Corpse Suzette

by G. A. McKevett

  “They like you, is more like it,” Savannah said. “What did you do? Feed them tuna from a can?”

  “Half and half, from the fridge.”

  “Oh, no wonder.”

  “And I gave Cleo her methimazole tonight. I figured you’d be too tired to mess with it.”

  “You gave Cleo a pill... and you lived to tell about it? Boy, now I am impressed! Any bleeding involved?”

  “Nope. I’m unscathed.” She held up both hands, turning them this way and that for inspection.

  Savannah smiled and wasn’t all that shocked when Abigail returned it. Abby grew on you. Once you got past that extremely thick crust, there was a sweet woman underneath. Way underneath.

  “If you’re sure I can’t talk you into trading places,” Savannah said, “I think I’ll go check on Dirk and then hit the sack myself.”

  “I’m sure. Good night.”

  Savannah stood, kissed the tip of her forefinger, then reached down and touched it to Abby’s forehead. “Sleep tight, kiddo,” she said.

  “You, too.”

  Savannah started up the stairs and for the first time since she could ever remember, the cats didn’t follow her.

  They say kids and animals can tell a good person from a bad one, she thought. I guess Miss Abby’s a goodie after all.

  She crept into her own bedroom and saw that, just as Abby had said, Dirk hadn’t moved a hair. He was still under her silk sheet and satin comforter, only his head sticking out, snoring like a buzz saw.

  Softly she pressed her hand to his forehead. It was cool and dry. A good sign.

  She repeated the kiss to her fingertip and placed it on his cheek. To her surprise, he turned his face against her hand and for a moment pressed his lips into her palm.

  “Thanks, Van,” he whispered.

  “You’re welcome, darlin’,” she replied. “Go back to sleep. Feel better.”

  He nodded and ten seconds later resumed his snoring.

  Cowboy Dirk Coulter was a tough-hided buzzard. He’d survive that gunshot/rattlesnake bite/Indian arrow attack/buffalo stampede, after all.

  Yeap, it took a whole lot more than that to kill an old gunslinger/lawman like Coulter.

  The next morning, Savannah was enjoying some of her favorite activities, sitting in her easy chair, sipping a cup of coffee and nibbling a pastry, watching while Tammy worked away at the desk in the corner and Abigail snoozed, head covered with her pillow, on the sofa.

  Life just didn’t get much better than that.

  If there was anything more pleasant than enjoying one of the seven deadly sins at a time, it was doubling up. And Savannah had found that Gluttony and Sloth went particularly well together... sort of like a cinnamon pecan Danish and Sumatra dark roast.

  And just when she thought things couldn’t get any better, Dirk came downstairs. He practically bounced downstairs. And Savannah hadn’t seen Dirk bounce since 1993, when they had busted the guy who had broken into his house trailer and stolen his eight-track tape player and his Johnny Cash collection. “Wow,” she said, “look at you! You’re pert nigh perky!”

  His hair was standing on end and his eyes a bit puffy, but he had a definite spring to his step and a smile on his face. “I feel great!” he said. “That thing John whipped up for me last night did the trick! I swear, it really is the cure for the common cold.” 'Tammy glanced up from her work, looked him up and down, and said, “I think we should make you one of those hot toddy thingies every night, Dirko. You look almost human.”

  “Personally,” Savannah said, “I think it was the solid night’s sleep that snatched you from the jaws of the Grim Reaper.”

  “Jaws? Grim Reaper?” Tammy made a face. “I think the Grim Reaper uses a scythe to—”

  “Oh, don’t go waxing literary on me this early in the morning,” Savannah told her. “I can’t stand two perky people when I first get up. One of you has to go, or at least turn down the sunshine of your smile.”

  “Well, it isn’t going to be me,” Tammy replied. “I think I’m on to something here.”

  “I’m happy for you,” Savannah told her. “An hour from now I might even be happy for us all, if what you’ve got is really good. But for now, I’m still waking up and have no measurable brainwave activity. Besides, you’re gonna wake up Abby, so keep it down.”

  “Well, I’m wide awake,” Dirk said, strutting across the room to stand behind Tammy’s chair. “Ignore the grumpy woman in the corner and show me what you’ve got, kiddo.”

  “Oh, Lord, I can’t stand it,” Savannah groaned, biting into the Danish. “Sugar, caffeine, do your stuff.”

  “I’ve been playing with this software that Ryan and John gave me, and I’ve found all sorts of skullduggery.”

  Skullduggery? Savannah shook her head. That girl was going to have to go off Nancy Drew books, cold turkey.

  “Like what?” Dirk asked.

  “Like major embezzlement... from the Mystic Twilight spa for starters.”

  “Really?” Dirk leaned over her shoulder. “How much and when?”

  “Beginning about a year ago.”

  Savannah couldn’t help responding. “A year ago is when Suzette threw him out of her house.”

  “Well, he got her back, big-time,” Tammy said. “He started siphoning off Mystic Twilight’s assets. And he was really good at it, too. He got a lot and he did it in ways that would have made it hard to tell he was doing it.”

  “How much is a lot?” Dirk asked.

  “A mil and a half,” Savannah offered.

  “More,” Tammy said.

  “More?” Savannah raised one eyebrow. “How much more?”

  “From what I can see here, about three million more.” Savannah and Dirk both gasped.

  Even Abigail stirred briefly, readjusting the pillow over her head.

  “Do you mean he pulled four and a half million dollars out of that business in only a year?” Savannah said. “Wow, he was good!”

  “But he got caught.” Tammy typed away and produced another file on the screen. “The person who installed the keystroke spyware pulled up his files... recently.”

  “Recently?” Dirk asked. “How recently?”

  Tammy grinned up at him. “Would you believe a week before he died?”

  Dirk grunted. “I would have killed the guy if I found out he stole four and a half million from me.”

  “You,” Savannah added, “would have gladly sent Billy Bob Mason to the gas chamber for stealing your eight track, so we can’t go by you. But just for the record, I would have killed him for that, too.”

  “I’ll bet you that Suzette is still alive and kicking somewhere,” Tammy said. “And she installed this spyware to see if he was chasing other women, and lo and behold, she found out he was ripping off the business.”

  “I’ll bet you’re right,” Dirk said. “She found out what he’d done, took the money back somehow and transferred it to an anonymous bank account in Switzerland or the Caribbean, then she grabbed her dog and hid out... waited a couple of days and knocked him off, and then left to go join her money in Europe or the Cayman Islands.”

  “But if she did do that,” Savannah said, “how are we ever going to find her? You haven’t had much luck finding an anonymous bank online with that sort of an account number, right, Tam?”

  “No, not yet. But there are so many. I haven’t even worked through all the ones in the Caribbean.”

  Suddenly, Savannah stood up, nearly spilling her coffee on one of the cats. “Wait a minute,” she said, flashing back to her conversation with Clare. “Do you know that they have casinos on Santa Tesla Island?”

  Dirk and Tammy both stared at her blankly.

  “So?” Dirk said. “We’re talking banking here, not gambling.”

  “I know. But where do they have casinos?” she said.

  “Las Vegas, Native American reservations?” Tammy said.

  “And cruise ships!” Savannah was practically dancing in her fuzzy penguin house
slippers. “Because the ships go out into international waters where it isn’t subject to the laws of the U.S. or other countries.... This is great!”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” Dirk said.

  “Gambling. Anonymous banking. Same sort of thing. They have them outside the legal boundaries of countries that might otherwise regulate them. And if there are casinos on Santa Tesla Island—which is plenty far enough away from the California shore to be in international waters—there may be anonymous banks, too.”

  She ran over to Tammy’s desk. “And last night Suzette’s sister told me that Suzette likes to go there, to gamble, run around the island and look at the lighthouse. Find out, quick, if there are any anonymous banks on Santa Tesla Island.”

  Tammy did a quick search. The results popped up on the computer screen.

  She beamed up at Savannah. “Bingo! There are six of them. Six!”

  Dirk was already heading for the door. “Find the phone numbers of those banks,” he said, “and fax me a list of them over to my desk at the station house.”

  “But... but...” Tammy sputtered. She looked at Savannah. “Why?”

  “Why? Why? I don’t know why. I peaked with the Santa Tesla Island idea. That was my flash of brilliance for the morning, maybe for the whole day.” She headed for the kitchen, mug in hand. “Now, I have to refill my coffee cup”—she lowered her voice and whispered—“and eat that other Danish before Abigail gets up. I swear, she’s almost as bad as I am about coffee and pastries first thing in the morning. Yesterday she ate my last French cruller before I could even...”

  * * *

  They found out Dirk’s “why” less than half an hour later when he called from his desk at the police station.

  “We’ve got a lead,” he said the moment Savannah answered the phone. “A real lead. A solid, bonafide lead. You were hot with that Santa Tesla bank business, Savannah, my girl.”

  Savannah winked at Tammy, who was standing nearby, jumping up and down with excitement. “He says we’ve got something.” Then, to Dirk, she said, “What? What do we have?”

  “I’m looking at phone records right now from Emerge.”

  “Emerge phone records,” she told Tammy.

  “And there were two phone calls from there to one of the numbers on Tammy’s list of anonymous banks.”

  “Yay! Tam, somebody from Emerge called one of your banks. Twice!”

  Tammy went from jumping to a full-fledged cheerleader routine... everything but the pom-poms.

  Savannah turned away so that she could concentrate on the call.

  From the living room they heard a groggy, “Hey, wanna keep it down in there? Person sleeping here!”

  “Which bank?” Savannah asked him.

  “Lighthouse Security.”

  Savannah grinned. The adrenaline that was hitting her bloodstream was far more stimulating than any mixture of sugar and caffeine. “I guess you and I are going to do some island hopping very soon. Eh, big boy?”

  She heard him chuckle on the other end. It was an evil, nasty chuckle that reminded her why she loved him so much. “Oo-o-oh yes, babe,” he said. “Right away.”

  Chapter

  19

  “You’re the captain of this boat?” Savannah asked, hoping it wasn’t true. When she had spoken to this guy earlier on the phone, she had imagined someone who looked a lot more like Russell Crowe, Errol Flynn or, on a good day, one of those hunks with the bulging biceps and a strategically ripped shirt on the cover of a romance novel.

  This skinny, slovenly kid—with mustard and ketchup stains on the front of his T-shirt and knobby knees sticking out of cargo shorts that were about to fall off him—just didn’t cut it, fantasy-wise.

  “I’m captain of this catamaran,” he told her, squaring his thin shoulders.

  “Boat, ship, catamaran... what’s the difference?”

  “Boat.” He pointed to a dingy tied at the dock. “Catamaran.” He pointed to the deck beneath their feet—the deck of a sizable ferry designed for carrying over one hundred passengers to and from Santa Tesla Island at a high speed.

  “Ah,” she said, “it’s a matter of size.” Then under her breath, she muttered, “Ain’t it always with you guys.”

  Docked nearby was a similar vessel, and she could see Dirk standing on the deck of that one, showing pictures of Suzette Du Bois to the crew. Together, they had interviewed nearly all of the ships that provided passage to and from the San Carmelita harbor and the island, and so far... no luck.

  She took the two pictures from her inside jacket pocket and shoved them under Captain Dirty Shirt’s nose. One was Suzette’s driver’s license photo, and the other the Marilyn look-alike pose.

  “Have you seen this woman lately?” she asked him. “Maybe given her a ride to or from the island? She may have had a white poodle with her and—”

  “Named Sammy.”

  “What?” She nearly swallowed her gum. “Yes! Named Sammy! You saw them when?”

  “I’ve taken her to the island a few times lately. Yesterday morning, bright and early, in fact. Can’t forget a gal like that. She looks like a movie star with that blond hair.”

  “Like Marilyn Monroe?”

  “Who?”

  Savannah sighed. “Never mind.”

  “I don’t know who that is, but she was sorta like Madonna, only older. She was wearing those big sunglasses like gals used to wear.”

  “Okay. Can you tell me anything else about her?”

  “She said she’s moving to the island, had some boxes and stuff that we had to help her with. She gave my guys a good tip.”

  “Hmm. She can afford to.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing. This was yesterday, you say, when you took her over?”

  “Yeah. Yesterday morning on our first run.”

  “And when does the last boat... er... catamaran leave the island to bring passengers back here?”

  “This time of year, twenty-three hundred hours. That’s eleven o’clock at night,” he explained with a condescending tone that made her want to slap him stupid.

  “So late?” she asked.

  He shrugged. “Some people complain that we don’t have even later ones. They like to stay, drink, gamble until all hours. As long as they get back home in time to drag themselves to work the next morning, they’re happy.”

  “Hey, whatever spins your bottle.” She glanced over at Dirk and saw that he was watching her. She waved him over. “And did this lady say anything else to you?”

  “Like what?”

  “Anything at all. Did she talk about her new place, where it is...?”

  “Said it has a great view of the water.”

  Savannah wasn’t terribly impressed with that gem of knowledge. On a small, narrow island, who didn’t have a water view?

  “When you docked and your guys helped her with the boxes,” she said, “how did she leave with them? Did she load them into a taxi, or...?”

  “No, somebody was waiting for her in a car.”

  “Can you describe the person, the car?”

  “Another lady. I don’t remember what she looked like. Nothing special. She was driving a big black BMW. We loaded the boxes into the trunk for her.”

  “How many boxes were there?”

  “Four or five.”

  “What size?”

  “Big, medium, little. All shapes and sizes. Listen, I gotta get going. I’ve got a schedule to keep here. Are you coming with us to the island or not? Because, if you are, you gotta buy a ticket.” Savannah could see Dirk hurrying across the deck toward them, a big grin on his face, still chipper from his long night of alcohol-induced coma. “Oh, I’m with you, Captain, and that dude there is footin’ the bill.”

  “I can’t believe this has been here all the time, and I never even knew about it,” Savannah said as she stepped off the dock and looked around at the island paradise that surrounded them. Lush greenery covered the hills that sloped gracefully to the sea, i
n sharp contrast to the dry, brown hills they had left on the mainland. The air had a sweet, clean smell with none of the eau de Los Angeles that gagged San Carmelitans when the Santa Ana winds blew the city’s pollution their way.

  Instead of the standard Spanish style of architecture that prevailed in her neighborhood, this place had more of a Polynesian feel about it. The shops that lined the waterfront were little more than rustic huts, primitive but charming structures with palm frond-covered roofs and bamboo walls and supports that blended nicely with the natural scenery.

  The waterfront to their right was a luxury marina, filled with all sorts and sizes of pleasure craft. To their left was a pristine beach with fewer sunbathers than Savannah was accustomed to seeing, even in the cooler months, on the California shore.

  And far to their left, on the southern end of the island, stood the lighthouse. Sparkling white in the sunlight, lovely in its simplicity, it was the crowning touch to complete the island’s exotic beauty.

  Yes, Santa Tesla Island was an unspoiled, uncrowded haven, and it fed Savannah’s soul just to stand on its soil. She vowed, then and there, that she would find an excuse to come back here, again and again.

  And not when she was looking for a killer.

  “So, where do you want to start?” she asked Dirk. “The bank?”

  He raised his arm to hail one of the taxis that was slowly driving by, looking for fares. “Lighthouse Security, here we come.”

  Lighthouse Security Bank was quaint and picturesque. When they entered the building, Savannah felt like she was attending some sort of Hawaiian luau rather than stepping into a bank. She half-expected the clerks to be wearing hula skirts.

  But the architecture was where the island friendliness stopped.

  The woman behind the manager’s desk was anything but welcoming.

  “We do not release information about our customers to anyone from the States,” she told Dirk, her hands on her ample hips, her eyes flashing behind her tortoiseshell glasses.

  He held his badge closer to her nose, but she brushed it away with one hand and reiterated, “No information. None. Your authority is not recognized inside this establishment.”