Beach Bags and Burglaries (A Haley Randolph Mystery) Read Online Free

sign of her.
    And why the heck would she be out here in the first place?
    Then I thought—ugh—maybe she was out here for a hookup with a man. Yeah, okay, no way did I want to walk in on that.
    I figured I must have missed her somehow and that I was sure to run into her—or someone else with the bag—again; I’d seen it twice already and we’d only just arrived. Plus, I could ask Avery if she would help me locate one.
    I headed back toward the path. A flash of color caught my eye. I spotted a swatch of yellow fabric near a big boulder that was almost hidden amid a stand of palm trees.
    I got a weird feeling.
    I walked over.
    My weird feeling got weirder.
    I circled the boulder and spotted a young woman lying on the ground.
    It was Jaslyn Gordon.
    She wasn’t missing anymore.
    She was dead.

C HAPTER 3
    S o far, sticking to our no-men pact hadn’t been a problem for me. I had yet to spot one young, good-looking guy at the Rowan Resort—just a lot of old, gray-haired, pot-bellied geezers who were, I guess, mostly the kind of men who could afford this place.
    But that suited me fine, because I didn’t want anything to do with men during my vacation. In fact, I much preferred it if I didn’t see one single, handsome guy anywhere near my target age range.
    Luckily, the two detectives across from me were firmly in the undesirable-old-guy category, both of them easily a minus ten on my own personal luscious-o-meter.
    I was sitting in yet another this-place-looks-like-a-boring-museum room on the hotel’s first floor, in front of a huge desk that was probably way older than me and all my friends put together. After finding Jaslyn Gordon’s body, I’d come back to the hotel, spotted Avery in the lobby, and given her the news. She hadn’t seemed all that surprised—I guess Rowan Resort employees are trained to roll with anything. She’d made some phone calls, and I’d ended up in this room with these two homicide detectives who wanted to talk to me, which didn’t really suit me.
    I’m not supposed to be dealing with this kind of thing. I’m on vacation.
    They’d introduced themselves as Detectives Vance and Pearce. They looked like a set of really unattractive bookends. Both had gray hair, spreading middles, and questionable taste in their coat–tie–shirt combos.
    “So, Miss Randolph, do you want to tell us how this happened?” Detective Vance asked.
    Homicide detectives always spoke in a way that made you feel guilty—even if you hadn’t done anything. But I was wise to their ways. I’d been in this situation before—long story, no, actually, lots of long stories—and I wasn’t about to fall for their tactics.
    “I went for a walk, and I spotted Jaslyn Gordon’s body on the rocks near the beach,” I said.
    “So you knew the victim?” Detective Pearce asked, as if he’d just made a major breakthrough in the case.
    “I didn’t know her,” I said. “But who else could it have been? I mean, jeez, how many people are missing on this island?”
    Both of them frowned like two pug dogs in the same litter.
    I don’t think they appreciated my commentary.
    I could have pointed out that I’d had experience solving murders—with help from L.A. homicide detective Shuman and private detective Jack Bishop, both of whom looked way hotter than these two guys—but this didn’t seem like a good time to mention it.
    “Why were you in that area of the island?” Detective Pearce wanted to know.
    Why was I still being questioned? It’s not like I was wearing a T-shirt that read I’VE SOLVED MURDERS, LET’S TALK ABOUT IT .
    “It’s isolated,” Detective Vance said. “There was no reason for you to be out there.”
    “Or was there?” Detective Pearce asked, leaning toward me with a you-can-confess-now look on his face.
    As alibis go, I doubted that my I-was-trailing-a-fabulous-beach-tote was a good one so, really, what could I do but ignore their question?
    “Look,” I said. “I was out for a walk.