“He’s not answering either. Something tells me we’re going to be working over the weekend, Prosperity. I hope you haven’t made any unbreakable plans.”
23
Charmed, I’m Sure
Reuben had barely put his phone down when Prosperity’s phone rang. She reached across Reuben’s knees to pick up her bag from where it rested by his feet on the floor of the car, and clicked the Answer Call button without looking at the Caller ID. “Prosperity Spartanburg.”
“Prosperity! I’m glad I caught you. It’s Bruiser here. Bruiser Rump. We met at your office a few days ago.”
“Bruiser, hi! Of course I remember you. What can I help you with today?”
Reuben mouthed ‘what does he want?’ as Bruiser spoke to Prosperity in his Boris Karloff voice. She ignored Ruby and listened carefully, adding in a few pertinent hmmms and uh-huhs where relevant, before finally hanging up.
“What was that all about?” Reuben offered her a stick of Mammoth Mango gum but Prosperity waved it away.
Prosperity turned the key and the Beetle jumped back into life. “Bruiser has found something at the house that he thinks might be of interest.”
“What do we do about these 9-1-1 photos?”
“It’ll have to wait. We don’t have anything to go on yet. Maybe you can get a trace on her phone over the weekend, if it turns out I’m right.”
Reuben nodded.
“What did Bruiser have to say?” Reuben asked again, looking wistfully out the window as they raced past the burger bar. “I’m not sure if I like the sound of missing out on my date with Fat Ronnie.”
“We’ll go back there after we’ve talked to Bruiser. We still need to talk to the staff to see if we can find out anything more about the red uniform fabric under Ophelia’s fingernails. Strangely enough, Bruiser said the object he found was wrapped in an old Sea Chicken burger wrapper.”
“Sea Chicken … ” Reuben’s eyes took on a glazed, unfocused sheen. “This detour better be worth it.”
“You know we have to follow up every lead. I have the feeling today still holds plenty of surprises.” She winked at him as she steered through the traffic. “Woman’s intuition.”
“I’m going to try calling Apex again.” Reuben made the call but this time it went straight to voicemail. “Hmmm. She’s still not picking up. What does your woman’s intuition tell you about Apex?”
“My woman’s intuition tells me that Apex and I could never be friends.” Prosperity thought for a moment, determined to try to be helpful. “Send her a text message. She might not be able to answer calls but there’s a chance she can check her phone for texts.”
“Okay.” He industriously typed away on his keypad for what seemed to Prosperity to be an inordinately long amount of time.
“Are you writing a book?”
“No. I’m asking her how she’s doing and if she’s still on the island. I figured if she’s still around, and if everything is okay, we might be able to hook up again.”
Prosperity’s hands tightened on the steering wheel. “Hook up?”
“Figure of speech. Turn here.”
It wasn’t long before they pulled up outside the Rump’s candy pink and white gingerbread house in Oak Bluffs. Reuben looked around as they walked up the path.
“Cute. More cutesy than I expected Ophelia’s vacation home to be but I can understand the attraction.”
“I like it. I’d like to holiday here. It’s been years since I had a vacation,” Prosperity said wistfully as she knocked on the door. “There always seems to be something that needs doing.”
“Take Spinner up on his offer for a trip on his yacht. A day out on the water on that beauty will feel like a vacation. I know that from firsthand experience.”
“I think I will. I liked him.” She put a smile in her voice as the door opened. “Hi, Bruiser. We got here as soon as we could. This is my colleague, Detective Sergeant Reuben Jackson.”
Bruiser looked even paler and more blue-veined today, if that was at all possible. He shook Reuben’s hand and stood back to allow Prosperity and Reuben to enter the house. Prosperity was charmed to see the vintage appeal of the interior, complete with lace curtains, cross-stitched samplers, handmade cushions, and handwoven rugs on the floor. “This is adorable!”
Bruiser looked around without interest. “Not to my taste. I already have a design team on the job and I’ve opted for a complete refit.”
“Oh. That’s a shame.”
“What have you got for us, Bruiser?” Ruby, clearly uninterested in a debate about the internal aesthetics of the house, brought the conversation back to the reason they were here.
“Ah, yes. I was tidying up in Ophelia’s old bedroom and I found this under her pillow. I guess you could say the intimate location of the object, and what it could potentially represent, got me thinking. That’s when I decided to call you.”
He picked a small parcel up from the dining table, wrapped in the distinctive red and yellow colors of a Fat Ronnie’s burger. He glanced apologetically at Reuben before handing it to Prosperity. “What do you make of this?”
Prosperity carefully unwrapped the item while Reuben peered inquisitively over her shoulder. Inside the crumpled burger wrapper lay half a silver heart charm, of the type that needs a matching piece to complete the heart shape. Reuben picked it up in his large fingers and turned it over. “It’s just a charm.”
He sounded disappointed but Prosperity had noticed something.
“Let me see, Ruby.” She took it carefully from his hand and held it up to the light. “There are initials engraved on it. Look, here. C.B.”
“C.B.” Reuben pulled out his notepad and flicked through it. “C.B. I don’t think we’ve spoken to anyone with those initials.”
“No one from the party?”
“No. The closest we have is a Caroline Docker. C.D. No C.B.’s. Seems it’s another dead end trail.” He snapped his notebook shut with a sense of finality.
“Not necessarily.” Prosperity tossed the charm gently against her palm, judging the weight of it. “Can you ring your jeweler friend now and get her to look at this one too? I want to know if this charm has any correlation to the charms found in the Blue Jay candy bags.”
Bruiser stifled a yawn. “Do you need me? I was hoping to take a nap.”
“No, we’ll take it from here. Thanks, Bruiser. Don’t hesitate to call if you find anything else.” Prosperity fumbled for the apple charm on her bag as they left the house, comparing it to the heart half as they walked back to the Beetle. “They look the same, but I’m no expert.”
“She probably found it in a bag of candy and decided to keep it for fun.”
“Does Ophelia Rump seem to you to be the kind of person who’d keep a dime trinket from a bag of candy? I doubt it, especially when she wore a $6.5 million charm bracelet around her wrist. A charm bracelet that was missing from the body of the deceased and has never been found. Can you see where I’m heading with this, Ruby?”
He looked at her blankly over the roof of the Beetle. “No. I honestly can’t. You’ll have to tell me.”
Prosperity slid behind the wheel. “I have a nagging feeling that your friend the jeweler is going to tell us that the supposed dime trinkets aren’t made of pig iron at all. My guess is that the charms in the candy bags are Ophelia’s expensive charms, distributed one by one into random bags of candy.”
“Why would anyone do that?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t gone that far. Here, hold this.” She passed the heart charm to Reuben as she drove back toward Fat Ronnie’s. “Get the charms looked at and we’ll go from there.”
“Okay. I’m phoning Lindy now to ask her.”
They were nearly at the burger joint when Prosperity’s phone again beeped with a message from her bag at Reuben’s feet. “Can you check that message for me? I was expecting to hear from Sophie about a litmus test she ran on the water at the office.”
“Why did you ask her to run a
test on the water? I didn’t know that the department water quality was part of any investigation.” Reuben pulled her phone out of her bag, his hair ticklish against her bare leg as he stooped down.
“Dry hands. It’s driving me nuts and I don’t know what’s causing it.”
Reuben glanced at her screen. “Blaine wants to know if you’re free on Saturday night,” he said flatly.
Blaine. She hadn’t really been avoiding him; it was just that she had a lot on her plate. “Cool. I’ll answer him later.”
She stared straight ahead, acutely aware that Ruby was watching her intently.
24
C.B
“Two Sea Chicken burgers, thanks.” The bored-looking girl at the hostess stand of Fat Ronnie’s was gone, replaced today by a moody-eyed, square-jawed man with a dimple in one cheek. Prosperity happily returned his smile, pleased to see the view had improved.
“Actually, no. I’ll have the Hickory Burger instead.”
Prosperity stared at Reuben, aghast by this blatant show of disloyalty. “Why do I feel as if you’ve just told me you’ve been cheating on me?”
“I’d cheat on every Victoria’s Secret model who’s ever sashayed down the catwalk wearing angel wings for just one bite of that buttery, smoky goodness.” He licked his lips lecherously. “Mmmmm, meaty, juicy, greasy decadence.”
“But, but … you always have the Sea Chicken.”
“Only when I’m with you. I do have other urges, Prosperity.”
Prosperity brushed over his comment and wrenched her mind back from wandering down paths she didn’t want to investigate. Instead, she watched Mr. Tall, Dark, and Handsome at the counter as he prepared their order. He looked to be around Ophelia’s age and he was certainly the type to attract the admiring glance of any red-blooded woman. Acting on a sudden hunch, she leaned over the counter to check his name badge. Chase Berenstein. C.B.
“Hey, Chase,” she called out to get his attention, “Does the name Ophelia Rump mean anything to you?”
Chase’s reaction was immediate. He dropped the wrapped burgers back down onto the counter and slowly turned around, his face ashen and his eyes wide with shock. “Um … ”
Reuben instantly switched into authoritative cop mode and flashed his badge.
“Detective Sergeant Reuben Jackson from Martha’s Vineyard P.D. Can we have a quick word, Chase?” He nodded at the dropped burgers. “Bring the burgers.”
Prosperity led the way to an empty table at the back of the restaurant, introducing herself to Chase on the way. He was visibly shaking now and he had not regained the color in his face. Reuben sat strategically opposite the man while Prosperity took a seat beside him. She unwrapped her Sea Chicken burger, leaving Ruby to do what Ruby did best.
“Get it off your chest, Chase. Open your heart. It’s obvious you know something.” Reuben lay the half heart charm on the table in front of Chase without saying a word and reached for his Hickory Burger.
“C-c-c-can I get some water first?” Chase looked as if he were about to pass out from fear.
Prosperity slid out of the booth. “I’ll get it. You stay here with Reuben.”
The men were still sitting in silence when she got back to the table, although Reuben had already munched through a third of his burger. Chase gratefully took the paper cup from Prosperity’s hand and drained half of it in one gulp. He set the cup down with shaking hands and straightened his back, bracing himself for what he was about to say.
“I met Ophelia a couple of weeks before she died.”
Reuben raised his eyebrows. “In what capacity are we talking about? Did she come into the burger bar or did you meet her someplace else?” He shoved his face forward aggressively as Chase squeaked and shrunk back as far as he could. “Did you know her body was found with red fabric threads under her nails? Red fabric threads with a 100% match to the uniforms worn by Fat Ronnie’s employees.”
He stared pointedly at Chase’s red polo shirt.
“When did you last see her?”
Chase swallowed hard, sending his Adam’s apple into freefall.
“I saw her the night before her body was found,” he muttered. “We, errrrrr, we hooked up.”
“Figure of speech?” Prosperity asked, although her eyes were on Reuben.
“What?” Chase turned to frown at her before looking back at Reuben. “We spent several hours together. I didn’t kill her.”
Reuben held his gaze for several seconds before returning his attention to all that remained of his burger. “Where did you go after you and Ophelia parted?”
Chase shifted uncomfortably in his seat.
“I went to a club,” he said shortly.
“You didn’t want to take Ophelia with you?”
“I asked her but she didn’t want to come.” His eyes flashed. “I’m sure you know how much Ophelia Rump was worth. She knew she was slumming it by hanging out with me. She had no intention of showing me off in public.”
“She said that?”
“No, but I knew what she was thinking.”
“You’re a mind reader?” Reuben crumpled his burger wrapper into a ball and dropped it back on the table.
“Of course not. It’s just a feeling I had.”
Reuben poked at the heart charm with the tip of his finger and inched it across the table, closer to where Chase sat.
“What do you make of this? Seems strange to me that a woman who was only dabbling in the peasant class to get her jollies would have the man’s initials engraved on a charm to keep under her pillow.”
Chase whimpered and reached for a napkin. “She kept it under her pillow? I didn’t know that.”
“Can you explain the engraving?”
Chase blew his nose loudly on the napkin before sticking his hand into his pocket. He dropped an identical matching heart half on the table beside the first, the two halves making a complete whole.
“My half has her initials engraved on it. O.R. It was a joke. We thought it would be fun to do it, sort of like those BFF necklaces that middle school girls wear.”
“Seems a deep move to make for the Friends With Benefits style relationship you’ve just described to us.”
“That’s just it. Underneath it all, we were friends. We genuinely liked one another aside from the strong sexual connection. We hit it off at once, as if we’d known each other forever. Ophelia was the type of girl I could imagine myself phoning up to talk to about my grandchildren many years down the road. I thought we’d be friends long after we stopped sleeping together. We just gelled.”
He blew his nose again, clearly distraught.
“I miss her. I really do.”
“What about the fabric threads under her nails?”
Chase glanced at Prosperity and then back at Reuben, his face flushed. “As I said, we enjoyed a powerful sexual connection. We didn’t always have time to undress.”
Reuben nodded as he scrutinized Chase with an air of practiced clinical assessment.
“I’m surprised to hear myself say this, but I believe you. About the friendship, I mean. Don’t plan on going anywhere though. I might still have some questions for you. At this stage, you’re the last person who saw Ophelia Rump alive, which raises more than a few red flags. Can you give me the name of the club you went to? We’ll need to check your alibi.”
Chase looked sheepish.
“Tail Spinners. They have some very talented dancers there and I enjoy a good show.”
“I bet you do,” Reuben said drily. He met Prosperity’s eye. “I think we have all we need for now. We’ll let this burger flipper get back to work.”
Prosperity smiled sweetly as she stood up, feeling sorry for the man. “Thanks for your time, Chase. We’ll be in touch if we have any more questions.”
“What do you think?” Reuben asked her as they left the burger joint.
“I think he’s telling the truth. He didn’t give off a liar vibe and if it smells like a fish it’s usually a fish. There was nothing
about Chase that smelled fishy to me.”
Reuben gave her an odd look. “One of your mama’s sayings?”
Prosperity nodded proudly. “She was very smart.”
“Well, I guess the next step is to see what Lindy has to say about the charms. As I said before, it looks like we might be working the weekend.” He hesitated before saying too casually, “I guess you’d better let your boyfriend know that you might not be available on Saturday night.”
Prosperity pretended she hadn’t heard his comment about Blaine. “Let’s stop by the jeweler’s and drop off the charms on the way back to the office. You should try calling Apex again, too.”
Reuben dialed Apex’s number but once again reached her message service. He tried Pinnacle next, and this time the rapper picked up. Prosperity listened as Reuben asked a few questions, but from what she could hear, Pinnacle hadn’t heard from his daughter yet he had no concerns for her safety.
Reuben said his goodbyes and hung up. “He’s not worried about her. Says she often ignores her phone for days at a time. He said it’s nothing out of the ordinary.”
“You didn’t mention the photos to him.”
“No. What was I supposed to say? Your daughter sent me a couple of photos of her hand and I think she’s in trouble?”
“I suppose it does sound strange.”
“Strange doesn’t even come close. He did ask us to come by Tail Spinners on Saturday night. He’s doing a gig there and we need to check out Chase’s alibi for the night of Ophelia’s death anyway.” Reuben gave her a smug smile. “Looks like your boyfriend is definitely out of luck for his Saturday night date.”
25
High Grade Silver
“Did you hear back from Apex?” Prosperity walked into Reuben’s office on Saturday morning carrying two takeaway coffees. She sat one down in front of Reuben and flopped down into his visitor’s chair. She’d slept uneasily last night, her dreams haunted with images of flying fish, huge bubbles of pink gum, and tinkling strings of charms that dangled teasingly just out of her reach while Boris Karloff laughed maniacally in the background.
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