Greed in Paradise (Paradise Series) (20 page)

The waitress delivered our drink order.

“We hired a new guy, Butch, to help with transportation. He works the night shift. Problem is, he picks up bodies and then doesn’t return for several hours. We know some of these trips should take less than an hour because most of them are local. We need to know what he’s doing. What if it’s something criminal and he brings bad publicity to Tropical Slumber? Scandal is not good in our business,” Raul told us. “We’ve never had a single complaint.”

“When does he work again?” Fab asked. “This should be easy enough to wrap up in one night.”

Every time we think it’s going to be an easy job we get shot at. How much trouble could a guy hauling dead bodies around get into?

“He starts work in a few hours. Even when he doesn’t have pickups he’s gone all night. He slips away with a reasonable excuse and is evasive upon return,” Dickie said.

“We’ll put a tracker under the Cadillac. It will make it easier for us to follow him and know where he is at all times. We’ll head over now and wait for him. Let you know in the morning what he did with his time.” Fab smiled at Raul.

* * *

“Not one word from you in the future about weird cases,” I told Fab.

We parked at the tattoo parlor next door to the funeral home. The streets had little traffic, not that it would be hard to follow a hearse.

“Do you think Butch is stupid enough to take a hearse on a crime spree?”

“We’ve made the acquaintance of some really stupid people, so it’s hard to say,” I said.

“Party’s on.” Fab pointed to a small truck pulling in the driveway.

A twenty-something-year-old husky dude stood under the lights that illuminated the parking lot. Right on time, he disappeared inside the funeral home and came out about an hour later, slipping behind the wheel of the Cadillac.

“How are we going to remain inconspicuous when there are only two cars on the road—his and ours?” I asked. “Do not turn off the headlights.”

“I already thought about that, but with our luck we’d get pulled over and given a ticket.”

We followed him in the direction of The Cottages until he turned off the main highway into a residential neighborhood. We hung back and he pulled up in front of a small house. After circling the block, we sat at the corner. A few minutes later, a longhaired brunette came running out of the house and jumped into the passenger side.

“Let me guess, his girlfriend?” I asked.

Butch cut through an alley back to the main highway. He drove along the coast and pulled into the main beach parking lot and up to the sand and parked. The twosome got out and held hands, walking across the beach in the direction of the water.

“I want to go home,” I whined. “How many nights are we going to have to follow him to figure out what he’s doing?”

“We’re going to wait. I’m not following them.” Fab took a pair of binoculars from the console box. “Let’s hope this is his idea of a date night and nothing more. I hate this job already. Why don’t I threaten the truth out of them?”

“They’re headed back already,” I said. Butch had scooped the girl in his arms and spun her around. She wrapped her legs around his waist, clad in her bra, shirt in hand.

Five minutes later, the Cadillac hadn’t moved.

I covered my face and laughed. “Bet you they’re using it as their love shack.”

“You’re nasty. Nobody would do that. Dead bodies have been in there.”

“I’m over this freebie of yours. I’m going to go peek in the window.” I opened the door and grabbed a flashlight from the back.

“Wait up. I’m not missing out on this.”

I crossed the parking lot and saw that neither of them were in the front seat, unless they were laying or scrunched down. To make sure, I peered in the window. The only other choice made me shudder; they had to be in the back. I tried the door and found it locked so I beamed my high-powered flashlight through the windshield, moving it around.

Butch yelled, “What the hell?” He peered through the viewing window.

“Get your pants on and get the hell out here,” I yelled, using my best growling mad voice.

Fab went around to the back, slipped her lock-pick out of her pocket, and threw open the doors. The couple was buck naked and scrambling to get into their clothes.

“You’re not the police,” Butch yelled.

“I never said I was. Impersonating a cop is a crime,” I said. “We’re private investigators.” I wasn’t, but he didn’t need to know that I lacked a license. “Is this what you do every night, screw in the back of a hearse?”

“None of your business,” he said.

“Do you have one of these?” Fab showed off her Beretta in her front waistband. “If not, answer the damn question. You’re making me cranky and when that happens I get erratic.”

The girl started crying. “I knew this was a bad idea.” She glared at Butch.

“We’re just having sex. We don’t get a lot of private time,” he said. “Satisfied?”

“What happens when you have a body here in the back?” I asked.

“We do it in the front,” the girl sniffed. “There’s not enough room with the casket.”

Fab cleared her throat behind my back. If she laughed I would turn around and hit her. I had Mac run a background check on Butch before we arrived at the funeral home and he came back clean. My criminal antennae spoke to me that the girl didn’t have a record either.

“Here’s the deal. You tell Dickie and Raul when you get back what you’ve been doing. If they fire you, take it gracefully and hit the road. I hear of any problems and I’ll have her kick your butt,” I said, and pointed to Fab. “If she can’t get the job done, just keep in mind I’ve been known to shoot people.”

We turned and walked back to the SUV.

“Let’s keep this job to ourselves,” I said. “I’d rather find missing cats.”

“Would you…?”

“No!”

Fab and I lounged by the pool eating enchiladas from Jake’s. Take-out was another cool perk of owning a bar.

Fab’s phone rang and she looked at the screen with suspicion, but answered anyway. “It’s pasty-faced Violet,” she covered her phone and whispered, and then pushed the speaker button.

“Why aren’t you returning Mr. Davis’s phone calls?” Violet whined. “He’s such an important man to have to keep making the same call over and over, not to mention the charge to the estate. He bills for every little thing.”

I stuck my finger in my mouth. Loathing wasn’t strong enough for how I felt about Tucker Davis, disreputable attorney-at-law.

“What do the two of you want?” Fab demanded.

“No need to be so surly,” Violet said. “Daddy left envelopes for everyone and yours seems to be missing. Did you take it?”

I covered my mouth and laughed. Fab glared at me.

“How could I have done that? Tucker never handed them out and informed everyone he’d be hanging on to them until the estate is settled. Now he claims they’re missing. They’re probably in his desk drawer.”

“Could you stop by Daddy’s later? I’d like to hear more about your relationship with him, and I thought we’d come to a deal on the gun collection.”

A grown woman whose voice sounded like that of a small child irritated me. I shook my head no at Fab. I never liked the woman; not that she gave me a reason to dislike her, but the hairs on my neck spoke to me.

“I’ll stop by.”

“I’m here at Daddy’s now going through the heartbreaking task of cleaning everything,” she sniffed.

After Fab hung up, I said, “Don’t go. I don’t trust her. Why make a deal on the gun collection when she’s contesting the estate and the court could award her everything?”

“Of course I’m going. I want to see what she’s offering.” Fab patted her Walther.

“I’ll call Didier,” I threatened, knowing it was underhanded, but when he told her not to do something, she listened.

“You will not.” She jerked my arm. “You’re coming with me.” She dragged me off my chaise and pushed me through the fence, a shortcut to the driveway.

“Why can’t you meet her at a restaurant and do lunch?” I glared at her. “If we met at Tucker’s, they at least have a snack bowl in the reception area.”

Fab looked me up and down. “You need to cut back on the junk food.”

“My Glock is loaded.”

* * *

“Why are there no cars?” I asked. We pulled into the driveway of Gus Ivers’ house, the guard no longer on duty. “It doesn’t look like anyone’s home.”

“It will give us time to check the garage and make sure she didn’t find the safe.” Fab parked along the side of the house and slid from behind the wheel.

I hustled to catch up. “Was the garage door padlocked before?” I pointed to the overly large lock.

“There’s a side door. She’ll never know we were snooping around.” Fab slid her lock pick from her pocket. She never left home without her tools of the trade.

Lying on top of a couple of garbage bags in front of the roll-up doors was Gary Greene crumpled in a very dead heap. My guess, it had something to do with the hole in the back of his head. He couldn’t have been dead too long, as the inevitable stench wasn’t evident.

“I think I’m going to be sick,” I said.

“Go outside, stay out of sight, and call your friend Harder. Then we’re getting the hell out of here.”

I slipped around the corner of the garage where I had a view of the entire yard. Gary wasn’t my first dead body, but it didn’t get any easier. I wasn’t sure how Dickie enjoyed his job so much. He always seemed happy to have another body to coif and dress.

Harder’s phone went straight to voice mail, but I knew him to be obsessive about listening to messages. “You know how you were looking for Gary Greene? Well, he’s dead in Ivers’ garage. Send help when you get this. We’re only about 50/50 at getting out of stupid situations.”

Violet drove in and parked in front of the garage. I crouched behind an old outhouse, the purchase of which Gus had been proud of for those times his septic tank backed up. I’d used an outhouse once at a flea market and had almost fallen in the hole, so now I don’t go within a foot of one. I wanted to ask Gus if he’d heard that Tarpon Cove had sewer lines and that he could hook in, but figured he’d never spend the money.

I stared opened-mouthed in disbelief as Violet and her male friend got out of the passenger side packing guns at their sides. Her makeover stunned me. She had ditched the Bo Peep look for tight skinny jeans and knee-high black leather boots. There was such a harsh glint in her eye I didn’t think her whininess capable. I whipped my Glock out. From this vantage point I could shoot one or the other, which still left one to shoot Fab. I never had a clue that the little girl persona had all been an act.

Violet slipped her gun into her waistband, and she and her cohort put their heads together. Whatever they were discussing spelled big trouble for Fab and I. One dead, four with guns. Damn it.

She surveyed the property, then walked over and stuck her head in the garage. She ditched her whiney little girl voice to bark at Fab. “Come out, Miss Merceau, so we can come to terms.”

Fab came out, Walther in hand.

“That’s so unfriendly.” Violet made a motion to put her hands in the air, and pulled her gun. “Throw yours on the ground. Two against one aren’t good odds for you.”

Fab looked her over from head to toe and dropped her gun; the makeover even shocked her.

“On your knees,” Violet ordered. “Or I’ll be forced to shoot you and I have something else in mind.” She swept her hand out. “The nice thing about acreage is the neighbors never bother you and no one will hear your screams.”

Fab gave her the finger and continued to stand her ground. “What do you want?”

“You’re going to die, but I think an overdose would be a much more fitting end to the whore who seduced my father.” Violet laughed. “I’ll need to get creative getting rid of your redheaded friend, can’t have everyone dying the same way.”

She’d given her delusional plans some thought. They sounded methodical and well-planned. There were no babbling signs of mental illness, but rather more like fury that there had been a hitch in her strategy.

“What happened to Gary in there?” Fab motioned to the garage with her head.

“He thought he could blackmail me.”

“It’s sad when you commit felonies with friends and they turn on you,” Fab sniffed. “Blackmailers are never satisfied.”

“I knew he wasn’t bright but he thought I’d actually cave in to his demand. He’d already become a liability, but little did he know he just hastened his inevitable death.”

“Violet you can tell me, what did Gary have on you?” Fab asked.

I admired the fact that Fab never flinched, even under threat of death.

“Idiot, his conscience started bothering him after I brought Daddy home in a nice urn. Interestingly, his shame came
after
the old man expired. Gary worked around here doing odd jobs, so it was very easy for him to spike Daddy’s iced tea with anti-freeze. Did you know it’s sweet and undetectable in a drink and brings about certain death?” She reached inside her pocket and took out a hypodermic needle, waving it at Fab.

And wouldn’t you know it, my phone rang.

Violet and her friend turned, and I got off a shot in the confusion. Although I was aiming for Violet, her partner moved forward at the last second and I hit the guy in the shoulder. He fell backward, screaming. Violet was enraged. She took aim in my direction and pulled the trigger. Ready for return fire, I dropped down and ran for the row of trees and tall grass that Fab disappeared into after she beat a hasty retreat around the back of the garage. Hopefully, she wouldn’t fall into the murky creek water.

“Oh, shut your mewling mouth,” Violet yelled in the man’s face. She raised her gun and shot him point blank.

I knew this was a bad idea.
I hoped Harder would send help when I didn’t answer his return call.

“Over here,” Fab whispered. She had submersed herself into some varied types of swamp grass that grew five feet out of the knee-high water in which she stood.

“Did you happen to pick up your Walther?” I whispered back. “Or are we sharing one gun?”