“I hope so. I mean, I don’t really hope so. It’s just that I hope that’s why they arrested him, not because he’s a murderer. Does that make any sense?”
“Yeah, makes total sense. Melvin’s a nice guy. No one wants to think he killed someone. You want the bad guys to be…well…bad guys. But I guess that’s why neither of us is in the police force, Mollie. We can’t be objective when it comes to this kind of thing.”
“You think Chief Dalton is objective?”
“Sure, why wouldn’t he be?”
“It’s just that he’s such a pain in the you-know-what sometimes.” I thought about the colored-marker incident. “Actually, make that all the time.”
Ben laughed. “Maybe that’s why they have an anonymous tip line. So people don’t have to talk directly to him.”
“There’s an anonymous tip line?”
“Sure.” Ben leaned forward. “Why? Do you have a tip for the police?”
“Me? Of course not,” I said, thinking about the file folder I had tucked away in the drawer of my nightstand. That might solve the problem of how to get the information about the real estate scam to the police without revealing exactly how it was found.
“Earth to Mollie,” Ben said. “You’re lost in thought. Come on, you can tell me. What have you found that you want to tip the police off about?”
“Nothing. I was just thinking about dolphins. I see you’ve got your dolphin T-shirt on again.”
Ben’s face turned a little pink. “Alejandra said she liked it last week.”
“She won’t be here tonight. She’s at a friend’s wedding this weekend.”
“Oh,” he said glumly.
“But I like your shirt.”
“Thanks, I guess.”
A loud commotion over by the buffet table interrupted Ben’s thoughts about Alejandra and my thoughts about how best to disguise my voice when I called the tip line.
“Get out of here, you mangy cat!” Nancy was waving a broom as a streak of fur bolted past her and hid underneath a table.
“I’d better go see what trouble Mrs. Moto has gotten into now,” I said.
I walked over to the table, crouched down, and gave her a stern look. “Nancy is mad at you. You really don’t want to get on her bad side.”
As I was trying to convince the cat to come sit over at our table, my phone beeped, alerting me to a new email. Alan had sent me a link to the video from the fishing boat fire in the Keys. I held the phone with one hand while scratching Mrs. Moto under her chin with my other. The first part of the video showed the wedding reception that he had been there to film. The happy couple was posing on one of the docks with their bridal party when a boat burst into flames behind them. They screamed and ran back up to the clubhouse while Alan stayed behind and continued to capture footage of the fire.
After watching the video a couple of times, I was convinced that Connie was in the background by the boat that went up in flames. And the man standing next to her looked a lot like Ken.
15
HARASSING SEAGULLS
“Enough, already!” I said as the third sanding belt of the day broke. I had spent the past five hours working on Marjorie Jane’s bottom, and nothing had been going right. I was exhausted, frustrated, and ready to pay the next person who walked by a hundred dollars to take the boat off our hands. I pulled back the hood of my Smurf suit and knocked on the hull. “Hey, is anyone in there? I’m ready to go home, get something to eat, and wash all this grime off me.”
“Wow, are you done sanding the bottom already?” Scooter asked, leaning over the side of the boat.
“No, but I’m through for the day.”
Scooter looked down at his watch. “But it’s only two.”
“I can’t take any more torture today.” I wiped grit off my lips, which were desperately in need of some sort of industrial-strength lip balm. “Besides, Mrs. Moto needs to be fed.”
“Oh, come on, she can hold out for a little while longer. This is the first day we’ve been able to get back in the boatyard and work on Marjorie Jane.” He wiped the sweat off his brow. “Did you see Nancy go after Chief Dalton at the barbecue last night? It’s thanks to her that we’re finally able to catch up on all the work we need to do on the boat.”
“Did we sign up for a race that no one told me about?”
“Well, not exactly.”
“So there aren’t any real deadlines other than the ones you decided to set for us?”
“But the sooner we finish up in here, the sooner we can splash the boat in the water, the sooner we can get her ready to go, and the sooner we can sail off to the Caribbean.”
“Wow, there’s a lot of ‘sooners’ in that sentence. If you checked a thesaurus, there would be a lot of helpful alternatives like, ‘the more speedily we go home and feed Mrs. Moto, the more quickly I can have a nice bubble bath, and the more rapidly you can give me a foot rub.’ See how much better that sentence sounds? It just rolls off the tongue.”
Scooter smiled and held his hands up. “Okay, I know when I’ve been beaten. Why don’t you head back home, and I’ll give you a call later so you can come back and pick me up? That’ll give me time to finish up a few things.”
“Okay, sounds like a plan.” I unzipped my suit, wadded it up into a ball, and threw it into the trash.
After I walked back to the boat, Scooter said, “Actually, you know what? Why don’t I sleep on the boat tonight? That way you can just relax and don’t have to worry about coming back here.”
“You want to sleep here? It’s a mess down below. The floorboards are still torn up. The lights aren’t working. Neither is the toilet. Are you some sort of masochist?”
“I don’t mind roughing it.”
“Fine, I’ll tell Mrs. Moto you chose Marjorie Jane over her. We can have a quiet girls’ night together. I’ll have a glass of wine, she’ll have some catnip, and we’ll watch a movie.”
Scooter pointed over at Mana Kai. Leilani was sitting in the cockpit of her catamaran working on her computer. “Why don’t you ask Leilani to come over? You were saying it would be fun to get together with her again.”
“That’s a good idea. Maybe she’d like a break from her boat as well.” I knocked on their boat and shouted, “Hey, Leilani! Fancy some wine and Thai carryout?”
She didn’t respond, so I climbed up a few rungs of their ladder and knocked again. Still no response. I didn’t want to go the rest of the way up and hoist myself on deck to get her attention—it’s a little like opening someone’s front door and walking in uninvited—so I tried knocking one more time, bruising my knuckles on the fiberglass in the process.
“She probably can’t hear you.” I looked down and saw Ken standing at the bottom of the ladder. “She’s always listening to those audiobooks of hers. I can drop an entire toolbox on the floor, and she wouldn’t hear a peep. Here, let me try.”
I watched as he ascended the ladder, walked across the deck, and tapped her on the shoulder. She lifted up her head and gave him a smile. He removed the headphones she was wearing. “Mollie was trying to get your attention,” he said, pointing down at me.
“Oh, she was? I didn’t hear her.” She leaned over the side of the cockpit and waved at me. “Sorry about that. My book is getting to the good part,” she said. “I’m determined to finish it tonight and find out whodunit.”
“Ah, I understand. I was going to see if you wanted to come over later for a girls’ night, but maybe another time.”
After Leilani and I settled on a date for the following week, I asked Ken to tell me more about the volunteer work he did with Connie. I mentioned that I had heard the two of them had worked on a project in the Florida Keys a few weeks ago. Of course, I hadn’t heard that so much as possibly seen the two of them on a video next to a boat on fire.
Ken squirmed and looked at me uncomfortably. He told me that he hadn’t been down in that part of Florida in months and that the only work he did with Connie was related to public lecture
s and films. The conversation ended abruptly when he went inside their boat without saying goodbye. Leilani tried to apologize for his behavior, saying that he was under a lot of pressure trying to secure grant money, but I wasn’t convinced that was the reason why.
* * *
Mrs. Moto and I enjoyed an early dinner for two, probably better described as “linner”—that meal you have between lunch and dinner. Personally, I could see making this a regular part of my day. Like my feline companion, I function so much better when I have frequent feedings.
We both had tuna, except hers came out of a can, while mine came out of the freezer. Despite what Mrs. Moto would try to lead you to believe, one can is a perfectly adequate serving for a cat of her size and age. I even showed her the label to prove it to her, but she still wasn’t having it. I was finally able to appease her, but only after I put a tiny piece of my own tuna on her plate.
Afterward, we went for a walk on the beach. As usual, she dashed off in pursuit of gulls. While she terrorized the birds, I paused and breathed in the salt air. Why would Scooter voluntarily choose to spend the afternoon and evening working on a dilapidated boat when he could be here listening to the gentle lapping of the waves on the shore?
My peace and quiet was interrupted by the loud shrieks of two boys running down the beach chasing Mrs. Moto. The birds had scattered and were watching smugly from a safe distance. The tables had finally turned in their favor. The cat was the one being chased, not them.
“Get over here right this second!” a harried-looking mother screamed. “Leave that poor cat alone.”
She seized the boys by their hands and led them back to their beach towels, muttering something about taking away their Xbox privileges. Poor things, I thought as I walked past them. I knew all about maternal threats, except in my case, we didn’t have all the electronic gadgets kids had nowadays—although the mention of taking away my collection of Barbie dolls always elicited good behavior. For a while, at least.
I looked around for Mrs. Moto, but there was no sign of her. The seagulls were still enjoying their reprieve from their furry stalker. “Here, kitty, kitty,” I shouted as I walked down the beach. “Come on out from where you’re hiding, and I’ll give you some extra tuna.” Still nothing.
The two boys had escaped the clutches of their mother again and were running toward a very impressive-looking sandcastle. “If you don’t get back here this instant, there won’t be any ice cream for dessert,” she shouted. That did the trick. They galloped back, grabbed their plastic sand buckets and shovels, and obediently made their way up the path toward the parking lot.
As I paused to examine the sandcastle more closely, admiring its four large turrets decorated with seashells and seaweed, I saw two pointed ears and a pair of green eyes peeking over the top of the moat.
“Don’t worry, they’re gone,” I told the feline. She gave a faint meow. I motioned her over to a piece of driftwood. “Come on, let’s sit here for a while and make sure there aren’t any more small humans waiting to attack you before we head back.” She curled up by my feet while I kept a lookout.
“Is that you, Mollie?” a woman called out.
Mrs. Moto gazed at the intruders with a mixture of curiosity and wariness.
“It’s okay. This is Fiona and Connie,” I said. “You remember them, don’t you? We met them the other day when they were with Simon, that nice guy from FAROUT. They’re not going to chase you. They’re turtle people. They love animals.”
She padded over to them and sniffed at them cautiously. Fiona won her over completely when she picked her up and gave her a few scratches under her chin.
“What are you two doing here?” I asked.
“We were passing out these,” Connie said. She reached in her backpack and handed me a pamphlet. “Trying to raise awareness about turtle conservation.”
“You guys are so dedicated. It’s really great that you have a cause you believe so much in.”
“Well, we do what we can,” Fiona said. “We have to try to reach the public in lots of different ways to get the message across. These work for some people.” She pointed at the pamphlet in my hand. “But others throw them away.”
“At least people take them from you. Maybe they read them before they toss them. We’ve got a much harder time trying to hand out stuff for FAROUT. All you have to do is mention alien abduction, and for some reason, people just walk away without hearing what you have to say. Even the offer of a free bumper sticker doesn’t do it.”
“Yeah, well, talk of little green men will do that,” Connie said dismissively. “But when it comes to serious causes, I really think Ken has the right idea—videos.”
“Ken Choi?” I asked.
“Yep, him. He’s over there right now filming. He’s making a video about how the toxic red tide we’ve been having on the coast is impacting sea life.”
I looked over where she was pointing and could just about make out someone standing near the shore holding up a small camera on a selfie stick.
“He makes short videos for his YouTube channel, but he’s also been involved in making longer films,” Connie said.
“Speaking of films, I think I saw you on a video of a wedding that took place a few weeks ago in the Florida Keys.”
“Me?” Connie asked. “Couldn’t have been. The last wedding I was at was for my niece last year.”
“Are you sure? The lady looked a lot like you. A fishing boat caught on fire during the reception.”
Connie frowned. “Must have been someone else. I think I’d remember that. Probably just someone who looked like me. What are you doing watching wedding videos anyway? Unless you’re the one getting married, they’re so boring. Now, films about protecting wildlife, like the ones Ken makes, are much more interesting.”
“Didn’t he just show one the other day at the Florida Turtle Trust meeting?” Fiona asked.
“Yeah. He introduced it and then led a Q&A afterward,” Connie said. “That turned out to be a huge disaster.”
“Why, what happened?” I asked.
“Right after the film started, I saw him take off in his car. We couldn’t find him anywhere when it ended, so we improvised by serving refreshments while we waited for him to show up.”
“So he wasn’t there the whole time?”
“No. I tried to ask him where he was going, but he said he had something urgent to take care of.”
“How long was the film?” I asked.
“About two hours.”
“And how much longer after it finished before he turned up?”
Connie scratched her head. “I don’t know. I guess thirty, forty-five minutes? Why are you so curious about Ken? I was ticked off that he left, but it all worked out okay in the end.”
“Just one last question. What time did the movie begin?”
“Eight,” Connie said. “Listen, if you’re interested in future film showings, I’ve got another pamphlet that lists them all.” She bent down and started to stick her hand in her backpack. A furry paw reached out and swiped at her.
Fiona laughed. “Looks like you have a hitchhiker.”
The older woman did not appear to be amused. She coaxed Mrs. Moto out of the bag, zipped it up, and slung it over her shoulder. “Come on, let’s get going,” she said to Fiona.
“Hey, something fell out,” I said, running after them. As I handed Connie her MP3 player and earbuds, it all clicked into place. I knew who had killed Darren and Suzanne.
* * *
I sat there for a while thinking about what Fiona and Connie had said. Ken wasn’t at the Florida Turtle Trust event the entire night, which meant that he didn’t have an alibi for Suzanne’s murder. And his alibi for the night of Darren’s murder didn’t hold up either. Because Leilani had been working in the aft cabin with her headphones on, drowning out any other noise, he could have easily left his boat and killed the young man without his wife being any the wiser.
“Come on, Mrs. Moto. It’s time to go
home,” I said, scooping her up in my arms. “I think I left my phone on the counter, and we need to call the—”
“Who do you need to call?” I turned and saw Ken standing behind me, holding his camera.
“Just my mom. You know how moms are,” I stammered.
“Oh, your mom will be fine. You can call her later. I’m making a video, and I thought you could help me with it. You were so interested earlier today in the work Connie and I did in the Florida Keys that I think you’ll like this one.”
“Sorry, I really have to go and call her. She gets worried when I don’t check in every night at this time.” I laughed nervously. “She might even call the police to check up on me.” I backed up a few steps toward the sandcastle and stumbled. Mrs. Moto leaped out of my arms and dived into the sandcastle’s moat.
Ken grabbed my arm and pulled me toward him. “I said, I need your help with my video.”
“I really need to get back. Scooter is waiting for me at the cottage.”
“No, he isn’t. I heard him tell you that he’s staying on the boat tonight, remember?”
He reached behind his back, pulled a handgun out from the waistband of his shorts, and jammed it into my side. “Now, start filming.” He shoved the camera into my hand and stepped back, keeping the gun pointed at me.
I looked behind me at the sandcastle. Mrs. Moto had crawled down into the moat. Her ears were flattened, her back was arched, and she was growling. Ken waved the gun at her. “Go on, get out of here,” I yelled. She stood her ground, growling louder.
“Stop staring at that cat,” he hissed. “Press the Record button, and aim the camera toward me.” While I tried to keep my hands from shaking, Ken coldly recounted why Darren and Suzanne deserved to die and that anyone else who stood in the way of the environment would also suffer retribution.
“You killed them to protect the environment? How is that going to win anyone over to your cause?” I blurted out. “Ecoterrorism is bad enough, but murder?”
Bodies in the Boatyard Page 19