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“Rohen!”
Normally a mother standing on a beach anxiously calling for a child would have drawn considerable attention, but in the crowded, noisy crush that Keystone Beach had become, she was easily overlooked. It hadn’t always been such. Catalina Island, off the coast of Southern California, had been a fairly small city until Minos Enterprises had shown up with deep pockets and grandiose plans. In the decade since the land had been sold and renamed Olympus Island, two of the five planned resorts were already completed, with a third nearly finished. A beach that local children had once been able to stroll along and find whole shells was now a field of tourists reeking of sunscreen, thousands of visitors jumping on early access discount packages intended to help the resorts established their name. Any shells left were trampled to shards.
Rohen’s mother called out again and walked closer to the water, gazing at the heads bobbing like buoys in the surf and searching for the telltale red gold of her daughter. A small café sat elevated over the beach, a more exclusive club for those escaping the chaos of the sands below. Three elderly women wearing sunhats that would have fit in on the Titanic sat over a game of poker, a game they paid less heed to than the increasingly frantic mother lost below.
“Soon,” one remarked.
“Very soon. Then again, we expected this,” the second added, as she set down a spread of cards that seemed random yet was accepted as the winning hand for the round.
“We always do. Still, it’s good to see that some things-“ the third replied as she gathered and shuffled the cards.
“-never change,” the first woman finished watched in satisfaction as chaos broke on the beach, two young surfers dragging a limp child between them. Rohen’s mother fell on the child with a scream, as a harried lifeguard ran across the sand. Even unable to hear what was said, the women saw the exchange and the mother’s palpable relief as it was revealed the girl was breathing just fine.
+++
Fifteen years later, Rohen stood over a body pulled up onto a different section of that same beach, in a rocky area where tourists often explored the small pools left behind by the tide. It wasn’t the first drowning or near drowning Keystone Beach had ever seen, including her own locally infamous survival, though it had been some time. Tourism had taken a hit with several seasons of poor weather and a pandemic, and though it had recovered to some degree the rising costs led to smaller, wealthier crowds.
The young man was, or had been, handsome. Beautiful, even, it was easy to imagine he’d been a model or actor. Rohen’s coworker stood not far away, taking statements from witnesses as resort staff comforted the young man’s sobbing fiancé. Rohen pushed her sunglasses up onto her forehead to get the loose red curls off her face, and pulled on a pair of blue nitrile gloves. On superficial inspection her suit and badge looked like what anyone would expect from a detective, and her mannerisms fit the role, but if one paid close attention they’d notice the obvious signs that she was employed by the resort, not the local police.
“Everyone is giving the same story, more or less. I think this will have to be ruled a suicide. He dunked his head in, and no one could pull him out.” Isabelle returned from questioning the witnesses and tied back her black hair before crouching down next to her partner.
“The boss would prefer that, certainly.” Rohen sounded non-committal.
“Another hunch?” It was well enough known that the redhead had a nose for when things were off, chalked up to observational skills and talent by her superiors while spoken of with superstitious respect by her coworkers.
“Maybe.” Rohen gently pried the young man’s mouth open, and frowned. “You called the coroner? I think he’ll enjoy this more than the usual overdose.” She closed the mouth again and stood up.
Isabelle frowned, and looked up at her partner in puzzlement. “Was that a daffodil?”
“Yes. Yes it was.”
+++
“Preston Andrews. Twenty-two. On vacation with his fiancé’s family.” Isabelle read the information off the chart and shivered; the chill of the morgue after a sunny summer afternoon was a big shift. A dead body wasn’t a new sight for the detectives, as the resort’s security forces worked for the entire city of Olympus. Tourists could go anywhere, and keeping a lid on sensational tragedies was in the best interest of Minos Enterprises. The local police acted more like a rubber stamp for the resort’s capable agents.
“This is much more fun than the usual overdose,” the coroner muttered as he teased the daffodil out of the corpse, the long stem trailing down the young man’s throat. Rohen mouthed a told you at her amused partner and watched closely.
“The boss is pushing for us to call it a suicide so we can settle up with the family without incident, but this seems weird, right?”
“Very weird. Looks like a daffodil.” The coroner shook his head. “Getting the stem down his throat without breaking it would have been tricky.”
“They’re also not in season,” Isabelle murmured, then flushed at the questioning looks. “My mom had them in her garden. First thing that would bloom after winter.”
“I always forget you’re a New Englander.” Rohan grinned. “Anyway, it’s not like someone couldn’t have them greenhouse grown, but that will definitely narrow down who might have had them available. We should check their suite.” She turned to the coroner with a frown. “Find out if there’s even water in his lungs. I’ll report to the boss that we think this might be a homicide.”
“He’s not going to like that,” Isabelle pointed out in a singsong tone.
“That’s why I’m bringing him the news myself.” Rohen flashed her a grin. “He likes me.”
+++
Despite her bravado, Rohen felt the usual sense of apprehension on her way to the top of the resort that was crowned “Queen of the five,” a sprawling jewel of ballrooms, conference areas, and a casino that overlooked an indoor amusement park. The office suite at the top of a very long private elevator ride was surprisingly Spartan compared to the rest of the building, but it suited the tastes of it’s occupant. It stood empty as he put out one of any hundreds of small fires the resorts saw in a day. Rohen shot his secretary a smile. “Tell the Chief I’m in his office when he gets in.”
The man behind the desk flashed her a smile and didn’t even question her authority. She entered the office and walked past the carefully acquired bits of Greek art that served as its only decoration, and leaned on the balcony overlooking the beaches below. It wasn’t a long wait before she heard the doors of the office open again, and she smiled to herself as the tall, dark haired man walked over to join her.
“Hello little fish. I take it you aren’t here with good news?”
“Sorry, Uncle Hudson.” She gave him a sheepish smile as he gave her a side hug. “Great view, though.”
“I love high places. I started my career in a glorified basement, after all. It reminds me of how far I’ve come, and you are stalling.” His voice was warm and his eyes twinkled in a way that would shock those who were only used to his flinty glares. He wasn’t technically her uncle, they’d only met the day she’d nearly drowned on the beach. He’d been the stressed out manager who had to handle an emotional single mother and a child who somehow survived after being under water for almost a half hour. As he was working his way up to the position of Chief Operations Officer of the resort, he kept an eye on and took an interest in Rohen, especially when her mother passed of cancer only three years after the near drowning. It couldn’t have been easy to juggle career and an unofficially adopted daughter, but she couldn’t imagine life without him.
“The kid who died? He had a flower in his mouth. Stem down his throat. I don’t know, boss, it doesn’t pass the sniff test.” She paused as the Chief’s expression sharpened.
“What kind of flower?”
“Daffodil, we think.”
“Narcissus.” His voice had an odd echo in the sparse, vast room behind them, and Rohen turned to look. He watched her and hid a flash of satisfaction in his expression before her gaze returned to his. “Interesting. I trust you, investigate. Get me an answer as fast as you can.”
“Will do. Thanks, boss.” She hugged him again and headed back to the elevator.
The COO watched her leave and looked out over the balcony again. Far below was a familiar sight, a mere speck of a man working hard on the beach, trying to construct a large sand castle. Hudson looked past him, to the sparkling sea, and sighed. “It’s time.”
Behind him, a soft echo whispered “Time.”
+++++
Rohen was nearly back to ground level when the ocular migraine struck. It began as they always did, scratchy vibrant lines of color that obscured the center of her vision and spread outward like a neon oil stain drawn in children’s crayon. In the center of the chaotic shape there was nothing, not even black, simply blindness. She winced and closed her eyes, irritated. They’d started when she was a teenager, only a few times a year, but they were getting more frequent as time wore on.
She stood in the elevator and waited for it to subside, braced for the pain that was sure to follow. The obstruction to her view was nearly gone, closing back in on itself, when the doors of the elevator opened. She nearly jumped out of her skin at the sight of something in front of her, visible in the fading aura, the outline of a person with eyes that glowed an ominous red. A blink later and the aura was gone, a perfectly ordinary staff member in the apparition’s place.
“You okay, ma’am?” Their voice was filled with genuine concern, and Rohen could imagine what her expression looked like.
“Yeah, no, I’m sorry. Headache, you just startled the shit out of me. Excuse me.” She walked past him with a friendly, professional nod, and shook off the lingering sense that something weird was going on. In her pocket, her cell buzzed, and she let loose an audible sigh at the realization that something weird was already going on. Rohen answered without looking. “What’s up, Izz.”
“How did it go with the boss?”
“The usual. Got permission to dig into this one. Probably just because it prevents the family blowing this place up with private dicks, but still. Got anything for me?”
Isabelle snickered. “Yeah. Coroner finished up. Turns out drowning looks like our cause, it’ll be a few days for the lab results but the pH and salinity matches our sample of the tide pool water. Also, the guy had gravel under his nails like he was trying to keep himself under. Weird way to end it.”
“Yeah. There’s a lot weird right now.” Rohen rubbed her temple with one hand as her head began to throb. “Anything on the flower?”
“Talked with the head florist, he said they do have a mainland hookup for special requests, and the only recent order of daffodils was three days ago.”
“That’s promising.”
“It’s not.” Isabelle sighed. “Different genus, apparently, and the request came from someone who I can’t imagine being involved.”
“Okay,” Rohen felt her curiosity piqued, “why is that?”
“It was from the Opsis sisters.”
“Goddamnit.”
“Told you.”
“We still have to question them.”
“Not it.”
“Ass.”
“Anyway I want to do a deep dive on this kid’s recent history, see if there’s anything that would explain a sudden desire to end it all. We wont have the toxicology report for a few weeks, but he wasn’t prescribed anything legally and the girlfriend claims they didn’t do anything more than smoke weed and drink.”
“Hmm. No point searching the rooms, they’d already have cleaned things up and I don’t need the parents going off on the Boss for breach of privacy. Ever wish we were real cops?”
“Hell no.”
“Me either.” The pain in her head began to intensify. “You dive, I’m gonna hit up Doc and then talk to the sisters.”
“Migraines again?”
Rohen snorted. “Yeah. If it’s not one thing-“
“-it’s another,” Isabelle finished.
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