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

by Christopher Pinto

  “Yeah, congrats on the car, Riggins. Try not to let it get stolen.”

  I laughed. “In this city? Forget it. It’ll be gone in a week. I know it for a fact, the cops here stink.”

  +++

  I hauled the rod up to my house in Weehawken at a quarter to four, and parked right out front. A couple of neighbors saw it and came out to gab about “the fine ’chine.” After a while they drifted away, and I finally got inside my nice, warm house.

  Gaddamned phone was ringing as I walked through the door. On what seemed to be the fourth ring, I grabbed the receiver.

  “Yeah?”

  “William Riggins?” the operator asked. Weren’t many people who called me William.

  “Yes?”

  “Person to person call from a Miss Melinda Hawthorne, long distance from Florida. Will you accept the call?”

  Gaddammit. I didn’t want to accept the call.

  “Yes, I’ll accept the call.” Dammit.

  “Just a moment sir.” There were some clicks and whirs, and Melinda’s voice came streaming through sixteen hundred miles of copper wire and into my head.

  “William?”

  “Hello Melinda. How’s the weather?”

  “Weather is fine. Jessica is not. There’s a plane ticket waiting for you at the airport, six o’clock flight to Miami. There’s a private plane there waiting to take you to Key West.”

  “Melinda, if you think I can just…”

  “Please William, it’s…it’s very important that you come.”

  I thought a minute. I hadn’t heard a peep from either of them in nearly two months, and I liked it that way. Now this. “I can’t just pick up and run, kid. I’ve got a job…”

  “She’s dying, Will. I don’t know how long she can hold on.”

  “I’ll be on the plane,” I said sadly, and hung up. Dammit!

  The jet was delayed an hour because of the snow. I didn’t get into Miami until well after nine, and the puddle-jumper that took me to Marathon took another twenty minutes. Melinda’s driver met me at the airport with a Packard limousine. He drove me to the dock where a speedboat was waiting. The speedboat made it to Tiki Island in under ten minutes. Melinda met me at the newly rebuilt dock.

  “William,” she said softy, and hugged me tight. “I’m…I’m really happy you came. It means a lot to Jessica.”

  I almost didn’t hear what she said. I took in the Island in one long gaze, amazed at what I was seeing. As if nothing ever happened, Tiki Island was back to its old, paradise self, holding me in that crazy, tropical magical trance that it had so easily caught me in before. The Tiki torches flaming against the twilight sky, the Islander girls in their Hawaiian garb, the lazy steel guitar and ukulele music floating on the warm air. All back, all perfect. All fake.

  I forced myself from the spell and asked, “How is she?”

  “Resting,” Melinda replied with a mournful note.

  “What happened?”

  Melinda took my arm and started walking me toward the main entrance of the Tiki Island Hotel. “One guess.”

  “She OD’d, didn’t she.”

  “Not quite.” We reached the doors, perfectly restored, and she led me inside. She didn’t say another word until we were seated in the Shipwreck Bar. Three beautiful Mermaids swam their water ballet as Arthur Lyman’s Quiet Village played in the background.

  “Come on kid, give.”

  “Her body is dying. It’s her liver, mostly. And her heart.”

  “The drugs.”

  “Yes,” Melinda said flatly, lighting a cigarette. I guess she took up smoking.

  “Fuck,” I said without thinking, the blood boiling in my brain and cooking away any morals I had left. “Sorry kid.”

  “No need,” she said, blowing a little smoke ring into the air. Her eyes began to glisten. “That’s exactly what I said when the doctor told me.”

  Something changed in Melinda since I saw her last. Not just the smoking, but her entire being was just a little askew. She seemed a little older, maybe a little wiser. Definitely a lot less innocent. Running Tiki Island, losing Hawthorn, and now losing Jessica was making her grow up fast.

  A waitress brought over a couple of drinks. Mine was a Bourbon on the rocks. Melinda’s was something clear, neat. I took a slug and said, “The junk. Always the junk. I’ve seen so many kids dead one way or another from the stuff, it kills me a little every time I see. Ain’t there nothin’ the doctors can do?”

  “No,” Melinda answered, the tears finally creeping through and rolling slowly down her bronzed cheeks. “It’s too late. She’s too far gone, they say. Her liver…it’s diseased, beyond hope. Even if they were to fix it, her heart…it just wouldn’t take it.”

  “Jesus. How did this happen? I figured she’d be ok now, after everything was over. Didn’t she come to live with you?”

  “She did. But it wasn’t over, William. It’s not over. I fear…”

  The waterworks came again. She tried to cover it up but her own tears betrayed her.

  “What kid? Tell.”

  “It won’t be over until Jessica is dead,” she said through the tears, and buried her face in her hands. I reached across the table and put my hand on her head, running my fingers through her soft, dark hair. “Anything, anything at all that I can do kiddo, just name it. I’m here now.”

  She looked up. Her eyes were brown discs floating in reddened pools. “She needs to see you, William. She needs to talk to you.”

  “Ok,” I said. Seemed like a simple request.

  “She needs you to…to hear the truth.”

  Now that’s a late change in the starting lineup. “Truth? What truth are we talking about?”

  “Her truth. And you need to hear it from her. You need to listen to her, and most importantly, you need to end what Jessica started.”

  I finished my drink and sat the glass down gently on the bamboo table. I thought for just a second as the exotic music filled my mind. I thought how the atmosphere in the lounge was just perfect; dark and mysterious, a wrecked boat sunken in an ocean of tropical fish and mermaids, no light except for a few candles and some strange red and blue glows emanating from hanging blowfish lamps. The scent of fruit, coconut oil and tobacco, mingling into a strange, foreign air. Even Melinda herself, wearing an untypically dark blue dress with dark flowers, and a black orchid in her hair. Everything, every sight, every sound, every smell told me something wicked was about to unfold, to get the hell out of there and never come back to this evil, haunted, maniacal place again.

  “Whatever she needs,” I said, “I’ll do it, for her, and for you.”

  Dammit!!!

  +++

  We took the elevator to the third floor, a ride that seemed familiar yet strange, like something remembered from a far off dream. I wasn’t surprised at all when we stopped in front of Eliot’s door.

  “During reconstruction I had them turn both apartments into one, with a bedroom each for myself and Jessica,” Melinda said as she unlocked the three separate locks on the new door. She swung it wide and hit the light. I was surprised to find most of Hawthorne’s room had remained intact, including his wing-backed chair and Oriental rug.

  “Still looks the same,” I commented.

  “Just this room. I always liked this room. Jessica’s in the back.” She led me down a long hallway flanked with Tiki-style art, black velvet paintings and carved-wood masks to a locked door. “She’s in here. Here’s the key.”

  “You’re not coming in?”

  “No William,” Melinda said softly, “This is between you and Jessica.” She hesitated, then said, “She still loves you, you know.”

  I didn’t want to hear it. “Sure.”

  “I mean it, William. She loves you more than anything, even herself. Even more than me. And I know you still love her, William, so don’t play mister tough guy and try to pretend you don’t.”

  “There was a time,” I said without thinking, “That I thought I may have loved you
.”

  “No,” she answered, “You never did. You were enamored with me because I did everything in my power to make you feel that way. You loved the idea of loving me. But you never really fell in love with me, Melinda, the person. It was Jessica you loved. It’s always been Jessica. And it’s Jessica you still love now.”

  I didn’t say a word. Melinda turned and walked away, her sandals clapping softly on the hardwood floor. In a second, she was gone. I sighed, then slipped the ancient skeleton key into the antique lock, and turned. It clicked. I pushed on the latch and opened the door.

  What I saw next will be burned into my mind for the rest of my life.

  Jessica was sitting up in bed, her face white as a sheet, her eyes puffy and red. Here flowing blonde hair was a nest of turmoil, matted and frayed. She was crying, saying something inaudible…to a dark, misty shadow hovering over her bed. As I looked on, she turned to me, startled, and the shadow dispersed into thin air.

  “Billy,” she said breathlessly.

  “Hello Jessica,” was all I could say. She began to cry a little harder, and coughed. I closed the door and sat beside her.

  “Billy.” She threw her arms around me and held onto me for dear life. “Billy, I’m dying,” she said.

  “I know.”

  “I screwed up,” she said with a cough.

  “It’s ok Baby,” I said, holding her.

  “No, Billy. It’s pretty fuwkin’ far from Ok, pardon my French.”

  I gave a little laugh. I couldn’t help it. “How long, kid?”

  Jessica sniffed, thinking. “Maybe a few days. Maybe...tonight.”

  “Jesus,” was all I could say. It didn’t seem possible. It didn’t seem real. “There something you want to tell me, kid?”

  “Yes,” she said shakily. “Yeah.” She let go and took a drink from a cup on her nightstand. “I got a lot to tell you. I just hope I make it through long enough to tell you it all.”

  “Don’t say that Jess.”

  “It’s true, sugar. The doctor said days. That was days ago. I truly think I’m down to hours, buddy.” She took another drink. I could tell from the smell it was whiskey. I guess it didn’t matter now.

  “I’ll stay here with you, baby,” I said, holding back some tears of my own. Melinda was right; Somehow I had fallen head over heals for this charming, sweet, broken, screwed-up, beautiful junky prostitute. How the hell it happened, I’ll never know. No wonder I was conflicted about running the Island with Melinda. I never loved Melinda. I should have loved Melinda, but sometimes fate slams a rock over your head and next thing you know you’re a vice cop falling for a hooker. “I’ll stay with you…however long it takes. What is it you want to tell me, kid?”

  “The truth, Billy. From the beginning. The whole truth. And I think maybe then ya’ll will understand me a little better, understand why I had to do what I did. Understand why…Why I asked you to come here, at the end.”

  I looked down at my watch. It was eight-thirty. I poured myself a drink from the bottle on the nightstand. “I got all night, baby. Lay it on me.”

  “You’re not going to like it, Billy. Not one bit of it.”

  “I’m sure I’ve heard worse.”

  “No,” Jessica said in a very serious tone. “I don’t think you ever have. Better make that drink a double. You’re gonna need it, sugar.”

  Jessica’s Story

  Baby Jessica was only three years old when she went to live in the nineteenth-century house in Key West. Her mother, Rose, had gone missing in the Great Atlantic Hurricane of 1935, an occurrence that many friends and family found strange, as she had packed up and gone off-island for the weekend without telling anyone why or with whom she was going. She simply dropped baby Jessica off at her grandparents, said she had some business out of town, and would be back in a few days. That was the last Rose’s parents ever saw of her, and though they knew she’d been lost to the storm, they never learned the truth behind Rose’s death...or more accurately, her murder at the hands of Eliot Hawthorne.

  Though it was the last her parents ever saw of Rose, it certainly wasn’t the last that Jessica would ever see of her.

  “I still remember,” Jessica said as she gazed past Riggins into some distant space and time, “The night she died. Even before my Grandmama knew, before the Sheriff came to say she’d been gone missing, that night she came to me, while I laid down in my crib. She was beautiful...shining, glowing like an angel. She hovered over me, and touched her hand to my cheek, but I don’t recall feeling it. Then she just...disappeared, sort of turned invisible as I watched. It’s as if she came to say goodbye on last time. I don’t remember much of my childhood, but I sure as hell remember that.”

  Yet that wasn’t the last time Rose came to Jessica’s side. Through the years, as Jessica grew from a baby to a child, from a child to a teen, on hot summer nights when the moon was low a shimmery shadow would float into Jessica’s room at her grandparent’s home. Sometimes she would see it, sometimes it was just a feeling, but she knew it was her mother, coming to check on her, visiting to make sure Jessica was doing well. Jessica welcomed these visits...and although anyone she tried to tell simply said she was crazy, fantasizing and dreaming, she knew that the visitations in the night were real, very, very real.

  “Then when I was fifteen, I met Ricardo,” she continued, taking a short swig of Bourbon. “Ricardo, the boy who convinced me he was in love with me, who wanted me to go to Miami with him.”

  Jessica was smitten. She had never had a boy tell her she was beautiful, or that he loved her. He plied her with flowers and cheap booze along with talk just as cheap, and finally, one cool night on a dark beach at the north end of the Key, he convinced her to let him touch her, to feel her, to let his hands wander over her young body as no other hands had before. With the help of some gin laced with a few pills, Ricardo took her virginity that night on the beach, though Jessica barely remembered it.

  Once he had her convinced that they were in love and would someday be married, he introduced her to something a little stronger than alcohol: Reefer. It took some convincing for her to try it, but she finally caved in. And she enjoyed it...with him...so much so that when he suggested trying some pills, she didn’t object. It was while high on pills that he first convinced her to have sex with another girl while he watched, and then joined in. Again, she was barely aware what she was doing...blinded by her love for him and the mind-bending drugs. When it was over, Ricardo convinced her that it was something they should do again.

  “Oh, he was good, that one.” Jessica continued. “He knew just how to manipulate young girls, get them to fall for his good looks and charm then get them hooked on pills or horse or whatever he could get them into. With me, he hit the jackpot. On a dull, hot, sticky summer night my grandparents were killed in an auto accident while driving home from Duck Key, and my world shattered. Ricardo was there for me, comforting me, telling me everything would be a-ok.”

  Then to soothe her soul, he proposed they try something new together...and at the age of sixteen, Jessica had her first injection of heroin, a special cocktail that Ricardo mixed himself. She got high, and he pretended to get high, and she loved it. She loved that this twenty-two year old man loved her, loved her enough to share such incredible things with her. She loved it so much that when he suggested they do it again the next night, she cheerfully obliged. And the next night. And the night after that.

  And just when she was hooked, just when going without the junk for a few hours started to hurt and she needed a fix, that’s when Ricardo told her she had to start paying for her own supplies, and it wasn’t cheap. Jessica’s grandparents had arranged for their life insurance to pay off the taxes on the house through 1960, to make sure she always had a place to live. But after the funeral expenses there wasn’t much left for a sixteen year old girl to live on, so, as Ricardo had hoped, she had to go to work.

  He got his friend (boss), a man named Roberts, to give her a job as a bar waitress at a
sleazy place on the edge of town, a burlesque house that “entertained” gentlemen upstairs. Jessica was made to do every menial job from serving drinks to stripping the dirty, wet linens off the beds. She was disgusted by what she saw, but knew it was necessary...Ricardo took all her money, and gave her a fix whenever she needed it, plus bought her groceries and clothes. She didn’t see as much of him now, as he often had to go to Miami on business (a business she still wasn’t sure what it was), but when he was out of town there were several other ‘connections’ she could rely on for her daily bread.

  “It wasn’t long before things began to change, of course. Prices went up. It got more difficult to find Ricardo, or any of his ‘friends’. That bastard Roberts cut my hours down and demanded more work from me when I was there. It seemed pretty damned unfair to me, and it was...it was because it was a completely calculated plan, one that had worked on dozens of girls over the years...get them hooked on the junk, introduce them to the life, and slowly pull them into where the real money was.”

  One night, after Jessica had been dry for two days and had the shakes something terrible, she begged and pleaded with Roberts to give her a fix...but her money was spent.

  “There’s one job left ya’ll ain’t yet done,” he said to her, “I could put you up on the stage. I recon a pretty, well-built babe like you dancin’ nekked would bring in some big bucks. Can you do it?” Jessica nearly vomited at the thought...no one but Ricardo had ever seen her naked, and she liked it that way. But the monkey was a strong one, and he was pulling on her back so hard she couldn’t stand it.

  “Will you give me the fix first, Roberts?”

  “Sure baby, you just let me have a look at the goods first, make sure ya’ll as pretty under them clothes as ya promise to be,” he said to the girl, licking his lips like a disgusting hyena.

  “Here? Now?”

  “Yea, darlin’,” he said, taking a needle kit out of his back pocket. “I’ve got ever’thin’ ya’ll need right here. Don’t be shy. Let’s see whatcha got.” And knowing that it was the only way to shut the monkey up, Jessica let her clothes slide to the floor, keeping her eyes closed the entire time.