Six Pack of Sleuths: Comedy Mysteries

by Barbara Silkstone

  ‘Don’t worry, Mr. P, we’ve got it all covered.’ The other one spoke again, and I was guessing it was Missing Link. ‘I’ve already hacked into the hotel’s security system and covered my tracks. It won’t show any disturbance to their security features at all. They won’t have a clue that we’ve intercepted their security system. As soon as he fires the shot to kill Kaya, the security system is set to completely disarm the lasers on the outside of the statue case, and the glass casing below will slide down. The shot will cause a distraction. It will be a full-scale panic. People will be running away, screaming, and all the guards will rush to Kaya, who will be on the stage in front of the port.’

  ‘Excellent. Excellent.’ I heard the excitement in Gravelly Voice’s words.

  ‘Then I’ll take the statue from the stage area and jump onto the speedboat, waiting at the port,’ Missing Link carried on.

  ‘But what if the guards don’t leave their post at the statue?’ Gravelly Voice asked.

  I took a sharp intake of breath. It sounded like an explosion in my ears, but they didn’t seem to hear it because they carried on talking.

  ‘I’ll shoot them as well if I have to.’ Ferret Face this time. He sounded like he’d enjoy doing it too. ‘My bedroom is in prime sniper position overlooking the stage area. Don’t worry. Even if the shot to kill Kaya doesn’t distract the guards, I will have a clear shot of anyone getting in my way.’

  I gulped.

  ‘Just make sure you kill Kaya,’ Gravelly Voice said. ‘He can’t double-cross me and get away with it. That hotel was supposed to be mine. My plans. My idea. And soon, it will be mine with Kaya out of the way. I’m going to take over his business empire, piece by piece, just like he did when he tried to ruin me.’ He followed with a throaty chuckle.

  ‘It’s a done deal, Mr. P,’ Ferret Face said. ‘You don’t have to worry about a thing.’

  ‘Good. It had better be. I didn’t pay you half a million for nothing.’ Gravelly Voice again. ‘Tomorrow my biggest enemy will be out of the way, and Kaya’s precious little statue will be en route to the art dealer in South Cyprus. Bye bye.’ He chuckled again.

  Another gulet suddenly chugged into the harbour with a rowdy bunch of tourists. Music blared away as they danced on the top deck.

  Oh, shut up. I want to listen! I strained my ears, trying to make out more conversation.

  The party boat turned around, repositioning itself to reverse into a spot further up the harbour, sending the water bouncing up and down, bumping against the fishing boat.

  As the fishing boat dipped down on a wave, I lost my grip on the buoy and catapulted backwards off the railings, legs shooting in the air like I was a human cannonball being launched.

  ‘Agh!’ I landed backside first in a large plastic box of fish and crabs in front of the cabin.

  I rolled over onto my back and tried to sit up, but the slimy wet fish seemed to keep sucking me back into a slippery abyss. One of the crabs clawed at my hair and another attacked my legs.

  ‘Help!’ My arms and legs flailed in the air, trying to grab something to hold onto so I could pull myself out. ‘Ouch!’ A crab nipped my bum. God, that really hurt!

  I heard a thudding noise from the engine room below as someone ran up the stairs, and a fisherman appeared, looming over me.

  ‘What the–?’ He frowned at me and held his hand out.

  I grabbed it, and he pulled me out of the box. ‘Thanks!’ I twisted around to look at my bum, which now had a crab hanging off, its barnacle-encrusted pincers locked firmly on. ‘Oh, my God! Get it off, get it off!’ I thrust my bum towards the fisherman, vaguely aware that the people in the harbour had stopped talking and were all turning to gawp at me. ‘Ooh, hurry up! It hurts,’ I said to the fisherman, who seemed to be taking a long time to prise the thing off me. Maybe he was enjoying it. Pervert!

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Ferret Face, Missing Link, and Gravelly Voice leaning over the top deck of the yacht, pointing and laughing at me.

  Great.

  I heard a crunching sound as the fisherman pulled the crab off.

  I twisted around again to make sure it had gone. Yep, no crab. I rubbed the spot where it had clung on for dear life, wondering if it had actually taken a chunk out. Did crabs eat humans? I didn’t have a clue. Maybe it was a killer crab.

  I shuddered.

  The fisherman eyed my backside with appreciation. ‘That is a dangerous red crab.’

  I gulped. ‘How dangerous?’

  Gravelly Voice leaned on the railings of his boat, looking down at us and watching the show.

  ‘Very,’ the fisherman said. ‘You’ve only got ten minutes to get to the nearest hospital.’

  I felt a warm glow crawling up my legs. No! It had started already. The poison must be seeping through my veins. ‘How far away is the nearest hospital?’ I cried.

  ‘Fifteen minutes away.’ The fisherman let out a smutty chuckle. ‘Want me to suck out the poison?’

  Missing Link thought this was hilarious, leaning his head back and howling up to the sky.

  See, I was right. In fact, he could’ve been a close relative of that giant hairy man who lived in the woods; what was his name? Oh, yes. Bigfoot!

  ‘Yoo hoo!’ Charlie climbed aboard to the rescue. ‘Oh there you are.’ He winked at me. ‘I thought I’d lost you. Come along.’ He linked my arm and tried to steer me off the boat.

  The fisherman blocked our path. ‘Hey, not so fast. What are you doing on my boat interfering with my crabs?’

  I opened my mouth to say that the crab actually interfered with me, but thought better of it and clamped it shut again.

  ‘I get it. You’re from that big fishing company, aren’t you? Trying to steal my catch again and force me to sell out, aren’t you?’ He narrowed his eyes at us. ‘I’ve had enough of–’

  ‘No, we’re from the…Turtle Project.’ I interrupted, straightening myself up and dusting off my clothes, trying for my best authoritative look. ‘We’ve had a report of a turtle on one of these boats in the harbour, and we’re just checking it out,’

  He frowned.

  ‘Have you seen one?’ I asked him, covertly rubbing my bum.

  Missing Link howled even louder. ‘How is a turtle supposed to get on a boat?’

  ‘I saw one earlier,’ Gravelly Voice shouted down at us. ‘Yes, I saw it leaving the Chinese restaurant with a bag of seaweed. It just left on a Jet Ski.’ He pointed out to sea, trying to contain his amusement and failing.

  Missing Link nearly wet himself. Ferret Face slapped the railings of the yacht, tears streaming down his face. The fisherman cackled.

  OK, OK, it’s not that funny.

  ‘Right, well, if you see one, please let the Turtle Project know.’ I gave the fisherman a haughty look.

  He stepped aside and let us pass.

  Charlie wrinkled up his nose at me. ‘You stink.’

  ‘Well so would you if you’d been squished in fishiness,’ I huffed as we bolted out of the harbour with a hundred pairs of eyes following us. ‘Do you think that’s what Osman’s mum saw with the fish in the Turkish coffee cup?’

  Charlie shrugged.

  ‘God, what if everything else she said comes true?’ A chill slithered through my bones.

  ‘You don’t really believe in all that, do you?’

  ‘Of course not! Don’t be ridiculous!’ I didn’t want to even contemplate it. I ran a hand over my matted, squelchy hair. ‘Have I got crab poop in it?’

  ‘Do crabs poop?’

  ‘I don’t know, but I can feel something in it.’ I waved a hand in front of my face to try and disperse the smell. ‘I need a shower. Can you drop me off at our hotel and pick up Kalem from his parents’ house for me?’

  ‘You need more than a shower. You need a decontamination chamber.’

  ‘Do you think it was a poisonous crab?’

  ‘No. No such thing.’

  I guessed that I’d find out in about another five minutes.


  Chapter 12

  I grabbed a quick shower. Well, no, I thought it would be quick, but a whole bottle of papaya and lemon shower gel later, I could still smell bloody fish. You don’t even want to know what I pulled out of my hair!

  Another ten minutes of bubbles and spray left me pink and blotchy. Now I smelled like a slightly fruity fish, so I squirted a quarter of a bottle of perfume and half a bottle of body spray on. Great, now I was carrying enough fumes to gas a small country, but at least I couldn’t smell any sea creatures anymore.

  ‘What have you done?’ Kalem almost shrieked at me as he rushed into the steamy bathroom, side-stepping the wet towels I’d flung on the floor. He went into a choking fit from the fumes. ‘I thought you were going to ring me if you found him, not do something that could put you in danger.’

  ‘There wasn’t time! I had to follow him. And it’s a good job I did, otherwise we wouldn’t know exactly what they’re planning.’ I grabbed his arm and yanked him out the door. ‘We have to go back to the Plaza and try to warn Ibrahim Kaya. He was there earlier, but I was a bit occupied following Missing Link and Ferret Face.’ I filled him in on what I’d overheard on the yacht.

  ‘OK. Well just leave all the talking to me this time. We don’t want any confusion about nuts again. The opening ceremony is on Friday. This could be our last chance to get someone to stop this.’

  ‘And what if we don’t get to talk to Kaya?’ I slid behind the wheel, wound the window down so we didn’t pass out from the perfume fumes, and rammed the gearstick into first. ‘Now we have more information about what’s going down, we need a plan B.’

  ‘Going down?’ He threw me a questioning look.

  ‘Yes, I heard that in a crime film once.’

  Kalem thought about this for a while. ‘The assassination is the distraction designed to get the guards away from the statue. If they can’t shoot Kaya, there won’t be any distraction, and they won’t try to steal the statue because the guards will be posted in front of it.’

  ‘So we need to concentrate on stopping Ferret Face from trying to shoot Kaya,’ I said, feeling lightheaded at the enormity of the situation. I took a couple of deep breaths and nearly passed out from the fumes. ‘And how do we do that?’ My mind wandered around various scenarios. ‘Hit him over the head and knock him out?’

  ‘Do you know what room number he’s staying in at the Plaza?’

  ‘No. I didn’t actually see him go into a room.’

  ‘If we hit him over the head, we might have to do it in public, which wouldn’t work.’

  I glanced over at Kalem. ‘Tie him up?’

  ‘Again, how can we do that in public? And I would think Ferret Face might be a bit resistant to being tied up.’

  ‘He might be kinky. We could find out what room he’s in, and I could pretend to be a hooker and tie him up.’

  Kalem gave me a not-in-this-lifetime look. ‘Too dangerous.’

  ‘I know! We could drug him.’

  ‘How?’

  I thought back to the conversation on the boat. ‘Ferret Face is going to the bar at the Plaza after his meal tonight to drink posh cognac. If we don’t get to speak to Ibrahim Kaya, we could buy some sleeping tablets and put them in his drink.’

  ‘Are you nuts? No, let me rephrase that. I already know you’re nuts. How are you going to put them in his drink?’

  ‘I don’t know yet. I’ll have to improvise. Maybe I can pretend to be a barwoman and slip them in there, or…I know. I can try and chat him up. Yes! That’s it! I can buy him a drink, shove in the tablets, and hey presto! Nighty night Ferret Face. Then we can tie him up and wait for help to arrive. The President would have to do something then, surely.’

  ‘I don’t like it. It could be dangerous.’

  It wasn’t really high on my list of fun things to do either. ‘But we might not have any other choice.’

  ‘Anyway, isn’t he going to recognize you from the harbour?’

  ‘Damn. I hadn’t thought of that. Make-up. I need lots and lots of make-up. I’ve got some in my bag. And I’ll put my hair up. It was dark on the fishing boat, and he was looking down at me from the yacht, so hopefully he won’t recognize my face.’ He might recognize my bum, but I didn’t want to even think about that.

  ‘He might need a lot of sleeping tablets to knock him out so we can tie him up with no trouble.’

  I pulled into a late night pharmacy and gave Kalem a wicked grin. ‘Well let’s give him a lot then.’

  ****

  We arrived at the Plaza armed with some extra-strength, fast-working sleeping tablets. The pharmacist assured us that one tablet would be enough to knock someone out for eight hours. I thought that if I gave him three, he’d be in the land of nod for at least thirty-two hours. She also advised us that some people could have a severe allergic reaction to them…

  Me: Oh, yes? What sort of reaction?

  Pharmacist: It can make your hair fall out, or give you hives, or long-lasting diarrhoea.

  Me: Really? Interesting. Very interesting.

  ****

  As we turned into the Plaza’s entrance the traffic was at a standstill. Hundreds of cars lined the driveway, nose to tail. The car park was crammed with people trying to park, and at the entrance to the hotel, hundreds of paparazzi and journalists waited around. A white Hummer limo sat out the front, engine running.

  ‘What’s going on?’ I asked Kalem.

  ‘It must be Jayde arriving to stay at the hotel.’

  I eventually found a space and zoomed into it before a TV crew, complete with cameras and furry microphones, beat me to it.

  ‘Right, let’s get proactive. We need to crush up three tablets, so they’re all ready.’ I rummaged in my handbag, looking for some implement to use. Notepad? No. Comb? No. Camera? No. What? Cigar tin!’ I pulled out a slim cigar tin and emptied out the cigars. I waved the tin at Kalem. ‘If you crush them on the dashboard, we can put the granules inside it.’

  Kalem quickly got to work, grinding the small white tablets into powder and teasing it into the cigar tin as I piled on dark brown eye shadow, lashings of mascara, blusher, and a bright vermillion lipstick. I pulled my hair back into a long ponytail and surveyed the finished look in the visor mirror. Fab. I looked completely different from the harbour. Even I didn’t recognize me.

  He handed me the cigar tin. ‘I’m coming with you.’

  ‘No!’ What if Ferret Face is outside with the paparazzi?’

  Kalem stared at the mass of photographers and reporters. There were probably about two hundred people out there in the mayhem.

  ‘I can’t see him being out there with them. And if I stay in the middle of all those people, he won’t be able to see me anyway.’ He put a baseball cap on his head and pulled the peak down low over his face. ‘I’m not just sitting in the car and waiting for you to come back. It could be dangerous. It’s a chance I’m going to have to take.’ The look on his face meant business.

  I sighed. ‘OK.’ I slid the tin in my handbag and hung my camera around Kalem’s neck as we got out of the Land Rover. There. Now he’d just blend in with the other paparazzi. Hopefully.

  ‘Make way, Just for Women magazine coming through.’ I jostled through the crowd out front.

  ‘Just for Women magazine?’ Kalem questioned me.

  ‘Don’t ask.’ I shook my head and turned to a photographer on my right. ‘When’s Jayde arriving?’

  ‘She’s already arrived. We’re just camping out to see if we can get any more pictures of her. Hey, did you say you were from Just for Women magazine? My wife loves that. Do you have any vacancies for more photographers there?’

  ‘Sorry, they’re all filled at the moment.’

  ‘Look, here’s my card. I’d appreciate a heads-up when there are any vacancies.’ He handed me a white business card.

  I took the card. ‘Sure. Is Ibrahim Kaya here?’ I asked him.

  ‘Yes, he’s busy giving Jayde the star treatment, making sure her rooms are
OK and all that stuff.’

  ‘How many does she want?’ I frowned.

  ‘She’s got an entourage of about twenty people.’

  ‘Is that his limo?’ I jerked my head towards the Hummer at the rear of the crowd.

  ‘Yes. I think he’s leaving for some meeting with the President as soon as she’s settled in,’ the photographer said.

  I leaned closer to Kalem, whispering in his ear, ‘OK, let’s put plan B into action first. You wait here and blend in until you see Kaya. If he leaves before I get back, you can try to talk to him again. I’ll go to the pool bar and see if Ferret Face is there.’

  He clutched my arm, staring deep into my eyes. ‘I’m coming with you.’

  ‘You can’t! We’ve already been through this. He might recognize you. You need to wait here in the crowd, where he won’t be able to see you.’ I clutched his arm, feeling tears stinging my eyes. ‘I don’t want to lose you. I can do this on my own. I promise.’

  He let out an exasperated sigh. ‘OK, but you have to able to get in touch with me instantly if you need help. Give me your mobile phone. We need to have a link to each other so I know exactly what’s happening.’

  I unzipped my handbag and passed it to him. He dialled his own mobile phone from mine. Reaching into his pocket he answered the call and selected the mute setting on his phone. Then he handed me my phone back. ‘OK, now we have a direct phone line to each other. Keep your mobile in your hand, and I’ll be able to listen to everything that’s going on. That way, if you get in any trouble, I’ll be able to hear it straight away and come and get you. My phone is on mute, so your phone won’t pick up any noise from my end.’

  I took my mobile phone back and held it in my hand. Swinging my handbag over my shoulder, I nodded. A bad stinging sensation worked its way up from the pit of my stomach to my throat. Sort of like indigestion but a hundred times worse.

  Everything will be OK. Everything will be OK. I repeated it over and over again as I entered the foyer. A different receptionist from the night of the nuts was on duty. She smiled at me, and I waved back.