Glossy Lips

by Barbara Silkstone

  “Somebody at the hospital put my things in a plastic bag. I asked a nurse to use my phone to call you with my speed dial. She did a few times but said you weren’t answering. That got me really worried. I thought maybe something had happened to you. I was gonna ask for the police if I didn’t hear from you soon.”

  “How did they find you?” Lizzy asked. “No one stops in at the cottage unless they’re invited.”

  “The paramedics said someone called nine-one-one from your landline. Whoever clobbered me didn’t want me to die. He wanted me down while he finished rifling your house. My guess is Sterling. He must have wanted something you have. Why does he keep wanting to see you?”

  The green-eyed monster was alive and kicking. I watched his reaction as Lizzy broke the news to him.

  “Sterling’s dead,” she said. “He died this morning.”

  I could have predicted the look on Dave’s face. It wasn’t one of surprise or sympathy. It was satisfaction. He did have motive, but no opportunity. He wouldn’t have been welcomed at Barracuda Manor and he was working when Peanut was killed. His name went on my “B” list of suspects.

  “We better get to your place,” I said, tapping Lizzy on the shoulder.

  “Poor WonderDog! He must be totally freaked out.” She touched her fingertips to her lips. “I hope he hasn’t been dognapped!”

  “Call the cops…” Dave mumbled, his voice trailing off.

  “Yup,” I said as I tugged Lizzy from his bedside. It appeared the killer was coming unglued—fast. The key to the mystery might be in her cottage if the invader hadn’t run off with it.

  We raced across the asphalt parking lot. An invisible hand was squeezing my throat, cutting off my breathing. What would we find at Lizzy’s place? Had the paramedics thought to close the door? If WonderDog was hurt or had wandered off, my friend would be devastated.

  Chapter 31

  I didn’t have to call the cops because just as we reached the car my phone rang. It was Kal. “Nod once if you ladies are okay.” If he was trying for light humor his timing was dreadful.

  My laugh came out short and dry. “We’re okay but Lizzy’s guy friend Dave Bronson was hit from behind and knocked unconscious while at her cottage. We’re just leaving the hospital now. Not to worry. We weren’t there when it happened.”

  “Stay away from her place!” he ordered. “Promise!”

  There was a long pause, which I chose to end by a clever deflection. “Any word from the medical examiner?”

  “That’s why I’m calling. There’s an unusual toxin in Kelly’s blood. The ME is finishing the autopsy now.”

  I stepped away from the car on the chance Lizzy might overhear the “a” word. Despite that her sort-of ex-husband was dead, her boyfriend was in the hospital, and a corpse had gone for a ride in her car, she seemed to be rolling with the punches.

  Kal continued. “So far, the ME is able to tell me what it’s not but not what it is. There was no sign of illegal drugs, alcohol, amphetamines, and none of the common poisons such as arsenic or strychnine. No wounds, abrasions, or needle marks.”

  “Any clues as to what the toxin might be?” I held up my index finger to Lizzy. She was sitting in the car, rolling her hand in a speed-it-up motion.

  “There was a trace of what might be digitalis in his blood, but if he was on heart meds that would account for it. We’re trying to reach his doctor now.”

  “What about his lungs and stomach contents?” I asked, sounding as if I did this all the time. It was a little creepy but I fell back on my one year of medical training to pull me through the ick parts.

  “His lungs were clear. The odd thing is his stomach. Kelly ate fried grouper sometime early this morning,” Kal said.

  There was dead air for the longest time before I spoke. Sterling had fried fish for breakfast? “Dave Bronson works at Crabby Nancy’s Fried Fish. But he couldn’t have brought the fish to Sterling—they don’t deliver. Besides he hated Sterling!”

  I could hear Kal thinking through the silence on the line. “Not saying he did. It could have been leftovers, although it seems an odd thing. See if Lizzy knows anything about Sterling’s breakfast habits. I’ll ask the housekeeper.”

  “Can you share anything you gathered from questioning Lizzy’s father?”

  “Dingler gave me the slip. When I got to his place he wasn’t there, even though he’d agreed to the meeting. The neighbors said he mentioned taking his yacht out, but it’s in the marina.” His voice took on a growly tone. “I’m not putting up with his tricks. I’ll haul him in for obstructing justice or jay-walking—whatever!”

  “If he wasn’t at home maybe he attacked Dave,” I said.

  “Why?”

  The word echoed in my ear because I was thinking the same question.

  “I’m taking one more lap around town, stopping at all Dingler’s known haunts,” Kal said. “If I don’t find him I’ll head to Barracuda Manor to pick it apart, piece-by-piece. I’ll have a forensic guy with me. This time we’ll treat the place as a crime scene and not death by natural causes. The ME’s snap judgment was wrong.”

  “Lizzy and I’ll meet you there later. I’d like to get into Addy’s head and see what she knows. I’ll use my therapist techniques and gently pry so as not to upset her any further. Mrs. LaVine can stay with Heather, so the child won’t get caught up in the investigation.”

  “Ah…Ivy LaVine, the scofflaw. Good choice.” He hesitated. “Did you just insert yourself into police business?”

  “You inserted me into it as your freebee consultant.” I walked slowly toward my car, still keeping one finger in the air in response to Lizzy’s hand signal. “Wait!” I finally remembered to ask him. “Has Peanut…I mean Newton Nott’s car been found?”

  “Yes! I forgot to mention it. You’re really good at this. You might consider adding criminal investigations to your CV.”

  I was certain the murderer would have a connection to Peanut’s car. “Where was it?”

  Lizzy honked the horn. I waggled my finger at her and stretched my face into an extreme grin.

  “Nott’s car was in Jaimie Toast’s garage,” Kal said.

  “Jaimie!” The air whooshed from my chest. It was Jaimie who took Peanut to the police station to pick up Lizzy’s car! She had an opportunity to kill him when he returned the car to Barracuda Manor. She could have gotten away with it without being seen. Sterling wasn’t home. He was busy scrawling on Lizzy’s mirror. Addy and Heather were probably sleeping. But what was Jaimie’s motive?

  “Could she have killed Peanut?”

  “When I brought Jamie home in the police car, she was staggering drunk,” Kal said. “She insisted she felt fine and that her own car was in her garage. She pushed the door opener to show me. Marinated in Bloody Marys and not thinking clearly, she appeared honestly surprised to see his car there.”

  Kal spoke to someone in the background and then continued. “We’ve had a BOLO out for Peanut’s black Lexus, and there it sat. The keys were on the counter in her kitchen. She claims she doesn’t remember how the car got there. It’s clear there was something going on between them.”

  “Good work!” I back-peddled since my approval sounded condescending. “I mean that’s good news.”

  A herd of suspicions stampeded through my brain, their tiny feet giving me a major headache. But with the migraine things were beginning to come together. “Did you leave an officer at Barracuda?” I asked, hoping the answer was no.

  “I sent deputy Robbie to pick up Nott’s car. That leaves no one on duty at Sterling’s house. Perhaps the housekeeper is back on her feet. She’ll let you in if you get there ahead of me. Just don’t touch anything.”

  Lizzy almost yanked the words from my mouth as I filled her in on Kal’s update. I told her that her father was being elusive. I told her about the toxicology report avoiding the mention of the autopsy. How much could she cope with in one information dump? When I got to the part about Jaimie and Peanut, her only
comment was a terse. “That’s probably the only thing that makes sense.”

  We headed to her cottage to rescue WonderDog and see what damage had been done. Boy was I wrong in believing nothing bad could ever happen in such a whimsical place. The best sage smudge stick in the world wouldn’t cleanse that bungalow from the negative vibes set by Sterling Kelly.

  I feared the worst was yet to come.

  Chapter 32

  As we turned off the main road onto the sandy trail that led to Lizzy’s house, I hid my car behind a clump of scrub pine about a hundred yards from her cottage. We could observe the setting without being seen.

  We waited about five minutes but didn’t see a single brute. “Ready?” I asked.

  Lizzy tugged a metal rod from her large purse and gripped it in her fist. It looked heavy. “Yup!”

  “What’s that?”

  “I have no idea, but it should pack a wallop. It was on the table in Dave’s hospital room.”

  “Try not to make any noise. Someone might be inside. I’ll leave the car here with the keys under the seat in case you have to escape without me.”

  Lizzy cringed at my words.

  We got out and eased the doors closed. As the sky turned a vivid red-orange and the sun began its descent, we walked cautiously, taking an indirect approach to the cottage. Standing behind a cabbage palm, we surveyed her home. No sign of activity.

  Like a team of ninjas, we ran to the door, Lizzy armed with her medical device and me carrying my purse and New York attitude.

  The yard looked the same as it had in the morning, except for a set of wide tire tracks probably made by the EMT vehicle that rescued Dave. The front door vibrated with the repeated thuds of what could only be WonderDog.

  She didn’t need her key to open the door—it wasn’t locked. As bad as Sterling’s vandalism had been, it was nothing compared to the horror that lay before us. She moaned and then cursed a stream of words sounding more like Jaimie than Lizzy.

  WonderDog threw himself in her arms, slobbering her with kisses as he whimpered pathetically.

  The main room was turned upside down. Everything was stacked in teetering piles as if systematically inspected and discarded. A large homespun rug was folded in fours and lay in a corner. Whoever burgled the cottage was obsessively neat. OCD?

  I whipped out my phone, and took a couple of photos of the mess. We might need them for evidence. Poor Lizzy stood in the middle of the stacks looking like a lost child. I could imagine how she felt.

  Leading the way across the room, I looked back at the kitchen and shuddered. I moved to the bedroom door and stepped in front of Lizzy in a useless attempt to protect her from the memories of the Womdampy!

  The clothes were off their hangers and piled on the bed, albeit tidily. It appeared the top of the dressing table had been cleared. Bottles lay in a basket on the floor. The ransacking looked to be the work of a desperate person with a tendency to neatness.

  “Whoever did this is going to pay dearly,” I said, putting my arm around my friend. I allowed her a moment to mourn the desecration of her sanctuary while I studied the way things were disarranged. Whoever did this was strong, probably even strong enough to stuff Peanut’s body in the car trunk.

  I noted the height of the piles in the family room and kitchen, and then thought about Dave. He was a fairly tall guy, and he was hit on the head. That meant the perpetrator had to be tall and most likely on a rampage—an orderly rampage.

  “We don’t have time to clean this up. Just take a look around and see if there’s anything that—I was going to say looks out of place—but that won’t work.”

  She laughed, but it came out a sad chortle.

  “Let’s go into each room before you lock up. If there’s anything of value you want, you’d best take it now.”

  As Lizzy picked over her possessions, Sterling’s final words came back to me. I closed my eyes to capture his last moments. After he had asked for Heather, he told Lizzy her lip gloss looked awful. Awful! That was it!

  “Your ‘Awful Lip Gloss’ box! Find it!” I squealed.

  “Why?”

  “Because you weren’t wearing lip gloss when Sterling died!” I said.

  She knotted her face as she repeated my words. “I wasn’t wearing lip gloss when Sterling died?”

  “Right! You couldn’t bring yourself to put on any lip stuff after the mirror mess! So why’d he say that your lip gloss looked awful? You weren’t wearing any!”

  “Could you repeat what you just said?” Lizzy gave me a blank look.

  “Sterling gave you a clue. It wasn’t an insult. He meant for you to look in your ‘Awful Lip Gloss’ box!”

  Lizzy’s mouth opened but nothing came out.

  “Trust me. I’m on to something!”

  “Why would he leave a clue in my lipstick box?” She turned hesitantly toward the dressing table. “During the short time we lived together, he groused continuously about how messy I kept my makeup drawer. I never opened it when he was in the bedroom because he would pummel me with insults. It was my drawer and my business how I kept it.”

  “Exactly!” I said. “The graffiti on your mirror were insults designed to flag your attention. I can’t guess why but I’m certain there is or was something hidden in your dressing table. Based on his last words, I’m guessing it’s in your ‘Awful Lip Gloss’ box. A place he was certain you wouldn’t go unless he pointed you in that direction.”

  Chapter 33

  Lizzy picked her way over the books and baskets piled on the floor. I was two steps and three boxes behind her. I watched as she sorted through her jumbled makeup, retrieving the shoebox labeled ‘Awful Lip Gloss’. The lid was on the carton. I held my breath as she opened it. Below the first layer of rejected lip gloss lay a long silver tube. Lizzy took it out and rolled it over in her hand. “This isn’t mine.”

  The tube was about ten inches long and about an inch and a half in diameter. There was a small metal slide on its side. Lizzy pushed it open exposing five tiny number wheels each one set at zero. She ran her finger over the first wheel and it advanced from zero to one.

  “What do you think it is?” she said.

  Myron showed me a similar tube years ago. “Would ‘ya look at this!” he said. “What I have here is a small un-crackable safe! It’s easy to hide and opens with a combination. All I gotta do is set the numbers and then remember them. At my age, that’s the hard part.”

  “It’s a tube-safe,” I said. “It must contain something important to have caused Sterling to behave like a nut-job. Scrawling insanities on your mirror was to call your attention to the dressing table.”

  “My brain’s too foggy to get it,” Lizzy said.

  “My guess is this contains something he didn’t want you to have until he was gone—papers, a flash drive, whatever. He must have feared he wasn’t going to make it but hadn’t completely given up hope so he concocted this way to get it to you only if he died.”

  “Why didn’t he use his safe? He has a perfectly good wall safe in his master bedroom.”

  “That’s what we need to find out. We have to beat Kal to Barracuda Manor. I want to get inside Addy’s head, before Kal blunders in. She might have a sense of what Sterling was thinking in his final days.”

  I looked around the cottage cabinets and under the kitchen sink. I spotted a pair of huge yellow rubber glove and tucked them in my purse—just in case. Sterling had been poisoned. Who knew what we might run into.

  Lizzy gathered more clothing, a photo album, and a framed picture of her as a little girl, standing next to a pretty lady who must have been her mother.

  With a worried hound at our heels we dashed through the sandy landscape, clambered into my car, and set off for Barracuda Manor.

  Lizzy sat in the passenger seat and fiddled with the tube-safe while I drove us from the beach to old town and thought about Addy. She’d be in the caretaker’s cottage since the big house was taped off as a crime scene. For an effective intervie
w we needed to have as much information as possible. There could be something in the house that would mean nothing to a crime scene tech but would to Lizzy. Hmm, what was a little trespassing among friends, especially when one was a freebie consultant for the chief detective?

  A confession was worth a thousand trespassed-upon crime scenes. That was written in the female sleuth’s handbook…if there was one…and if there was, I promised to read it if we got through this. With a fistful of evidence and a sympathetic ear, I could draw a confession out of the killer in time for the ten o’clock news.

  Lizzy shook the tube in frustration. “I’m not able to crack this puppy. I tried every number sequence.”

  “Think of more and keep at it. I’m certain that tube holds the key to solving the murders. Barracuda Manor might have some hidden clues also. We have to check it out. If we can slip in there, can you keep WonderDog quiet—no barking, no whimpering, no snuffling?”

  Lizzy and WonderDog snapped their heads towards me.

  Can a dog look indignant?

  Lizzy sure could. “We’re talking about WonderDog here. He can almost read and write.”

  She bent over the back of her seat and spoke to the hound. I watched him in the rearview mirror. He perked his ears and turned his head sidewise as Lizzy said, “You stay at my side and don’t even think about making a sound. Got it?”

  The dog nodded. Amazing or scary? I couldn’t decide.

  We arrived at the Barracuda Manor turnoff. WonderDog sat up but stayed silent. Can a dog look smug?

  I swerved my car onto the grass next to the driveway and parked under a large droopy cypress tree. We crept toward the protruding front entrance. Yellow crime scene tape stretched across the huge front door, which I expected. I touched Lizzy on the arm. “Let’s see if the backdoor is taped. I’d rather not blatantly violate the law.”