A Floyd Sisters Mystery:
Calamity on Coronado Island
“Oh no…she’s doing it again,” Cheri grumbled.
“Doing what?” Lynda asked.
Just then a can of grape soda slipped off the windowsill in the kitchen and fell on the kitchen table on Cheri’s new technology magazine. The whole action seemed to go into slow motion with the can falling ever so slowly and grape soda spraying through the air like an abstract painting. Plop! It fell right on the magazine with more grape foam fizzing everywhere. It wasn’t the first time this had happened.
Cheri screamed!
Lynda groaned!
Sinda hid her face behind their Siamese cat Ty-Ling who had jumped into her lap to get a better view of the excitement.
As the older sister, Lynda felt it was her duty to take charge of the situation when their mother, Jean, was not at home. Mother was off to work at High Tech Electronics in Richardson, Texas where she worked. This had started off to be a fun summer day when the girls had planned to go swimming at Cheri’s friend Jade’s house.
“You know she did that on purpose,” yelled Cheri. “Why does Mother keep buying grape soda for her?” Cheri was not too patient in dealing with their younger sister Sinda. It seemed to Lynda that all they did was fight.
Sinda, being only 8 years old, knew that big sister Lynda would come to her rescue, as usual. She put on her “I’m sorry” face and appealed to Lynda.
“Lynda, you know I didn’t do that on purpose. Cheri just hates me. Why did she have to put her magazine on the table anyway?”
“And Sinda Jayne, why do you always have to put your soda can on the windowsill? I swear you two just like to fight with each other. Come on, let’s get this mess cleaned up.”
The girls had looked forward to this summer since it was their first in Richardson. After their parents’ divorce, Jean had gotten a good job in Texas and moved her girls. Their father, Larry, had been a policeman in San Francisco where they had lived as a family, but took a new job himself as a private investigator on Coronado Island by San Diego, California. He said that he was making twice as much money as his last job. The divorce had brought many changes to the family and everyone was still trying to adjust.
Texas sure was different than San Francisco! San Francisco always had cool breezes because it was near the Pacific Ocean. Dallas was hot and getting hotter—maybe over 100 degrees this summer. There were no ocean breezes in this big Texas city.
Cheri and Lynda finished cleaning up the grape soda mess. Cheri had to throw away her magazine.
“Jeez, how come it’s always my stuff that she wrecks? I notice she doesn’t ruin anything of yours, Lynda,” Cheri huffed.
Lynda looked at her sister and smiled. “Do you realize that you somehow have grape soda in your hair and on your glasses?”
“Oh for Pete’s sake!!” Cheri took off her new red-rimmed glasses and sure enough had purple streaks on them like little stripes. Lynda handed her a paper towel and Cheri cleaned off her glasses mumbling and grumbling about her little sister.
“Sinda, where are you?” Lynda called. Sinda had, as usual, wandered off when trouble was at hand. “Are you upstairs?”
“No, Lynda, I am under the table,” Sinda called out. Whenever she was in trouble, Sinda hid under the dining room table with her paper dolls. Mom had found these printable paper dolls online and thought Sinda would love to play with paper dolls as she had done as a little girl.
Lynda heard her talking to Ty-Ling.
“No, Ty, don’t push down my paper dolls! “ Sinda had set up some of her paper dolls by the table legs and Ty-Ling had come over to see what she was doing. Sinda was always doing something interesting, he thought. Lynda noticed Ty was lying close to Sinda and reaching out with a paw to knock down her dolls when she wasn’t looking.
“Are you and Ty having fun?”
“No, all he wants to do is to snag one of my paper dolls and either push it away or bite it. I don’t know what is wrong with him today,” whined Sinda.
Lynda looked at the big Siamese cat. He had an expression on his face like he had just eaten something juicy!
“Well, how about we all go over to Jade’s house to swim now? Are you two still interested?” Lynda asked. “I hope my bathing suit still fits.”
“Sure, let’s go,” said Cheri.
“I wanna go too,” Sinda chimed in.
Upstairs in her bedroom, Lynda looked at herself in the dresser mirror in her bathing suit. Well, she wasn’t a model, but she thought she looked okay. Her brown hair had grown shoulder length by summer and she liked how it curled around her face. Cheri had her blonde hair cut very short because she couldn’t be bothered with fixing her hair. Sinda had pretty long blonde hair that was always flying around her cute face. Lynda thought she was so angelic looking but yet such a troublemaker! She sighed.
Everyone was dressed and heading out the door when the phone rang.
Lynda answered. “Hello? Oh, hi Dad! We were leaving to go swimming. No, Mom’s not here right now. Do you want her work number?”
Cheri and Sinda had stopped in their tracks. They both wanted to talk to Dad.
“Let me talk to Daddy,” Sinda whined. “Lynda, lemme talk to him….Lynda….I wanna talk to Daddy.”
“Sinda, would you pipe down! I want to speak to Dad. He has a new smart phone that I want to ask him about,” responded Cheri.
“Nooooo! You never let me talk to him and I have lots of important things to tell him!”
“Oh, right. Like what?” Cheri taunted.
“Would you two pipe down? I can hardly hear Dad speak!” Lynda said.
Sinda and Cheri glared at each other, but were silent.
Lynda listened for several minutes. “Okay, Dad, if that is what you and Mom want us to do. No, we would love to come out to Coronado this summer. Mother just didn’t mention it yet to us and that surprises me.”
“Yes, you’re right. She probably thought it would be better coming from you. No, no, they are both right here, dying to talk to you.”
Cheri and Sinda grabbed the phone at the same time. “Let me talk to him, Cheri,” yelled Sinda.
“No way! You talked to him first the last time,” responded Cheri.
Lynda solved the problem by taking the phone from both of them. She gave them a hard look.
“Would you two knock it off? Dad doesn’t have lots of time. He is on a new case and wanted to speak to you both. You first, Cheri.”
Cheri gave Sinda a “So there” look and took the receiver. “What’s your new case, Dad? Really? At the Hotel Del Coronado? And there’s a ghost? You want me to research it for you? Ok! Great! I would love to.”
Then Lynda took the phone from Cheri and gave it to Sinda, waiting eagerly.
“Hi Daddy! We miss you so much! Even Ty-Ling misses you, although he was bothering my paper dolls and me today. But I know anyway because he can’t hide his feelings from me.” Sinda kept babbling on, hardly giving her dad a chance to speak. “Sure, I would love to come out to see you! But does Cheri have to come? Okay, I’ll try but it sure won’t be easy.” She handed the phone back to Lynda.
Lynda ended the conversation with their father and put down the phone.
“Can you believe it? We’re going to spend the whole summer on Coronado Island with Dad!” Lynda said excitedly to her sisters.
“Dad wants to me to do some research on the famous hotel there. He has a new case and needs some information,” said Cheri. “Did you know that movies are made there? Dad is working for some producer trying to make a movie about a ghost there.”
“I wanna see my Daddy,” sniffed Sinda. “I haven’t seen him in lots of months and I miss him. When are we going?”
“You two go start walking to Jade’s house. I need to call Mother,” said Lynda. Privately, she wondered why Mother hadn’t told her anything about going
out to see their father this summer. Was this a sudden thing or was there a problem she didn’t know about? Lynda picked up the phone to call her mother.
Mother told the girls at dinner that it wasn’t anything mysterious. She didn’t have lots of extra money after their move to Texas and talked it over with Dad. Mother was trying to plan summer activities for the girls and she really didn’t have enough money. Their father had suggested the girls come out to Coronado for the whole summer and Mother thought that was a good idea.
“Your father is sending plane tickets for you girls, so I hope you will be helpful when you get there. Try to stay out of trouble, please,” Mother said sternly.
Cheri and Sinda spoke at the same time.
“I just wanna see my daddy….”
“”Dad has this great new case and…”
Lynda interrupted, “We all just want to see Dad. I promise you, Mother, that we all will be good as gold.” She gave her sisters a stern look at that statement.
“So you won’t do anything dangerous and try to solve some mystery?” Mother asked.
“What if Dad asks us for help?” Cheri responded.
“I don’t think he will but just try to be helpful. Sinda and Cheri, try to get along for a while. Don’t give your dad fits. He’s paying a lot of money to bring you three out and I want you all to enjoy your time together.”
Lynda thought Mother was being reasonable.
Cheri thought Mother was being overly optimistic.
Sinda thought about going upstairs to play with her dolls.
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