Corpse Suzette (21 page)

“But... but...” Tammy
sputtered. She looked at Savannah. “Why?”

“Why? Why? I don’t know
why. I peaked with the Santa Tesla Island idea. That was my flash of brilliance
for the morning, maybe for the whole day.” She headed for the kitchen, mug in
hand. “Now, I have to refill my coffee cup”—she lowered her voice and whispered—“and
eat that other Danish before Abigail gets up. I swear, she’s almost as bad as I
am about coffee and pastries first thing in the morning. Yesterday she ate my
last French cruller before I could even...”

* * *

They found out Dirk’s “why”
less than half an hour later when he called from his desk at the police
station.

“We’ve got a lead,” he said
the moment Savannah answered the phone. “A real lead. A solid, bonafide lead.
You were hot with that Santa Tesla bank business, Savannah, my girl.”

Savannah winked at Tammy,
who was standing nearby, jumping up and down with excitement. “He says we’ve
got something.” Then, to Dirk, she said, “What? What do we have?”

“I’m looking at phone
records right now from Emerge.”

“Emerge phone records,” she
told Tammy.

“And there were two phone
calls from there to one of the numbers on Tammy’s list of anonymous banks.”

“Yay! Tam, somebody from
Emerge called one of your banks. Twice!”

Tammy went from jumping to
a full-fledged cheerleader routine... everything but the pom-poms.

Savannah turned away so
that she could concentrate on the call.

From the living room they
heard a groggy, “Hey, wanna keep it down in there? Person sleeping here!”

“Which bank?” Savannah
asked him.

“Lighthouse Security.”

Savannah grinned. The adrenaline
that was hitting her bloodstream was far more stimulating than any mixture of
sugar and caffeine. “I guess you and I are going to do some island hopping very
soon. Eh, big boy?”

She heard him chuckle on
the other end. It was an evil, nasty chuckle that reminded her why she loved
him so much. “Oo-o-oh yes, babe,” he said. “Right away.”

Chapter

This skinny, slovenly
kid—with mustard and ketchup stains on the front of his T-shirt and knobby
knees sticking out of cargo shorts that were about to fall off him—just didn’t
cut it, fantasy-wise.

“I’m captain of this
catamaran
,”
he told her, squaring his thin shoulders.

“Boat, ship, catamaran...
what’s the difference?”

“Boat.” He pointed to a
dingy tied at the dock. “Catamaran.” He pointed to the deck beneath their
feet—the deck of a sizable ferry designed for carrying over one hundred
passengers to and from Santa Tesla Island at a high speed.

“Ah,” she said, “it’s a
matter of size.” Then under her breath, she muttered, “Ain’t it always with you
guys.”

Docked nearby was a similar
vessel, and she could see Dirk standing on the deck of that one, showing
pictures of Suzette Du Bois to the crew. Together, they had interviewed nearly
all of the ships that provided passage to and from the San Carmelita harbor and
the island, and so far... no luck.

She took the two pictures
from her inside jacket pocket and shoved them under Captain Dirty Shirt’s nose.
One was Suzette’s driver’s license photo, and the other the Marilyn look-alike
pose.

“Have you seen this woman
lately?” she asked him. “Maybe given her a ride to or from the island? She may
have had a white poodle with her and—”

“Named Sammy.”

“What?” She nearly
swallowed her gum. “Yes! Named Sammy! You saw them when?”

“I’ve taken her to the
island a few times lately. Yesterday morning, bright and early, in fact. Can’t
forget a gal like that. She looks like a movie star with that blond hair.”

“Like Marilyn Monroe?”

“Who?”

Savannah sighed. “Never
mind.”

“I don’t know who that is,
but she was sorta like Madonna, only older. She was wearing those big
sunglasses like gals used to wear.”

“Okay. Can you tell me
anything else about her?”

“She said she’s moving to
the island, had some boxes and stuff that we had to help her with. She gave my
guys a good tip.”

“Hmm. She can afford to.”

“What?”

“Nothing. This was
yesterday, you say, when you took her over?”

“Yeah. Yesterday morning on
our first run.”

“And when does the last
boat... er... catamaran leave the island to bring passengers back here?”

“This time of year,
twenty-three hundred hours. That’s eleven o’clock at night,” he explained with
a condescending tone that made her want to slap him stupid.

“So late?” she asked.

He shrugged. “Some people
complain that we don’t have even later ones. They like to stay, drink, gamble
until all hours. As long as they get back home in time to drag themselves to
work the next morning, they’re happy.”

“Hey, whatever spins your
bottle.” She glanced over at Dirk and saw that he was watching her. She waved
him over. “And did this lady say anything else to you?”

“Like what?”

“Anything at all. Did she
talk about her new place, where it is...?”

“Said it has a great view
of the water.”

Savannah wasn’t terribly
impressed with that gem of knowledge. On a small, narrow island, who
didn’t
have a water view?

“When you docked and your
guys helped her with the boxes,” she said, “how did she leave with them? Did
she load them into a taxi, or...?”

“No, somebody was waiting
for her in a car.”

“Can you describe the
person, the car?”

“Another lady. I don’t
remember what she looked like. Nothing special. She was driving a big black
BMW. We loaded the boxes into the trunk for her.”

“How many boxes were
there?”

“Four or five.”

“What size?”

“Big, medium, little. All
shapes and sizes. Listen, I gotta get going. I’ve got a schedule to keep here.
Are you coming with us to the island or not? Because, if you are, you gotta buy
a ticket.” Savannah could see Dirk hurrying across the deck toward them, a big
grin on his face, still chipper from his long night of alcohol-induced coma.
“Oh, I’m with you, Captain, and that dude there is footin’ the bill.”

“I can’t believe this has
been here all the time, and I never even knew about it,” Savannah said as she
stepped off the dock and looked around at the island paradise that surrounded
them. Lush greenery covered the hills that sloped gracefully to the sea, in
sharp contrast to the dry, brown hills they had left on the mainland. The air
had a sweet, clean smell with none of the
eau de
Los Angeles that gagged
San Carmelitans when the Santa Ana winds blew the city’s pollution their way.

Instead of the standard
Spanish style of architecture that prevailed in her neighborhood, this place
had more of a Polynesian feel about it. The shops that lined the waterfront
were little more than rustic huts, primitive but charming structures with palm
frond-covered roofs and bamboo walls and supports that blended nicely with the
natural scenery.

The waterfront to their
right was a luxury marina, filled with all sorts and sizes of pleasure craft.
To their left was a pristine beach with fewer sunbathers than Savannah was
accustomed to seeing, even in the cooler months, on the California shore.

And far to their left, on
the southern end of the island, stood the lighthouse. Sparkling white in the
sunlight, lovely in its simplicity, it was the crowning touch to complete the
island’s exotic beauty.

Yes, Santa Tesla Island was
an unspoiled, uncrowded haven, and it fed Savannah’s soul just to stand on its
soil. She vowed, then and there, that she would find an excuse to come back
here, again and again.

And not when she was
looking for a killer.

“So, where do you want to start?”
she asked Dirk. “The bank?”

He raised his arm to hail
one of the taxis that was slowly driving by, looking for fares. “Lighthouse
Security, here we come.”

Lighthouse Security Bank
was quaint and picturesque. When they entered the building, Savannah felt like
she was attending some sort of Hawaiian luau rather than stepping into a bank.
She half-expected the clerks to be wearing hula skirts.

But the architecture was
where the island friendliness stopped.

The woman behind the
manager’s desk was anything but welcoming.

“We do not release
information about our customers to anyone from the States,” she told Dirk, her
hands on her ample hips, her eyes flashing behind her tortoiseshell glasses.

He held his badge closer to
her nose, but she brushed it away with one hand and reiterated, “No
information. None. Your authority is not recognized inside this establishment.”

Dirk’s face darkened, and
Savannah cringed. Sergeant Detective Dirk Coulter had worked damned hard for
that gold shield, and the last person who had slapped it away had wound up flat
on his face on the floor in one and a half seconds.

“Look here, lady,” he said.
“I’m investigating a homicide, and even out here in international waters,
murder is murder, and can land you in some sort of prison somewhere. Now you
better reconsider what you just said to me.”

“I haven’t murdered anyone,
and I couldn’t release information to you about a customer here even if I
wanted to. All of our banking is done with anonymous numbers and customer
passwords. We, ourselves, don’t know their identities.”

Savannah stepped between
them and adopted her most solicitous tone and expression. “Of course, you
can’t,” she said. “I understand your position completely. But we’re not asking
you for their identity. We need a record of their recent transactions. I
already have the account number, even the password. Perhaps you could be so
kind as to let us know what’s been going on with the account.”

“No.”

Savannah was a bit taken
aback. Her down-homey routine almost always worked... at least a little. “No?”
she asked. “That’s it? Just ‘no’?”

“No. And that’s not all. If
you don’t leave right now, I’ll have security remove you.”

Suddenly, a couple of
enormous guards materialized behind them. Savannah turned to look at them and
was astonished that people even came that big! They were at least a foot taller
than Dirk’s six feet, two inches, and their uniforms—khaki shirts and shorts
with breast pocket insignia badges—showed off their muscular physiques with
intimidating clarity.

“Let’s go,” she told Dirk.
“If these folks aren’t interested in helping us, they deserve to have a
murderer here on their little island, rubbing elbows with them on a daily
basis.”

She grabbed Dirk’s arm and
propelled him toward the front door before he could cause any trouble with
Goliath and King Kong.

“But, but... he sputtered.

“Keep walkin,”’ she told
him. “Make tracks, buddy.”

“I ain’t afraid of those
guys,” he said, looking back over his shoulder.

“Well, I am, and you would
be too, if you had the sense God gave a goose.” She shoved him through the
front door and out onto the street. “We’ll find out what we need to know some
other way.”

“How?”

“I don’t know, but—”

Her cell phone was buzzing
inside her purse. She reached for it and looked at the caller ID. “It’s the
kid. Hi, Tam. What’s shakin’, sugar?” She listened for a long time, a smile
spreading across her face. Finally, she said, “Darlin’, you are worth your
weight in gold. You have no idea how timely this little bit of info is.
Consider yourself kissed and hugged.”

She flipped the phone
closed, turned to Dirk and chuckled. “Turns out you didn’t need to go fifteen
rounds with those heavyweights in there after all. Tammy’s better than Miss Grumpy
could ever be.”

“Why? I thought she was
having a hard time trying to access that account info. The password ‘
rosarita
’
wouldn’t work or somethin’ like that.”

“True, but she kept trying
other passwords, and she found one that worked. She opened the account info
online and discovered that three-hundred and twenty five thousand dollars was
withdrawn, in cash, five days ago.”

“Five days ago? That’s two
days after Suzette Du Bois went missing.”

“That’s right.”

They smiled at each other.
They could practically smell their prey.

The trail was getting
fresher by the minute.

“Good for the kid!” he
said. “She’s getting better at this stuff all the time. What did the password
turn out to be?”

Savannah laughed. “Sammy.”

“Of course.”

“Of course.”

They walked down the
street, passing buildings more substantial than the slapdash huts that lined
the beachfront areas. Here the businesses and houses resembled some that
Savannah had seen in Key West, Florida, on a vacation there years ago. They had
a combination of tropical and Victorian flavor, with lots of gingerbread-house
details, verandas, and the occasional widow’s walk around the roof. Under
different circumstances, she might have considered her surroundings romantic.

But strolling alongside
Dirk, whose formerly buoyant mood had been replaced by his standard sullen one,
thanks to the snippy manager at the bank, it wasn’t easy to get into any sort
of romantic state of mind.

And that was okay. She was
working.

Who needed romance when
there was a bad guy—or girl, as the case might be—who needed catching?

Dirk stopped in the middle
of the sidewalk, leaned against a palm tree, and took out his cell phone. “I
just want to check something,” he said. A moment later he barked into the
phone, “Coulter here. I’m on Santa Tesla Island... yes, all the way out here.
Run a check with DMV. I want to know the name and address of everyone on this
island who owns a BMW. That’s right.” He scowled. “What do you mean you can’t—”

Savannah elbowed him in the
ribs. “Look around you, Dorothy,” she said. “You’re not in Kansas anymore... or
California either, for that matter.” She pointed to a passing car that had no
license plate, only a red sticker in the lower left corner of the rear window.
“They’re not going to find any of these cars in the California DMV records.”

“Oh.” He grunted, then said
into the phone, “Never mind.” Then he turned off the phone and shoved it back
into his pocket. “I have to tell you,” he said, “I’m feeling a little out of my
element here.”