by Amy Vansant
“Sorry. I’m afraid you were always my hero. Not Mrs. Terry.”
I’m her hero?
Frank felt his throat tighten. “Who’s Mrs. Terry?” he asked, trying to change the subject before his eyes teared.
“She’s the best mahjong player in Pineapple Port.”
“Right.” He swallowed hard. “Just my luck.”
Chapter Two
“Sounds like we’re going to get a direct hit,” said Darla as she and Mariska selected Publix shopping carts. They jostled hips, each trying to avoid the cart with the wonky leg, its wheel hovering three inches off the ground like a levitating magician.
With a grunt, Mariska jerked her cart clear of its nested mates. “Stupid hurricane. The thing is crazy. It’s headed for Texas, then Louisiana, then back at Texas, and now here.”
“Staggering like a drunk,” agreed Darla. “They should have named it after my ex-husband.”
“Which one?”
Darla shrugged. “Take your pick.”
They pushed their way towards the first aisle. Mariska stopped to check a display for BOGO wine, tucking tight to the bottles to avoid other shoppers. She didn’t drink wine, but how could she avoid a buy one get one free? To not buy a bottle would be losing money.
“It’s busy for this time of day,” she mumbled.
Darla agreed.
Plucking a bottle from the shelf to read its description, Mariska’s elbow grazed the shirt of a man rustling through plastic boxes of strawberries. He’d stood so close to her she could feel the heat radiating off of him.
Anger bubbled in her chest.
Who are all these people? This is my store.
Agitated, she wheeled away from the display and found Darla parked in front of the shredded cheeses. She clucked her tongue, staring daggers at a woman whose cart caromed towards her own.
“Why are so many people here?”
Darla shrugged. “I don’t know. I thought all the snowbirds left.”
“Idiots. We should have come earlier.” Darla tossed two packages of BOGO bacon into her cart. Publix offered one brand or another buy-one-get-one-free every week, so between the two of them, Darla and Mariska had close to twenty packages of bacon in their freezers. Trapped by a hurricane, they’d die of high blood pressure and salt intake long before they ever died of starvation.
Darla cocked her head like a curious beagle. “Hey...”
“Hm?” Mariska read the back of a package of fat-free cream cheese knowing she had every intention of buying the full-fat package.
“The eggs are all gone.”
“What?” Mariska turned to see a system of shelves she’d never realized existed. They’d always been covered with cartons of eggs.
“What happened?” she asked.
“I don’t know…”
Mariska watched a woman roll by with a child in her cart, the boy barely visible over multiple packages of toilet paper and paper towels.
“She’s going to lose that kid in there.”
“These empty shelves remind me of the last time a hurricane...” Darla’s voice trailed off as another woman stormed by with at least a dozen packages of ground beef.
“Oh no,” she said.
“What?” Marla followed her friend’s gaze to the passing cart. “Why is she—oh no.”
Mariska and Darla’s gazes met.
“Panic-buying,” they said in unison.
Darla set her jaw. “Snowbirds. First they clog up our highway, then they swarm our beaches like nasty little ants, and then they steal all our food.”
Mariska shook a fist. “Usually we only have to deal with snowbirds or hurricanes, not both. This early storm is for the birds.”
“Snowbirds.”
They giggled.
Darla sobered. “Okay. We’re going to have to do this like a military operation. I’ll hit the paper products, you hit the milk.”
Mariska craned her neck to see around the growing crowd. The refrigerated bins, once overflowing with chicken, beef and pork, glowed naked and white like empty rib cages.
“It’s all gone,” she whispered, her tone implying she’d lost a friend.
Darla’s shoulders slumped. “We’re too late.”
“But the hurricane only turned track towards us this morning. It probably won’t even hit us.”
Darla gritted her teeth so hard Mariska worried she’d crack a tooth.
“What is wrong with these people?”
“It’s like they lose their minds. You’d better get a move on to the paper products. I’ll meet you there.”
Darla saluted Mariska and took off, shamelessly sprinting her cart in the direction of aisle eight.
“Water!” Mariska called after her.
Mariska hustled to the meat, barely slowing to snatch the last bottle of her favorite coffee creamer from the shelf as if she’d been training for a Coffemate emergency all her life.
She stared with dismay at the empty meat shelves. Nothing remained except hot Italian sausage and corned beef set out for St. Patrick’s day—the one day a year people choked down corned beef in order to get back to drinking.
She grabbed the sausage, thinking lasagna, and pushed toward the paper product aisle. There, she found Darla standing with several other women, all of them gaping at empty shelves, seemingly shellshocked.
“All gone,” said Darla as Mariska approached.
The four of them stood there a moment longer recognizing a moment of silence, until one of the women spoke aloud.
“Potatoes.”
She slapped her hand over her mouth, realizing her mistake.
The women looked at each other, eyes wide with panicked determination. Leaping to action, three carts collided. Darla dodged them at the last second and skated by.
“I’ll get you a bag!” she called behind her as she torqued the cart around the corner headed for more produce.
“Get lettuce!” screamed Mariska.
Chapter Three
“Hey, do you need me for anything?”
Charlotte and Frank’s heads swiveled toward a salt-and-pepper-haired man crossing the lawn of the house next door. He wore khaki shorts, a bright pink polo and white sports socks pulled to mid-calf. A lime-green canvas belt circled his waist with tiny, embroidered martini glasses. He held a golf club, for no apparent reason, in his left hand.
Frank sniffed. “Depends. Who are you?”
The man thrust out his chin. “I found the body and called it in. Name’s Jack Canton.”
“You found the body?” Frank jerked a thumb in the direction of the woman being interviewed by Deputy Dan. “I thought she found it.”
Jack shrugged. “You could say we found it together. I heard her scream and offered to call it in because she doesn’t speak English so good.” He rolled his eyes to show how ridiculous he found that fact.
“So she found the body,” murmured Charlotte, suspecting for the rest of Jack’s life, his new favorite cocktail story would be, The Day I Found a Body.
Frank nodded his cheek in her direction without actually looking at her and she frowned.
I know. Shut up.
Frank fished his notepad from a leather case on his Batman-like utility belt. “We’d like to take a statement from you. You want to do it here or down at the station?”
The man looked at his watch, unable to hide his annoyance. He’d wanted to claim responsibility for finding the body, but apparently hadn’t counted on being dragged into the paperwork portion of the equation. Charlotte guessed him to be about sixty-five years old. Odds were good he didn’t have a nine-to-five job.
Jack crossed his arms against his chest. “I was about to put up my own hurricane shutters but I can take a minute.”
Really? Charlotte eyed the golf club in his hand. Apparently, he carried it around all the time, like a security blanket.
Frank licked the tip of his tiny pencil. Charlotte didn’t know how licking it helped, but pencils were about as common as VCRs. She kept
one in her utility drawer for marking walls when hanging pictures.
“So tell me exactly what you saw,” said Frank.
Jack rubbed his nose and stared at the body as if trying to recreate the scene in his head. “Nothing really. I came out to get my paper and that little Mexican lady screamed. I thought Ted fell—”
“Ted? You know his last name?”
“No. He’s pretty new.”
“So you didn’t know him well?”
Jack shook his head. “No, no. We introduced ourselves when he first moved in, but we didn’t become fast friends. Not really my type.”
“How so?”
“No reason really. He’s just old.”
Charlotte snorted a laugh and then cleared her throat to disguise it.
Jack, the spring chicken.
Frank glowered at her. “You need a tissue?” he asked.
She sniffed. “No. Sorry. Allergies.”
Frank grunted and refocused on Jack. “Okay. Go on. You saw Ted there, dead?”
Jack stabbed his club into the ground and leaned on it. “I didn’t know he was dead right away. I saw the ladder and figured he fell. I asked her what happened, but you know...I figured she was illegal and too afraid to call the cops.”
“Why would you assume she’s illegal?” asked Charlotte.
Frank took a half step in front of her. “Do you know her?”
Jack cast a condescending glance in Charlotte direction. “She’s dressed like a housekeeper and she’s Mexican. I did the math.”
“So you know her well enough to know she’s Mexican?” asked Charlotte.
Jack rolled his eyes. “No, I mean Hispanic. Whatever.”
“Did you touch the body?” asked Frank, leaning to further block her from Jack. She took a step back.
“I checked his pulse,” said Jack.
“How?”
“The usual way, I guess.”
Frank shook his head. “How exactly. We have to account for fingerprints on the body.”
“Oh. His neck. With two fingers, like they do on TV.”
“And you didn’t feel anything?”
“I didn’t have to. He was cold as a stone.”
Charlotte elbowed Frank. “Ten bucks says he died last night.”
Frank scowled. “Why would he be on a ladder at night?”
“Exactly.”
They turned back to Jack, who stood glaring at them.
Frank cleared his throat. “Figure of speech. We’re not really betting on the investigation.” He glanced back at Charlotte. “Isn’t there somewhere you need to be?”
“No.”
“I think Dan could use your help.”
Charlotte sighed. “Fine.”
She made her way to Deputy Daniel. He’d finished interviewing the housekeeper, who’d taken a seat on the front step.
“Anything good?” she asked.
Daniel looked up from his notes and grinned. “Hey, Charlotte.”
“Hey, Daniel. Did she know anything helpful?”
“Nah. She found the body and that dude over there called it in for her. Name’s Corentine Flores. She’s from El Salvador.”
Charlotte glanced back at Jack. “I knew it. Not Mexican.”
“What?”
“Nothing. How long has she been working for Ted?”
Dan’s eyes grew wide, pupils bouncing in the direction of Corentine. “I don’t know. Should I have asked her that?”
The quick whoop whoop! of a police cruiser made them jump as the FDLE officers pulled to the scene.
Charlotte frowned. She needed to leave so Frank didn’t get in trouble for letting her poke around. Technically, her training was over and while Frank did deputize her from time to time for particular cases, she hadn’t been officially assigned to this one. Though after the discovery of the brick, she hoped she’d earned a spot on the team should FDLE ask them for additional help.
Two officers approached Daniel. One ignored her completely, the other gave her a head-to-toe eye washing and grinned.
“Where’s the body?” asked the other.
“Are you a witness?” asked the one with eyes on her.
“Nah, she’s Charlotte,” said Daniel. “She’s the witness.” He pointed to Corentine on the step.
“I’m just a neighbor. I’ll get out of your way,” said Charlotte. “You’re going to want to look at the brick in the back west corner of his back yard though. Sheriff thinks maybe someone hit him with it.”
Both men seemed to refocus on the task at hand and headed toward Frank with a touch of their hat brims as goodbye. The all-business officer slapped his partner on the arm and pointed him toward Corentine.
The other clucked his tongue, but headed in her direction.
Daniel leaned toward Charlotte. “Is that true?”
“What?”
“You think someone hit him with a brick?”
Charlotte nodded. “Looks like it to me.”
Chapter Four
Three Days Ago
“Headed for Tampa,” murmured Jamie Moriarty from the common area of her current home, the Lowell Correctional Institution in Marion County Florida. Her gaze moved like a laser-pointer past the word Tampa on the weatherman’s map to a little area southwest in Manatee County. The tiny town of Charity didn’t earn a spot on the weatherman’s map, but it was there. There, with her daughter and the people who’d sent her to prison. Something about the hurricane made the synapses in her brain fire like lightening.
I need to be there for this storm.
“Why we watchin’ weather? Nobody care about no weather.”
Jamie looked down at the skinny punk sitting in the chair beside her, the girl’s body speckled with tiny holes where earrings and bolts once threaded.
Charming.
She didn’t respond, just stared, until the girl looked away.
Jamie strolled away from the television. She didn’t want to press her luck. She had moves, but she wasn’t a large woman. Taller than average and thin, she was athletic without being athletic. If the punk wanted to hurt her, she could have, easily enough.
The first thing Jamie did upon hearing where she’d be remanded for life—or at least until Texas tried her for her crimes there and she received the death penalty—was make sure her lawyer contacted the right people and put money in all the right pockets. Everyone in Central California knew not to mess with her.
Well, everybody except one woman. The one who’d refused to follow her leader’s hands-off mandate only to end up running through the common area screaming and less one eye after trying to catch Jamie off-guard in the shower with a homemade shiv.
Jamie wasn’t the toughest, biggest woman, but she was underestimated. Bonus, the idiot had wailed like a doomsday siren through the prison. Jamie couldn’t buy advertising like that.
Her lip curled at the memory. The whole thing had been distasteful, to say the least. She didn’t have the time or resources to plan a proper Puzzle Killer death, and she hadn’t relished piercing the woman’s eye with a sharpened plastic spoon.
But, it had to be done. Plain old, boring murder was such a common thing for the residents of her cell block, so she’d had to send a more powerful message. They didn’t fear death, but nobody wants to be blind.
She knew from gangster movies that removing a tongue implied the victim was a snitch. Moonpie wasn’t a snitch, so she’d gone with the eye and let her fellow inmates interpret the act any way they liked. Like art.
Jamie heard the television channel change behind her. They’d waited until she’d walked twenty feet away before switching it.
Still got it.
She moved toward a nearby guard with purpose, her prison fatigues almost flattering on her hard, square frame. At fifty, she still had the body of a model’s clothing dummy. The prison’s best hairdresser, incarcerated for stabbing her boyfriend in the neck with shears, kept her shoulder-length naturally blonde hair hovering perfectly above her shoulders. She found i
t odd the prison allowed that woman to handle shears, but Stabby McHaircut was almost always available for an appointment.
The guard watched her approach, the dark-skinned woman’s expression growing more sour with every step. The screw’s mother’s bank account had recently doubled, but she still didn’t like being called on to payback for her payoff.
“Hey, Deja,” Jamie purred, arriving in earshot.
“Hey, Jamie. What can I do for your highness today? Will you be stripping anyone for parts? Poppin’ out a few eyes? You know it’s cuz of me you ain’t die in the hole for that mess.”
“I need to make a phone call to my lawyer.”
“You need? Or you want?”
“Depends. Does your momma need an extra five thousand dollars?”
Deja grew agitated and scanned the area. She leaned in and hissed her answer. “I don’t want to hear my momma’s name anywhere near your nasty lips.”
“I’ll take that as a yes.”
Deja frowned. “Hold on. I ain’t said yes. I don’t trust you.”
Jamie let her head flop to the side, as if she were exasperated by the worries of a small child. “Sweetheart, I kill people. I don’t steal. I’m not a con. You can trust me with everything except your life.”
“Angel was a thief,” said Deja, mumbling as if to herself.
“Angel? Is that your daughter?”
“My daughter?” Deja barked the words too loud and had to sweep the room with a practiced prison guard glower to push the other inmates’ attentions from her. Mission accomplished, she turned back to Jamie. “Are you calling my daughter a thief?”
“No, I thought you were.”
“Angel isn’t my daughter. She’s the one you—” Deja flicked her finger near her eye and made a sound like popping champagne with her mouth.
Jamie blinked. “Oh. Was that her name?” It hadn’t occurred to her to ask. She’d always called the girl Moonpie due to her broad, pockmarked face.
She shrugged. “Then I did her a favor. They can release her. She’d make a crappy thief now, feeling her way around a house looking for the jewelry.”
Deja laughed and covered her mouth with her hand. “You’re bad.”
“Matter of opinion.”
Deja squinted at her. “Where’d you get all this money anyhow, if you don’t steal?”