Gnarly New Year (Corsario Cove Cozy Mystery #2) (11 page)

“Brien, Brien…” I whispered, as I yanked the door open revealing what could only be described as a tiny cell, no bigger than the walk-in closet in our hotel suite. Brien, who had been some distance away, was at my side, breathing heavily after what must have been another sprint to reach me that quickly.  With that penlight he searched the room. The room was empty except for a crucifix hanging on one wall. No doorway leading outside, either. “A monk’s cell?” I asked Brien in a whisper.

“Could be. Let’s keep moving. No light, okay?” He brushed my forehead with a kiss. I had caught the look of worry on his handsome face, illuminated briefly by the light from my cell phone. No bars. No service.

“Sure,” I whispered, as he bolted again. Why make it easier for the guys following us to spot this corridor by lighting it for them? Especially, if I wanted them to consider the possibility, even for a few moments, that we had taken that partially blocked passageway instead. I shoved my cell phone into a pocket.

As we did another hundred-yard dash down that corridor, the light in front of us grew brighter. I could now tell it came through an opening of some kind. As we grew closer the opening produced enough light to reveal that the corridor was lined with doors on either side. More monk cells? I pressed on, not stopping to find out the answer to that question.

My heart pounded from the exertion, now mixed with fear. Where were we? Had the incline in that previous corridor led us high enough to reach that monastery built at the highest point above the cove? The long corridor we were in now was on level ground. The floor beneath us was made of stone—not packed earth like it had been in the previous corridor. Fresh air was pouring in along with the light, but I could tell by the footprints we left in the dust behind us that no one had been in here for some time.

When we finally reached the end of the corridor, we found a door! An enormous wooden one, it resembled those on the monk cells, but wider and taller. Brien gave the door a yank, pulling on the large iron handle. The door did not budge. A second tug did no better. I grabbed hold of the handle too and Mick joined me. Together, we all gave it a pull.

The door still didn’t move but the handle came loose and a big iron bar fell. Brien with his amazing reflexes caught it before it could hit the floor! Wow! I stood on my tiptoes and placed a little kiss on his lips. Brien pulled me to him and gave me a kiss I wouldn’t soon forget. If I remained alive to remember it, that is.

Brien held that metal bar from the door in his hand. His eyes rose to the source of that light. It came from clerestory windows. Boarded up now, part of the weathered boards had given way, letting in that light. Brien scrambled to find a way up to those windows. They must have been no more than ten or twelve feet above us, but the walls were smooth. No crumbling façade like there had been on that makeshift wall blocking the other corridor we had passed. Maybe we should have chosen that route after all. There was no going back now. With no rope or ladder, we were stuck.

I began making my way back down the corridor, opening doors as I went. As I opened each door, I hoped for a miracle. What I found were more empty, or nearly empty, cells. When I had opened and shut half a dozen doors, I noticed that I had left one ajar. Not a lot, but enough that it stood out from the others—like we had found the door to our hotel suite earlier today.

Out of the corner of my eye I glimpsed Brien, standing in an arc of light cast by that window. He was testing out that hunk of metal, swinging it like Thor’s hammer. The muscles in his arms and chest bulged. Mick gawked.

Inspiration struck me once again as I heard noise from the corridor we had left behind. I pulled Mick and Brien into the cell across from the one with the door ajar. Once inside, I closed the door behind us. Then I explained what I had in mind. Waiting was the worst part. Minutes passed. I leaned my head against the wall near the doorway in that tiny cell where we huddled.

It seemed like days, rather than hours, had elapsed since we started that descent into the cave complex. The fleeting view of my phone when it functioned for a few seconds, told me I was wrong. It hadn’t been much more than an hour ago that we first dashed up that long corridor leading away from the chamber of heinousness. I was beginning to think Gary and Bat Guano Guy had taken the bait and gone down that other passageway.

Just as I was about to suggest we have another go at trying to get that door open, I heard sounds. In a few more minutes Gary and Bat Guano guy reached us. From the barrage of curses as they yanked on that enormous door, I could tell they were not in a good mood. More of that door handle clambered to the floor.

“Do you think they got out and locked us in here?” one of them asked in a voice I recognized as Gary’s. That was followed almost instantaneously by “Ow, why’d you do that?” Then an audible “shush,” from Bat Guano Guy who we now knew, thanks to Mick, was “Larry.”

“I’d know that voice anywhere,” he had whispered angrily as we stood in that tiny cell.

Stooges is right
, I thought. Armed stooges, no doubt. Once Gary shut up, they figured out the game quick enough. What’s behind door number 1? I heard a cell door open and shut. Then, a second door. I hoped they weren’t going to open and shut each door, one by one. I had set things up to happen a certain way. Quick steps down the hallway toward us, told me they had spotted that door left slightly ajar. 

I heard them do exactly as I had planned. They opened the door to the cell across from us. As they did that I pushed the door open to the room we were in. We burst from the room, with Brien wielding that iron bar we had yanked from the door. He landed a blow to the guy standing just outside that door, knocking the gun out of his hand. Still staggered, I shoved the off-balance lowlife toward Brien.  Brien hit him again, and sent him hurtling into the room, where he slammed into his curly-haired confederate just as he raised his gun to fire. Brien jumped out of the way as both men fell to the floor.

I slammed the door shut. Shots rang out from inside that room, but the thick hardwood door stopped the bullets. I picked up the gun that had fallen on the floor, and joined Brien and Mick holding that door shut as the angry bull of a man inside hurled himself at that door—not once, but twice. That had to hurt. Another bullet sent splinters of wood flying. Brien and I held fast, although Mick jumped out of the way of those splinters. He quickly took his place again—a little off to the side of the splintered wood, though. I motioned for Brien and Mick to step aside as I hollered at the man inside.

“Give it a rest, Larry. You’re going to run out of bullets before you shoot your way out of there and we’ve got the other gun.” Two more bullets flew. More splinters. How many more bullets could he have in that gun? Enough to make their way through that wood?

The three of us turned as we heard a clamor. Not from the stooges in that cell, but from the front door. A grinding sound reached us as that door slowly began to open. I tensed and aimed my gun at that door as it opened and people burst through.

“Police! Don’t anybody move. Put down your weapon.” I did as I was told, and placed the gun I held on the ground. I heard a clanking sound from inside that cell, too. Brien and I stepped away from the door.

“Stooges,” I said, pointing at that cell as I squinted in the bright light that bathed Mitchum in a halo. Standing to either side of him were two uniformed officers and behind them several burly looking men in monk’s robes. I heard angels singing.

11 gnarly new year

Those hadn’t been angels singing. As one of our robed liberators explained, most of the ninety or so monks who live at that monastery were chanting what he called “none”—ninth-hour prayers—in a chapel not too far from us. When we stumbled out into the afternoon sunshine, we soon found ourselves on a path that led through a garden more beautiful than the ones down below at the resort. The scent of the forest surrounding us blended with that from the herbs and other plants in large, well-tended vegetable beds. An orchard stood opposite. Flowers bloomed around us too, and lined the path we took back to the monastery.

We entered the monastery complex through an opening to one corridor of buildings organized into a large quadrangle. In the center was another garden. A large labyrinth occupied much of this one. With the scented air, birds chirping, sunshine, and the sound of that chant growing louder, the setting was enchanting.

I glanced back over my shoulder a time or two as we left the remains of what must have been an earlier monastery built on the grounds up here. That scene was less than idyllic. The stooges, cuffed and bleeding, were being hustled off by Mitchum’s officers. My hubby’s makeshift Thor’s hammer had done its job. They were lucky, in fact, not to be in worse shape than they were having been on the receiving end of Brien’s mighty blows.

One of the massive monks who had come to our rescue was working to secure those wooden doors we had exited. From what I could see, that enclosed corridor of cells was in the best condition of a much larger set of remains, now partially reclaimed by woods. There had been a fire. Most of the other structures that I could see were badly charred. Heaps of rubble poked their way through tangled vines, weeds, and brush. The police tape added to the incongruity of the scene. Old villainy and new, perhaps, bound together by that brightly-colored tape.    

Mitchum chatted with our escort as we headed away from there. The two men discussed managing potential conflicts between police procedures and monastery practices. It made a lot more sense to haul out the evidence in that cavern using our exit rather than schlepping it up the steps we had used to enter the chamber of heinousness. The fact that the ceiling around the entrance off those steps was none too stable was a problem now, too. And then there were those Krugerrands.

“Here you go, Mitchum. This must be what all the hoopla is about for Simpson and his stooges. Gold fever,” I had said, as I placed the two remaining Krugerrands in my possession into his outstretched palm. “I think someone needs to post a guard at both entrances to Owen Taylor’s hideout. There are lots more of them down there.”

Brien and I told Mitchum about that stack of barrels and the one in which we had found gold pieces. Who knew how many? Even if none of the other barrels held treasure, the ones we had found had to be worth a small fortune.

“If your guys search Larry and Gary, I’m betting one or both of them have a couple more of them.” I explained what I had done in an effort to redirect the goons chasing us by leaving Krugerrands behind. That was news to my adorable husband who beamed his approval my way. Even Mick had a kind word for me.

“Good one, Gidget. You’re almost as crafty as Opie.”

“Crafty is right. He had all of you chasing after that GPS device when he’d already claimed the prize,” Mitchum added.

“Maybe not all of it, Mitchum. Larry the diver can tell you more about what he saw when they went to that underwater site. Who knows how much more is still down there?” I offered.

“Could be,” Mitchum sighed. “Owen should have quit while he was ahead. If he’d been as crafty as he thought he was, he would have cut and run with what he had.”

“
Such are the paths of all who go after ill-gotten gain; it takes away the life of those who get it
.”
That was our escort speaking. “Too bad people don’t take those old proverbs to heart. They don’t always work out in quite so literal a way. Your friend Owen—or Opie, is it?” He asked, turning a little toward Mick. Mick nodded. “Opie could have benefited by heeding those words. Crafty and wise are two different things, aren’t they?” Brother Thaddeus, as he had introduced himself, smiled in a congenial way. Something in his eyes told me he knew what he was talking about—from experience, rather than merely spouting platitudes.

I was dying to ask about those old ruins. They had to be as old as any I’d ever seen in California. Had the pirate Bouchard burned them down? Legend held that the local monks, like St. Albinus, had warded off marauding pirates with prayer and bribery. Early townspeople had been so convinced that the hermits had saved them with divine intervention from St. Albinus, they named their town after the patron saint known for his power to protect against pirate attacks.

Mitchum had said little when I described that blocked corridor or the human remains that had fallen along with the stooges when they crashed through the roof into the chamber of heinousness. Why was that second passageway blocked? What about the skull and those other bones?

“Duly noted. We’ll look into it.” The little sideways movements of Mitchum’s bushy mustache made me think old corridors and bones weren’t going to be a priority. If the situation had not been so chaotic already, and if I hadn’t been
bone
tired, I might have asked Brother Thaddeus. As if that would have done any good. Those eyes spoke volumes but he had the quiet demeanor of a man not given to idle conversation. What else would you expect from a cloistered monk?

When we arrived back at our hotel, Brien and I were finally alone. We even had time to clean up before the New Year’s eve festivities began. That included a few fireworks of our own, of course, in addition to the fabulous display put on by the hotel. Open to the locals, the beach was packed so we had watched from our veranda, instead, toasting the new year we had lived to enjoy!

Mick had accompanied us to our suite where he picked up his new clothes, “scored” as he put it, earlier in the day. Mitchum had a car waiting at the resort to take Mick into protective custody until they had a better understanding of the conspiracy afoot. Mick’s testimony might not even be needed since loose lips were everywhere. The thug we all called Larry possessed none of Brother Thaddeus’ reticence.

Larry, whose real name turned out to be Ronald Chapman, was under arrest for murder, attempted murder, kidnapping and a host of other charges. Despite his lawyer’s advice to take a vow of silence, Ronald Chapman was ranting—some version of “he made me do it!” He blamed Albert Simpson for ordering the murder of Bob Goddard and telling them to pin it on Mick. The mean-eyed, muscular lowlife claimed to be afraid of the rich, refined Albert Simpson. Could be he was right to be afraid. According to Chapman, Simpson killed “Curly,” the big, bald, tattooed stooge-for-hire, in a fit of rage for losing Mick and that GPS device.

Chapman’s pal Gary Richards, with him in the chamber of heinousness, also claimed Simpson was the mastermind behind the effort to salvage the boat and the booty it held. Those Krugerrands were only part of the loot on board. If Chapman could be believed, drugs
and
money had gone down with that schooner from Miami.

Davis had started to talk, too, acknowledging that Simpson had been behind the plan to recover that sunken treasure and a number of other schemes, including smuggling counterfeit goods. Not that Davis was always in the loop even before his arrest took him out of commission.

Simpson
wasn’t
talking, so who knew where all this was headed? Even if he didn’t get nailed in a murder-for-hire conspiracy, or for killing Curly, he was bound for prison. Simpson’s fellow board members of the real estate development group that built The Sanctuary Resort and Spa were after him. They were determined to see he got all that he deserved for pilfering money from development projects. They had already begun auditing transactions involving the slick corporate lawyer, before the deaths of Owen Taylor and Bob Goddard.

“If they had only slapped that guy in cuffs sooner, Goddard’s death might have been avoided,” I groused.

“It’s too bad when things don’t work out nice and neat like that. Mean and dirty is what makes crime a crime,” Mitchum had retorted. When Mitchum joined us in our suite New Year’s day to take our statements and deliver a “complimentary update,” I was pretty sure meeting in our suite had something to do with the coffee and donuts we supplied.

The new head of hotel security dropped by with information, too. Security had picked up a shot of a resort housekeeper handing off that bag taken from our room that contained Mick’s soggy Santa suit. Gary, the newest buffoon to enter the picture, had been the recipient of that prize. He had set the small fire and sounded the alarm to get us out of our suite so she could enter our room. That way she could search it, looking for a black Santa bag, using housekeeping duties to cover her tracks if she got caught. Gary admitted he found it “disappointing” that the bag wasn’t the one that Mick had stolen from the boat with that GPS device in it. As far as we knew, that GPS thing was still floating around out there, lost, or maybe tossed out after all. I didn’t ask.

An update from Mitchum wasn’t the only complimentary update we received. Newly charged to oversee security at the resort, Alan Henderson, “Big Al” to his friends, had a nice, laid back way about him. The nickname fit him perfectly. Big he was! He was almost the size of Brien’s boss, Peter March, a mountain of a man. No buzz cut, like Peter. Big Al had a head full of hair, close-cropped, and so neatly styled I was tempted to ask him where he’d had it done.

Brien hit it off instantly with the easy-going man who responded amiably to Brien’s questions. The loquacious man had no problem keeping up with Brien, either. Mitchum was soon growing antsy and Big Al picked up on it right away.

“I’d better get out of here before Bernard busts a gut. We were on the force together, and I promise you, it ain’t pretty when he does that! Our team here at the Sanctuary could use a guy like you, Brien. If you’re ever interested in making a move to the coast, give me a call. I’ll fix you right up! See ya’ later, Bernie.” Mitchum said nothing, nodding instead.

“Wow, thanks Al. I’ll—we’ll have to think about that.” Brien modified his response mid-sentence, after stealing a glance at me. I think my mouth was hanging open. Bernard? I never thought about the detective having a first name. I don’t know what I expected, but Bernie? Oh, yeah, Big Al had just made Brien an offer my surfer boy might find hard to refuse.

“We’ll talk about it, Brien,” I said, giving Brien’s hand a reassuring squeeze. I wasn’t totally opposed to the idea, just stunned. It was another surprising development in what had been an altogether unpredictable start to our gnarly New Year. Big Al wasn’t done yet.

“Nobody expects you to make any decisions right now. This honeymoon hasn’t turned out the way you planned. The resort management wants you to stay a few extra days—on the house. We also want to give you a ‘do-over.’ Call it a second honeymoon, compliments of the resort. Two weeks, any time you want to use them in the next year.”

I felt my heart beat a little faster, and even grew a little misty-eyed. Sometimes, good fortune still gets to me. I was never going to be one of those people comfortable enough to “depend on the kindness of strangers,” like that Blanche DuBois chick in
A Streetcar Named Desire
. Mr. P’s moments of largesse had always come at a price. Not Jessica Huntington’s, however, so I had learned to say thanks. My brain was already calculating how many more days we could hide out without imposing upon our friends and coworkers. Somehow, I managed to speak up before my chatty blond surfer dude hubby could reply. He was deep in thought, perhaps imagining all those perfect waves he had yet to ride.

“Thank you. That’s an offer we will accept, right Brien?” I didn’t have to ask twice. He swept me up in his arms and spun me around right there in front of Big Al and Bernie-bust-a-gut-Mitchum.

“Exactamente! Our most excellent honeymoon adventure continues
and
we get a do-over! I told you this was going to be a gnarly New Year, didn’t I?” I was a little breathless as he clutched me in those sweet, brawny arms of his. When he put me down, I caught my breath as the door shut behind Big Al. I was ready to say goodbye to Mitchum, too, but I did have one last question for him.

“How did those stooges find us in that cave?”

“The same way we did later—using the GPS signal on your phone. The guy trailing you knew you’d spotted him, Kim, so he let you all go and then called in your location to those two who tracked you into the caves. They took another route in there. Another bit of misdirection on Owen’s part led them to believe they knew where you all were headed and how you were getting there. They ended up in a chamber above you and the loot. They spooked the bats, the bats spooked you, and they heard the racket when you sent those barrels flying. A comedy of errors that could have ended in tragedy.”

“Well, without that series of errors, we might not have found the Krugerrands, Detective.”

“I’ll give you that one, but I’m sure I don’t have to tell you…blah, blah, blah. I quit listening at that point, refocusing long enough to say goodbye a few minutes later. Brien walked him to the door of our suite and then rejoined me on the veranda. We sat for a few minutes, listening to the roar of the waves. I inhaled the salty air as the breeze blew through my hair. A sunny new year rippled before us on the horizon.