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  Praise for

  Shadows on the Sand

  “Gayle Roper’s mysteries get deeper and develop more tangled threads with each book. The characters and setting are so real I wanted to run out and help them. Happily ever after was in serious doubt. Very well done.”

  —LAURAINE SNELLING, author of the Daughters of Blessing Series and the Red River of the North Series

  “There’s nothing quite like a long-awaited vacation, especially when it’s served up with a Gayle Roper novel. Shadows on the Sand, a tale of faith, forgiveness, and fresh starts all wrapped in a captivating mystery, was just what I needed to return to the real world refreshed and inspired.”

  —TAMARA LEIGH, author of Nowhere, Carolina and Restless in Carolina

  “With vivid, realistic characters and a tightly woven plot, Shadows on the Sand is a novel I couldn’t put down. The emotional ride stayed with me long after the last page. Highly recommend!”

  —ROBIN CAROLL, author of In the Shadow of Evil

  “Shadows on the Sand is a rare mix of love story, spiritual warfare, and crime drama all rolled into one fabulous tale. Gayle Roper has once again created fascinating characters and a rich story that kept me up well into the night.”

  —MARK MYNHEIR, homicide detective and author of The Corruptible

  SHADOWS ON THE SAND

  PUBLISHED BY MULTNOMAH BOOKS

  12265 Oracle Boulevard, Suite 200

  Colorado Springs, Colorado 80921

  Scripture quotations or paraphrases are taken from the following versions: The Holy Bible, New International Version®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by Biblica Inc. ™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com. The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. Copyright © 1991, 1992, 1995 by American Bible Society. Used by permission. The King James Version.

  The characters and events in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to actual persons or events is coincidental.

  Copyright © 2011 by Gayle Roper

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Published in the United States by WaterBrook Multnomah, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House Inc., New York.

  MULTNOMAH and its mountain colophon are registered trademarks of Random House Inc.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Roper, Gayle G.

  Shadows on the sand : a seaside mystery / Gayle Roper. — 1st ed.

  p. cm.

  eISBN: 978-1-60142-306-1

  1. City and town life—New Jersey—Fiction. 2. Missing persons—Investigation—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3568.O68S53 2011

  813′.54—dc22

  2011003832

  v3.1

  In memory of Chuck.

  They don’t come any better.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Epilogue

  Letter to Readers

  Acknowledgments

  Readers Guide

  Other Books by This Author

  1

  So Bill punched him in the nose, Carrie!” Andi Mueller swung an arm to demonstrate and nearly clipped me. “He was wonderful!”

  I leaned back and held up a hand for protection. “Easy, kiddo.” I smiled at the girl and her enthusiasm.

  Andi giggled like the smitten sixteen-year-old she was. “Sorry.”

  “Mmm.” I rested my elbows on the pink marble counter that ran along one wall of Carrie’s Café, located two blocks from the boardwalk in the center of Seaside, New Jersey. I was the Carrie of the café’s name, and Andi was one of my servers, in fact, my only server at the moment. She’d been with me almost two months now, taking up the slack when the summer kids left to go back to college or on to real jobs.

  “Let me get this straight,” I said. “On Saturday night Bill, who is your true soul mate, punched Jase, our Jase, for paying too much attention to you at a party.” I didn’t think my voice was too wry, but soul mates at sixteen made me both cynical and scared, teen hormones being what they were.

  Andi just grinned with delight of the even-mentioning-his-name-gives-me-the-vapors kind and nodded as she sat on a stool at the counter. “Isn’t it romantic?”

  I was hearing this tale today, Monday, because now that the season was over, Carrie’s was closed on Sundays. My staff and I had earned our day of rest over a very busy and marginally profitable summer. We might be able to stay open for another year if nothing awful happened, like the roof leaking or the dishwasher breaking.

  Listening to Andi made me feel ancient. I was only thirty-three, but had I ever been as young as she? Given the trauma of my growing-up years, I probably hadn’t. I was glad that whatever her history, and there was a history, she could giggle.

  “How do you expect to continue working with Jase after this encounter?” I was very interested in her answer. Jase was one of three part-time dishwashers at the café. All three were students at the local community college and set their schedules around classes. Jase worked Tuesdays and Saturdays from six in the morning until three, and the last thing I wanted was contention in the kitchen between Andi and him.

  Andi looked confused. “Why should I have trouble with Jase? I didn’t punch him. Besides he’s an old—” She cut herself off.

  I wanted to pursue her half-thought, but the door of the café opened, and Greg Barnes walked in, all scruffy good looks and shadowed eyes. His black hair was mussed as if he hadn’t combed it, and he had a two-day stubble. He should have looked grubby, but somehow he didn’t. He looked wonderful.

  All thoughts of Bill and Jase fled as my heart did the little stuttery Snoopy dance it always did at the sight of Greg. Before he could read anything in my face, assuming he noticed me as someone other than the person who fed him, I looked down at the basket of fresh-from-the-oven cinnamon-swirl muffins I was arranging.

  Andi glanced from me to him and, much too quick and clever, smiled with a knowing look. I held my breath. She wasn’t long on tact, and the last thing I wanted was for her to make some l
eading remark. I felt I could breathe again when all she did was wink at me. Safe for the moment, at least.

  Greg came to the counter and slid onto his favorite stool, empty now that the receding flood of summer tourists left it high and dry this third week in October, a vinyl-covered Ararat postdeluge.

  “The usual?” I asked, my voice oh-so-casual.

  He gave a nod, barely glancing my way, and opened his copy of The Philadelphia Inquirer. The Press of Atlantic City waited.

  I turned to place his order, but there was no need. Lindsay, my sister, partner, and the café’s baker, had been listening to Andi’s story through the serving window. She waved her acknowledgment before I said a word. She passed the order to Ricky, our short-order cook, who had stayed with us longer than I expected, long enough that he had become almost as much of an asset to Carrie’s as Lindsay was.

  My sister gave me a sly smile, then called, “Hi, Greg.”

  He looked up from his paper and gave Lindsay a very nice smile, far nicer than he ever gave me.

  “The sticky buns are all gone,” he said in mild accusation, nodding toward the glass case where we kept Lindsay’s masterpieces.

  She grinned. “Sorry. You’ve got to get here earlier.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Or you could make more.”

  “I’ll take the suggestion under advisement,” she said agreeably.

  “Haven’t you heard the adage about making your customers happy?”

  “Yeah. So?”

  He laughed and turned a page in the paper. I brought him a glass of OJ and a cup of my special blend.

  “How’re you doing?” I asked, just as I did every morning.

  He gave me a vague smile. “Fine.” Just as he said every morning.

  But he wasn’t. Oh, he was better than, say, a year ago, definitely better than two years ago, but he wasn’t well. Even three years after the tragedy that had altered his life, he was far from his self-proclaimed fine. If you looked closely—as I did—you could see the strain never completely left his eyes, and the purple stains under them were too deep and dark, a sure sign that a good night’s sleep was still little more than a vague memory for him.

  But he was sober. More than two years and counting.

  “Keep talking, Andi,” Lindsay said as Ricky beat Greg’s eggs and inserted his wheat bread in the toaster. “This is better than reality TV. It’s really real.” She walked out of the kitchen into the café proper. “Bill bopped Jase,” she prompted.

  “Our Jase,” I clarified.

  Greg looked up. “Your dishwasher?”

  I nodded.

  “Hmm.” And he went back to his paper.

  “And Jase went down for the count.” Andi’s chest swelled with pride at her beloved’s prowess.

  I flinched. “Don’t you think knocking a guy out for talking to you is a bit much?”

  Andi thought for almost half a second, then shook her head. “It wasn’t for just Saturday. He knows Jase and I work together, and he was staking his claim.”

  I’d seen Jase and Andi talking in the kitchen, but there never seemed to be any romantic overtones. “Jase is a nice guy and a good worker. I don’t want to lose him because of your boyfriend.”

  “He is, and I don’t want him to go either,” Andi agreed. “I like talking to him.”

  “Me too.” Lindsay rested an elbow on the counter and propped her chin in her palm. “I think he’s sad.”

  “What do you mean, sad?” But I’d sensed he was weighed down with something too.

  “He’s funny and open most of the time,” Lindsay said, “but sometimes when no one’s talking to him, I see this look of sorrow on his face.”

  I nodded. “All the more reason to hate that he got punched.”

  “Yeah.” Lindsay got a dreamy look in her dark brown eyes. “But there’s something about a guy defending you, even if what he’s defending you from isn’t really a threat.” She sighed.

  “Lindsay!” I was appalled. “Get a grip.” Though if Greg ever wanted to defend me, I was pretty sure I wouldn’t mind. Of course, that presupposed he’d notice I was in trouble. I glanced at him bent over his paper. Not likely to happen. I bit back a sigh.

  “Tell me, Andi. Does Bill plan to punch out any male who talks to you?”

  “Come on, Carrie,” Andi said. “Don’t be mad at Bill. You know how guys can be when they’ve had a few beers.”

  I did know how guys could be, beers or no beers. “What were you doing at a party where there was drinking?”

  She became all prim and prissy. “I did not drink.”

  “I should hope not, but you shouldn’t have been there.” Good grief. I was sounding more and more like her mother—or how her mother would have sounded if she weren’t missing in action somewhere. Part of that history I didn’t know.

  “Order up,” Ricky announced as he walked to the pass-through. “The food is never better than when I plate it.”

  You’d have thought he was Emeril or Wolfgang Puck or one of Paula Deen’s sons, not a stopgap cook who couldn’t find any other job after graduating from college with a psychology degree and who stayed around because he had a crush on the baker.

  I grabbed Greg’s scrambled eggs and wheat toast and served them. He accepted them with a nod and a grunt.

  “So what happened to Jase?” I asked Andi. I found myself hoping Bill had bruised a knuckle or two in his violence, though I was pretty sure it meant I was a terrible person too. I didn’t wish for a broken hand or anything that extreme, just something to remind him that punching wasn’t the way to handle a perceived rival.

  Andi waved her hand vaguely. “Bill and a buddy carried Jase to his car. They only dropped him once.”

  I imagined the thunk of poor Jase’s head hitting the ground and flinched in sympathy. No such thought bothered Andi. She was too busy being thrilled by Bill, who rode in like her shining knight, laying waste to the enemy with knuckles instead of the more traditional lance.

  “How much older than you is Bill?” Lindsay asked.

  Good question, Linds.

  Andi studied the cuticle of her index finger. “He’s nineteen.”

  Lindsay and I exchanged a glance. Those three years from sixteen to nineteen were huge.

  I couldn’t keep quiet. “So he shouldn’t have been drinking at this party either.”

  Andi slid off her stool. If looks killed, Lindsay’d be sprinkling my ashes in the ocean tomorrow morning.

  “What does Clooney think of you and Bill?” Lindsay asked. Clooney was Andi’s great-uncle, and she lived with him.

  Andi cleared her throat. “We don’t talk about Bill.”

  “Does he know about Bill?” Lindsay’s concern was obvious.

  Andi stared through long bangs that hung over her hazel eyes. The silky hair sometimes caught in her lashes in a way that made me blink but didn’t seem to bother her. “Of course Clooney knows. Do you think I’d keep a secret from him?”

  “I didn’t think you would.” Lindsay smiled. “I’m glad to know I was right.”

  So was I. Sixteen could go in so many different directions, and I’d hate for this pixie to make wrong choices—or more wrong choices.

  “Is he going to college?” I asked. “Bill?”

  “He was, but not now.” Her fingernail became even more absorbing. “He dropped out of Rutgers at the end of his freshman year.”

  Uh-oh. Dropped out or failed out? “Does he plan to go back? Try again?”

  She shrugged. “He doesn’t know. Right now he’s happy just being. And going to parties. And taking me.” By the time she was finished, she was bouncing at the excitement of it all, her strawberry blond ponytail leaping about her shoulders.

  Greg looked up from his newspaper. “So this guy took you, a very underage girl, to a party where there was lots of drinking?”

  Andi looked at him, eyes wide, acting as if he’d missed the whole point of her story. “Don’t worry about me, Mr. Barnes. Or any of you.” She
included Lindsay and me with a nod of her head. “I can handle any problems that might develop at a party. Believe me, I’ve dealt with far worse.”

  I was intrigued. I’d stared down plenty of problems in my time too, and I wondered how her stare downs compared to mine.

  She grinned and waved a hand as if she were wiping away her momentary seriousness. “But I’d rather talk about how great Bill is.”

  “So how great is he?” Lindsay asked. “Tell me all.” At twenty-seven, she was an incurable romantic. I wasn’t sure how this had come to pass, since she had every reason to be as cynical as I, but there you are.

  I frowned at her. “Stop encouraging the girl.”

  Lindsay just grinned.

  I looked at Andi’s happy face and had to smile too. “So what’s this wonderful guy doing if he’s not in school?” Besides being and partying.

  “Uh, you mean like a job or something?”

  “Yeah.” Lindsay and I exchanged another glance. Greg looked up again at Andi’s reluctant tone.

  “Well, he was a lifeguard over the summer. He’s got this fabulous tan, and it makes him so handsome.”

  Soul mate stuff if I ever heard it. I half expected her to swoon like a nineteenth-century Southern belle with her stays laced too tightly. “What about now? Postseason?”

  “And he was the quarterback on the high school football team two years ago when they won the state championship.”