“Did she die right away?”
“No. She begged for help. Tried to call 911 on her phone. I took it away from her.”
“That was smart.” I had no idea what else to say. “Did you consider calling for help?”
“You probably want me to say ‘yes,’ don’t you?” Christine’s green eyes were clear when they locked with mine. On some level she understood what was happening, what she had done … both times. How she accepted her part was up for debate. “I wasn’t worried about myself. I didn’t let her die to protect myself. I just want you to know that.”
“You did it for J.D.,” I said quietly.
“I did,” she agreed, nodding. “I was in a predicament. She was still alive and I wasn’t sure her wound was life-threatening. I had to get rid of her.”
“So you decided to follow the plot in your husband’s book and dump her in the ocean.”
“Not quite.”
I jerked up my head, surprised. “What do you mean?”
“I needed help,” Christine said simply. “I couldn’t carry her myself. She was too heavy. Besides, I couldn’t guarantee that she wouldn’t somehow manage to swim to shore if I just dumped her over the side.”
“I don’t ... you ... what did you do?” I couldn’t wrap my head around what she was insinuating.
“I called for help,” she replied simply.
“She called for me,” J.D. offered, moving from the shadows and filling the empty space behind his wife. I had no idea when he’d entered the building. He probably came looking for Christine when she was delayed. Ultimately it didn’t matter. What mattered was that I was outnumbered ... and I didn’t have a phone.
“You helped her finish off Shayne.” I was mildly disappointed. “Why didn’t you call the police, right the wrong your wife committed?”
“Are you kidding me?” J.D. made a face. “I didn’t like Shayne any more than the next person. She was an evil little troll who got off on hurting people. Have you found one person at this conference sad about her death? I didn’t think so. She was a blight on humanity and she deserved to be eradicated.”
My hands clenched at my sides, and I debated my options.
“She thought I was going to help her at first,” J.D. continued. “She ordered me to call the police. She didn’t even ask, just demanded I do it. She kept saying that she was going to have Christine locked away for the rest of her life and she was looking forward to writing a book about what happened.”
“We’ve already ascertained that she’s a terrible person,” I noted. “That doesn’t mean she deserved to die.”
“I wouldn’t have chosen to kill her,” J.D. offered. “But when it came to choosing between her and my wife, there was no contest. Christine is impulsive and often acts before she thinks, but she’s a good person. You can’t say the same for Shayne. She never did anything good for anybody.”
Now wasn’t the time to argue Shayne’s merits. “She was alive when you got to the pier. Was she alive when you threw her in the water?”
“Yes, at least I think. She was unconscious, I definitely know that.”
“Did she pass out from blood loss?”
“No.” J.D. shook his head as he regarded me. “We needed her to be quiet. She’d started yelling, trying to attract attention from the tiki bar. We didn’t know at the time, but Clark was there with one of his little friends, taking refuge in one of the cabanas from a rainstorm. He mentioned hearing voices, but he never went to check. Even though she was horrible to him, I think he felt guilty about that. He stayed with his prostitute while she died just one-hundred feet away.”
I felt sick to my stomach. “How did you keep her quiet?”
“I injected her.”
“With what?”
“Insulin.” He reached into the bag he carried around his waist. “It was handy and I knew what would happen if I gave her an overdose. Hypoglycemia. She lost consciousness relatively quickly and never regained it.”
“That allowed you to move her body without drawing too much attention,” I mused. “Did you take one of the golf carts at the end of the pier?”
“They’re very easy to hotwire.”
I frowned. “So I’ve heard.”
“We took her to the end of the pier. The initial plan was to simply drop her in and walk away, but I started to worry that she might wash back to shore intact and it would be too easy to identify what sort of weapon was used to stab her. Knitting needles aren’t hard to identify.”
“And your wife carries knitting needles wherever she goes,” I added.
“Idle hands,” Christine murmured, her eyes glassy.
“Did you already have the Megalodon tooth from the gift shop?” I asked. “How did you come up with that idea? It was genius, by the way.”
J.D. beamed. “Thank you. I was rather proud of that myself. I bought the tooth in the shop earlier in the day. It was in Christine’s knitting basket. We were sitting at the end of the pier, hoping I’d dosed Shayne with enough insulin to keep her under, and wondering exactly how we could cover up the wound. Christine stumbled over the tooth and it just sort of made sense.”
“You had to push it into her body,” I pointed out, disgust rolling through my stomach. “You had to stab her with it.”
“Yeah. That was a messy business.” He made a face as he shook his head. “We played rock, paper, scissors to see who would have to do it. She lost, but it turned out she didn’t have enough upper body strength. I had to do it.”
I pressed my lips together, horrified at the visual. “Did she wake up?”
“No. She was essentially in a coma. She didn’t feel anything.”
“You can’t know that.”
“I guess not, but I’m willing to bet she didn’t feel anything.” J.D. was blasé as he absently rubbed his hand up and down Christine’s back. “I created two wounds, one directly over top of the wound Christine inflicted and the other nearby. By this time, Shayne was barely breathing. She might have stopped by the time I dropped her in the water. I can’t be sure.
“Together, we lifted her over the railing,” he continued. “She didn’t sink right away. I thought she would. We could see the pink of her shirt bobbing in the surf and it made us both nervous. We watched her body for a long time, hoping it would be carried out to sea. We finally had to give up and return the golf cart. We couldn’t afford for something that trivial to trip us up.”
He didn’t appear upset at his part in the story. In fact, he simply looked annoyed that he was forced to dispose of a body.
“She got caught in the shark net,” I pointed out. “That’s why she didn’t float out to sea. That allowed for sharks on the other side to feed on her.”
“Yeah. That was a godsend.” J.D. beamed. “I heard there was so much damage to her body they couldn’t discover a cause of death. That worked out really well for us.”
I wanted to smack him. “She was a mother. She had five children.”
“She was evil.”
I shook my head, acid boiling through my stomach. “I can’t believe you feel no remorse for what you did.”
“Would remorse help? My wife is a good person. Shayne pushed her too far. No one will miss Shayne. I would miss Christine, even if she does cause a few problems from time to time. This one right here, this would be an example of a problem I don’t want to deal with but have no choice.” He gestured toward Clark’s prone body.
“And how do you plan to deal with that?” I asked, dreading the answer.
“We have to kill both of you,” he replied without hesitation. “Clark is already halfway there. You’ll take more work — and we’ll have to think of a good cover story. Perhaps you and Clark were having an affair and you took off together. I’m sure we can come up with something. I’m a writer, after all. Telling tall tales is what I do.”
“Right.” I shifted from one foot to the other. I sensed my time was running short. I would have to act ... and fast. “You know I’m not simply goin
g to let you kill me, right?”
“You don’t have a choice.” Christine gripped her remaining knitting needle tighter as she regarded me. “We can’t let you live.”
“And I can’t let you get away with this.” I flexed my fingers, readying myself. “Part of me does feel sorry for you. I want you to know that. The other part is horrified. The depraved indifference you’ve shown Shayne and Clark is disgusting.”
“They’re both disgusting people,” J.D. shot back. “They don’t deserve to live.”
“And what about me?” I asked the obvious question. “What did I do to you to deserve this?”
“You’re simply collateral damage.” J.D. took a step toward me. I didn’t know what he was planning. He was big, probably strong, but he was in horrible shape and I was expecting him. When he reached out his arms I let my magic loose without even thinking about the consequences.
A terrible and biting wind exploded out of my chest, hitting J.D. with enough force to throw him into the wall behind him. His eyes went wide as his head smacked against the cinder blocks. He struggled to remain focused, but the blow was hard enough that he slid to the floor, his head lolling to his side.
It was over, start to finish, within three seconds.
“What did you do?” Christine screeched, her eyes going wide. “You killed him!”
“I didn’t even touch him.” That wasn’t a lie. From Christine’s perspective I went nowhere near him. “He probably passed out from the excitement.”
“He did not!” Christine turned on me. “You killed him! You killed my J.D.”
She waved the knitting needle around like the world’s slimmest sword and managed to catch me on the arm before I could shift out of her reach. I yelped, instinctively reaching up to cover the wound, and thoughts of magic fled as she descended on me.
Instead of attacking her with the power pooling in my chest, I lashed out with my foot and caught her as she tried to stab me a second time, spinning her back hard enough that she bounced off the wall. She looked shaken as she attempted to regain her focus.
“I’m not going to let you get away with this,” she hissed. “I’m not going to let you ruin my family. He’s all I have. I’ll protect him any way I can.”
I recognized the truth behind her words. I also recognized she was a sad woman who’d probably long ago lost whatever shred of sanity she had clung to. “It’s already over. You simply don’t realize it.”
“It’s nowhere near over.”
“But it is.”
“No!” Christine screamed and lunged at me, the knitting needle directed at my face. Before I could release the magic begging to be unleashed, the door behind Christine popped open again to allow Jack entrance. He caught her before she could land on me, snapping her back and using his forearm to pin her against the wall as she fruitlessly struggled against his strength.
His gaze was incredulous as it bounced over Clark and J.D. and then latched onto me. “Are you okay?”
I nodded as I dropped to my knees to check on Clark, my breath coming in ragged gasps. He was still breathing, but his heartbeat was rapid and his breathing shallow. “What took you so long?”
“Why didn’t you call me?”
“You had my phone.”
“Oh.” He was momentarily abashed. “Well ... you’re okay. It all worked out in the end.”
I nodded as I applied pressure to Clark’s wound. “We need an ambulance ... and then I want to get out of this bathroom. This is not how I saw my night going.”
“That makes two of us.”
Twenty-Nine
Resort security arrived quickly, taking custody of Christine and J.D. The police and emergency personnel were close on their heels, and Clark was briskly wheeled out so he could be transferred to the hospital.
When J.D. regained consciousness, he instantly began spinning a yarn about trying to protect me from Clark’s advances. I had to give him credit, it was a fairly ingenious story and he took very little time to dream it up. Jack and I had already related our stories, though, so the police didn’t fall for it.
“It was my fault,” Christine announced as she was placed in cuffs. “I did it. J.D. had no idea what was going on. He’s innocent.”
“Listen to her,” J.D. encouraged. “She’s telling the truth. I’m an innocent victim here.”
The way he turned on his wife made me dislike him even more than before, if that was even possible. Still, I followed Jack’s lead and kept my disdain to myself as he was dragged off. It was unlikely the cops would believe him given the information I provided, but it was on them how they planned to proceed.
“Are you guys okay?” Chris asked when we exited the building. He stood to the side, the other members of our group close. “They wouldn’t let us in to check on you.”
“We’re okay,” Jack replied. “I ... .” He grunted when Laura raced to him and threw her arms around his neck.
“I was so worried,” she gushed, her voice wavering. “I thought for sure Charlie dragged you into another ridiculous situation. You could’ve died.”
Jack wrinkled his forehead as he pulled Laura’s arms from around his neck and gave her a gentle shove back. “Charlie is the one who was in danger. I was on the beach when it went down.”
“Not all of it,” I countered, doing my best to ignore the way Laura batted her eyelashes. “You came in at the end and took down Christine before she could stab me with a knitting needle.”
“That was after you’d already taken out J.D.,” he pointed out. “You did the heavy lifting on your own. I don’t know how you managed to take out a guy that big, but good on you.”
I shrugged. “I didn’t really do anything. He kind of did it to himself. I think maybe his blood sugar was out of whack or something.” I avoided Millie’s doubtful gaze. She knew how I’d taken out J.D. She would keep it to herself. “I got lucky. I wasn’t sure you would come looking for me ... at least in time. I knew Clark didn’t have long, so I was getting ready to fight Christine when you came in.”
“Well, you still took care of yourself.” He slung an arm around my shoulders, amusement pushing out the worry in his eyes. “You handled yourself well.”
“Very well,” Chris agreed, bobbing his head. “I’m still not sure how all this happened. Are we certain that J.D. and Christine killed Shayne?”
I knew what he was really asking. He didn’t want to let go of the possibility that a Megalodon was involved. He would always be that way because he craved proof of the unknown. I understood his desire, yet it seemed silly to cling to the impossible given everything we knew.
“They admitted it,” I said quietly. “Christine stumbled across Shayne plotting against J.D. and lashed out. She was still alive when Christine called for J.D. to help her. He injected Shayne with insulin to keep her quiet and they dumped her over the side of the pier. It was all very clinical from their perspective.”
“That doesn’t explain the huge teeth marks,” Chris persisted.
“It was the marble tooth, the same kind Jack bought earlier today,” I explained. “Christine had one in her knitting bag. They used it in an attempt to cover up the knitting needle wound because it was so distinctive. They had no idea that sharks would do the bulk of their dirty work, but when that happened they decided to take advantage of the situation for J.D.’s upcoming launch.”
“But ... it’s a souvenir,” Chris pressed. “How can we be sure it’s strong enough to do the job?”
“They’re made out of marble,” Jack replied. “I left the one I bought out by the cabanas. We can collect it on our way back to the condos.”
Chris didn’t look happy with the suggestion. “I guess. I was really hoping it was a Megalodon.”
“I know.” Jack grinned at him. “It was never going to be a Megalodon, though. I think part of you always knew that. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter. This investigation turned out to be a dud. You’ll get just as excited for the next one, and that might not be a dud.”
Chris brightened considerably. “That’s true. There’s always another case.”
“There you go.” Jack’s fingers were gentle on the back of my neck as he slid me a sidelong look. “What about Clark? How did he get involved in all of this?”
“He was hiding in the bathroom. He blamed me for making things hard on him. He said he was talking to a local attorney and arranging a visit with the police because he had information he wanted to share.”
“What information?”
“That he thinks Shayne killed Nancy when they were in high school and he was deathly afraid of her. He was convinced she did it, and that was why he was careful when he extricated himself from her a second time.”
“Do you think he was telling the truth?”
I searched my heart. “I guess I do. He said he really liked her, that it wasn’t until he spent time with her that he realized relationships weren’t supposed to be as difficult as Shayne made theirs. He wanted out, but when Nancy died he was afraid Shayne would try to do the same to him.
“He knew he was a suspect in the murder. That’s why he left the area, never to return,” I continued. “He was afraid the similarities between Shayne’s death and Nancy’s murder would do him in. He was trying to arrange a meeting with the cops to finally tell them the truth.”
“Well, that answers that question,” he said as he linked his fingers with mine, ignoring the way Laura huffed and glared. “He’s still a jerk.”
“He is, although he says he’s playing a part and doesn’t believe half the things he says.”
“Do you believe him?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. Does it matter?”
“No.” He squeezed my hand and smiled. “You look tired.”
“I feel tired. I’m ready for bed.”
“Then we should head back.” He gave my hand a little tug to keep me close. “I think we should get out of here early tomorrow. Not that I haven’t enjoyed myself, but this humidity is enough to make me want to commit murder.”
“We’ll head home early,” Chris said. “I want to see what new cases have crossed my desk.”
The Megalodon Mix-Up Page 27