Coastal Cottage Calamity (A Logan Dickerson Cozy Mystery Book 2) (7 page)

Chapter Twelve

Finding out that Ron
Anderson had actually gone to the courthouse and a judge might listen to him put
Miss Vivee in a tizzy. I had gone up to her room after breakfast to see how she
was doing and had told her the latest about what was going on with “the
cousins.” And then I told her about Renmar being the possible murderer. When
she heard it I thought she was going to faint dead away.

I hadn’t meant on
telling her, but I just couldn’t carry the burden of that secret all by myself.

I just told her
about their argument. I wasn’t going to spill the beans on my
going-to-make-me-famous fish. My lips were sealed tight on that. But when I
relayed the quarrel she clutched her chest, like she was having coronary
attack, eyes rolling around, she kept making
whoosh
sounds with her
mouth like she was in labor.

“Lord have mercy,”
she said and
whooshed
again.

I had to guide her
over to a chair and fan her with my hands.

“Are you okay?”

“Am I okay?” she
screeched. “Do I look okay? You tell me that my daughter is a murderer and then
expect me to be okay?”

“Miss Vivee,” I
said. “I didn’t say she was a murderer. I just told you that she and Oliver had
had words.”

“And that she told
Oliver that she’d kill ‘em.”

“Yeah. Well. That
too. But I didn’t say she was a murderer.”

“I don’t know how
you manage to live on your own, girl. You can’t put two and two together and
come up with four.” She grimaced at me. “You sure you went to college?”

I ignored her
question.

“This changes
everything,” she said.

“Changes what?” I
frowned up my face.

She started
digging down in her purse. “I can’t just let the investigation be a brain
teaser to keep my mind sharp. Not anymore. I’ve got to actually solve this
thing.” She found her memo pad and a pencil.

“No you don’t,
Miss Vivee.”

“I have to save my
child,” she said and pushed my fanning hands away. “You’ve got to hurry and get
me my notebook. We’ve got to work quickly.”

“Hold on, Miss
Vivee.”

She swiveled her
neck and looked up at me standing over her. “Listen here, Missy. You don’t tell
me to hold on. I don’t know what kind of poison killed Oliver. It might just be
the kind that disappears before even an autopsy can get done. So we can’t waste
any time.”

“Miss Vivee. I can
almost assure you that modern technology doesn’t miss anything these days. As
much as you watch TV, you should know that. Don’t you watch Forensic Files?
CSI?”

“You don’t know
what you’re talking about. This isn’t television. This is real life.” Miss
Vivee was working up a lather. “And the killer could get away,” she said. “Did
you ever think about that, Missy?”

“If there
is
a killer, Miss Vivee, Bay’ll catch him.” I assured her. “They caught Gemma
Burke’s killer didn’t they?”

“
I
caught
Gemma Burke’s killer,” Miss Vivee corrected. “I’m the one that figured it out.
Don’t forget that.”

That was true.

“Bay’ll be upset,”
I said, singing out the words. “He told you to leave it to him.”

She grabbed my arm
and pulled down on it making my face even with hers. “We can’t tell Bay that
Renmar is a suspect. It’ll kill him.”

We can’t tell him
because that man was all business. He’d threatened to throw me and Miss Vivee
in jail – his two best girls – I’m thinking he’d do the same to his mother.

“We won’t have to
tell him anything,” I said. “Because we won’t be finding out anything.” I sat
down next to Miss Vivee and looked directly in her eyes. “No investigating,
remember?”

“I raised Bay.
What you think, he’ll really arrest me for obstruction of justice?”

I raised my
eyebrows and pulled my lips in a tight line.

I kind of did.

“I’ll do this by
myself. I don’t need you,” she said, she seemed to have fully recovered from
her near death experience. She hopped up, turned and looked at me. “I can still
drive and I’m still able to do anything I put my mind to.”

I thought about
how she had ran over Mac with that two-ton monstrosity she called a car and
fractured his hip, his obvious limp showing what she was capable of. Then I
could vividly see her tearing through the streets, people diving out of her way
as the crunching sounds of the bones of her victims lay in plain sight in the
gas fumes of her car as she drove away . . .

I studied her. She
did the same to me. I shook my head and took in a breath.

How in the world did
I think I could win this argument with her?

Chapter Thirteen

“Miss Vivee,” I
said. “What makes you think that’s the way Oliver died? That he was poisoned?”

I had decided to
try and play two against the middle. Keep Miss Vivee happy by getting her a
notebook and indulging in conversation – only – about the “murder.” And I was
keeping my new boyfriend happy by not telling him
anything
about what
Miss Vivee and I were doing.

Wasn’t quite sure
how
that
was going to work out.

Bay had left for
Atlanta to accompany the body. He’d been right – it’d only taken one call from
the Bureau’s medical examiner in Atlanta to the judge in Yasamee to quash Ron
Anderson’s injunction. And of course with it all covered in yellow tape, Ron hadn’t
ventured over to Oliver’s beach house. He and his wife were staying, per
Sheriff Haynes, at the Stallings Inn, the only other bed and breakfast in
Yasamee.

We were in Miss
Vivee’s greenhouse in the Maypop’s massive backyard. I had followed her and Cat
out to her greenhouse after lunch with no intention of telling her about my
fish. But she kept after me about what exactly was said during Oliver and
Renmar’s spat, and what I think it meant. And we weren’t there having that
conversation for more than five minutes before I blabbed everything I knew. By
that I meant my secret fish find.

Maybe Bay was
right, Miss Vivee just had this hold over me.

“So. This extinct
fish might be the reason that Renmar and Oliver were arguing?” Miss Vivee asked.

“I don’t know,” I
said. I was walking around the greenhouse looking at her flowering plants. Now
that I’d told everything, I didn’t want to keep talking about it, but Miss
Vivee drew me in. “They are always on that Island together – were – on that
Island together, and she sure doesn’t want anyone to know what she puts in that
bouillabaisse of hers.”

“I’ve see her make
it plenty of time,” Miss Vivee said. She stopped working on the plant in front
of her and gazed off thoughtfully. “Can’t say that I paid any attention to the
kind of fish she used.” Miss Vivee shook her head. “How could I have not paid
any attention to that?”

“No reason to be
upset about it, Miss Vivee. Fish is just fish.”

“Evidently not,”
she said and sighed. “So tell me about the argument again.”

“I told you,” I
said. “Renmar said she’d kill anyone before she’d let them put her hands on it.
Or something like that.”

“You’re not very
good at eavesdropping, are you?” Miss Vivee said.

Most people would
think that was a good thing.

The greenhouse was
overflowing with plants and herbs. Tables lined the entire interior, part and
parcel of her trade as resident Voodoo herbalist. Her son-in-law, Louis, had
introduced her to the age old practice of healing using roots, potions and
concoctions. Furthering her studies by moving in with a Voodoo Queen in New
Orleans for five years, Miss Vivee claimed to be a master herbalist.

“Oliver didn’t hit
his head on a rock, that’s for sure,” she said, I guess answering my earlier
question of why she thought Oliver had been poisoned. Although Oliver’s head
wasn’t on the rock, it was laying precariously close enough that I thought he
could have hit it if he had, perhaps, stumbled and fell.

“How do you know?”
I asked.

“No blood,” she
said matter-of-fact.

I thought back on
it and couldn’t remember seeing much blood. But I miss a lot of things. Unlike
Miss Vivee, I didn’t have a second sense about causes of death. I had a degree
in anthropology – the study of humans. When I dug up the remains of a body and
wanted to know a cause of death, I sent it off to a lab.

“No blood could
just mean that hitting his head wasn’t what killed him, Miss Vivee. It doesn’t
mean he was poisoned.” I gave her a “isn’t that true?” look. “Like I said
before, maybe he had a heart attack. Fell to the ground dead.” I looked over at
her. “Hit his head then.”

“That’s the same
thing you said about Gemma Burke,” she said and threw me a glance over her
shoulder. “She had a heart attack. You remember that? Is that all you can come
up with? Heart attacks?”

“I’ll admit I was
wrong about Gemma Burke.”

“And you’re wrong
about Oliver, too. When have you ever seen a rock on the shoal? Or along the
coastline for that matter?” she asked.

Okay, so I had to
admit that there usually weren’t any rocks that large on the coastline. Sand
filled the area. And even though sand was the product of the erosion of rock,
no one I’d ever heard of had suffered blunt force trauma by sand.

I thought about
where there were rocks.

Up by Oliver’s
house. A pain shot through my thigh as I thought about my spill into Oliver’s
rock garden. And on my Island. Stalling Island had lots of rocks.

“Okay, so why do
you think he was poisoned.” I could feel myself giving in to her. Next she’d
have me driving her to strip bars in Atlanta to find clues like she did when
Gemma died.

“Didn’t you see
all the drool around his mouth?” she asked me.

“No.” I walked
over and plopped down on the stool next to where she stood.  She was pruning a
plant perched on the high-topped table as she talked.

“Well it was
there. Lots of poisons make you foam or drool. But what really got me,” she
said her thoughts seeming to drift off. “Was the burn on his lips . . .”

As she talked I let
my eyes float across her shelves of “medicines” on the wall behind me. I remembered
how she told me that the pretty orange one that I was holding could kill me. I
had immediately put it back.

Then I thought
about Bay’s dad. How I’d learned how she’d helped him “pass over” so he
wouldn’t have to suffer through the pain of the cancer that had wrecked his
body. And Mac thinking that Miss Vivee had concocted a recipe of death for “The
Hussy” as she called her, who she thought Mac was cheating on her with, making
it look like a heart attack.

Miss Vivee
definitely knew about poisons.

But what was the
likelihood of another murder in Yasamee in the course of a few weeks?

Oliver. Poisoned.
Oliver. Poisoned.
I heard Miss Vivee’s voice over and over in mind. I shook my head to clear my
thoughts.

Very unlikely I
told myself. Another murder was very unlikely. But listening to Miss did give
me pause. Like my mother, Miss Vivee was usually right.

 “I’m sure, Miss
Vivee,” I said probably trying to convince me more than her. “If you noticed
all of that, so did the FBI. No need of poking our noses in.”

“Wasn’t the FBI
that was there,” she said and snipped at the plant in front of her. “It was
their liaison.”

“Same difference.”

“Ask him that
after you ask him if there’s a difference in pay between him and an agent.”

“What I meant,
Miss Vivee, is it
is
the FBI.”

“Doesn’t matter.
I’ve got all that stuff down in new my notebook. Thank you,” she said and
nodded at me. “Now I have to investigate this. It’s different now that my daughter
is involved. She’s a viable suspect.”

“Viable suspect
?” I mouthed.

“The right thing
to do is tell Bay,” I said out loud.

“How is that the
right thing to do?” The volume in her voice rising. “The extinct fish and
Renmar and Oliver’s argument might not have to do with him being murdered,”
Miss Vivee said.

I rolled my eyes.

“Especially, as
you always like to say,
if
Oliver was murdered. Don’t want anyone even
thinking that the two could be related. Not even Bay until I can work this
thing out.” Her level of excitement working up ten notches. “I know what I have
to do,” she said and gave me a firm nod. “Tonight, I’m going over to his house
and see what I can find.”

“Who’s house?”

“Oliver’s.”

“No you’re not.”

“Yes, I am. Me and
Mac.” She looked at me. “It’s what we’re gonna do,” Miss Vivee said, her face
and tone resolute.

“Does Mac know
he’s going to help you break the law?” I asked.

“He’ll know as
soon as I tell him.”

“I’ve had enough
trespassing onto federally protected lands to last a life time,” I said. “I’m
not going and you can’t go without me.”

“It’s not
federally protected,” she said.

“Yeah. No. Not
federally protected. The federal government just marked it as a crime scene to
protect it from people coming onto the property.” I hope she caught the sarcasm
in my voice.

“I don’t need you
to go, you know,” she said raising her eyebrows as if testing me.

Sometimes she acts
just like a spoiled little kid.

Then, as if she
heard me, she turned and gave me a sickly sweet smile. “Just go if you want
to.”

 “I don’t want
to,” I said. “And I am not going to. And I don’t want to hear anything about
you going.”

“Okay. Suit
yourself.”