COFFIN COVE a gripping murder mystery full of twists (Coffin Cove Mysteries Book 1) by JACKIE ELLIOTT (books for new readers .TXT) 📕

Andi had wandered around the Nanaimo malls once since she moved to the island. She found them a little depressing. She’d been a teenager when it was cool to hang out in malls, eating junk food in the food courts and spending hours browsing in the multitude of cheap clothing stores and over-perfumed makeup counters of the big department stores. Now, many of these stores had disappeared, replaced by dollar emporiums or boarded up completely as online purchasing took over the retail industry.

In her mind, she started mapping out an article about how small communities were navigating economic disruption.

Like Coffin Cove, the outskirts of the downtown core of the city of Nanaimo were a patchwork of dilapidated residences, pawn shops and thrift stores. Jim had warned her to be careful where she parked.

“Lots of homeless people, and plenty of drug problems,” he said. “We had our own tent city spring up in Coffin Cove before — it’s an epidemic.”

Another symptom of economic change, Andi thought, and sighed. No kid decides to grow up to be poor, homeless or addicted, she thought. But we all treat them as if their lot in life was all down to poor decisions.

The Ocean Protection Society HQ, which sounded a lot grander on the website, was one, possibly two, cramped rooms — a storefront and back office — beside the Salvation Army soup kitchen. Andi could only verify that the society had once been here from the sign in the window. Apart from that, the door was locked, and it appeared that the headquarters was closed down. Peering through the window, Andi could just see a few brochures on the floor and a door at the back propped open with packing boxes.

Strange that the office had closed down so abruptly. It had been just a few days since Mason was killed, and it looked like the entire Ocean Protection Society had disappeared. Andi had expected to at least find someone manning the office and issuing press releases.

She stood for a moment, undecided what to do next, when she caught sight of a small sticker in the corner of the window. It was peeling off, but she could still see a phone number and a partial name. Andi punched the number into her phone and waited. A man answered.

“West Island Property Management, can I help you?”

“I’m interested in one of your properties,” Andi answered, and described where she was.

“Oh yes, that one has just come available again,” the man replied.

“Who was in it before?” Andi asked, hoping that her question didn’t sound too suspicious. The manager was happy to chat, and in a few minutes, Andi discovered that the Ocean Protection Society had rented the office space and paid six months in advance, but refused to sign a long-term contract. They had only been there for a couple of months and had not given notice that they were leaving. The first the manager had learned of anything amiss was when he heard about the suspicious death on the news and had recognized the name. But the next day when he checked the property there was no sign of the Ocean Protection Society, and no forwarding address.

“I haven’t even advertised the property yet,” he was saying. “What did you say your name was?” But Andi wasn’t listening. Through the grimy window, she caught sight of something moving at the back of the office.

“Thanks, I’ll get back to you.”

A thin woman with close-cropped grey hair was bending down, picking up documents. She hesitated when Andi banged on the front door, but didn’t look up or move to answer.

“Hey, can I speak to you for a moment?” Andi called out.

The woman finally looked up but still didn’t move. Instead, she tossed documents and files into a cardboard box, stuffed it under her arm and hurried towards the back of the building, then disappeared.

“Shit!” Andi looked around to see if there was access to the back of the building. Three storefronts down, there was a narrow alleyway. Andi jogged down it, side-stepping garbage and gagging on the smell of urine. At the back of the building was a small parking lot, but it was empty.

“Damn,” Andi said out loud. The woman could have useful information. Or, Andi considered, she could just have been an office worker cleaning up.

Either way, she wouldn’t find out now.

Andi made her way back through the alley and checked her phone for the time. Still two hours to kill before her interview with the DFO officer. She was still on the hunt for coffee, so she wandered through Nanaimo’s Old City Quarter.

An hour later and she still hadn’t had any coffee, but she’d bought a book in the tiny Window Seat Bookstore and some clothes from a small boutique. Jim wasn’t paying much but Andi’s rent was cheap, and living in a town where there were virtually no shopping opportunities, unless you wanted bait or a hunting knife, had its financial advantages.

Feeling the glow of retail therapy, but mindful of her sparse bank account, Andi passed on the expensive branded coffee and walked past the Coast Bastion Hotel, a Nanaimo landmark, towards the waterfront. She found a tiny coffee shop, Java Time, that had the same feel as Hephzibah’s and settled down at a table overlooking the harbour. After a few months in Coffin Cove, Andi found that she wrote best in sight of the ocean. Today was all about research, though. She programmed her phone to buzz in an hour, flipped open her laptop and googled the Ocean Protection Society.

The website looked professional and had some spectacular West Coast photos, but very little information. There were some blog posts, a mission statement all about protecting the oceans and wildlife from overfishing, poaching, pollution, the tourist industry — just about everyone who spent any