Cloudy with a Chance of Ghosts (Destiny Bay Cozy Mysteries Book 4) (14 page)

“No!” He aimed right at me and this time he meant business. “You stay right where you are, sister.”

My heart was beating out of my chest. I closed my eyes and waited to hear the gun go off. Instead, I heard a shuffling sound.
 

“Hey,” George cried out. “Hey, get away from me!”

I opened my eyes and saw him batting at something down near his feet.
 

“Get this cat away from me,” he yelled, and then I saw the little Siamese leap out of his grasp and turn, looking as though she was laughing back at him.
 

“Oh!” I couldn’t believe it. The cat was fighting for me! But where was the bracelet?

I didn’t have time to speculate. Roy had arrived on the scene, with a couple of other cops trailing in behind him, and they had George on the ground and in handcuffs in no time at all. I watched, breathing hard, as relief washed over me.
 

“Hey.” Roy grinned down at me. “We’re getting a rope ladder. We’ll get you out of there in no time.”

“No hurry,” I lied, my knees shaking so badly I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to keep standing up. “I can wait. Just don’t go off and leave me here.”
 

I noticed he had my bracelet on his wrist and my heart gave a lurch. “So the cat found you and led you here?”

He hesitated. “I don’t know about that. She did show up and rub against my legs. I looked down and saw your bracelet. As soon as I grabbed it, she took off and I started running right behind her.”

“So you knew it was me!”

“Mele, my beautiful Hawaiian girl,” he said, smiling down at me as his fellow policeman threw down part of the rope ladder. “It’s always you.”

Chapter Eleven

We three were back at the Texas Bar and Grill—Bebe, Jill and I--this time to celebrate.
 

“What are we celebrating?” Jill asked.

“Survival,” Bebe told her firmly, holding her glass of iced tea high as though making a toast. “That’s one more murderous situation Mele’s had us tangled up in. And once again, we come out of it unscathed.”

“Hey, one of those situations was all because of you,” Jill reminded her.
 

“And this one was pretty much because of you,” I piped in, looking at my best buddy. “If we hadn’t gone to that art show….”

“We wouldn’t have soaked in all that culture,” she said defensively.

“Culture.” I hooted. “Paintings of trash cans and cows and imprints of Celinda’s overly-rounded butt on canvas. If that’s culture…”

“What about Jagger’s paintings?” Jill gave me a superior look. “Or are they too far out of your sphere of experience for you to understand?”

“What?” I pretended to glare at her and put on an exaggerated accent. “I’m so tempted to say, ‘Yeah? Understand this, lady,’ and dump my glass full of ice water over your head.”

She stuck her chin out. “I dare you!”

“You fool! Double dare me and I’ll do it.”

She stuck her chin out further. “Double dare!”

This was too much. How could I ignore a challenge like that?

Okay, you might think we both, as level-headed, educated adults, would be too sophisticated for something like this. We’d be above it. We’d know how silly we looked.
 

But no. Sadly, we’d been here before. As close friends and roomies for four years, we’d done it all. I’d short-sheeted her bed, rigged water to pour down on her when she opened a door, saran-wrapped her bike while she was in class, the usuals. She’d bought a bucket of live eels and set them free in our room, then left for the weekend, leaving me to discover and take care of the horrible things. You should have seen me diving across the floor after impossible-to-hold eels. That took hours!

So dumping a glass of water on her was going to be no big deal. Honest.

I reached for the glass, she started to shriek, and just before I could toss the water at her, a strong, well-tanned masculine hand shot out and held my wrist.
 

“You pour this on Jill,” Roy said, his voice firm, though his eyes were laughing, “And I’ll have to pour one on you.”
 

Something wild flared between us and our gazes locked together as I strained against his grip.
 

“Think hard, Hawaiian girl,” he said softly. “Make your decision wisely.”

“Alright,” Bebe said, establishing her authority at last. “That’s enough. You all are going to get us kicked out. And I want my steak!”

The moment passed. We were all laughing now, and I put down the water glass. But I gave Jill a look, one she recognized. I would get her for this later. Maybe not tonight. But soon. She cringed.
 

Still, it seemed silly to waste this short time that Roy had to be with us. He had to be back at work, but he’d volunteered to stop by and help us get caught up on exactly what was going on with the investigation.
 

He slipped in beside me and grinned at everyone in turn. “Okay people,” he said. “Here’s the latest word on the Carlton Castle murders.”

“Is Jagger totally cleared yet?” Jill looked anxious.

“Oh yeah. He’s been completely exonerated. No worries on that score.”

“Thank God,” she said, sinking back in her seat and looking relieved.
 

“So what’s the word?” I asked. “What’s the final verdict? Who are the guilty parties according to the North Destiny Bay police?”

“Okay. First a little background. Carlton Hart is a wealthy local landowner and arts patron. He’s been important in our community for twenty years. But before that, he lived a very different life on the East Coast.”

“Such as?” I asked, prompting him to move along with this. The steaks weren’t far off.

Roy shrugged. “I’m relying on rumors now. Don’t hold me to this. But the word is, he had mob connections. And did some things that wouldn’t stand muster if delved into too deeply.”

“So he got his money the old fashioned way,” I quipped. “He stole it from somebody. Or leaned on a mark. Or strong armed a victim. Or threatened a client.”

“Maybe. I’m not accusing him at this point. I can’t prove anything.”

“But somehow, someway, he got rich. And he didn’t do it by just working harder than those around him.”

“Looks like…maybe.”

I nodded. “Okay. I’ll accept that. So?”

“So. No one was accusing him of anything until Marilee got canned and told to leave the premises. She was unhappy about the way she was treated, and it seems she’d done her homework. She knew about his shady past. And she’d documented it.”

“Hmm. Smart girl,” said Bebe. “She was primed and ready for that proverbial rainy day.”

“So it seems. From what we’ve pieced together, we see a picture of a classic blackmailing. She very carefully let him know he was in trouble, that she could unleash the forces of retaliation on him if he didn’t do what she wanted.”

“But then, did he know who was blackmailing him? She wasn’t asking for her job back, was she?”

“No. She wasn’t that sloppy. She wanted money and she let him know it.”

“Yikes.”

“He was shocked, but didn’t know who the threat was coming from. Therefore, he was scared to death his lovely, privileged life style might be compromised by this person who was throwing threats around. So he paid up. Sent money to a P.O. box. Didn’t know who was making the threats, but knew she had information he didn’t want made public. The money flowed. It actually wasn’t much of a hardship for him at the beginning. She didn’t get tough. She just wanted enough to live a decent ocean-side lifestyle without having to get a job.”

“Poor Marilee. I know it was awful, what she did, but you have to have some compassion for her. She’d lived with the Hart family for so long, had probably thought herself in love with Carlton, and then, suddenly, she was cast out on her own. No wonder she thought she deserved something more from them.”

“Well, it’s one thing to feel hurt and resentful. It’s another to start blackmailing people.”

“Of course, you’re right.”

“So Carlton was blackmailed. He hired a private eye to look into it, but it seems the guy he hired wasn’t very bright. He didn’t give him any answers. So he was clueless that it was Marilee.”

“And then….”

“And then, Keri Shorter came to town. She came by and acted friendly, but inquisitive. Carlton welcomed her at first, then began to realize she had too many questions and that they were a little too pointed. But he wasn’t sure what to do about it. He told Jagger of his fears. He trusted Jagger. He thought he might help.”

“And Jagger tried.”

“Yes. But Marilee had already sensed the danger that Keri represented, and she took care of business right away. She found her wandering in the orchard, picked up a rock and dispatched her with no further ado. Case close as far as she was concerned.”

“But George saw her.”

“Yes. And he was a Carlton partisan. He wanted to protect his mentor. So he went to Marilee’s apartment to try to strong arm her—found her in the tub and decided then and there to drown her. Thus getting rid of that little snag for all time.”
 

“The only problem really was, Jill and I arrived just after he’d done that. And he had to find a way to get past us without us seeing who he was.”

Jill gave me a woeful look and I gave it right back.
 

“Hey, we were just lucky that he didn’t try to kill us right then,” I noted. “After all, we were new bumps in his road.”

She shivered and nodded at me.
 

“Yes. Instead, he grabbed up all Marilee’s paperwork and made a mad dash in the dark, and it worked pretty well for him. At least in the short run.”

“It was so scary when that happened,” she said, shivering again.
 

And then her face was suddenly wreathed in smiles and I turned to see what had brought on that change. Jagger, of course. He’d come in to find us and he was walking toward our table, his gaze filled with Jill. She rose from her seat and he took her in his arms and kissed her soundly. We all stared, open-mouthed. Then he turned, grinned at us, and said, “May I join you?”

For some reason, we all laughed, then everybody talked at once, and we made room for him.
 

“We’ve just been going over the facts of the case as we know them,” I said. “Or at least, as Roy was able to give them to us. So you’re right in time to give us your version.”

He shook his head. “I’ve got no version. I’m only thankful that I’m not being suspected of foul play any longer.”

My gaze narrowed as I studied him a bit. “You know, if you hadn’t had that purse in your hands, I don’t think anyone would ever have suspected you at all.”

“Marilee accused me.”

“But that was only after it was clear that you were the prime suspect. It would have been so convenient for her if you’d been charged.”

“You got that right.”

I frowned. “What I don’t get is, why you still had the purse when you were coming up the stone stairs to the terrace. Why didn’t you just throw it into the bushes somewhere?”

I could see Jill tense, as though she thought I was getting too nosy, but she didn’t need to. I just wanted to clear up all the issues, not start a new line of interest.

“You better believe I wished I’d dumped the thing earlier,” he agreed. “I took the recorder out and hid it, then thought I’d put the purse somewhere along the stairway, maybe in one of those cracks or behind a flower pot. But suddenly everyone was looking down at me and I was stuck with it.”

I nodded. “You sure did look as though you’d wished you’d dropped it before the scream,” I noted.
 

“Once you’d been seen, everyone began to wonder what the heck you were doing with it,” Jill agreed. “It seemed so odd.”

“The funny thing was,” Jagger added, “George came up to me and made a rude joke about it. At that moment, he couldn’t have had any idea how important his actions were going to be in the case.”

“No. Though he seemed to have lethal ambitions about doing away with someone all along if you ask me,” I said. “How about the whole pit in the middle of the forest thing he built? He could have done some permanent damage there—and not just to me.”

“Yes, he could have,” Roy said with a crooked grin. “Luckily, you were bright enough to fend that off and get some help from your usual sort of familiars.”

I flushed, knowing he was still a skeptic as far as my ghosts went. I’d been trying to introduce the concepts to him little by little, and he didn’t seriously scoff, but I could tell he had his doubts. When I’d tried to convince him that he’d met Aunty Jane, the day she warned him where to find me when I was in danger of being thrown off a cliff, he flat out refused to believe it.
 

“That sweet little old lady who talked to me? A ghost? Come on, Mele. Give me a break.”

So we had some work to do—if I decided to do it.
 

“What we still don’t know,” Bebe said sensibly, “is just what it was that Carlton Hart was so intent on keeping secret about his past.”

“I guess George burned all the evidence, didn’t he?” I turned to Roy. “Nothing left to give us any clues?”

“That’s right,” Roy said with a smile. “Nothing left at all.”

But he glanced up as he said it and I thought I caught a little spark in his eyes, a little hint that there might be something else…just some little thing…. Maybe he would tell me later, when we were alone.
 

Roy had to get back to work and I walked out to the car with him. He kissed me and grinned.
 

“Okay, you’re dying to know if I know anything else about Carlton. I could see it in your face.”

“Well, why not? After all, this whole episode has revolved around him, and we still don’t know why! And here I voluntarily handed over the micro-cassette player with the recordings Keri made and everything. It seems like you owe me."

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah."

He laughed and looked back at the restaurant. “Sometimes people deserve to get their comeuppance,” he said slowly. “And sometimes they’ve done things they need desperately to atone for.” He looked at me. “And sometimes you just think they ought to be left alone—that they’ve been working hard to make up for previous bad behavior on their own.”