Death of a Hot Chick

by Norma Huss

  My heart was beating triple time, but I said, “The police came on your authority to kick me off my boat. I rather believe that concerns me, don’t you?”

  “Put that way, I suppose it does. But, I still can’t tell you anything further.”

  “Can you tell me if you saw any legal document to base your order on?”

  “I’m sorry, that’s privileged information.”

  The man was going to stonewall me. I felt like bolting, but I couldn’t. I had to face him. “Well, whoever, or whatever.... I have the title to the boat, Snapdragon. It has been registered at the court house.”

  “Perhaps you could give me your document,” he said in a most condescending tone.

  So he could take it and throw it away? “I have notarized copies only. The original is in a safe-deposit box. You may see this one.”

  I handed the paper to him. He studied it, and asked, “Of course your witness is ready to testify that he saw Miss Joline sign this before her death.”

  “Yes.”

  “I hardly believe this could be considered a legal document.”

  “My lawyer and the clerk at the court house considered the original a legal document.”

  “And, of course, you have the funds to fight this in court.”

  “But...I don’t need to.”

  The judge smiled. “Ah, you are such a naive child. This will go on trial if you persist in your ridiculous claim.”

  I couldn’t say another word. I had to leave. I grabbed my paper from his fat, wimpy hands, darted out of the room, and slammed his door behind me. I ran to the elevator, pushed the button, and as soon as that door opened rushed inside. I punched one, then, as the elevator descended, I slid into the corner, sat in a heap with my hands clutched in front of my face. I wouldn’t cry. I wouldn’t scream. He thought he’d won, but he hadn’t. I just had to get away from him. The elevator was slow, and by the time it reached the first floor, I had myself under control. I had faced him. I’d said what I had to. He couldn’t be right. He’d just tried to scare me. I wouldn’t back down. I headed for the police station. I’d file a claim before he even thought of it.

  But—a claim for what?

  Harassment. Definitely.

  I knew where Judge Haley got his information. From Nicole’s next-of-kin, her father. The ship chandler had taken the dinghy, but Mr. Joline couldn’t take Snapdragon. She belonged to me. And, there was at least one witness who could testify that Nicole Joline would never have given her father anything. My sister Kaye.

  ~ ~

  This was not a call for help. This was a call to share information. Kaye answered just before I was about to hang up. “Hello Cyd.”

  “How’d you know it was me? Did you get caller ID? My phone doesn’t have that.”

  Being my sister, and having a second sense besides, she asked, “What’s up?”

  “I’m at the police station and I....”

  “I’ll be right there.”

  “Wait a minute. I don’t need that. No problem. I’m just following through on the ownership of Snapdragon. I’ve been to Judge Haley’s office, which wasn’t much help, and I wanted to be sure there were no more cops headed my way.”

  “You scared me with a call from the police station. And why were you at Judge Haley’s office?”

  “Tell you later. Like I said, I’m outside the police station, actually, and it’s something I heard just now. I was leaving, had the door ajar, so I heard it. I’m sure Doug Yarnell didn’t see me there when he came bursting through. Then, after I was completely outside, he ran by me and was still talking and got in the patrol car and took off.”

  “So, you heard something. What?”

  “What he told Emily, you know, the lady at the desk. He said, something about a probable fatality off Calvert Cliffs. A car that burned up. He’d heard it on the news this morning and they’d tracked down the guy’s name from Rent-A-Wreck. ‘Local bad boy,’ he said.”

  “And...”

  “As he zoomed past me, he must have been looking back, because he sure wouldn’t have said any name if he’d seen me.”

  “Cyd, you’re driving me crazy. You heard a name? Do I know the person?”

  “Chester Foltz.”

  “Chester Foltz?”

  “The guy who owned Snapdragon before Nicole. You know, he’s been hanging around. Did I tell you? He wanted to help me repair my boat, which is ridiculous since he....”

  “This is serious.”

  “He had to be the one who was inside my boat. And, according to Lizzie, he was acting suspicious.”

  “Stay where you are. I’ll pick you up.”

  “And why was he hanging around?”

  But Kaye had hung up. She was upset about something. And if I left the police station before she arrived, she’d only be worse. I sat on the curb waiting and wondering why it isn’t a crime for a judge to give fraudulent orders, or state police to harass somebody on her very own property.

  Kaye made it in twelve minutes. As I opened the car door, I said, “Okay, I give up. What’s so important?”

  “Two past owners of your boat are dead. Do you know what that means?”

  “Oh.” That someone was killing Snapdragon owners? Could that be possible? “No. Not true. No one wants me dead.”

  “You never know. In any event, I believe we must make a concerted and focused effort to find the killer. We’ll gather evidence today. I have a few ideas. We’ll get all interested parties together and meet tomorrow night.”

  “Tomorrow night is my class.”

  “Class?”

  “Remember? I’m studying to take the Coast Guard test so I can get my captain’s license renewed.”

  “You already know all that. Skip it this time.”

  “It’s the final class. The final review. Any last minute hints for taking the test. You think I should skip that?”

  “Why didn’t you say so?” Kaye asked. “Okay, we meet tonight. That won’t give us much time to research. But, maybe it’s better this way. We’ll discuss the way we want to go. I’ll invite Teddy, maybe Doug will come too.”

  “We are not in grade school with our Lime Street Detective Agency. Get real, will you?”

  “Okay, not Doug. Maybe Teddy. And Nicole’s cousin. After Nicole split up with her boyfriend, she moved in with her. She might know something vital.”

  “Nicole had a cousin?”

  “Yes. Although her cousin was a few years older, they grew up like sisters, according to Nicole. They were nothing alike, actually. They didn’t share surnames. Her cousin is a Swent. Finley Swent.”

  “Finley Swent?”

  “Probably no one you know. Or, maybe you do. I believe she has something to do with boats.” Kaye raised her eyebrows when I shook my head. “So, you don’t know her.”

  “Yes, I know her. Remember, I have something to do with boats too.”

  “Obviously too much to do with boats. At least right now. We have to get you off that boat. Someone is killing its former owners. Pack up and come with me.”

  “Snapdragon isn’t an ‘it.’ And I’m not going to leave her.”

  Kaye didn’t realize I’d decided to be responsible and finally get over the funk Al’s disappearance, not to mention his death, left me in. And, I suddenly realized that was true. I replaced my scowl with a big grin. “I have to stop depending on you for everything, Kaye. I’ll be all right.”

  “I can’t talk any sense into you?”

  “Hey, when I was single I certainly took care of myself. I can still do it.”

  “It’s just....” Kaye shrugged. “Yes, I’m sure you can,” she said, with a lot more confidence than I felt.

  Chapter 13

  I’d just dumped my cleaning supplies into a bucket when my cell phone, the twenty-first century umbilical cord, chirped.

  It was Kaye. She said, “Finley will stop by to pick you up after seven. We meet here at seven-thirty.” She clicked off before I could answer.

  Fin
ley had changed since our days as friendly rivals for jobs at the helm. Before, she’d been more into pizza with a lot less beer. Why hadn’t Nicole gone to her for help with her boat? Maybe she had gone to her—for the thirty dollars she intended bringing to me. Very likely. Finley and I had borrowed from each other constantly. But, was Finley still the same?

  Slim was on the two-masted sailboat where I’d already spent two days. “Yeah, come on up,” he told me. “Got enough work here for a month, maybe more.”

  “I thought you might be gone for lunch already.” I climbed up the ladder and stepped over the guard rail. I’d worn Dad’s old sailor cap I’d appropriated long ago. It kept the sun off my head, and I’d smeared on enough sun block to last the afternoon. Had to be in the high eighties. “Still working on the outside?”

  Slim nodded. “After a while we’ll do an inside job, less you get too hot before that.”

  I joined him with my own rags. Preserving weathered teak was all about sanding it smooth, then rubbing oil into the wood and rubbing excess oil off. If you had a large smooth expanse, a motorized sander with the added fluffy, polishing cover was the ticket. But on top of a sailboat, around ports, hatches, and hand rails, that wouldn’t work. Sand an area, apply teak oil, wipe over the wood, then rub, and rub some more. All work I’d done a thousand times before. I’d learned from Slim so I knew what he expected.

  He was even quieter today than usual. To fill the stillness, I asked, “So where has this sailboat been to get this neglected? Do you know?”

  “Ain’t neglected. She just kept on a’going. See that solar thing? She’s nice and shiny because she needed shiny.”

  Slim seldom answered questions straight on, except in his own way. He started humming something that vaguely sounded like, “If I Had a Hammer.” I sanded and rubbed, accompanied by Slim’s low, droning voice.

  Ten minutes later, Slim’s voice broke through my thoughts. “Bet you dollars to donuts, that guy ain’t dead.”

  “What guy?”

  “The feller what had your boat.”

  “Oh, you mean Chester Foltz. Is it already on the news about his car burning up?”

  “Ain’t no way he’s gonna burn himself up.”

  “Oh.” I sat back, waiting. Slim knew something, but he wasn’t telling. At least not right now.

  “You ate your lunch already?” he asked.

  I nodded, even though lunch had only been one apple.

  “Well, I’m going myself.” Slim trotted down the ladder after glancing around, furtively, I thought. Then I saw Teddy headed our way.

  Aha, this was the “tomorrow,” Teddy mentioned before. “Your ‘girl friend’ is here,” I said.

  “Yeah.” He cackled. “Guess I didn’t get going fast enough to keep no secrets.”

  “Hey, she’s my girl friend, too.”

  “She’s got a nose for news, that little gal. And she ain’t shy about bringing eats to listen to me yammer.”

  Teddy called as she neared. “Hey, I brought lunch for both of you. Cold lemonade and hot barbeques. Apple turnovers for dessert. No ice cream today. Too hot. It’d melt all over the place.”

  No way I would miss a free meal. I clambered down the ladder. “How did you know I was here?”

  “Guessed. Plus, I stopped by your marina and Lizzie told me you’d gone to work.” Teddy opened her bag and pulled out a large thermos.

  Slim dumped rags out of a bucket, turned it over, and sat on top. “You got this over at that new place? I ain’t tried them yet.”

  “Nope. Got it at the Breakwater.”

  “That’s mighty high class.”

  The conversational ball bounce back and forth as Teddy successfully soothed any hurt feelings from yesterday while I looked for a place to park my own fanny. Finally, I wedged my behind on the bottom step of the ladder and grabbed a tumbler of lemonade. “So what’s the occasion here?”

  No one paid any attention to me. Teddy handed Slim an oozing bun. “Guess you heard there was no body in that burning car.”

  “Didn’t hear, but don’t surprise me one little bit. Chester, he knows about burning.”

  “That right?” Teddy leaned forward in reporter mode.

  “Yeah. He’s ole Pop’s burn-baby. ’Course, he’s outta practice since Pop ain’t been around. He ain’t getting no jobs from nobody else.”

  “Burn-baby. I like that. That your call, or somebody else’s?”

  “Don’t rightly know about that.”

  I grabbed a barbeque and started eating. I’d never heard of a burn-baby. I listened as Teddy said, “I take it that means he set fires on order. What kind of things has Chester burned?”

  “Guess a house or two. Tried burning a cow once, I heard. Didn’t work. Ole cow kicked him right outta the barn.”

  “He actually burned houses down? Anyone die in the fires?”

  “Don’t think so. You see, he just lights little fires. Warnings, you know? Like on porches, or such. Tree maybe. Heard he tried a car port once. ’Course, you don’t know what’s for sure about any of the stuff you hear.”

  I took a long drink of lemonade. It sure hit the spot.

  Teddy refilled both of our plastic cups. “You think Pop will come back to Smith Harbor when he gets out?”

  Slim chewed and swallowed before he answered. “You bet.”

  Teddy asked more questions. Slim kept eating and talking, all about boaters, gossip, and Bayside Marina’s future plans of trying to buy up City Marina. Where did he hear all that stuff? Finally, Slim ran down and Teddy said, “Have you heard that about the marinas, Cyd?”

  “No, Wes isn’t a big talker,” I said and reached for one of the apple turnovers.

  “Ain’t nobody a big talker,” Slim said. “But I got my ways.”

  “And you always have the straight dope.” Teddy pulled the last turnover out of the bag and handed it to Slim. She said, “Cyd, Lizzie is really looking after you. She was right there the moment I stepped on your boat to rap on the door. She’s pretty sharp.”

  “She was watching over my boat?”

  Teddy nodded. “She had some interesting comments about Nicole. More than she told me yesterday, actually.”

  I had heard some of Lizzie’s comments about super-snooty Nicole. Super-snoopy Lizzie could came up with a lot of unusual stuff.

  “She’s your biggest fan, I’d say. She told me all about how you found Nicole’s body and how she brought a flashlight and held it so you could see.”

  “All that lemonade gone?” Slim asked.

  “She did?” I didn’t remember that part at all. Was that night such a blur?

  “Yep, lemonade all gone.” Teddy pulled out her tiny recorder and told me, “I think so. Let me check.” She pushed buttons, ran quickly through a garble of words, stopped and backed up. “This is what she said.”

  She held the recorder so I could hear just as she’d done the day before. First I heard Teddy, then Lizzie’s voice.

  “So you brought a flashlight?”

  “That’s right. We looked in the cart and it didn’t look like much. A bunch of blankets or something. Cyd, she put her hand down and jerks it back and says how it’s all wet. Then she moved the cart a bit, and we saw her face. Terrible. I get nightmares, you know. Just terrible. Especially when I sleep like the dead. Some day I’ll be the dead one, you mark my words.”

  Teddy clicked off the recorder. “Then she showed me where the cart had been.”

  I shook my head. That wasn’t the way I remembered it. Lizzie didn’t show up until later. Was I wrong, completely out of it? Or, was Lizzie really there when I discovered the body?

  “I had the flashlight,” I muttered.

  “You had the flashlight?”

  “That’s for sure. Maybe I don’t remember. Maybe I don’t want to remember. But Lizzie’s right. Except for the flashlight, that’s how it all happened. Maybe she was there, watching. But, honest, Teddy, I didn’t see her until later.”

  No, Lizzie hadn’t
been there. She hadn’t seen me, or she certainly would have popped up before the cops arrived. That’s the way Lizzie operated—checking out anything that was different. Snooping. “She probably just heard me tell the cops so often. Over and over.” But, it wasn’t at all like Lizzie to be confused. Except, her stories did seem to change and improve with age.

  ~ ~

  We were an odd group. The school marm, the giant, and the boat bum. Kaye, Finley, and me. We settled in at Kaye’s house. She was only half of her family. Her hubby, Hans, was off teaching in Namibia during the southern hemisphere’s winter, while Kaye taught during the northern hemisphere’s winter. A long-distance marriage, but it seemed to work. Their joint incomes paid for the two-story home, lawn service, and exotic African touches like the polished, wooden table between us, laden with a platter of home-made cookies and tall glasses of iced tea.

  Kaye said, “I called Teddy, but she had something out of town to research. However, I think, between the three of us, we can figure this out logically. We each knew a different part of Nicole. First, let’s go with our gut reactions. Who killed her?”

  Like a Nero Wolf mystery solution, I thought as I bit into a cocoanut blossom. I had known Nicole the shortest time, so how could I come up with a solution? But I knew one thing. “Chester killed her,” I said.

  “No, it was her father,” Kaye said.

  “My vote is for Brandon Bates,” Finley said. “And since I knew Nicole all her life, I’m right.”

  “Good point,” Kaye said. “However, we each knew different sides of Nicole, which is why we’ve come up with different answers. So, if we share our information, we’re bound to agree on one killer.”

  “Agreement isn’t proof,” I said, surprising myself by speaking up. When the other two looked at me, I shrugged. “Killers aren’t logical. So, if we go with logic, what do we have?”

  “Really. That is a good thought,” Kaye said, surprise in her voice.

  Finley looked from Kaye to me and back again. “I get it. Let’s forget this sister act. Kaye, I don’t know you, but I know your sister. She knows things. Listen to her.”

  Kaye went for icy and aloof. “Are you surmising, from one sentence, that I’d ignore Cyd?”