sunlight on my face and let my head fall back as I stepped out of the car. I could smell the salt in the water, hear the roar of the waves stirred up by a strong wind now blowing my hair around my head, and hear the seagulls screeching at each other. Florida was just so fresh and this time of year brought the scent of orange blossoms with it. The scent was very faint but I knew what it was.
    Closing the car door I walked to the house, stooping down on the covered porch that spanned the front of the coquina covered structure, to pull the key from under a small statue of Ponce de Leon. Not a very good way of letting your guests in but in all of the years we’d been coming to the house we’d never heard about any problems.
    I stepped into the house and immediately felt like retching. Something was rotting in the house and it must have either been in the dark hallway with me or else it was huge. Burying my nose in the crook of my elbow I started walking through the house, trying to spot what was causing the smell. If I could get it out perhaps I could get rid of the smell.
    I wandered downstairs but didn’t find anything. I looked up the dark wood stairs to the second floor. There was only bedrooms and a bathroom up there. I’d hoped that the smell was coming from downstairs, in the kitchen, where nightmares might not exist. I stopped on the bottom step, too afraid of what I might find upstairs to go any further.
    I didn’t know how long it had been since the house had been rented, or what could be up there but I decided before going any further that I was a paying customer, I wasn’t paying to remove dead things from the place. And whatever was up there, I