Marty Ambrose - Mango Bay 01 - Peril in Paradise Page 5

  A waitress wearing a splashy tropical print shirt with tight jeans appeared at my elbow. I ordered the blueberry pancakes and a yet another cup of coffee.

  After she left, I scanned the writers’ group. Their alibis were lame, and they looked like they knew it. Chrissy dabbed at her eyes with a shaky hand, Burt and Betty were preoccupied with their drinks, and George seemed very intent on cleaning a spot off the white linen tablecloth. Any of them could’ve murdered Hillman.

  “After I left yesterday, did you notice anything odd?” I asked.

  George shook his head, followed by Burt and Betty. Chrissy, however, lowered the handkerchief and pursed her mouth.

  “Now that you mention it … about twenty minutes after you left, Jack got out of the hot tub. I stayed in to catch some afternoon rays and work on one of my new poems. I was right in the middle of rhyming `the joys of compost’ with `those who love you the most,’ when I heard him yelling at his neighbor-this old guy who has the house right next door. They were really going at it-and it wasn’t the first time I’d heard them arguing.”

  “Could you make out what they said?” I inquired, trying not to conjecture how compost had anything to do with love. Or anything else in the romantic department.

  “Not really”

  “Think hard, Chrissy. It could be very important,” I pressed her.

  “Uh …” She drummed her fingers against her cheek. “Oh, yes, I did hear something.” She straightened in her chair. “The old guy mentioned a land survey that Jack had done a week ago. That’s what the argument was about. Yeah … I remember now … Jack told me his neighbor was disputing the property division between their two lots. Jack had staked out where he wanted to put up a fence and the neighbor said it was partially on his lot. The whole thing kinda mushroomed into this running argument-that’s why Jack ordered the survey”

  “How angry was the neighbor yesterday?” I asked.

  She grimaced. “Absolutely livid. I could hear him yelling for almost half an hour.”

  “B … b … but that doesn’t mean that he’d want to kill Jack,” George pointed out. “I mean, he made me so angry sometimes, I couldn’t see straight.”

  “You never know,” Betty waved her glass. “This neighbor could’ve gone berserk.”

  “That’s always possible,” I agreed, eyeing George. So he had a temper under all that shy diffidence. Was he a ticking time bomb that had finally gone off last night? My musings were interrupted by the waitress who placed a heaping plate of blueberry pancakes under my nose. I doused them in extra sweet maple syrup and dug in.

  “Isn’t that stuff full of refined sugar?” With obvious distaste, Chrissy wrinkled her nose at my three large pancakes swimming in syrup.

  Burt picked up the plastic syrup bottle. “Nope. Worse. See the label? It’s artificially sweetened. That can’t be good for you”

  I was tempted to point out that Bloody Marys weren’t exactly part of the four healthy food groups, not to mention contained a high alcohol content, but refrained. Instead, I concentrated on my pancakes and listened. When I was hungry, fortunately my motor mouth shifted into low gear.

  Chrissy clucked her tongue. “I never eat processed foods or artificial anything.”

  “G … g … good for you” George’s eyes kindled in admiration.

  I paused, my fork hovering near my mouth. Was George infatuated with Chrissy? He was looking at her as if she were the next best thing to sliced bread. And he’d been furious when Hillman caused her to breakdown in tears yesterday. Motive for murder? Maybe.

  “Aside from Jack’s neighbor, did anyone visit the house while all of you were still there yesterday?” I continued eating the pancakes.

  “We left shortly after you did,” Burt said. Betty nodded in agreement.

  “Me too,” George managed to get out without a stammer.

  Chrissy sighed. “After my poetry session was interrupted, I left. Jack was still arguing with his neighbor, but no one else showed up”

  “How come you’re so interested?” Burt’s tone turned wary.

  Uh-oh. “I’m doing a story on the murder for the Observer,” I replied, all of a sudden feeling like an insect pinned to the wall by four pairs of razor sharp eyes. “My editor wants it as the lead story for next week’s edition, and I’ve got to come through for her. My job is on the line.”

  “Oh,” Chrissy responded. She nibbled on an allnatural granola bar. “If you need an interview or want to include a picture of me from my blog for the story, I’d be happy to oblige. Anything for Jack.”

  “Thanks. I might take you up on your interview offer.” Anita would probably burn down the newspaper office before she’d let me promote a blog in the paper. “What are all of you going to do now that the Writers’ Institute is … defunct?”

  “We decided to still meet-right here at Starfish Lounge” Burt waved his hand in a wide arc around the table. “We figured that we’d have to give statements to the police and remain on the island for a while, so we thought we might as well keep critiquing each other.”

  “I have to keep working on my poetry if I want to make my blog a success by the end of the year,” Chrissy said.

  “I want to keep going on my b … b … book on shyness,” George added.

  “And Betty and I have every intention of finishing our short story collection.” Burt gave a broad smile. “We all felt it would honor Jack’s memory to keep writing since he believed in us so strongly.”

  “That sounds like a plan.” I smiled back weakly.

  “Hey, how ‘bout you joining us, Mallie?” Burt said. “We could review your newspaper stories and help you become a better journalist-not that our critiquing skills are in the same league as Jack.”

  I opened my mouth to dissent, but then closed it again. Coming to the critique sessions would keep me in contact with them, and give me access to any information they might come up with about Jack’s murder. “Why not? Count me in.”

  “Wonderful” Betty clapped her hands. “We’ll meet you here tomorrow morning and get started”

  Everyone joined in with a chorus of approving exclamations-except Burt. He simply lifted his glass in a silent toast. I swallowed hard, and not because the pancakes were lumpy, but because I had just committed myself to more endless mornings of literary commentary with four strangers any one of whom could’ve been Jack’s murderer. Oh, goody.

  A few hours later, after hearing the group discuss Chrissy’s “Ode to Jack Hillman: Man of the Earth”written that very morning-I headed back to the Twin Palms Resort for a swim. I needed to feel the cleansing calm of the Gulf of Mexico.

  I pulled up to my Airstream, noticing the honeymooning couple next door in the behemoth RV still hadn’t made an appearance. They’d opened their awning and put out two padded lounge chairs, but were nowhere to be seen. I sighed. It must be nice to be so in love. I just hoped they had a good AC unit.

  Torn between amusement and envy, I entered my Airstream. Kong greeted me with a few happy, highpitched barks.

  “What do you think, Kong?” I looked down at his large brown eyes. “What are the odds that our honeymooners will actually make an appearance today?”

  Kong lowered his snub nose to the floor and crossed his paws in front. I turned my back to him and pulled on my one piece, racerback swimsuit.

  “Maybe ten to one?” I slathered on a new sunblock with a SPF of thirty. “Well … fifty to one. They’re in a top-of-the-line luxury motorhome, after all”

  Kong sniffed audibly.

  “Okay, one hundred to one..

  I fastened a leash on Kong’s collar and led him out of the Airstream. He eyed the beach warily. “At least we have each other,” I murmured to my pooch as we strolled toward the surf.

  That was something wasn’t it?

  After my swim, with Kong anxiously watching from shore, I decided to follow up on Chrissy’s lead about Hillman’s argumentative neighbor. He might not have been angry enough to commit murder, but then
again, he might’ve seen the person who did. I threw on my jeans and a fresh T-shirt and drove over to Hillman’s house.

  As I approached The Mounds, a lump rose in my throat. Was it only last night that I’d driven up to find the house empty and Hillman dead in his study? I shuddered inwardly. It seemed like weeks ago rather than less than twenty-four hours. Then, my eyes followed the yellow tape that the police had strung around his house. DO NOT CROSS. Like I was about to go in that house. Like I’d ever want to go in that house again.

  I parked Rusty on the street in front of Hillman’s house and hiked up toward the low, flat stuccoed dwelling next door. Before I had the chance to make it halfway up the driveway, an elderly man with a gray beard came charging out of the front porch waving a cane.

  “That’s far enough,” he exclaimed. “This is private property, missy.”

  “I’m from the Observer and I’d like to talk to you.” I noted the man’s plaid shorts, black silk socks and wing tips. This attire was de rigueur for retirees on the island. Sometimes they wore a Hanes white cotton undershirt or a striped golf shirt. But Hillman’s neighbor had chosen neither-he was shirtless. What was it about the Mounds that seemed to cause men to wander around half naked?

  “I’ve got nothing to say,” he grumbled. “I already talked to the police, and the only thing I could tell them is I’m glad somebody finally did that jerk in.”

  I assumed the “jerk” he was referring to was Hillman.

  “That dadblamed troublemaker was the worst neighbor I’ve ever had-with his loud music and giggling bimbos coming in and out of here at all hours.” He shook his head. “My poor little Mabel couldn’t take all that noise-it upset her to no end.”

  “Your wife?”

  “My cat”

  “Oh” I moved a little closer and quietly reached into my canvas bag for my handy-dandy official reporter’s notepad. “What happened?”

  “Mabel’s whole system was thrown out of whack. She coughed up hairballs something fierce every time Hillman had a party” He clucked his tongue and pulled on his gray beard.

  “That must’ve been very upsetting.” My fingers fished around in the jumble, and I made a vow for the hundredth time to clean out the black hole that passed for my bag.

  “I was half crazy. And would that good-for-nothing Hillman even listen? No way. He didn’t care if my Mabel’s little heart gave out while choking on those hairballs.”

  “Is she all right now?”

  “She’s holding her own” He held up a hand to shield his wrinkled forehead from the afternoon sun as he fastened a speculative gaze on me. “You must be a cat person.”

  “Let’s just say I’m an animal person.” Actually, I was allergic to cats-big time. “I’m Mallie Monroe” I held out my hand.

  “Everett Jacobs” He kept his hand firmly fixed to his forehead.

  “Pleased to meet you” I waved my fingers in lieu of shaking hands. “And my best wishes for Mabel’s speedy recovery.”

  “She’ll be fine now that things are quiet again.” A note of triumph entered his voice. Was he so obsessed about his cat that he’d actually kill to protect her good health? It hardly seemed possible. But, then again, Everett certainly gave the impression of being a cranky old codger who might not need much of a push to become a vindictive old killer. “I heard that you and Mr. Hillman had some kind of dispute over the boundary line-“

  “He was fixing to encroach on my property” The old man’s arm came down, hand curled into a fist. “I saw him out here one day with a surveyor and I knew what the two of them was up to”

  “But why would he want part of your land?”

  “He said it was for some damn privacy fence, but I think he wanted things that weren’t his-that’s just how he was. But I wasn’t about to give him one foot of my property. I already lost part of my acreage to that Henderson Research Center.”

  My ears perked up. “Research Center?”

  “Yep” He pointed to the back of his property where the shell mounds were the highest. “Some archaeologists from the University of Florida got a grant to go digging up there, and I had to let ‘em-something about the area being declared a historic site. Next thing I know people are poking around at all hours, turning up things they shouldn’t be messin’ with.”

  “That’s an archaeological dig?” I followed his glance toward the highest mound and noticed a roped off area on the top. “I had no idea.”

  “Well, now you know, missy.” He emitted a loud cackle and wagged his head. “The only good thing is they also dug up Hillman’s part of the mound, too. He didn’t like it anymore than I did.”

  “So you had something in common”

  “Yeah, we hated trespassers.” His fierce old eyes fastened on me again. Pikes!

  “Would you mind if I took a look at the dig?”

  “Why?”

  I smiled, stalling for time until I could think of a good reason. “I’ve never seen one before.” Oh, wow, was that a compelling reason. I mentally kicked myself for the lame excuse, but I never was good at lying. Maybe that’s why I wasn’t as successful as my sister. I could never fib enough to get the kind of job where you had to stretch the truth so thin just to make it through the day that reality became a distant dream. It had been hard enough for me to tell people “Welcome to the Magic Kingdom-Where You’ll Have the Time of Your Life,” when I knew the reality was that they’d be dragging screaming kids around with them for ten hours and then stagger back to their hotels as food-splattered, foot-aching zombies.

  I waited to see if Everett would order me off his land faster than you could say “burial mound”

  “All right, but don’t whine if the prickly pears scratch your arms to smithereens.”

  “I’ll be careful” But I’d also be sniffing around. Maybe something about the dig held a clue to Hillman’s murder.

  Everett turned on the heels of his scuffed wingtips and motioned for me to follow with his gnarled old cane. We started up a narrow shell path flanked on either side by gumbo limbo trees and huge bougainvillea bushes. An occasional prickly pear cactus stretched its long, thin barbs toward my arms, but I successfully dodged most of them. Higher and higher, we climbed. Perspiration beaded on my forehead and my breath came in ragged gasps but, surprisingly, my intrepid guide scrambled up the path with the alacrity of a mountain goat-even in his unsuitable footgear. When we reached the top, I bent over and took in a couple deep breaths.

  “Looks like you need to work up a sweat a little more often, missy,” Everett said. He wasn’t even breathing heavily. Old coot.

  “Seems so” Breathe in, breathe out. Whew. The oxygen struggled to get into my lungs, but they weren’t used to that much exertion and almost screamed in outrage. Okay, I know I should exercise more, but marching on a treadmill wasn’t my idea of fun, and I wasn’t outdoorsy.

  Gradually, my breathing settled down and I could take stock of my surroundings.

  We were standing about thirty feet above the shoreline on a giant mound of crushed shells and, as I scanned below, I realized I could see almost from one end of the island to the other. “This is incredible. I can make out Mango Bay”

  “Nothing to see there but a bunch of tourists and fishermen” He pulled a red bandana out of the back pocket of his shorts and blew his nose in a loud, honking sound. Charming. “I try not to drop into Mango Bay but once a week”

  “Probably just as well,” I mumbled. Strolling around the top of the mound, I halted in front of the neatly roped off area. The dig comprised about a twenty-foot square, with a depth of maybe ten feet. It didn’t look like much more than a big hole with bits of black pottery and broken shells at the bottom. I sighed in disappointment. There was nothing up here to provide clues to Hillman’s murder. People generally don’t kill for pottery chips. “It’s not … much, is it?”

  “Actually, it’s quite an important site,” a quiet voice said from behind me.

  I turned and spied a man approaching with stiff
dignity. He wore neatly pleated dress pants, a polo shirt and loafers. On his head he sported a wide-brimmed straw hat. “This mound used to be almost sixty feet high with a canal at the base that led to the Sound.”

  “Wow.”

  “Hello, Everett,” the man said. “Is everything going well?” Probably in his mid-thirties and small-boned; of medium height, he had a beaklike nose and wore thick, square glasses that seemed too large for his thin face.

  Everett mumbled something that could have been “hello” or “hell no” I supposed the latter.

  “Mr. Jacobs brought me up here to see the dig.”

  “If you want to know more about the site, you can take a tour. The Henderson Research Center gives a two hour presentation on the dig and their findings.”

  “Do you work for them?”

  He nodded. “I chair the board that oversees the dig and I also run the Coral Island Historical Museum” He stretched out a hand. “Bradley Johnson”

  “Mallie Monroe. I work for the-“

  “Observer,” he finished for me. “I’ve seen your byline on the bike path stories.”

  I groaned.

  “Hey, that’s important news on Coral Island. We all want that bike path to happen” He grinned and I noticed a slightly crooked front tooth. “You doing a story on the dig?”

  “No-I just wanted to see it.”

  “People shouldn’t be digging on the mounds, disturbing history.” Everett kicked a couple shells with the toe of his shoe.

  “But this is an important site-archaeologically speaking, of course,” Bradley protested.

  “Who built the mounds?” I asked, wondering if Everett should actually be kicking artifacts around as if they were crumbled pieces of garbage.

  “The ancient Caloosa Indians,” Bradley informed me. “They lived here about five thousand years ago and built these for their villages and temples. Pretty ingenious really. They hauled tons of sand and shell to build their mounds and the sides were held in place with rows of white conch shells. At the base of the mounds there was an intricate system of canals so they could canoe between villages.”

  “And if they were high and dry up here they were protected from the storms and high water,” I reasoned. “So why are the mounds only about half as tall?”