“Thank you,”
And so it went. They took turns approaching the business owners. Some refused to speak to them at all, but most were happy to receive a few dollars and look at the pictures. They were nearing the end of the dock, and Kitty felt her hopes fading. In other countries there might be CCTV, or some kind of charting the boats would have to complete. Here in Punta Molas, they were lucky if the police checked for boat licensing.
Stopping in front of the second to last sign, Kitty smiled at the young boy sitting on the stool. She decided to skip the pleasantries. It didn’t matter if she seemed rude. The answer would be ‘no’, as it had been for almost an hour.
“I was wondering if you could look at these photos and tell us if you’d seen any of these people here two nights ago.” Kitty paused, rethinking a verb tense, then deciding it didn’t matter, either. She was tired, and the dogs needed a cold drink.
He leaned forward and looked at each picture closely as Kitty scrolled past.
“Sí,” he said, his brow wrinkled.
“Which ones?” Kitty asked, excitement blooming in her chest.
He hummed and scrolled backwards. “This one. And this one. And this one. And that one. Oh, and that one.”
“When?” She didn’t believe him. Coleman, Andrew, Jenny, Ren, and Lisa went on a night dive, and none of them had said anything?
“Two nights ago. The mean one pushed over my sign because it was in his way. The tall one laughed. The young one gave me one of his candies. The lady with the red lipstick was mad because her light was too small.”
Kitty felt her eyes go wide. That certainly sounded like Coleman’s unpleasant personality, Andrew’s childish sense of humor, and Lisa’s negative attitude.
Leander passed him a few dollars. He shot Kitty a look and she knew exactly what he was thinking, as clearly as if he’d said it out loud.
Was it possible they had been wrong, and they shouldn’t have been looking for a single killer all along? As horrible as it was to consider, Kitty had to admit that it seemed more than likely that the lure of riches had turned them into murderers. As Hawthorne said, a mortal man, with once a human heart, had become a fiend. But it hadn’t been out of jealousy, but greed.
Chapter Ten
“Women were different, no doubt about it. Men broke so much more quickly. Grief didn't break women. Instead it wore them down, it hollowed them out very slowly.”
― Cornelia Funke
They walked along the beach in silence for a while, both of them thinking hard.
“I don’t understand,” Kitty said finally. She could hear the shock and sadness in her own voice. “How could so many people be willing to murder for money?”
“It’s probably a lot of money. We don’t know what they found yet.”
“Something’s not right,” she said.
“People are disappointing,” Leander said. “Sometimes I hate my job.”
She turned to face him, the warm Caribbean wind blowing her curls into her face. She brushed them back impatiently. “Why would they kill Coleman? He’s only one man. They’d still have to split it between the four of them. I could understand if Angelina were part of it, because then they were picking off members and making their portion of the pie bigger.”
“Maybe Coleman demanded a larger percentage. He owned the boat and the equipment.”
“True,” Kitty conceded. “Okay, if that’s true and this trip out here today is to cover their tracks, why isn’t Lisa here? She was the one who sat next to Angelina.” Kitty threw up her hands. “And Angelina. She’s really the key here, isn’t she? If we can find out why she was poisoned, we’ll be able to figure out the rest.”
Leander blew out a breath. “Maybe there are two different cases?”
They looked at each other.
“No,” they said together. It made even less sense for Angelina to have been poisoned and Coleman stabbed, with no connection between the two.
They reached the lighthouse again and found a place to sit on the rocks. Chica and Toto chased each other in the sand, and the sun sparkled off the pale blue waves. If they hadn’t been chasing a psychopath, it would have been perfectly romantic. Kitty sighed. Someday it would be nice to sit with Leander and talk of something other than murder. Then again, maybe they wouldn’t have anything to say to each other.
She shook off the thought. Angelina deserved her full attention. The poor girl had done nothing wrong. “Angelina,” she said slowly, turning the syllables over in her mouth. “She wasn’t there that night. What did she see?”
“If it was enough to convict someone, wouldn’t she have said?”
“Yes, unless she didn’t know what she’d seen, exactly.”
Leander leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. “She sees something and the killer thinks she knows.”
“Ok. We’ll just assume that for now.” Kitty couldn’t sit still. She had to walk. Pacing in front of Leander, she said, “Let’s erase everything else. Let’s forget about Coleman’s brother being a senator, and forget about the treasure.”
He frowned. “That doesn’t really leave us with anything.”
“It leaves us with something,” she said, waving her hands in the air in front of her. “We still know something about it. Seven stab wounds is a crime of passion.”
“Revenge? He was a pretty unlikeable person, it seems.”
“He was rude, but I couldn’t see someone stabbing him for kicking over a sign or yelling at the customers.”
“Maybe Angelina’s brother? Could he have killed Coleman to convince Angelina to come work for him?” He hesitated. “Then poisoned her when she refused?”
“Someone at the table poisoned her.” It still gave Kitty chills to say it so baldly. She rubbed her bare arms, feeling goosebumps under her fingers. Maybe Jenny had worn long sleeves and jeans because the weather was turning, and not because she was out of laundry.
Long sleeves… Kitty froze.
“On a black background, the red letter ‘A’,” she murmured. And as if conjured by her thoughts, three figures approached them across the sand. Andrew was talking, or she assumed by the motions he was making with his hands. Ren had his arm around Jenny’s shoulder. She looked dejected and small.
Leander stood up beside her and watched them come closer. “Is someone wearing the scarlet letter of shame?” he asked quietly.
“Not that we can see, no.”
Chica stopped playing and came to stand beside Kitty. Her ears were up, back straight, and she was staring intensely at the group.
Ren waved, and called out, “We didn’t find a thing, so I guess we’ll go back as poor as we came.”
“Poorer,” Andrew corrected. “I’ve spent more on this trip than I have on any others.”
Kitty looked at Jenny, wondering if it was possible that such an unremarkable face could hide such heartache and grief. It had been a crime of passion, but not what she’d been thinking.
Reaching out, she slowly lifted Jenny’s sleeve. Chica growled low in her throat.
Slapping it back down, Jenny stepped away, her face furious. “What the heck?”
“Why aren’t you wearing a Tshirt and shorts?” Kitty asked.
Jenny laughed, but it sounded hoarse and angry. “None of your business what I wear. You have a real problem, you know that?”
“Today on the boat, did you make some excuse to change in private like you did yesterday? I bet you took a larger wet suit again today, like Andrew’s, and left him to take the old suit that nobody wanted. I’d wondered why he was using such a loose suit. I thought maybe he’d torn the good one.”
Andrew frowned at Jenny. “I asked you if that was the one I’d used this week and you said it wasn’t. Why’d you lie and make me use that old floppy one? It doesn’t fit me at all.”
Her eyes looked wild. “I didn’t. I told you that I have no idea where yours is. We’re one short, that’s all.” She turned to Ren. “Why is everyone being mean to me?”
Leander said softly, “I want to know how you slipped the puffer fish into Angelina’s dish, Jenny. It would be easy enough for you to get ahold of one and extract some toxin, but you weren’t anywhere near her at dinner.” He snapped his fingers. “Yes, you were. You went to the kitchen for a bit. And then you served her before passing the platter.”
Ren started to laugh. “Okay, this is really funny. Good joke. There’s no reason for Jenny to hurt Angelina or Coleman.”
“But I think she did,” Kitty said. In a way, she could understand. She’d never been a mother, but she understood betrayal. “I think Jenny came here to ask Coleman for help. And he refused.”
“Nobody would ask him for help. He was a jerk.” Ren shook his head.
“You’ve been to Coleman’s Dive Shop before, haven’t you, Jenny?”
“So? A lot of people have. Andrew’s been here a bunch of times.”
Kitty almost hated to say what she did then, but the vision of Angelina’s twitching body had not faded from her memory. “How old is your child, Jenny?”
Her face went pale. “What?”
“Coleman’s child. Your family is raising him, but he could have so much more. A private school education, a relief from the financial worry.”
“Jude isn’t Coleman’s kid,” Ren said, laughing. “Coleman was, like, old.”
“He refused to support him?” Leander said. “That’s against the law, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” Jenny burst out. “He refused to come back to America because there was a judgment against him for child support. I wasn’t asking for much. Just enough for school and a better apartment for my mom. She was spending so much on child care and I was in school all the time.” Now that she’d stopped denying it all, the truth streamed from her like lava.
Ren took a step backward, and then another. Sinking to the sand, he stared unseeing at the ocean in front of him. “How?” he whispered.
“I didn’t mean to,” Jenny said, starting to cry. “You said you wanted one more look, and my tank was empty so I went back to the boat. We started arguing. He didn’t want to pay a penny for Jude. He said he couldn’t even be sure it was his kid.”
Andrew took a few steps away. “You― you said he went with some other divers. But he didn’t, did he?”
“Why didn’t any of you say something?” Leander asked. “Why keep it a secret that you were out there in the night?”
“Because we found a gold coin,” Andrew said. “We didn’t want anyone to know.” He swallowed. “Does that make us accomplices?”
“Obstructing an official investigation sounds about right to me,” Leander said.
“You can’t prove any of this.” Jenny’s eyes were wild. “It’s all circumstantial evidence.”
“Until they get a look at the cuts on your arms. I bet Coleman fought hard. As big as he was, you would have had to take him by surprise.”
Jenny lifted her chin and for a moment, Kitty thought she wouldn’t say anything more. “Isn’t that just like him, though? He never thought anybody would fight back. He was a big bully who always got his own way. Well, guess what. He’s dead and my son will inherit everything he had. So I still win.”
Leander moved forward, pulling a pair of handcuffs from the back of his belt. “I’m arresting you for the murder of Coleman Larson. You have the right to remain―”
The sound of distant screams and shouts came from the dock. They all swiveled to look and Toto took off at a dead run.
Kitty chased after her, calling her name. Something was very wrong. Please, not Penny. Not Elaine. She hadn’t known until that moment how much she had come to see them as friends. Wise, witty, and kind in their own way, Penny and Elaine had lifted her spirits and brought her comfort on the very worst days.
Chica flew past Kitty and raced up the dock, leaping over scuba gear and dodging tourists. Kitty could see the little orange boat that Penny and Elaine had hired to take them out to the reefs. The owner was shouting and waving his arms. People were crowding in, craning their necks.
“El tesoro! El tesoro!” His face was shining with joy and excitement.
Kitty stopped in her tracks. No way. Of all the lucky ducks, they would be the ones to find the treasure.
And then they appeared in front of her, signing like they were across a canyon from her.
“We found it! We knew we would,” Penny said. Her pink cap was askew and her gray hair stuck out from under it on one side.
“Treasure! Sunken treasure!” Elaine hopped on one foot, then the other. “We’re going to donate it all to programs that help disabled children in the public school system. Take that, Senator Larson!”
“Kitty, why are you crying?” Penny reached up and wiped a tear from Kitty’s face.
“Am I?” She started to laugh. “It’s just… I thought. Never mind what I thought. But I should tell you something,” she said, glancing back down the beach where Leander stood next to Jenny and Andrew. Ren was still on his knees, motionless. “You found the treasure, but we caught the killer.”
“Of course you did,” Penny said, patting her arm. “We never doubted you two for a moment.”
Epilogue
Kitty stared down at her favorite reading chair and contemplated the two large, black cats curled around each other. She could move one, and hope the other followed. Or she could try to scoop them both up fast enough to scoot underneath. Or perhaps she could just pull a different chair into the sunny corner where she spent her afternoons reading.
Sighing, she tugged an armchair across the flagstone floor of her old colonial home. Her brother had declared, after visiting once years ago, that she couldn’t have paid him to live in such an ancient place. He said the exposed beams and eight-foot oak interior doors gave him the shivers, like he’d been locked in a medieval castle. Kitty didn’t bother to point out it was seventeenth century colonial, not medieval. Her brother preferred glass and steel architecture. That was fine. She simply had a love for homes that had stood the test of time. It was comforting somehow.
Just as she settled into the red armchair, she realized she’d forgotten her book. Spotting it on the mantelpiece, Kitty snapped it up and headed back to her chair just in time to see Rook and Raven take up residence in it. She smiled. That had worked nicely.
Kitty relaxed into the cushions of the first chair, tucking her feet up underneath her. Chica was snoozing by the fire and had barely twitched an ear as she’d moved the furniture around. She’d earned her rest, and Kitty was loath to disturb her.
She’d barely read half a page when her phone buzzed. Leander had sent her a photo. Kitty snorted with laughter, and then grimaced. It was painfully funny how bad she looked in the selfie they’d taken on the beach.
My favorite, it read.
Kitty zoomed in on her face, and sent it back. Can you see my eye twitching?
Admittedly, it was silly and rather immature. To think she’d been afraid to text him only a few weeks ago, and now they talked all the time.
Did you get my package? It should have arrived today.
She wondered what it could be. Probably a book.
I haven’t checked the mail. Just a second.
She slipped on shoes and headed to the front of the building. There was a mail slot to the side of the door that opened with a key from the outside and the inside. Most of her book deliveries fit neatly into the box. She could see a small shadow through the glass on her side. The mailman had left her a present.
Kitty was already smiling as she unlocked the box and found a small package wrapped in brown paper. Square, like a book. She did love books. Probably Hawthorne. He wasn’t her favorite, but Leander seemed to know him well enough. Actually, he was familiar with most of the classics. It could be anything.
She ripped open the paper and for a moment she thought the pretty wooden
frame held a copy of the photo he had just sent by text. It really was a funny picture and looked nothing like her at all. But it wasn’t the same photo. Similar, but not the same. There was Chica, Toto, Leander and Kitty on the beach, and in the background was the Punta Molas lighthouse. But this time it was Leander who looked ridiculous. Kitty started to laugh as she saw how one eye was half closed, his hair blew straight up, and his mouth was open at an odd angle.
A piece of paper fluttered to the floor and Kitty stooped to pick it up.
Happiness in this world, when it comes, comes incidentally. Make it the object of pursuit, and it leads us a wild-goose chase, and is never attained. ―N.H.
Here’s to happiness, my friend.
―Starling
Kitty fairly floated back to a chair by the fireplace. Raven and Rook had repossessed the one she preferred but she didn’t care. Happiness, indeed. She picked up her phone to send a thank you text when she saw there was already a message.
Will you have dinner with me this week? I’ll be near Mérida and would like to see you without any dead bodies involved.
Kitty felt the smile slide from her face. She wanted to say she wouldn’t miss it for the world and that she’d walk there if she had to, but she hesitated. Happiness couldn’t be chased. The more you looked for it, the harder it was to find.
But neither could grief be avoided.
Yes, of course. Chica would be delighted to see you again.
She placed the framed photo on the antique side table. Chica wandered over to give it a good sniff while Kitty flipped open The Scarlet Letter and tried to find her place. Turning the pages of the familiar tale of betrayal, woe, shame, revenge, and eternal judgement, Kitty saw her own life in sharp contrast.
Of all the possible twists in her own story, this was the most surprising: a second chance at happiness.
Dear Reader,
Thank you for reading the third installment in the Starling and Swift Cozy Mystery Series!
Danger at the Dive Shop Page 10