by Amy Vansant
Chuck elbowed Bob in the ribs. “There’s the freezer.”
Bob followed Chuck’s pointing finger to a large white box in the corner.
“It’s running, but it has a padlock,” said Chuck. He walked to the freezer and flipped the lock so it clattered back into place.
“Why would you padlock a freezer?” asked Bob.
“To keep the bodies from crawling out?”
Bob grimaced. “I think that proves it. We gotta go tell Seamus.”
Chuck nodded, his gaze drifting back to the freezer. “Should we try and pry it open?”
Bob considered this. It seemed like a lot of work.
“Nah. We’ll let the cops do that.” He wandered to the water heater and read the label on the side of the tank while Chuck looked around for bodies.
“See anything?” asked Bob when he was done.
“Nah. Nothing but boxes of junk.”
“Okay. I got what I needed. Let’s go.”
“Did you boys find what you need?” called a voice from the top of the stairs.
Bob motioned to Chuck and the two of them tromped back to the main floor.
“Thank you. That was perfect,” said Bob as he reached the landing.
Chuck held up his half-empty glass in salute.
Julie walked ahead of them to open the front door and usher them away. With a last doff of invisible caps, the men walked into their boots and down the outside stairs.
Bob paused on the patio beneath the back stairs of their house. “Let’s finish the drink before we go back in.”
“Out here?” asked Chuck, tucking back against the house to avoid the light rain.
He nodded. “I’m only allowed to drink on Bourbon Club nights and vacations. If Mariska catches me with a drink this early, she’ll shut me down for my evening cocktail. Maybe the rest of the vacation. I’m allowed to enjoy a cocktail—I’m just not allowed to look like I’m enjoying a cocktail.”
Chuck nodded. “I know exactly what you mean. I’m under similar restrictions.”
“Sisters.”
They rolled their eyes in unison and then passed the pour back and forth, taking turns sipping.
Bob stared at the yard as Chuck took his turn. A thin sheet of water covered everything in sight. Catching a flash of movement, he spotted a ghost crab scuttling through the slop.
What looked like an eyeball was stuck to the tip of his claw. The orb watched Bob as the crab scuttled by.
Bob remained mesmerized until the crab disappeared around the side of the house.
He glanced at Chuck. His friend stared at the same spot where the crab had disappeared.
“Did you see what I saw?” asked Bob.
Chuck nodded. “Yup.”
Bob sighed. “You know, if we told everyone we saw something crazy out here—”
“The wives wouldn’t let us drink for the rest of the year,” said Chuck, finishing his thought.
“So that being said, did we just see—”
“Nope.” Chuck handed him the glass with a splash left inside.
Bob finished the last swig and headed for the stairs.
“I didn’t think so.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Seamus lay on the ground armed with his flashlight, peering beneath the neighbor’s outdoor shower and into the hole where the squirrel had disappeared. Creeping on his hands and knees like an army man, his face hovered inches from the gap. He raised his flashlight.
The beam illuminated a man’s face, staring back at him through the ragged hole. Milky eyes locked on him. Seamus yelped and scrambled back, only to find himself pinned beneath the walls of the shower. The milky-eyed man’s hand reached through the hole, his long, boney fingers clawing at his shirt—
Seamus awoke in a pool of sweat.
He glanced at the clock.
Three thirty-three.
Outside he could hear the wind still roaring. The pounding of rain had stopped. He left his bed and threw on khaki shorts and a t-shirt before heading downstairs.
Seamus shuffled to the sliding glass door of their vacation home and stared outside, unable to see much more than a light rain crossing the path of the porch light.
The storm had eased. That was good.
He turned and found himself staring through the side window that overlooked the Elder Care-o-lina.
The window that overlooked their outdoor shower.
He shivered, recalling his dream.
In his mind’s eye, he pictured the squirrel disappearing through the hole behind the outdoor shower.
Was the creature running to hide more bits, or get more?
At the time he’d been half joking with himself, but the more he thought about a body hiding in the neighbor’s lower level, the more it made sense. It would be impractical to try and bury a body in the seashore’s shifting sands. And a storm could create a logistical problem, one that meant keeping the body at home longer than they’d planned...
Bob had said the Elder Care-o-lina’s freezer was humming along and padlocked. Dinah had told him the freezer was broken.
There was little reason to lock a freezer, and even less reason to lock a broken one.
Of course, there were the squirrels. They were an argument against the body being in the freezer. Unless somehow they’d dug a hole into that, too.
Maybe there were multiple bodies.
Maybe the squirrels were picking from a buried body and a new body sat in the freezer awaiting burial.
Frustrated, Seamus plodded up the stairs to his bed, where he spent some time staring at the ceiling.
It went against everything in his nature to sit around and wait for the tide to recede so they could call the police and start searching for bodies. Back in Miami, he’d seen the “proper channels” in action too many times. People called the police, the police waited for warrants, and by the time the warrants were procured, the evidence was gone and so were the bad people.
That’s how he’d made his money in Miami. He was the “back channel.” He could do things the cops couldn’t do—in the interest of justice—and the cops trusted him to keep his mouth shut.
Of course, the cops usually had good reason for circumventing the rules. He didn’t have any actual evidence of wrong-doing at the Elder Care-o-lina, other than the criminal act of watching sappy movies.
Maybe the medical records Charlotte found were sufficient proof. Maybe not proof of a body, but proof that they were hiding something.
Seamus glanced at the glowing red numbers on his bedside clock.
Four-fifteen.
It would be daybreak soon.
Maybe I can slip in where the animals come and go.
Seamus sat up and patted his belly.
Maybe.
It wouldn’t hurt to look.
Once again, he padded down the stairs and slipped into the spare jacket.
Abby appeared in the kitchen, staring at him.
He raised his finger to his lips as he opened the door.
“Sssh.”
The dog watched him leave.
Outside, he raised his face to the sky. The rain had stopped. A strong breeze ruffled his hair.
Walking with his head down, hands thrust in his pockets, Seamus crossed the yard and tucked himself inside the Elder Care-o-lina’s outdoor shower.
It was a luxury to have walls surrounding his chosen break-in location.
He jerked the thin sheet of wood that covered the side of the house. It shifted enough for him to confirm it masked a large hole where a window had once been. Someone had nailed wood over it to cover the hole, but the corner had come loose. With a little additional gnawing, the cats had been able to use it as an escape hatch.
Or the squirrels had created a place of entry. He wasn’t sure which now.
Seamus tugged at the wood, but its position behind the shower made it too awkward to pry. Working at it, he managed to pop a nail from the upper half and slide away the board.
He’d started
to sweat, but at least he hadn’t had to gnaw it away.
Score one for opposable thumbs.
Seamus stuck his head inside the lower level of the Elder Care-o-lina and found it too dark to see. He debated whether to tumble in head first or feet first.
He made a decision.
Feet.
Laying on his stomach, he shimmied his legs through the hole until he’d entered to the waist. His toe hit something and he tapped around, attempting to judge the size and sturdiness of the object beneath him.
It felt like the chest freezer Bob had described to him.
He rested half his weight on it. It held. Bracing himself with his hands he lowered his remaining weight.
It still held.
Seamus smiled.
He slid the rest of the way into the room.
Though both houses had large flood lights, little of that illumination made it through the hole he’d created. Seamus climbed down from the freezer and shuffled toward where he imagined the stairs would be. After some trial and error, he found the light switch and turned it on.
Seamus scanned the room.
Yep, he’d landed on the freezer.
A combination lock hung from the top loading door of the freezer, slipped through a metal latch.
Seamus sighed. It had been a while since he’d cracked a combination lock, and the process involved a fair amount of math. The trick was to pull and turn the lock until he could find the sticking points. The first number would lie between those two points. By the third number, there were more possibilities—and more math—involved.
In his heyday he’d been able to crack a combination lock in about fifteen minutes. Now, both his fingers and his math skills threatened to fail.
Seamus spotted a hammer lying on a wooden shelf unit against the wall.
That would be faster.
Seamus slipped the claw of the hammer behind the metal clasp that held the lock and pried as quietly and steadily as he could until he felt a pop!
He moved to the other side of the lock plate and pried again. This side released much more quickly. The sudden release of the plate caused the hammer to fly from his hand. It hit the wall with some force before ricocheting back and striking him on the side of the head.
The lock clattered to the ground as Seamus slapped a hand over his mouth to keep from yelping.
Grimacing, he froze, listening for noises upstairs.
It appeared the residents were all deep sleepers.
Seamus stood in front of the freezer and, taking a moment to brace himself, lifted the lid.
“What the...”
“Freeze!” shouted a voice.
It sounded close.
A second after Seamus heeded the command, he heard the sound of someone pumping a shotgun.
Chapter Twenty-Two
“You’re up early,” said Charlotte as Declan hit the bottom of the stairs. She perched the kitchen table in her newly adopted usual spot with a cup of coffee. Even without the wafting smell of bacon, she’d been unable to sleep in. She attributed that to the body parts and blood splatter accumulating around her as she slept.
“I heard you making coffee. I’m surprised the others aren’t up yet. That bean grinder sounds like you’re grinding down a stump.”
“You know Mariska and her fresh coffee. Thank goodness for the portable bean grinder or we’d never get her to vacation anywhere.”
Declan poured himself a cup. “Any sign of the others yet?”
“No. I think all this maintenance work is starting to catch up to the older crowd. I know it’s starting to catch up with me.”
“You should have slept in.”
Charlotte sighed. “Tried. Failed. I wanted to look at that lettering on the flesh blob again. It’s really hard to tell—it could be a piece of Mr. Marino’s tattoo, or not.”
“That covers all the possibilities.”
“Exactly.”
Declan sat. “Let’s pretend it is Mr. Marino in the butter dish. What then?”
“Then we’d have to assume Emmitt or Dinah or Emmitt and Dinah had something to do with it. They’re in charge. Oh, and maybe James, the missing owner.”
“Maybe he’s more than missing.”
Charlotte nodded. “Right. Maybe he’s the body. Maybe he found out about Mr. Marino and threatened to go to the police.”
Declan took a sip. “Maybe we have bits of both. Mr. Marino, James and who knows who else.”
“If you could get away with it again and again, who knows how many people you might knock off and then pretend to house?”
“Could be a lot of bodies.”
“A lot. More than can fit in a freezer.”
They fell silent, considering the number of bodies that might be piling up at the Elder Care-o-lina.
“What would they do with that many hypothetical bodies?” asked Declan.
“That’s what I’m wondering. Having them properly buried would not only be expensive, but would also start a paperwork trail. The veteran benefits agency would stop sending checks.”
“So if they grew the scam, they’d have a body problem.”
“The squirrels don’t seem to find it a problem. Maybe that’s the plan: let the squirrels distribute the bodies all over the island a little bit at a time.”
“They’d definitely have to come up with a plan for the remains before they started killing people on a regular basis.”
Charlotte nodded. “You’d think. It’s not like this was a crime of passion.”
“I hope not. Ick.”
“Unless...what if he just died?”
“Of natural causes?”
“Yes. And it occurred to them that they’d really like to keep receiving his checks?”
Declan twisted his lips into a knot, seemingly mulling her suggestion. “That seems like the most likely scenario, doesn’t it? It moves them down a notch from evil calculating monsters to greedy opportunistic monsters.”
“Maybe James didn’t agree and—”
A loud boom! reverberated through the room, and Charlotte dropped her thought. Coffee sloshed onto Declan’s sweatpants as he jumped.
“That wasn’t thunder,” said Charlotte.
“That sounded like a gunshot,” agreed Declan.
They stood and moved to the front windows, scanning the yard and beach, illuminated by the dim light of the rising sun.
“I don’t see anything,” said Charlotte.
She heard another bang come from the direction of the back door and turned to find Declan gone.
“Declan?”
There was no answer.
Caught by a breeze, the back door slapped against the wall and she hurried to it. From there, she could see Declan already on the ground and running over the dunes.
“Declan!” she screamed into the wind.
He kept running.
She traced his most evident path forward and spotted another man on what remained of the beach, running toward the ocean. He weaved left and right, stumbling across the sand. The man’s stocky build felt familiar to her.
Seamus?
Reaching the water’s edge, the man splashed into the ocean, waves crashing around him as he fought to break through. A third figure stood on the beach behind him, holding what looked like a long gun.
She watched as the armed man’s attention left the man in the water and moved to Declan.
“Declan—he’s got a gun!” she screamed, though she knew he couldn’t hear. The wind blew off the water. Any words sent in that direction tumbled right back to her.
The man with the gun looked in her direction and lowered his weapon. He bolted back toward the dunes and the Elder Care-o-lina. She recognized him from his large frame and the lumbering way he moved.
Emmitt.
She turned back to Declan, who had lost any interest he might have had in Emmitt. He ran into the water after Seamus, who had reached deep water and was moving quickly down the beach.
Too quickly.
&nb
sp; He must be caught in a riptide.
Declan raced down the beach to get ahead of Seamus. Charlotte felt helpless. Even if she was a great swimmer—which she wasn’t—she was much too far behind to be of any assistance.
She silently prayed for Declan and Seamus and determined to something. She ran down the stairs, hoping to catch the gunman off-guard. If it was Emmitt, as she suspected, she hoped he would talk to her. At the very least, she had to try and distract him. She didn’t want him shooting Declan and Seamus the moment they left the water.
If they left the water…
Charlotte shook her head, refusing to entertain the thought.
Charlotte searched the area for a make-shift weapon as she ran toward Emmitt’s yard. She grabbed the lid from a metal trashcan for a shield and scooped up a gardening shovel as her sword. She didn’t think the lid would stop a bullet, but it made her feel better to think she might slow one down.
She reached the back yard of the Elder Care-o-lina the same time as Emmitt.
“Stop!” she screamed.
He stopped and looked at her, the hand holding the gun raising.
Uh oh.
Charlotte dove to the patchwork of beach and dune grass that separated their yards, sand blasting into her mouth as she tried to catch herself. Her hand slid through the wet grit as she face-planted into the sand. She gagged and spat.
Hearing no gunshot, she pushed to a low crouch and searched for Emmitt. She spotted him heading for the far side of the building.
Still sputtering, she leapt to her feet. A moment before Emmitt would have disappeared to the opposite side of the house, a naked foot appear at Emmitt’s eye-level.
It struck him in the face. Hard.
She paused and watched as Emmitt’s head snapped back with the force of the blow. She couldn’t be sure in the dim light, but she thought she saw teeth fly off.
The gun spun from Emmitt’s hand as he tumbled backwards. Charlotte broke into a sprint hoping to secure the gun before he could recover from the blow.
As she neared the weapon, Chuck stepped out from the side of the building, reaching for the gun at the same time she lunged for it.
“Chuck! What the—”
Seeing she had the shotgun, Chuck moved to position himself between her and Emmitt’s unmoving body.
“I saw the whole thing. Went around the front of the house to cut him off,” said Chuck.