by Amy Vansant
She took James’ hand.
“We can’t risk staying. We have to go far away. Leave the body and we’ll go. I’ll empty the accounts and we’ll go to a country where they can’t bring us back.”
James had been nodding, agreeing with her, but he reversed and began to shake his head.
“No. We still have to get rid of the body. It will slow down any investigation. Give us time.”
“No body, no crime,” she whispered. She’d heard the line on television a million times.
“Exactly.”
“Okay. You...” She looked at Phil and rested her hand on the small of his back for a moment. One last gesture of affection for the good times. “You figure out what to do with Phil. I’ll go get packed up and move what money I can.”
James nodded and stood, holding out a hand to help her to her feet. He kissed her on the forehead and turned to head downstairs.
“Where are you going?” she asked.
“I need tools. Bags—”
“Tools?” She shook her head. “No. Don’t tell me. I don’t want to know.”
Brenda went upstairs and packed. She used her laptop to move money into her personal account. She’d move more later. She didn’t want things to look too suspicious, too fast. Her head throbbed. She lay on the bed and thought about the things she’d be leaving behind.
Maybe if I just close my eyes for a moment…
“Brenda?”
She opened her eyes and realized she must have fallen asleep.
“James?”
She sat up.
“It’s done,” he said.
She stood and followed him downstairs. The kitchen looked the same as it always did, no sign of Phil, no sign of blood.
“How?”
James ran his hand through his hair and offered her a sheepish smile. He was sweaty.
Why is he sweaty?
“I’m not saying it’s perfect, but no one would know something happened here if they weren’t looking for it. If somebody just walked in, they’d never know—”
“Darla!” Brenda blurted, her hand moving to her mouth.
“Who’s Darla?”
“My friend. I’d asked her to come here and help get the house ready for the season.”
“She’s coming here? When?”
“Soon. A couple days.”
“Call her. Cancel.”
“But you said no one could tell. And won’t it look suspicious if I cancel?”
James paced. Brenda moved as well, and in doing so, noticed three large dark green trash bags next to the sink.
“Is that—”
“Don’t look at them,” said James.
“What are you going to do with those?”
“Bury them, I guess.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know, Brenda!”
Brenda jumped. James had never screamed at her before. He might not be the perfect boyfriend, but like a good little gold-digger, he was exceedingly kind and patient.
He took a deep breath. “I’m sorry. This is stressful.”
“I know.”
Brenda’s phone rang and she froze, unsure what to do. She looked at the screen.
“Speak of the devil. It’s Darla.”
“Maybe she’s calling to cancel.”
Brenda answered the phone.
“Hello?”
“Hey, Brenda, it’s Darla.”
“Hello, Darla. How are you?” Talking to her Tennessee friend, she could hear her own accent thickening.
“Great. We’re all really looking forward to the trip. Thank you so much for thinking of me—”
“My pleasure. You’re doing me the favor.” She looked at James and rolled her eyes. “But you know, I was thinking about cancelling with you.”
“Cancelling? Why?”
“Um, we were thinking maybe we’d just sell this place, as is.”
“Oh Brenda, you can’t. I promised everyone. We can get you top dollar if we fix things up.”
“Uh,” Brenda stammered, unsure how hard to push for cancellation.
Darla continued. “We have to come. You won’t be sorry. But I have one little thing I wanted to let you know—Mariska’s sister Carolina is coming to the house a little early. I hope that’s okay?”
“What?” Brenda winced, knowing she’d nearly shrieked the word. “When? Why?”
“The weather. That awful Midwest weather.”
“When will she be here?”
“Here? Are you at the house now?”
“At the...no. No, I’m home getting ready for a trip. I’m going to, uh, Mexico.”
She looked at James and they shrugged at each other.
“You and Phil?” asked Darla.
“Sure. Yes. Me and Phil.”
“Oh that’s great. I went to Cancun back in—”
“Darla, I’m sorry, when is her sister going to be here, I mean, there? At the house?”
“Her plane will be landing in a little bit. Maybe a couple of hours?”
“A couple of hours?” Brenda could feel the panic welling in her chest. “I have to go. I’m sorry. I’m really busy packing.”
“What about Carolina?”
“I’ll be sure to have the key under the mat for her.”
“Oh Brenda, that’s wonderful. You don’t mind?”
“No problem. I have to go.”
“You have a good time—”
Brenda disconnected and looked at James.
“Her friend’s sister’s going to be here in a couple hours.”
His eyes bulged. “What?” He turned and looked at the bags. “I was going to bury them.”
“We have to go. We can take them with us.”
“To the airport?”
“We’ll leave them in the car in the parking lot.”
“That defeats the purpose. We need to hide the body. If we just leave his empty car at the airport, maybe they’ll think he went somewhere.”
“Ran away with a mistress,” muttered Brenda.
“Yes, good,” said James, pointing at her.
“What if we take the bags with us and bury them somewhere on the way?”
James shook his head. “Drive around with a body in the car in broad daylight? What if we get pulled over? And where exactly are we taking them?”
Brenda’s gaze drifted to the kitchen counter, where she noticed something behind the coffee maker.
“What is that?” she asked. She stepped closer, squinting at the object.
“What?”
“Is that a finger?” she asked, her voice rising an octave.
James moved to see from her angle. He grunted something that sounded like whoops, pushed aside the coffee maker, and grabbed the finger. “It must have shot off when—”
“Don’t finish that sentence.” Brenda stumbled back and pulled a chair from the table to sit. She felt ill.
“Sorry. I thought I had it all.” James pulled the trashcan out and tossed the finger inside.
“You’re going to put it in there?”
“The other bags are tied tight already.”
“But—”
“Tomorrow’s trash day. No one will look in the bag. Don’t worry about it.”
“’Don’t worry about it.” Brenda sighed. “We have to go. Carolina is going to be here in two hours. And believe me, she won’t promise not to tell if she finds those bags here.”
James put his hands on his hips. “Screw it. We’ll get out of town and see how things shake out. You can tell people Phil went on vacation with you to buy us time and then say he’s on a business trip or something. If people buy it and everything seems safe, we’ll come back and deal with the body.”
“But what does that mean? What are you going to do with the big bags now? You can’t take those to the curb.”
James took a deep breath, tilted back his head to stare at the ceiling, and released the trapped air through his nose.
“I have an idea.”
Chapter Thirty
Charlotte had never seen women pack so fast in her life. Mariska and Darla were standing by the front door with their suitcases at their feet, five minutes after Declan let it slip that Phil was “living” in the attic.
“Let’s go!” yelled Darla as she dropped her bag at the door.
Carolina toddled from the kitchen, dragging a trash bag full of frozen meat behind her.
“I couldn’t leave the meat.”
The three ladies dragged their belongings to the bus and sat there while the cops spoke with the others.
“So how long have you been collecting these bits?” said a police officer with blonde hair knotted at the nape of her neck. She scowled at the uncovered butter dish.
“Since the day we arrived,” said Charlotte.
“Oh, you’ll want this,” said Seamus, opening a drawer and tossing the police woman a plastic bag he pulled from inside.
She scowled. “What is this?”
“Junk I found in the kitchen pipes. Hair, grease, fat—”
The officer grimaced and dropped the bag on the counter as if it were scalding.
“You found all this and only now thought to call us?” she asked.
“The storm would have made it impossible for you to get here.” Charlotte’s voice trailed to silence. Even as she said the words she began to second-guess their we’ll call the police when the storm leaves idea. Maybe a finger and an ear were worth a ringy-dingy to the local constabulary.
Behind her a gasping sob rang out. They’d called over Emmitt to confirm the semi-transparent reflection they’d spotted in the photo was James. The moment he’d seen his ex-boyfriend’s familiar t-shirt, he’d burst into tears.
“James is a graphic designer,” he said, sobbing as they showed him the doctored photos of Phil.
Dinah took a break from consoling Emmitt and strolled to Charlotte’s side.
“So this is all about James and that woman, right?” she mumbled, holding her hand in front of her mouth to keep the police from reading her lips.
Charlotte nodded.
“I told Emmitt that James had propositioned me.” Clearly pleased she’d been proven right, Dinah smiled and worked her way back to Emmitt. “He was never good enough for you dear,” she said, patting him on the back.
He sobbed louder.
Once the police had gathered the facts and the process of removing Phil from the attic had begun, the rest of the Pineapple Port crew piled into The Reptile. They’d been asked to stay in town another day while the police sorted things out.
Seamus hopped in the diver seat and they roared away from the beach house.
“I hope the ice machine at the motel is full,” said Carolina, eyeballing her bag of meat.
“I hope the police will let us go tomorrow so we can get home in time for Thanksgiving. I’m afraid they suspect we were involved,” said Mariska.
“It probably didn’t help that we were driving around in a snake,” said Carolina as they pulled into the driveway of a cheap beach hotel. The one good thing to come of the debacle was off-season rates.
“It probably didn’t help that we didn’t call the police right away, even if they couldn’t get to the house,” said Charlotte.
“Or that we’d felt comfortable enough to live in a house with severed body parts,” added Declan.
Darla raised her hands and flopped them back into her lap. “Frank is never going to let me hear the end of this. A sheriff’s wife accepting an invitation from a killer and then handling everything wrong,”
As the bus pulled to a stop Bob stood, smiling.
“What are you so happy about?” asked Mariska.
“We finally get a real vacation,” said Bob.
Chuck grinned. “Yeah. This place might not be fancy, but at least they won’t ask us to paint it.”
THE END
Thank you for taking time to read Pineapple Beach House! If you enjoyed it, please consider telling your friends or posting a review on Amazon or GoodReads or wherever you like to roam. Word of mouth helps poor starving authors so much!
Pineapple Port Mysteries
Funny, clean mysteries full of unforgettable characters
Pineapple Lies (I) Pineapple Mystery Box (II)
Pineapple Puzzles (III) Pineapple Land War (IV)
Pineapple Beach House (V) Pineapple Disco (VI)
Pineapple
Disco
A Pineapple Port Mystery: Book Six
Amy Vansant
©2018 by Amy Vansant. All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by any means, without the permission of the author. All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
ISBN- 1718850840
ISBN- 978-1718850842
Library of Congress: 1718850840
Vansant Creations, LLC / Amy Vansant
Annapolis, MD
http://www.AmyVansant.com
http://www.PineapplePort.com
Copy editing by Carolyn Steele.
Proofreading by Effrosyni Moschoudi & Connie Leap
Cover by Steven Novak
Dedication
To Gordon. I miss you every day
Chapter One
It started with the brush of a hand.
Every day Gloria walked the River Walk, not far from her new beach apartment. After falling into a little money, she’d left the Pineapple Port retirement community for the cool beach breezes of the Gulf.
Gloria enjoyed nodding her head and smiling at the people who passed in the opposite direction when she walked. She liked everything about her new lifestyle by the water, but she especially enjoyed the walks.
Walking kept her need to right wrongs at bay.
She hadn’t slashed a tire, or dropped a bug in a cocktail, or switched yard decorations between neighbors with competing gnome ideologies, in nearly three months.
Even Superman grew old and let a few offenses slide here and there, didn’t he?
Gloria let her mind wander when she walked. She waved at dogs and called them buddy, or sweetie if they had a bow or a pink collar. She liked the Yorkie terrier with the watery eyes and the regal standard poodle that ran at the same graceful pace as her owner. The owner never smiled, but the dog’s presence said she wasn’t a bad person and Gloria believed the dog.
Thanks to the poodle, I let sourpuss off the hook. ‘Old Gloria’ never would have let that skinny woman’s refusal to return a smile slide. I’m maturing.
Her patience had limits, of course. Gloria did not like the two ladies who hogged the whole sidewalk and never deigned to step aside for her to pass. She had to balance-beam the curb, or tumble into the bike lane to avoid being clipped by their stupid rounded shoulders. Those ladies...
Those ladies didn’t deserve a pass.
After the fifth or sixth offense, Gloria followed them home. One had a New England Patriots football flag flying outside her house, so Gloria returned under cover of night to replace it with a Miami Dolphins flag. The next time she passed the women she made a point to not move out of their way. As they jostled to avoid knocking into her she shouted, “Go Dolphins!”
After that day, the women fell single file when they saw her coming. They knew she knew where they lived. Gloria had a giant bottle of vinegar for the other woman’s manicured lawn, should they forget their manners.
See how she likes the word MOVE scrawled across her front yard in brown, dead grass.
Other than those two sidewalk-hogging, boorish wenches, Gloria liked the people and pets on her walk. She liked the chubby Italian man who waddled along yammering on his phone in his native tongue. She liked the woman who always wore too many clothes, but never appeared sweaty.
Classy.
Most of all, she liked the tanned man with the dark hair. He always flashed his perfect smile and winked. She didn’t know if he wore dentures or had those replacement teeth people had drilled into their jaw bones, b
ut his chompers were impressive. Nearly as striking as the cowlick in his magnificent mane of dark hair. The front row of follicles stood strong and proud, like a hair wave begging to be surfed.
I never properly appreciated men’s hair until I grew older and suddenly none of the men have any. Think of all the hair I took for granted as a foolish young girl...
The man had kind eyes, and those sparkling orbs always found hers. At first, she’d thought the man was just friendly. After his walk she imagined he returned to a pretty wife sipping coffee on her lanai with a good book propped on her lap. But then she noticed he didn’t wear a wedding ring. Not even the telltale tan line of a cheater. If he was a widower, he’d been one for some time.
The man’s smile and wink were soon accompanied by a nod, the tip of an invisible hat, and once, what she felt sure was a blush.
Mornings changed. Gloria grew giddy pre-walk, eager to see Smiley Joe, which is what she’d started calling the man in her head.
Then it happened.
As she passed Smiley Joe on the narrow pathway, his hand brushed hers.
Gloria gasped and kept walking. After a dozen steps she glanced back, but Joe had continued on his way.
After that day, he always touched her hand. Anticipating the contact, her hand began to jerk away from her body, reaching to feel his, as if it had a mind of its own. Their touches became more eager. On day six their pinkies intertwined and uncoiled, slipping away like lovesick garden snakes as they continued in their opposite directions.
Then it happened. Smiley Joe wore his usual white t-shirt, but he’d handwritten Hi on the chest. She’d been so shocked to see the word she’d forgotten to reach for his hand.
Was that message for me?
The next day he wore a new t-shirt. She assumed it was new—it had looked as though the previous day’s Hi was written in permanent marker and she couldn’t imagine how he could have washed it out.
Now, his shirt said Will.
Gloria knew the messages on his shirts were for her. His eyes were playful. Twinkling with mischief.