Cruise to Murder (Z & C Mysteries, #2) (8 page)

“U
h huh. This will make you feel better. It was the zombie guy. You don’t have to worry about him anymore. He’s a goner!” Butch took another big bite and stuffed a big fry dipped in ketchup, then talked around it. “You know how we know it was him?”

Zo replied, “How?”

“He had a grass doll stuffed down the back of his shirt and a bone necklace.” He leaned back and laughed. “By the way, did you have to give the pin you said the guy took to the police?”

“No. He lost the loot
, so the police were glad to give it back. I’ve got it here. Did you want to see it?”

“Sure.”
Butch took it and turned the pin over a couple of times. “This kind of jewelry has never wowed me… Old-maidish, grandma type.”

“Well, look who
’s here,” Larry said, smiling.

One of the men from the table behind the partition came with Larry—an Asian with a classy suit.
“Hey, Butch! Nice seein’ you here.” The man put forward a hand for a shake, which was eagerly accepted. He had an accent, and Zo wondered what nationality he was exactly.

“Mike! You gotta come and twirl some fir
e swords with me at my next gig,” Butch regarded.

“Just might do that.”
A bit of a chuckle followed.

Zo remarked, “We always come here for lunch when discovering murdered bodies.”

“Oh, you guys still creeping out over Blondie in my disappearing cabinet?” Larry mentioned. “Actually, her name was Janet. I’m thinking I’ve got to lose that part of my act for a while and get a new cabinet.”

The magician picked up a salt shaker and napkin. “Want to see a quick trick?”

“Sure!” they agreed.

As he was placing the napkin over the shaker, Zo had the sudden urge to cough.
It was complicated from inhaling a bit of food. She hacked loudly into her hands, which was very embarrassing for her. To add to the humiliation, Claire knocked over her ice water, in an attempt to reach a napkin. It made a horrible clatter with ice and water going everywhere.

Everyone reached f
or napkins and Larry tried to summon a server. Butch had to slide over fast or get his pants watered. Even the man with Larry was dabbing with napkins that were volunteered from a nearby table.

“I’m soooo sorry.”
Zo continued coughing, but she was much better.

Soon there were a couple of servers with towels and a tray for
picking up left over ice. Some lunchers laughed over the sight once they saw there was no emergency.

“Well, dang! You know how to get attention!” Butch exclaimed to Zo.

“Oh, come on, I’m the one who interrupted the meal,” Larry protested.

“Sure, and I saw three guys stand up ready to give the re
dhead here mouth-to-mouth!” Butch added.

Larry’s friend
excused himself, ending with a promise to get back to Butch with a call.

“Just so you all know,” Larry warned, “I heard Customs is holding the ship further, because some dead guy showed up in a cave somewhere and they think it is related to our ship somehow.”

Then, he said he needed to get to the ship and cautioned that it might not be that easy to get off again with all the investigation
—something about terrorism. He quickly left.

“A dead guy in a cave, huh? That guy will make up any kind of story!” Butch pushed his plate back and began to move out of the booth. “You two are murder magnets and yet so sweetly enticing, so thrilling and heart pounding, filled with scary adventure. It is terrifyingly interesting to be around you two. Goodbye, see you later
. I have to go home now and cry like a little girl.”

“Byyye
, Buuutch,” they said in unison.

“Claire, we might not be able to get off the s
hip, if Customs is holding it because of terrorism. I wonder what has made them think that. They get information that we don’t… Uh, oh. Where is it?”

“Where is what, Mom?”

“My broach. It’s not here.”

Zo moved plates looking for it. Claire looked on the seat and under the table. After a careful search, Zo concluded, “Somebody took it! Anyone of the guys could have done it,
including the friend of Larry or the waiters.”

“What is there about that pin that makes everyone want it?
!” Claire asked. “Do you remember what it looked like? It had an island-looking house and a well, with the words ‘Go the second mile.’”

“Yes, I can tell you every detail. I’ve looked it over well enough. Look it up on your
phone’s Internet. It looked like it could have been carved bone or shell.”

Claire pulled out her cell phone and began typing and moving images on the screen. “So far there is nothing that even remotely is the same as that design.”

“I want to go back to the cave again,” said Zo. “Everything happens in that cave. Well, except for the blondes; and, yet, one of them was found down in the ocean. It all seems to go back to the cave.”

“We still have the afternoon. Let’s you and I go back and look together, and really analyze that place.”
Claire signaled for their server.

“The bill has been taken care of
, including the tip, ma’am,” the waiter informed.

They asked the cabby to drop them off at the area where they went down to the beach and found Mrs. Belmont. They would walk from there toward the Koona Caves.

“I don’t know what we are looking for
, sweetie, so look at everything.”

“I’ve got my best smooth-ray sunglasses on
, so everything will be clear. Nothing will escape my eyes, even to a can bobbing in the ocean.”

As they walked and walked toward the caves, they n
oticed what people were wearing—or barely wearing—in sun and swim get-ups. There were boats near and far, lots and lots of footprinted sand and as they got close to the caves, they heard insistent barks and snarls of a nearby dog.

“It sounds like a dog fight. It’s
coming from way up there.” Claire started walking up a thin trail, to where an excluded beach house was perched behind the top of the caves.

“Do you hear the
viciousness
in that dog’s bark and growl? What are you doing?!”

“I just want to make sure that there is no one in trouble.”

As Claire stood at the top of the hill, she waved her mother up. “Mother, you have got to see this.”

When Zo reached the top, Claire was surprised that in spite of the dog’s maniacal barks, her mother’s eyes were fixed somewhere else. “What are you looking at?”

“That is the picture on my pin!”

The big, black, curly
-haired dog was now in a frenzy behind a tall rail fence. He couldn’t quite push his head through, although he was trying. It pulled his eyelids back to slits, as his teeth flashed like a spiky bear trap chomping and drooling at them.

The two walked up closer toward the property
(and by extension, the dog). Zo, when close enough, began to speak to the dog in a high pitch, toddlerish tone. “Who’s a cutie? Oh, yes, a little pooky poo, babykins. You little cooty-cooty, sweetums!”

The dog stopped moving and snarling a moment to look at Zo with a look of disbelief across his eyes. Then he took a couple of steps back and leaned forward again. Hair standing up on his back, he growled while gnashing his
fangs, throwing spit.

The duo stood with hands on hips
, looking at the dog, when he suddenly exploded into flames.

“What the…?” Zo’s mouth dropped open.

Neither one of them had found words yet as they looked at each other and then at the remains of the dog. Amidst the smoke and ash was a collar.

“Mom, you really ticked that dog off!”

“He did seem to have anger management problems,” she agreed, then began to laugh.

“It’s too bad that Butch isn’t here to see this.”
Claire began to laugh, too; maybe because of nerves from the bizarre incident.

The laughter was getting higher and higher, where it was hard for either of them to say their words.

“I don’t think he could take any more, heee’d probably have a heart attack. Aghaha ha.” They were wiping away tears and bending over in laugh-weakness.

“
Should we… tell him?”

In an exceedingly high pitch, Zo
tried to master the answer “Noooo” through a laugh.

“Okay, okay. We have to pull ourselves together and try to figure out what to do here,” Zo continued, wiping her
eyes with her wrists from tears.

“Are we going to call the cops on this dog explosion?”

“I’m thinking, daughter, they aren’t going to accept that the dog had a bad case of gas and blew up in a fart.”

The two began to laugh again.

“You know I don’t like that word, Mom. Heh heh.”

Zo continued, “They are going to begin to add up that we are at every violent occurrence and we might be hauled off; but
, yes, call the police. Just tell them the truth about how we came up here. Don’t tell them anything about the broach and this house and well. We want to do a little surveillance ourselves.”

“Surveillance?”

“We’ll just follow along behind them. I know they will try to find someone at home here to ask questions. We will just happen to be standing in the corner. Tee hee.”

“Tee hee,” Claire agreed.

A
police officer came and took information, bagged the ashes and bits of a collar. He asked Zo and Claire for a description of what had happened and the two began to do a little giggling again.

A few minutes later, Zo exclaimed to Claire in a whisper, “Well, that made us look like a couple of ghouls!” That started up more giggles.

The house was a cottage with paned
windows and hewn stone going halfway up its exterior. The women watched from a respectful distance as the police officer knocked on the estate’s heavy wood door. There was no answer. He talked on his shoulder radio to the local dispatch, asking for information on the house. A woman’s voice broke through a sound of interference, saying, “That is the residence of a Mr. Felix Lee Belmont.”

“Whoa…, Mr. Belmont?” Claire said.

“Thanks, Lucy. Do you have a phone number with that address?”

Zo elbowed Claire in excitement. Claire snatched h
er cell phone from her pocket, opened her Contacts file and typed every number carefully.

“If he’s dead, who do we plan on talking to?”
Claire said in a hushed tone.

“The man is rich. Maybe he has people taking care of the estate while he is away. That dog had to be fed by somebody.”

“Good point, good point. I think maybe they shoulda laid off the salsa on the kibbles.”

“Ya think?” Zo raised her brows.

They watched further as the officer pulled out a phone from his pocket and made a call.

Zo and Claire squished together, shoulder to shoulder, ear to ear, in excitement. The officer soon put his phone away and turned to walk back to his car. “Oh, you two ladies are still here.”

“Yes, we are wanting to make sure there are no more
hotdogs
on the premises,” Zo joked.

“Well, ladies, I think your job is done. You notified the police. You can go home now.”

“Okay, okay.” Zo motioned Claire forward. They looked at each other knowingly. As they rounded a corner of the lot, they hid behind a bush, waiting for the cop car to zoom away. “We are not leaving here without seeing the inside of this place.”

“For what? Why?” Claire asked.

“I’ve already trespassed into Belmont’s stateroom aboard ship. I guess you can say, I don’t want to stop there. Come have fun with me.”

“How do you suggest we get inside?”

“I haven’t figured that part out yet.”

The police car took off down the road.
Just as they were about to come out from hiding, another car came up the road and parked in front of the cottage—a black sedan with tinted windows.

A man with
black hair, wearing a suit, got out of the driver’s seat and started walking up the stone walkway.

“Do you recognize that man
, Mom?”

“I
think I do recognize him… Mike! The man that said hi to Butch at lunch.”

Mike turned a key and went inside.

Zo left her tropical blind and snuck up to peer into a window. Claire stayed put, but panicked for her mother’s sake. Zo opened the door quietly once she saw that Mike had gone into another room. She tiptoed across the way and unlatched the window and returned back out the door, pulling it shut quietly.

“I don’t like
it when you take chances like that, Mom.” They waited what seemed like an hour sitting down and whispering together. Finally, Mike came out, locked the door, got into his car and drove away.

With some effort and Zo bruising an elbow
, they both got inside. The house seemed empty. It hadn’t been swept or dusted in what looked like years. As they explored, they found a kitchen with rust stains on the sink and cracked linoleum. An entryway from the kitchen led to stairs going up and to another dusty, empty room on the left, which was probably at one time a bedroom. To the right was another bedroom, which was neatly clean with a desk and cabinets. Looking around they found maps with no marks on them, pencils, pens, a stapler—nothing at all unique. The files and cabinets were empty.