Death By Sunken Treasure (A Hayden Kent Mystery Book 2) (14 page)

Twenty-Four

In the nanosecond of silence that followed, I heard a dry click. Dana moaned softly. A baby shrieked from somewhere in the back. Dark green polyester legs swished past me. Each event stood out sharp-edged and distinct. A dust bunny occupied the far corner of the floor behind Dana’s head. The smell of pine-scented tile cleaner filled my nostrils. Individual corpuscles of blood chugged through my veins. My heart unclenched a bit. Something metal skittered across the floor. It slammed into my ankle just at the top of my boot. I lifted my head. The shorter cop had one knee pressed into the center of Kristin’s back, his hands full of her hands and a pair of handcuffs. Someone used my thoughts to marvel that he used handcuffs, not zip ties.

The second deputy stood over me. He slid his weapon smoothly back into his holster and squatted near my feet. “Let me help you up.” He jerked his head in the direction of the gun at my feet. “Try not to move that.”

I struggled to hear him through the buzzing in my ears. I slowly bent my knees away from the gun and took his hand. In one easy motion, he brought me to my feet. “You okay?” His voice came from far away.

My voice deserted me for the moment. I nodded a response and turned to help Dana. His grip on my shoulder stopped me in mid-turn.

“Stand over there.” He pointed to a place near Kristin.

An effervescence bubbled in my veins. “But I…” Something in his face stopped further protest and I slunk in the direction he indicated. 

His partner stood next to a now seated Kristin.

The taller deputy stood next to a still prone Dana. He said something I couldn’t hear and pushed the microphone attached to his shoulder. Dana struggled to stand. Everyone sounded foggy. Like my ears hadn’t cleared.

Dana yelped from across the room. Duct tape stuck to the deputy’s left hand. His right reached for Dana. When she came up from the floor, I could see a deep bruise colored the left side of her face. Blood trickled from her hairline and her white shirt showed red stains. She fell heavily against the deputy helping her. Still leaning against his shoulder, she glanced in my direction and said, “Get the baby.”

My ears filled with a ringing sound, but they worked. The shorter cop reached over and gripped my elbow to stop me. He glanced at his partner.

“She’s my friend.” Dana’s voice held a pleading quality.

The tall cop nodded. “Room on the left.” I ran toward the sound of the wails. It didn’t occur to me to wonder how he knew.

A tiny baby dressed in a blue bodysuit screamed in the king-size bed. He lay strapped in a baby carrier all but hidden in the center of a nest of pillows, his face a deep red under the shock of brown hair. I leaned over and scooped him up, carrier and all. His wailing increased in intensity. Uncertain what to do next, I tried bobbing him up down while I walked toward the front of the house. Nothing helped. My panic must have been evident.

“Give him to me,” Dana demanded. Her voice sounded stronger. Sirens sounded loud on the street below. Red and blue lights strobed over the child’s face as I put the baby, carrier and all, on the table next to her.

A storm of police and EMTs flowed into the room. A man in a navy blue suit organized everyone at the scene. Another, dressed in a baggy beige suit, stood almost in the middle of the room. His sharp gaze missed nothing. I felt guilty of something when it lingered on me.

Crime scene technicians bustled around, putting little yellow tent cards over things I didn’t see, swabbing, and swirling brushes. The man in the blue suit pigeonholed the two deputies. His pen flew across the pages of the notebook he held. The three spoke in tones too soft for my ears, then the two detectives split up, one questioning me, the other Dana.

In the street below, a woman’s sobbing screams rent the night. The screams grew louder as they neared the living level of the house. Lisa burst through the door and into the room, almost knocking me over as she snatched the baby from the table, spun on her heel, and stalked from the house.

The flush on Dana’s face had nothing to do with the EMT swabbing and bandaging her wound. She gave me a quick smile that didn’t reach her eyes.

“Why didn’t the cops shoot Kristin? She was running around brandishing a gun,” I demanded from the detective.

He shrugged. “It’s not like TV.”

Dana could have died. I could have died. A spurt of rage darkened my vision. Why did they hold back? I pulled out the chair next to Dana and took her hand. She turned her face toward me and leaned against my shoulder.

“God, what a night.” Her voice sounded hoarse. She drew in a ragged breath.

I gave her an awkward hug trying to avoid the injured places on her body. The blue-suited detective took a last glance around the now empty room and exited through the door.

“Do you want to talk?” I really wanted to know why Kristin showed up and what the baby was doing there.

Dana pulled back and stood. “My night for Mike’s exes.” Her hand reached for the side of the table and she steadied herself. A stack of papers lay on the glass top. The one on top bore the name of a prominent insurance company on the letterhead. I gave Dana a questioning glance. She responded with a shrug and a wince. I pulled the stack toward me. The letter named Dana the beneficiary of a million-dollar life insurance policy. The information section of the letter identified the policy as rolled over from another plan.

“She came here for this?”

Dana shook her head. “She brought it over. The insurance company told her she’s contingent.” Dana’s hand reached out and touched the bandage on her temple. “I guess she thought if I died, she’d get the money.”

I scanned the paper. I handled probate estates for a living. Dana survived her son. Mike’s company owned it. Not Mike. Even if Kristin killed Dana, the proceeds would go to Dana’s estate. I lay the paper down on the table as another thought struck. “Did she want you to sign the policy over to her?” Now that I knew about Dana’s financial predicament, I knew what a godsend the policy would be.

“I don’t know. We never got that far.” Dana walked to the kitchen.

The sound of running water pulled me to my feet. I took the teakettle from her hand and put it on the stove. Then I found her teapot. “I should be doing that for you.” I filled the teapot with hot water to warm it before adding the tea leaves to the built-in infuser.

“What about the baby?” I asked as I poured the now steeped tea.

“I went to Lisa’s to ask if I could visit with the baby.” Her hands trembled a bit as she lifted the cup to her lips and sipped. “Lisa told me I could do more than visit, I could take the baby home with me.” A faint smile touched her lips. “God knows why, I jumped at the chance. The woman looked exhausted. She probably just needed a break.” Her gaze met mine across the table. “I haven’t ever had an infant in this house, but off I trotted with the baby, a carrier, and the diaper bag.” She shook her head and lifted her cup again.

“She just let you take him?”

Dana finished her tea and stared into the tea leaves that had escaped the diffuser into her cup. “Yeah, Lisa was quite specific. I could have him for an hour. Then she was coming to pick him up.” Her hands gave the cup a restless swirl and she resettled it in the saucer. “We’d had our differences, but I almost liked her for that.”

I wanted to ask her why she disliked Lisa, but the words wouldn’t cross my lips. As far as I was concerned, she’d gone for the child to try to hold on to a piece of her son. It didn’t matter now what she thought of the mother.

Dana stood and yawned. “I need a shower and bed.”

A wave of tiredness washed over me as she walked me to the door. She leaned over, pecked me on the cheek, and cupped my chin in her right hand. “You be careful. Keep your alarm on.” Then she let go.

As I reached the top step, I heard her say, “There’s nothing of Mike in that child.”

Twenty-Five

Dana’s words rang in my ears on the short drive back to my house. Tiger met me at the front door. Tail high, he trotted in the direction of the kitchen, hoping for a late-night snack. With Dana’s words about my safety firmly in mind, I set the alarm.

Tiger received a fistful of catnip-flavored treats and I reached into the cupboard for a wineglass. A wave of exhaustion washed over me. Earlier, I hadn’t expected sleep to find me tonight. Now I didn’t know if I had the strength to get to my bedroom and remove my clothes or makeup before falling into bed.

My sleep was deep and dreamless. The sound of the alarm annoyed me. When I looked at the clock, I realized I barely had time to pull on a pair of trousers and a shirt before leaving. Forget about a shower.

I raced for my car and made good time through the light traffic. The news came on the radio station as I drove over the Long Key Bridge. The commentator reported the events at Dana’s last night.

Ruth greeted me with a huge smile when I walked in the door. “Glad you’re here and okay. We heard about the excitement last night,” Ruth burbled. Her fingers fanned the pages of her message book as she talked.

“Thanks, Ruth.” Her words touched me, doubly so because we sometimes had a prickly relationship.

Her smile rewarded me. “Coffee’s fresh, grab some before you start the day.”

I shot her a grateful grin and headed for my office, dropping my briefcase and handbag on the visitor chair. The smell of promised coffee floated to me over the all-pervasive odor of paper.

Unable to resist, I followed my nose to the coffeemaker. Grant stood there waving a cup back and forth. He used his hand to waft the scent in my direction from the cup. I snatched it away and noted he’d even added cream. The liquid made its way down my throat with a delicious warmth. By the time the caffeine hit my stomach, I felt better.

“You thought I wouldn’t find you and you could sneak in without my knowing?” He waggled his eyebrows, an evil glint in his eyes.

“Brat,” I retorted.

He arched his eyebrows again, this time in question. Cup grasped firmly in both hands I shook my head. “Let me get my thoughts organized. This could be some kind of odd dream.” Gratitude washed over me as he nodded his understanding. Coffee in hand, I went to my office. Lisa’s complaint sat front and center on my desk, right where I’d left it.

After last night, my feelings about her were muddled. No way had she faked her terror for her child last night. From a humanistic standpoint, she deserved some kind of remembrance, if for no other reason than she was the mother of Mike’s child. I would have to tread carefully. Not let my viewpoint interfere with the work I needed to do for us to win the case.

Dana’s words came back to haunt me. The child looked nothing like Mike. I didn’t know much about kids. He looked like a baby to me. I doubted I’d be able to pick him out in a baby lineup.

I looked at my cell phone. The screen told me I’d missed two calls last night while I was at Dana’s. Before opening my computer to start the workday, I hit the icon to listen to my voicemail. Janice’s voice came through the speaker telling me a boat lay at anchor right over Mike’s treasure site. It looked like a twenty-seven-foot Mako, but she was on a missing diver call and couldn’t investigate or get the FL numbers that identified the boat’s ownership in the State registration database from the boat. The second was more frantic. From Janice, worried about last night’s events at Dana’s.

Janice answered her cell on the second ring, her voice groggy with sleep. “What the heck went on last night?”

“What, no hello?”

That earned me an ear-blistering response. She peppered me with questions about the shooting, including many I didn’t have the answers to. We then moved on to the missing diver and the boat on the treasure site.

“Hayd, I was grateful that a fellow officer found the diver. It let me go back to Mike’s site.”

“Who owns the boat? Is it The Petard?”

Her voice dropped a bit. “The boat was gone when I got back. If it was Mike’s, who was driving it?”

The hair on the back of my neck tingled. More than anything, I wanted to check this out underwater. The number of people who knew the location of the treasure and who had access to a very distinctive boat was limited. “Are you up for a dive this afternoon?”

“I’m off all day today. I’m game if we can arrange the transportation.”

Grant was going to think I was a part-time employee if I took any more time off, but this was work, in a way. I asked Janice to call Cappy to see if he could take us and let me know. That decided, I sent Mallory a quick text and marched to Grant’s office to tell him about last night.

Finally, I drew the excitement to a close telling how Lisa came for her child. He heard the sympathy in my voice.

“You like her, don’t you?”

I chewed on my lip a bit. “Yeah. Well, maybe. Not from my first real meeting with her.” I couldn’t find the words to tell him that even though I thought we might be friends in different circumstances, I couldn’t condone her actions towards me. I gave him what I hoped was a winning smile and asked for the rest of the day off.

He nodded a quick ascent. “I’m surprised you got any sleep last night.” He shot me a squint-eyed look. “Although you don’t look like you’ve been shot at and up all night.”

I should have smiled and exited; instead, my trademark honesty took over. “I’m fine.” My text chime sounded. Janice texted that Cappy had agreed. Heat rose up my throat and prickles of perspiration broke out along my hairline. “To tell you the truth, Janice and I are diving the treasure site.”

“You’re going to what?” The heat in his voice seared my ears. “No. I won’t let you.”

“You gave me the day off. Are you taking that back?”

An expression like jealousy flashed over his face. With a start, I realized he wanted to come with us. He wouldn’t ask. It looked like he literally bit his tongue to keep from begging.

I rounded the desk and lay a hand on his shoulder. “Someday soon, we’ll get you certified.”

The text tone sounded again. Mallory begged me to consider putting the dive off until the weekend when she could come with us. My quick reply let her know Janice, Cappy, and I were all going. Grant finally stood and walked me to the door of his office. He pulled me into a hard hug.

“Stay safe.”

Before I left the office, I called Deputy Diego to find out if he wanted me to come in and give a statement about last night.

“I appreciate your call, but what happened last night isn’t related to Mike Terry’s death.”

My fingers made tracks through my hair as I digested the deputy’s statement. “I don’t get it. She tried to kill Dana. I’m not a cop, but if she was looking for money, would she care who she killed to get it?” A sound like a choked-off chuckle filled my ears. What was I missing?

“Oh, she wanted money. Her boyfriend told her about the Terry treasure find. She wanted to embarrass Terry enough to pay her off to go away.”

That made sense. More sense than Kristin killing Mike. She had no rights to the find if he died. With Mike dead, Kristin had no hope of getting part of the salvage claim. She didn’t kill him.

The drive home gave me time to devise dive profiles. Janice beat me to Cappy’s dock. The two of them stood talking when I pulled up, Janice’s tanks already loaded.

Cappy started the engine and pointed the small boat towards the open ocean. While we motored along, I turned the conversation to her mention of murder and the Mako.

Janice gave me a strange look. “Are you prepared to find out that the killer could be Dana?”

I felt like she’d punched me in the gut. “No way.”

She cocked her head to the side and studied me. Her expression said “just speculating” while her voice said, “Sorry.”

We rode in silence until Cappy threw out the anchor and gave us a dive briefing.

Janice and I each took a seat on opposite gunnels. We executed a simultaneous back roll. I nearly spit out my regulator on impact when the icy water sloshed into my wetsuit. I twisted my head back and saw the same look on Janice’s face. She grabbed her arms and hugged herself, communicating her chill too. Then she pointed to the anchor line.

The visibility was gorgeous. In a matter of minutes, the water did its magic. All of the events of the last few days rolled off. I enjoyed feeling weightless and free. We got to the anchor line and each performed an equipment safety check. It wasn’t unusual for weight belts or masks to be dislodged or weakened in a back roll. Those kinds of problems took on gigantic proportions at our planned depth.

Having checked our own and each other’s gear and finding nothing wrong, we swam side by side to the anchor and checked its bite in the sand. I took a long line from the pocket of my buoyancy compensation vest. Janice removed an auger from a D ring on her vest. She secured the auger in the sand and I hooked the carabineer holding the line to the ring on top. I tugged. The line held. Side by side we swam off in the direction of the wreck. We’d gone less than fifty feet when the visibility lessened.

The bottom was all stirred up. Someone had been working the area. Every flip of our fins stirred up silt. I stared into her mask. Her eyes looked as wide as mine felt. We both sank down lower to the bottom. I checked my depth gauge and hers. My gauge read one hundred thirty five feet. The limit of our nitrox mix.

Janice nodded her understanding. We ran our hands over the bottom and fanned out in a semi-circular pattern as far as we dared go. Gold shimmered in the filtered sunlight. We stared at the shiny objects that filled our field of vision. Coins, some chains, even something that looked like it was set with stones.