The Elaine Investigates index page.
©1 January 2025 Levite
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1.
Things had been routine for some time. I had just finished another mundane task... tracking the doings of a county employee who was suspected of trying to milk a worker's compensation claim for more than they were justly due, they were, I proved it, they admitted it, and went back to work cleaning a county building... when my boss, the Sheriff stopped by my cubicle with a box.
"This one is all yours. Issued in your name." He said proudly, "You've earned it."
I opened the box and saw a matched set of detectives badges with a department ID that simply said "Detective", no modifier before or after the word as with my current ID, with my name and picture on it.
The first thing I saw was my last name, in blue letters on the gleaming gold background on the badges.
The second thing I saw was that they had misspelled the name of the county.
He saw my face, "what's wrong?"
I didn't tell him, instead I just handed the box back to him, "look at them."
"You're name is.... oh, damn."
"Somebody owes us an 'F'."
"I'll send them back. I don't think they can fix it, they'll have to make new ones." He took the ID out of the box and handed it to me. "This is yours, they spelled it right on there."
"Thanks."
"Use the old badge until I get these back," he said, then he chuckled. "I guess that proves you're a detective, I'd looked at them and didn't even notice that."
It happens more than you think it would, even on official documents from Albany, and, obviously, other things. The correct way to spell the county name is with two 'f's in the middle, Suffolk. In just my time with the department I'd seen the county name spelled all sorts of ways, sometimes with an 'S' instead of the first 'f', sometimes in other ways, as with the vowel placement reversed. Usually if it were a human that made the error, they'd chuckle about it and say they'd fix it next time, and usually they would, and that was the end of it.
If it were a computer that made the error, such as the one that mailed out one of the law enforcement newsletters the department received, it might be easier to change the name of the county to conform to its spelling than to try to get it to correct what it had and leave it that way.
I read the new ID next to the old one. Other than missing one word, they were identical. Including using the older picture of me that was taken in the winter when my hair was a darker brown than it usually was in the summer.
The word the new one was missing was "assistant".
I felt very satisfied with myself for the next two days.
"Here you go, Detective." The Sheriff said later in the week.
"Another one?"
"Another one. But this one is a bit different."
"How's it different?" I asked him.
"You'll see." He grinned broadly and then started laughing. But instead of saying anything else he simply repeated, "Oh, you'll see," and walked away.
I shook my head and opened manila file folder than included some hand written notes and a few printed emails, and even a printed map with hand written notes and lines on it indicating where the incidents had been occurring on one of the few county maintained beaches on the Atlantic.
The citizens had reported it to the state recreation department. They had kicked it to our county's police. Who then sent it to the Sheriff because it had happened on a county beach and it wasn't an active crime in progress. Then instead of sending the complaint to somebody else, he gave it to me.
There was two contacts as the complaining parties. The first was a married couple, Anna and Ed Johnson. According to the information they both worked at a golf club near Sag Harbor, and lived in a development around there. The other contact was named Melanie who lived closer to the Hamptons and worked down there. And then as far as other complainants the note said that these two could reach them if needed.
I called the Johnsons and set up a meeting at a coffee shop in Sag Harbor when they had a mutual day off. They said they'd check with Melanie and see if she was free because her schedule changed depending on events where she worked.
So the next week on a Tuesday morning I left early and drove thirty miles out to Sag Harbor.
That was one thing that amazed everybody that came out on the Island from New York City or even on the mainland, the Island is Big! Route 27 is one hundred and twenty miles long, all on the Island. There are places where it is well over ten miles from the ocean to the Sound, and, just like my trip today, you can drive for half an hour or more, at highway speed, and still be in Suffolk County.
I've been in my fair share of coffee shops, and I think I'd been in this very one before.
Anna and Ed Johnson were right where they said they'd be and greeted me like we'd known each other for years. Which, now that I think about it, was how they both earned their daily bread, making total strangers feel welcome and appreciated.
"Melanie is is on her way, she even gave us her order to put in when you got here," Mrs. Johnson said with a big smile. "Get whatever you want, Ed's paying today."
Now I remembered this coffee shop, "do they still make that pound cake blueberry muffin here?"
Anna seemed surprised by the question, "I don't think they make it here, but they sell them here."
"OK. I'll take that and a half and half coffee."
Our orders arrived just after Melanie.
And once again I found out that there was no delicate way to eat one of these top-heavy, overstuffed, muffins. You simply had to rip it apart and eat it, or ask for a knife and fork to basically do the same thing, and then deal with the consequences later.
And then I found out why the Sheriff had been chuckling at me.
The Johnsons, Ms Melanie, and a certain number of other locals had been frequenting a remote beach for several years.
And doing so without the benefit of swimsuits, when the weather was accommodating.
I took the news about their choice of beachwear in stride. The county's unofficial position on informal nude beaches was that as long as nobody was complaining, and they weren't on a beach that was part of a town, consenting adults could go for it.
"We tried a couple of other beaches, but we didn't like being in a crowd like the one down on fire tower, and we didn't want to buy a membership or pay for access. So we looked around until we found this place."
"It was deserted, and there is usually nobody there."
But they said that since a wildfire came through a couple of years ago, things on their beach had changed.
"There was some bad erosion, and even the road changed. It took a long time for beach grass to grow back, and where there had been a natural screen of trees and bushes is still not back like it was," Mr. Johnson said, "But we're OK with that. Nobody comes down there, we park over in the fire break lane now and nobody really even knows we're there."
"But somebody knows we're there. They keep watching us." Melanie said softly.
"But we can never catch them."
"When do you see them watching you?"
The Johnsons exchanged looks, "Lately, almost all the time."
Their descriptions were consistent for three of those they'd seen. Then they said that there had been others out there, always in the same area back towards where they had been parking their cars since the fire.
"Do you want to come out and see where we're talking about?" Mr Johnson said.
"You don't have to get naked." His wife added, he shrugged and grinned.
"It always helps to see the scene of the crime."
They spent some time checking their own schedules, and sending messages to several of the others, and then I agreed to meet Melanie out there Thursday morning, and the Johnsons would join us around noon.
2.
Once you're past the Hamptons Route 27 gets very lonely very quickly.
I was following Melanie's small hybrid car along when she slowed, then carefully turned off onto what appeared to be a half forgotten service road. She got out and took down an old cable with a rusty warning sign on it, then drove through. I followed her, and in a moment she put the cable back up.
She followed the half overgrown track back between the dune along the road and the coastal dune, then parked in an area that had seen some use, but was in no way civilized.
In a few minutes we walked through a breach in the coastal dune and were facing the Atlantic.
"Some of the beach cruisers will come down this far on weekends, which is why we usually avoid weekends and holidays. During the week, we usually have it to ourselves until late in the afternoon."
I could see the beginnings of more beach houses way off to the east, but there was nothing to the west as far as I could see.
"OK, let's take it from the top. Where are you when you come down here to sunbathe?"
"Right down there." She nodded at the wet sand where the breakers were ending.
"Let's go."
We walked down and I could see where somebody had had some beach chairs just above the high tide line.
"The Gurneys were down here Monday. They always bring chairs. Ed said they'd try to come out today too. They've seen them watching us and tried to get pictures of them."
"Where are they when you see them watching you?"
She didn't hesitate but pointed back to the area where we'd parked, "Just off over there."
"OK, stay here and tell me when I'm there." I walked back to where we'd parked and then over a bit further. Then I turned and tried to see Melanie on the beach. All I could see was sand and bushes.
To see anybody on the beach, they'd have to climb the dune. I picked the least disagreeable route and started climbing up.
For every three steps I took upward I slid back down almost one. Finally I got to where I could see the beach, then I looked for Melanie.
"I can kind of see you," I shouted to her.
"But I can't see you," she said and shaded her eyes against the morning sun coming in low from her left.
I moved up to the top of the dune, and to my left a little, then I moved a bush out of the way and waved.
"Oh, there you are," Melanie shouted back. "Maybe down a little lower."
"Lower." I said to myself. Then I took a step down toward the beach. Then I took a couple of steps down at a bit of an angle to avoid a steeper section of sand. Then I looked back at Melanie.
"Yes, that's where I saw one a couple of weeks ago."
"OK."
I looked around where I was. There was no obvious signs that anybody had been there any time recently. I didn't expect to see clear footprints in the sand, but if they had done anything else there might have been evidence ranging from a stray cigarette butt to uprooted grass. I could tell by my own tracks coming up and down that if anybody had been here, they'd left plenty of tell tales.
As I was making my way back to the cars the Gurneys arrived.
I asked them about where they'd seen whoever was watching them and they indicated just a bit west of where I had just been. But again, I hadn't seen any signs where anybody had been.
"Maybe they're coming in from down the beach and going up into the brush," Mr. Gurney said.
"That's a possibility. Let's go check it out."
All four of us walked west along the beach until we were away from their area, then we started up and along the dune looking for a trail somebody could use to approach without being seen.
I could see my own tracks on the front of the dune. Nobody had approached from along the ocean side either.
As we discussed when the spies, as they called them, had been spotted, it was mostly when there had been a mixed group of men and women on the beach.
"I've never seen them on a girls day out." Mrs Gurney finally said.
"You'd think that's when they'd be here," I said, then I thought about it, "if it were a straight man, or maybe some fifteen year old boy."
"That's what we thought, but ...." Mr. Gurney added.
"I think they're going to catch us doing, you know, other stuff. And they are always disappointed." Mrs Johnson said seriously.
"Well, usually disappointed." Her husband grinned.
All I could do was laugh.
I left them to enjoy the beach as they did, and went and sat in my car for awhile. Then I got the text message from Mrs. Gurney that I'd been waiting for: "Mel thought she saw something. Down from where you were."
I moved in slow motion, and left my car door open. I walked the long way back between the dunes, and then after I was well down the beach I climbed up slowly and tried to make my way along as silently as I could.
Then I sent a text of my own, "do you still see them?"
The immediate reply was in the affirmative.
I stopped where I was and just watched.
Shorebirds flitted this way and that. And I got a glimpse of what appeared to be a feral cat slinking along, but neither of those could easily be mistaken for somebody watching from along the edge of the dune.
So I started walking again, stopping every so often to just watch.
And, of course, this whole time I had my old badge and new ID ready to show to whoever I came across, with a half conceived speech about unlawful surveillance, even though you had no reasonable expectation of privacy on a public beach.
3.
I never needed the badge or the speech.
What I needed, and didn't have, was a shovel.
Just seeing the old pieces of cut lumber sticking out of the sand on the ocean side of the dune gave me chills. And upon closer inspection it did look like exactly what I thought it was in the first place.
I took several pictures of it and its location, then I tried to mark a small but notable tree with my handkerchief, as well as getting the GPS location with my phone.
I tried to downplay both what I'd seen, and the beach-goers attire, or lack thereof, as I walked out onto the beach and back down to them.
Now the Johnsons were there as well, and, shall we say, I felt a bit self conscious since I was the only one in socially acceptable attire.
"Thanks, but no, I'm still on duty. I've got an idea, but I need to do some research first." I said when Mrs Johnson asked if I wanted to join them.
And it was back to the land records and historic archive to do some digging through records before I went out to the dune to do real digging with a shovel.
What I found was nothing short of amazing. And, apparently, we had Superstorm Sandy to blame for it. She had done a hundred years of beach and dune movement in a couple of days.
But three hundred year old plot maps of the Island weren't enough, I wanted to confirm my findings on the ground out at the beach. So I had to make an odd request of my boss.
"Yes, we've got one that we use, and I love watching them work, so I'll come with you. Hang on, the number is right here."
I knew we had used a local ground penetrating radar service before, and I knew that the Sheriff had been out when they had checked for things before, but I didn't know he was a fan.
In minutes I was explaining what may be out on the beach, and where.
Then I had to come to the punch line, "and if they are colonial era burials, they're in danger of being washed out to sea if another Sandy comes along."
The Sheriff nodded, "if they are there, we'll get them moved inland. There's a cemetery the county uses out that way, we'll put them there."
I called several people I knew in various historic offices, and the coroner. If we did locate human remains, we wanted to make sure they were archaeological, or rather, anthropological, and not criminal in nature.
The story goes that several groups of Puritans had left New Haven on the mainland, and settled on Long Island beginning about 1640. The first group had purchased land in what was now Southold on the northern peninsula between the Sound and the Bay. Other groups soon followed, including one that settled in this area several years later.
Unfortunately, just as the settlement along the Atlantic began to thrive, something else began to thrive. First a wave of yellow fever swept through, and then around 1720, smallpox.
The only record I could find said that they survivors of one fell to the other, and were buried "to the ocean side of the carriage track." And not long after that the town dissolved and the property went to a local family that farmed it for several more years. Much later most of their property inland ended up becoming a state park where you could still find tobacco that had gone wild.
Every old map I could find had what was today's highway very near where the original had been, but what had changed was the shoreline. Before Sandy, the dune, and indeed the beach itself had been somewhat further out.
Early the following week we met the survey team out there, and after a bit of drama, I located the spot and everybody agreed that what I had found uncovered was a coffin. The coroner verified that the occupant was human, and that they had been there a "good long while, I'll know more after we test it."
We carefully removed the remains, then the team began scanning for more with both the ground penetrating radar as well as several sorts of metal detectors that made my own, now somewhat out of date unit, look like a weekender's toy. I told myself I needed to upgrade.
Scanning, and finding more graves, that is.
Two of the graves showed where beach erosion had beat us to them, but the others were more or less intact, and a few were still well under the bulk of the dune. The process began of exhuming them before the Atlantic claimed them, and moving them to a cemetery where they were respectfully reburied.
Unfortunately, we didn't uncover any stones or markers that had survived to identify them. And the only grave items we found were common to the era; buttons, small bits of jewelry, one very rusty hunting knife, and so on, and were of no help at all identifying the deceased.
Then I had to report back to the beachgoers.
We set up a meeting on the beach on a day when the group doing the exhumation of the remains would be inland reburying the individuals they'd already removed from the danger zone.
I know they did it as something of a joke, and I had half expected it when they said they'd provide me breakfast on the beach that morning. And they did not disappoint. On either item.
I didn't leave my clothes in the car like they did, but I was wearing something more casual than my usual formal office outfit. I'm not as shy about my body as I know that some women.... my age .... are. And, as I've stated before, I have Muy Thai to thank for my staying in shape. But there's limits.
Then as I talked to Mrs Johnson and Melanie over some very good homemade breakfast sandwiches and coffee, I partially gave in to the madness and shed my old beach wrap while still wearing my jogging shorts.
After breakfast we gathered around the folding table where I laid out several images including current satellite maps and copies of hand drawn plat maps from hundreds of years ago. And the final map was where the graves had been found in relation to where the dune was now by where they parked their cars.
"We've been parking next to the graves." Mrs Johnson said pointing to where they stopped, which wasn't very far at all from where the team had found the last grave that would be moved.
"I don't think that's what disturbed them," I said, and they were all looking at me. So I had to continue. "Remember, they were Puritans. And, from what I've read about the group that came down here, they were even more Puritan than the Puritans in Southold. They didn't believe in the mingling of the sexes. At all." I looked at them.
"And not only are we mingling. We're mingling like this." Mrs Gurney said.
"And enjoying it," somebody else added.
"Which they would disapprove of all the more." I said. "According to one of the sources I read the 'coastal brethern' thought those in Southold were a bit too tolerant of things like 'proud walking'."
"Proud walking? What is that?"
"I'm not sure, but if you were accused of it, you could end up in the stocks for a day. And if it were a repeated offense, a day and a night. They would also tie you to a post and whip you if you had been doing something they called 'uncouth writing', or missed church."
"I thought if you missed church you had to pay a fine." Mr Johnson said.
"Up north you did. Down here, they whipped you, and, fined you."
"No wonder the town failed."
There was a long pause, then Mr Gurney asked the crucial question. "Will moving ... them, get them to stop staring at us?"
I answered honestly, "I don't know. But there is a good chance."
He followed up with, "Did you find all of them?"
"We believe so. The radar unit can penetrate well into the sand and they scanned some distance from the group of burials. They even found the old fence line on two sides."
"Good."
Melanie was looking at the chart showing the graves that had been identified. Even with some of them overlapped slightly, there had been about fifteen clearly defined burials. All but five of them had already been moved. "Maybe when you rebury the last ones we can be there and have some sort of service."
"Yeah, you know, have a minister say a prayer and stuff," Mr Gurney added.
"That's a good idea. I'll set it up when they move them. It should be in a week or so."
Mr Johnson nodded, "I'll take off work for that. It's worth it."
Several of the others affirmed that they were in favor of that as well.
Then Melanie asked me a personal question., "Why did you become a detective?"
"I'd been in the department for a few years and I wanted to get out of uniform."
"You're certainly out of uniform now."
I had gotten so comfortable being half dressed in the middle of a group of undressed people that I had actually forgotten that all I was wearing was my old workout shorts. I looked down and smiled, "And I kind of like it." Then I looked at my watch, "and I've still got over an hour before I've got to get back."
"Good, wanna go for a swim?"
Several days later we made the arrangements for a good sized group to gather at a local cemetery where the final settlers were being reburied with dignity.
It was a solemn time with what was perhaps the most light-hearted group of people I'd ever been around.
A gentleman from the historic affairs office even read part of a document that had been found that conceded most of what had been the town to the Mitchill family to incorporate into their farmstead which included the ocean-side burial land. Then he added that since the ocean was threatening to claim the cemetary that they had been moved to this consecrated ground so that they could continue to rest in peace.
But by the time the service was concluded, we all felt that the people we'd taken to calling The Old Ones could feel at ease again.
Then the Johnsons invited everybody to their house for lunch. .... fully clothed in mourning garb.
My report to the Sheriff was appropriately vague for an official document, and it centered around the location and relocation of a colonial era cemetery.
I did stay in casual touch with Mrs Johnson and, as of about a month after the service, they hadn't seen anybody watching them from the bushes.
So I considered the investigation closed.
-end beach club-
The Elaine Investigates index page.
[NOTE: The above story were written as adventure fiction, and is to be taken as such. While most of the geographical features of Suffolk County exist, including beaches on the Atlantic, the rest of the setting is fictional.
Thank you, Dr. Leftover, TheMediaDesk.com]
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