Murder on Tiki Island: A Noir Paranormal Mystery In The Florida Keys (Detective Bill Riggins Mysteries)

by Christopher Pinto

  “I know about what happened in Miami, by the way. Go on.”

  “Well, I went back to my suite when we got back, fell asleep around two, two-thirty.”

  “Alone?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “This is no time to be coy, Bill. We’ve already talked to Ms. Hawthorn.”

  “Then you know she was with me.”

  “I had to hear it from you.”

  “Am I being charged with something?”

  “Not yet. Just answer the questions, OK?”

  “Fine,” I said, getting a little hot under the collar. “We fell asleep around two or so. Then I got a call at three-thirty from a doctor in Key West. He phoned to say Ms. Rutledge had taken ill and wanted to speak to me. Melinda left and I hopped on a boat before four. I was in Key West by four-thirty and drove my car to the doc’s place on White Street. I was there until around nine-thirty, drove back to the dock, got the boat around ten and here I am now.”

  The Sheriff wrote everything down as I said it. He checked his notes and said, “So between the time that Ms. Hawthorn left and the time you got on the boat, that was less than a half an hour?”

  “Yeah, I guess so. You could check with Captain Rango to see when he logged the time.”

  “I already checked. You shoved off at three-forty-seven.”

  “Again, you know the answers better than I do. Now tell me what’s going on.”

  Jackson took off his hat and ran a handkerchief over his bald head. He put the hat back on and sighed. “Seems we’ve got a murder on our hands, Bill.”

  “The skeleton? I thought that was all settled.”

  “No, not the skeleton. This time a full-skinned corpse, upstairs in one of the rooms.”

  Oh, Jesus.

  “Which room?”

  “The one that belongs to Rutger Bachman, Bill. Someone killed him in his sleep.”

  Jesus! Bachman? A thousand thoughts and images scrambled across the front of my mind. Jerry, and how would I tell him. Hawthorn losing his long-time manager. Melinda...could she? Would she?

  “Bachman? Why? How?”

  “Why, we don’t know yet. How…he was suffocated in a most unusual way. His windpipe was crushed with a pipe.”

  “Holy hell,” I said while my mind raced with the events of the last few days. “The same night I get attacked by two of Roberts’ goons, and Roberts and Bachman were in Kahootz. No wonder I’m a suspect.”

  “Those weren’t Roberts’ men, Bill, they were Bachman’s. They were his muscle to keep his prostitutes in line, and they ran drugs up from Cuba. But maybe you knew that.”

  “I didn’t,” I said, “Although I had my suspicions.”

  “So you see the spot I’m in Bill,” Jackson said mournfully.

  “Sure. I get mixed up with a chick that I later find out turns tricks for Bachman. I get roughed up by Roberts twice. I almost get killed by two guys that work for Bachman, and kill them in self-defense. Last night I come back here, and have all the reason in the world to want to put Bachman out of commission for good. Except I’ve got an alibi…minus twenty minutes.

  “And it doesn’t take twenty minutes to get from your room to the dock, Bill.”

  “It does of you wash up and put on clean clothes first.”

  “Maybe.”

  I took out my Camels and shook one out of the deck. It was the first butt I’d had in two days, since Melinda didn’t like smoke. I lit it with the Zippo and let the smoke float high before I said another word. “Well, Sheriff, it wasn’t me. Plain and simple. Am I being charged?”

  “Not yet,” Jackson said to me with a touch of sadness. He knew if I was guilty, in Florida I’d get the chair. “But you are a suspect, so you know the deal…don’t leave town and all that there stuff.”

  “I’m not planning on going anywhere. I’m on vacation.”

  “So you keep sayin’. Funny how most people just come down here and fish.”

  “Yeah, funny.”

  I wasn’t laughing.

  In the next room they were interrogating Jessica with the same questions. She honestly didn’t remember much, so there wasn’t much to tell. I told Jackson about her almost overdosing, and that I’d volunteered to help her clean up. He agreed not to press charges on her (he didn’t have any proof but he still could have made her life hell) if I kept an eye on her.

  “Sheriff, honestly, do you think I did this?”

  He looked down at the ground, then at his belt. He took my revolver out and handed it back to me. “Honestly Bill, I don’t know what to think. I’ve got no motive other than Bachman was into some bad stuff. But no, personally, I don’t really think you did it. First of all, you wouldn’t have been so foolish as to make yourself look like a suspect. Second, I don’t think bashing a man’s throat in with a pipe is your style. I just hope I’m right.”

  “You’re right, Sheriff. That’s not my style. I’d have gotten the goods on him and turned him over to you.”

  “Yeah, well, try to stay out of trouble for the rest of your trip, Detective. I’m still here if you need me, or if anything turns up.”

  “Thanks Sheriff. I’ll keep my ear to the ground.”

  “I will be watching y’all, just so you know.”

  “I’d be disappointed if you didn’t.”

  +++

  I brought Jessica down to the lobby restaurant and had the waiter page Melinda. We had coffee and a couple of plates of good old fashioned ham and eggs – with fried potatoes, not grits thank you very much – while we waited. An hour went by and Melinda didn’t show.

  “I’ll take you back to my suite for now, Jessica, and go find Melinda so we can get you a place to stay.”

  Jessica looked at me funny, and said, “Billy, I don’t understand. Why is Ms. Hawthorn taking an interest in me? I hardly know her.”

  “Because you’re a friend of mine, kid, that’s why.”

  “Is she this nice to all her customers?” She knew. She must have sensed it with that special radar they dish out to girls when they’re born. She knew about me and Melinda but didn’t want to come right out with it. She wanted me to tell her. Or she expected me to lie.

  I wasn’t much of a liar so I said, “Since you and I had our, eh, run-in, Melinda and I have gotten…sorta close.”

  “Close? As in you’re seeing her?”

  “Yeah, at least while I’m on vacation.”

  “I see. Now I know why you didn’t want me to stay with you,” she said, and I was afraid the waterworks were going to start back up. Happily for me they didn’t. “I understand now. She’s nice, Bill. Pretty.”

  “Let’s not go into that, kid. All I’m thinking about right now is getting you a new start, right?”

  “Sure Bill,” she said, and we headed back to my suite.

  I set Jessica up with a Seagram’s Seven highball and went looking for Melinda. Funny thing hit me as I left the suite: I didn’t get those knots in my gut, those impulses to take Jessica right there on the couch. I wasn’t sure why. Maybe it was because I realized she was just a pretty doll that I was lucky enough to have a little fling with. Maybe it was because all along my feelings for Melinda were stronger.

  Nuts. It was because I was scared silly that I was about to get a murder wrap hung around my neck when I didn’t even see the guy last night.

  I headed over to Melinda’s apartment and knocked. No answer. I tried Hawthorn’s next.

  Bingo.

  Melinda, teary–eyed and shaking, opened the door. Like an omen, a far-off rumble of thunder preceded her words.

  “It couldn’t have been you,” she said shaking her head. “It just couldn’t have. I was with you the whole night, and you couldn’t have had time…”

  “Can I come in?” I asked quietly.

  “Of course,” she said and opened the door wide.

  The place was dark except for a few candles. Hawthorn sat in a large, bamboo rocker smoking a pipe. The thick, dark air was drenched with the heavy smell of cherry
tobacco.

  “Sit down, William, anywhere is fine,” Melinda said and poured three glasses of brandy. She took hers down in one swallow, gave one to Hawthorn and one to me. “What did you tell the Sheriff?”

  “Same thing you did apparently, or we’d both be in the hopper.”

  “William, please, tell me…you didn’t have anything to do with this, right?”

  “No kitten, I didn’t kill Bachman. I had a plan to set up some juicy evidence and hand him over to Jackson. That’s all. I don’t kill for sport, kid.”

  “I knew so. I just needed to hear it from you.” She wrapped her arms around me and held me for a moment, then let go. No kiss.

  “How’s your old man?” I asked softly.

  “He’s in shock. So am I really. Neither of us ever expected something like this, here. Plus the scandal…dear God, William, once this gets out to the newspapers people will avoid this place like the plague.”

  “You can spin it, can’t you?” I knew it was a long-shot.

  “I can try. Once the facts are in maybe I can make it look like he was tied to the last of the old-time gangsters or something. Still, the security issue alone…”

  “Don’t worry about that now, kid. There’ll be time to fix the Island’s reputation later. For now we’ve got to try to figure out who did this and why.”

  Hawthorn looked up from his chair for the first time. “Mr. Riggins, isn’t that what the police are for?”

  “Certainly, Mr. Hawthorn,” I said looking his way. The candlelight danced on his ancient face, playing tricks. He looked like a ghost. “But I’m afraid at the moment the police think I did it, and that’s what they’re going on. I need to get the jump on them so I don’t wind up in the clink myself.”

  Hawthorn stared at me, sort of funny-like. “Mr. Riggins, you seem to be overlooking one very important fact.”

  “What’s that?”

  “That whomever killed Rutger may be after Melinda or myself next.”

  Melinda and I looked at each other as another thunder roll came in at just the right time. “I hadn’t thought of that,” she said, the slightest bit of fear in her voice. “Do you think that’s a possibility?”

  I thought about it a minute. “Sure, I guess it’s possible, but knowing what Bachman was into, I think it’s much more likely it was someone from the underworld that rubbed him out.”

  “Such a crass way of putting it, Mr. Riggins. Rutger may have had his faults, but he was still my friend, as it were.”

  I guess I was being sort of cold. I get that way when people try to kill me. “I’m sorry, Mr. Hawthorn. That was insensitive of me.”

  “No harm,” he said, and went back to his brandy, Melinda just frowned. I nodded my head toward the door and she got the idea.

  “Eliot,” she said softly,” William and I are going down to the dining room. Would you like anything sent up?”

  Hawthorn just shook his head. We headed down to the restaurant and talked along the way.

  “I came looking for you because Jessica’s in my room. I didn’t know what else to do with her.”

  There was only a slight twitch in her step, and a half-second pause before she answered, “We can put her in 320. But I need to eat something first or I’m going to be sick.”

  I said “Ok,” tentatively. I really wanted to get Jessica taken care of. “Well, how about we stop at the front desk, you get me the key and I get her squared away then meet you down here?”

  Melinda sighed, a sort of angry bull type of sigh. “I’d really rather not, William. We have some things to talk about and she’s honestly the last thing on my mind.”

  I stopped us just shy of the elevator. “What things?”

  “What things? Well, for one, both Eliot and I are being considered suspects by Sheriff Jackson.”

  I went cold. The Sheriff was no dummy. It occurred to me that if he had them on his list of suspects, he had more of a reason than just the plain fact that they worked together. What was in his head? What knowledge did he have that I didn’t? Did he know all about Bachman’s pimping? I tried like hell not to let the questions show on my face. I cleared my throat and said, “Really?” with a little more surprise than I actually felt. “I mean, I can’t imagine either of you having the bal…the inclination to do something so horrible.” I shifted a little and if Melinda were in the detective racket she’d have known I was hiding something because I just wasn’t a good enough actor to pull it off. Lucky, she didn’t catch on. I changed the subject fast. “Did he seal off the Island?”

  “Yes. No one comes or goes without his knowing. He’s got twelve deputies on the Island, too. They’re interviewing everyone, starting with us, then the staff, then you, and now they’re starting on the guests. It’s a nightmare, if I ever saw one.”

  The elevator came up and we got in, alone. The air inside seemed stuffy, hot. Close. Uncomfortable. “So, you have any idea who might have done this?” I asked, not looking at Melinda. She slowly turned to me and said, “Only every girl on the Island. He was a snake and put the moves on anything with heels. And of course, their boyfriends would be suspects too.”

  “Can you narrow it down at all?”

  “Not much,” she said as we exited the elevator. “Maybe down to the prettiest girls. I know he had something going with Kaliki.”

  “The mermaid? How did a guy like him manage to get his paws on a doll like her?”

  “I don’t know, money? Position? Blackmail? Who knows.”

  We entered the dining room and took a booth near the back under a giant palm plant. Melinda ordered a Tiki version of a Waldorf Salad (it had orange slices in it) and I ordered chicken lo mien and a Jack and Ginger.

  “No Mai Tai today, William?” Melinda asked in a flirty yet tired way.

  “Not today kid. Today is too much like work to pretend I’m on vacation. Now what else do you want to talk about?”

  “Funny you should mention work,” she said. “I was going to ask…and please don’t feel you have to say yes…but I was hoping maybe you would do some investigating of your own, to try to find out who killed Rutger.”

  “Ohhh, so it’s Rutger now?”

  “William, I may have loathed the man, but I never wished him dead.”

  “Well, somebody did. And yeah, I’d be happy to find out who it is. You’re not the only one with your head on the block. The answer just might save my neck.” I drank down half the hi-ball in one shot. A boom of thunder much louder than the others shook the hall.

  “Aren’t you worried at all about that storm?”

  “No,” she said. “We get storms all the time. The staff has already made preparations, tied the boats down, taken in the beach furniture. We’ll be ok.”

  I was almost convinced, then something horrible crept into my mind, one of those thoughts that starts out slow then hits you over the head with a ball-peen hammer. “Oh, Christ,” I said a little too loudly.

  “What is it? Is the Bourbon watered down? I’ll give that bartender the boot if she…”

  “No, the booze is fine. I’m not. I just realized something.”

  “What?”

  “Bachman is dead. Somebody’s got to tell his brother, Jerry.”

  Melinda was silent. So was I.

  It was well after two p.m. when Melinda got me the key to room 320 and we parted ways, her to run the hotel and me to get Jessica out of my room. She wasn’t too happy about getting stuck alone for almost an hour, and I noticed a bottle of gin was a lot lighter than it was that morning. I told her I had some work to take care of and set her up in room 320. I ordered her a platter from room service and got out before she had a chance to try to make me stay.

  Back in my suite I stared at the coconut phone for a good ten minutes before dialing the operator. The scene through the picture window was bad…dark clouds to the south and east, gray and swirling to the west. The sun, for the first time since I got to the Sunshine State, was nowhere to be found.

  A low rumble shook t
he room. Very suddenly the sound of large, flat raindrops banged against the glass here and there, then stopped. I picked up the receiver and spun the dial with my finger in the “O”.

  A few clicks, a few whirs and some static later I had Jerry on the other end.

  “Hey pally, how’s the south treating you?” He sounded like he was in a swell mood.

  “Well kid, everything’s been great up ’til now.”

  “Why? What happen, you spend the night alone for once?”

  “This is serious, Jerry. You better sit down.”

  I heard a glass clink on the other end. “You’re scarin’ me, pally. What’s so important I gotta sit down?”

  “It’s about your brother, Rutger.”

  “I’m listening,” he said with a quiver in his voice. He already knew at that point.

  “Jerry, I’m afraid he’s been murdered. Sometime during the night. No one knows who or why, yet. I’m sorry.”

  The line was silent for a few seconds, then I heard a glass smash on the floor. “Jerry? You all right kid?”

  “Riggins, you were just supposed…you were supposed to be on vacation, for Christ’s sake. How could you?”

  “Me? Now listen Jer, I had nothing to do with it! I actually only met him a couple of times because he was so busy. It wasn’t me who put him on ice, but I’m gonna do everything I can to find out who the killer is, that you can take to the bank.” I could hear the sobs coming on the other end. Then I could hear them in his voice.

  “He…he was supposed to come visit me this Christmas. I ain’t seen the guy in three years, ya know? Aw, goddammit, Bill, what the hell happened?”

  “You really wanna know?”

  “Yeah, give it to me straight.”

  “Someone killed him in his sleep. Smashed his windpipe with a lead pipe, or something like it. Probably quick.”

  “Why?”

  “Don’t know. Jerry, you may not know this, but your brother was mixed up in some crazy stuff.”

  “I know, Bill. That’s why I thought…look, I knew he had some side businesses going with girls and party favors. I didn’t want to tell you because…well really, it ain’t any of my business. Besides, I didn’t think you’d take the vacation if…” His voice trailed off in to soft sobs. It broke my heart.