Marty Ambrose - Mango Bay 01 - Peril in Paradise (19 page)

“Could I speak to Todd Griffith?” I asked in my most
polite tone.

“Just a minute.” She covered the lower half of the
phone, but I could still hear her scream out his name.

“I got it,” a young man’s voice came onto the line
and the woman hung up.

“Hi, my name is Mallie Monroe and I work for the Coral Island Observer. I’d like to ask you a couple of
questions about Jack Hillman, if you don’t mind.”

A pause. “I guess I don’t.”

“I can tell by your tone that you must’ve heard about
what happened to him.”

“Yeah, it was in the Herald. I was sorry ‘cause, you
know, he was like a really good guy”

“So I’ve heard” At least from you, and that makes a
majority of one. “How did you meet him?”

“He was my Big Brother when I was in middle school.
I’d just lost my dad, and my mom was working full-time
running a daycare. I was pretty mad at the world … and
doing stuff that I shouldn’t have been doing. Anyways,
Jack helped me, got me interested in sports, made me
want to make something of myself.”

I jotted all of this down in my official reporter’s
notepad.

“He even helped my mom go back to school so she
could become a teacher. She got a job here in Miami and
we moved in with my grandmother about three years
ago”

“Did you keep in contact with Mr. Hillman?”

“Oh, yeah. He helped me with my college applications this year. I’m a freshman starting this fall.” A tinge
of pride touched his voice. “Jack even set up a trust fund
for me to help with the tuition, but I got a Bright Future’s
Scholarship. Full ride and a stipend. I was going to tell
him last week, but I was … too late”

“I’m sure he would’ve been proud of you, Todd” And I meant it. “Did Mr. Hillman ever say that he was
having financial problems?”

“No. Leastways, I don’t think so. I know he was having trouble writing, but he said he’d found a `money
tree’-that’s how he put it. And that I shouldn’t worry
about affording college”

“Did he say what that `money tree’ was?”

“‘Fraid not.”

“Okay. Thanks, Todd, you’ve been a great help.”

“I hope they catch his killer … he’s got to be a real
sicko.”

“Yeah, I agree” I hung up and spent a few minutes
glancing over my notes. Hillman had found another way
of making money. That was the key. “Follow the money,”
Anita had said, and she was right. Wherever that cash
was coming from-that’s where I’d find his murderer.
And it sure wasn’t Pete.

The door swung open and my great aunt stepped in
with Sam at her side. “How are you doing this morning,
Mallie?” she inquired. “I don’t want you to think we’re
checking up on you, but that’s exactly what we’re doing. Heard you had quite a time of it yesterday.”

“The Jordan sisters?”

“Who else?” She smiled. “They’ve staked out the
picnic aisle at the Island Hardware, telling everybody
who cares to listen about your part in the arrest yesterday”

“My part was small.”

“Not the way they tell it.”

I looked from her to Sam. He’d changed his “enigma”
T-shirt for a wrinkled, white one that had some kind of
Chinese inscription painted across the front in bold
black. Still wearing the gold stud, he’d freshly trimmed
his remaining hair to a close crop. Not quite the scruffy
professor-merely tousled.

“Are you okay?” He seemed to be studying me as
though I were a specimen under glass.

“I was pretty wiped out last night, but I’m all right today” I glanced over at Sandy. Eyes closed, humming
away, she was in her own world. Good. I leaned in closer
to Sam and Aunt Lily. “But I’m not sure Detective Billie
arrested the right person. I don’t know. It seems off to me.”

“Best to let the police handle it.” Aunt Lily patted my hand. “Nick Billie knows what he’s doing.”

“What do you think, Sam?” I asked.

“Your aunt is a wise woman. Let events take their
natural course. This is a police matter.”

“I guess so” Doubts still assailed me, but were they
based in reality or the misguided hope that Pete wasn’t a
murderer? “Maybe I just want to believe that Nora has a
future with her husband that doesn’t include more jail
time-or worse.”

“Mallie, remember when you were just a kid and you
kept trying to catch bees?” Aunt Lily’s voice was quiet.

“Yeah, I wouldn’t give up.”

“Until you got stung. Then you stopped”

“I’ll say” I shuddered in remembrance. “My hand
blew up like a baseball mitt.”

“Exactly. This is the same thing.” Aunt Lily wagged
a wrinkled finger in my direction. “I don’t want to see
you get stung.”

“I get it.” And I didn’t like it. Going off half cocked
without any backup plan was my specialty. But I’d
changed. At least I thought about what I was doing before I did it. That was a start.

“Let it be for a couple of days and see what happens,” she said.

“Okay,” I grudgingly gave in.

“Come over for dinner tonight and we’ll talk. You can
fill us in on what happened yesterday. I’m sure the Jordan sisters left something out” She bent over my desk to
plant a kiss on top of my head. “It’s that red hair, Carrot.
It’s a curse”

“Takes one to know one”

She laughed. “We’ll see you later.”

“Hey, Sam, I forgot to thank you for the history book.
I’m not sure how it relates to the murder, but I’ve learned
a lot about the Caloosa Indians.”

He inclined his head slightly. “Knowing the past will
give you insights to the present. It works for me every
time.”

Aunt Lily raised her eyes to the ceiling and groaned.
“Don’t encourage her, Sam”

“Sam has helped me. He’s the one who put me onto
Nora in the first place”

He stared at me blankly.

“The note-you left it on my truck?” I prompted. “It
said to talk to Nora at the Seafood Shanty.”

“I never put a note on your truck.”

“But you stopped by the Lodge the other morning
and said you had information for me-“

“I wanted you to get the Caloosa history book-then
I went ahead and checked it out of the library and left it
at your trailer.”

My eyes met his. Whoa. Someone had wanted me to
talk to Nora and throw me off track-implicate Pete.
And that someone could be Hillman’s murderer. I’d
bet my last donut on it. Oh, no. I forgot. I’d already
eaten it.

I said nothing but felt in my bones that I was right.
The murderer was still loose on the island.

After I promised Aunt Lily to have dinner with her
and Sam the next day, I reluctantly turned my attention
to the story about Pete’s arrest. It was the last thing I
wanted to do when my mind was begging to go over the
list of possible suspects who could’ve put that note on
my truck: Everett? Chrissy? George? Burt and Betty?
Scooby-Doo? My head ached.

And much as I didn’t want to write the article, I
knew Anita would come breathing down my neck soon if I didn’t. And her smoke-filled breath was not a smell
to be taken lightly.

I pounded out a couple of paragraphs, watched Sandy
snap her rubber band a dozen or so times, and downed
another coffee before I packed it in for the afternoon.
“I’m going back to the Twin Palms for a break,” I informed Sandy. She waved me out with yet another snap
of the rubber band. Her wrist was turning red, the skin
beginning to swell. She’d be lucky ever to want to eat
again after her bout with cognitive diet therapy.

As I drove Rusty toward Mango Bay, I opened my
window and enjoyed the cool breeze coming in off the
Gulf. The rain had finally stopped. The sun hadn’t fully
appeared from behind the clouds yet, but it was on the
verge. Thin shoots of light already managed to eek out
little paths of warmth, so it was only a matter of time
before we’d receive a full blast of sunshine again. And
I’d have to slather on the sunblock again.

I checked my peeling nose in the rearview mirror.
Only the barest pink. Goody. One more cloudy day and
I’d have a semi-normal nose again.

When I reached my RV site, I glanced at the flat
tires. I’d need to order two new ones and have Pop Pop
put them on-if his arthritic hands could handle the
jack.

My honeymooning neighbors had opened their awning
again. They were still alive.

I put the leash on Kong, grabbed the Coral Island history book, and made for the beach. He immediately
balked. “Nope, it’s time to get over this beach thing,
K.K. This is our home now and you’ve got to stop being
scared of the water.”

I tried gently to tug him in the direction of the waves.
No go. Then, I yanked a bit harder. He dug in with surprising strength for a little hair mop. “All right. That’s
enough.” I scooped him up in my arms and walked toward the small beach. “We’re going to stay here until
you face your fears.”

I slipped the leash around my wrist and plopped
down in the sand. Kong whined, then tucked his head
under my knee. “Well, that’s a start” I set the book on
my legs and idly flipped the pages, skimming the section about the Caloosa Indians. Nothing new. I started
to move on to the pirate days when something caught
my eye. A picture of a Caloosa man. Tall and thin with
a weathered face and long, dark hair. Not much clothing. Wearing gold beads around his neck and carrying a
knife with a decorated gold hilt. Gold. He was wearing
gold.

Bradley had been mistaken. The Caloosa did trade in
gold. There could actually be valuable artifacts in the
dig on the Mounds. Wouldn’t he have known that? Or
wasn’t he as smart as he pretended?

I snapped the book shut and pulled Kong out from under my leg. Maybe that’s why Hillman wanted sole ownership of the mound behind his house. He was doing a little digging of his own. Was it possible he’d found the
jackpot? Were the Caloosa artifacts his “money tree”?

“Okay, Kong, you’re off the hook for now.” I jumped to my feet and brushed the sand off my jeans. “I’ve got
to make a couple of calls.” I hustled Kong back to the
Airstream, almost running in my eagerness to question
Bradley.

I reached for the phone as soon as I made it inside,
and rang the historical museum. “Come on. Come on,”
I chanted.

“Hello, you’ve reached the Coral Island Historical
Museum. I’m Bradley Johnson, curator. Please leave a
message at the tone, and I’ll return your call as soon as
humanly possible. Have a great day”

I gritted my teeth. “Bradley, this is Mallie Monroe. I
need to talk to you about something. Call me, please” I
left my number and hung up.

Just then the phone rang.

“Hello?”

“Mallie, this is Chrissy. How-ya-doing?”

“Pretty good”

“Just thought you might like to join us at the Starfish
for a drink. Now that this Pete guy has been arrested,
some of our group is leaving tomorrow. This is sort of
our farewell get together.”

I hesitated. But then I realized Chrissy might know
something about the artifacts, and this might be my last
chance to talk to her. “Sure, I’ll be right over.”

“Great. George is here already here.”

I hung up, gave Kong a quick hug, and left. I was
getting close.

A few minutes later, I was on Cypress Road heading
for the Starfish Lodge. On a whim, I decided to swing by
the Henderson Research Center at the Mounds just
on the chance that Bradley might be there. As I came
around the road in front of Hillman’s house, I didn’t see
Bradley’s car, but I did spy an old model Cadillac with
New Mexico license plates in Hillman’s driveway. Burt
and Betty. What were they doing here?

I pulled in behind their car and quietly slid out of my
truck. Even though I knew it was illegal, I ducked under
the yellow police tape and made for the house. Drawing
closer, I tiptoed across the screened front porch. I heard
voices within. Definitely Burt and Betty. There were
inside the house. Why?

I eased the screen door open and stepped onto the
porch. Then I crept around the living room toward the
hallway. Burt and Betty were in the office-the place
where Hillman had been murdered.

“We’ve finally got the proof we need,” Burt was
saying.

“Thank goodness. After two years. We can show the
world what Hillman did to us,” Betty said.

Some shuffling of papers and books.

“I’m sorry he was killed, but what he did to us was
wrong, and it has to come out. Now they’ve caught his
killer, we can go public with the truth,” Burt added.

“Maybe we should wait” Betty’s tone was tentative,
worried.

Burt gave an exclamation of impatience. “But we’ve
waited so long. It isn’t fair.”

What the heck were they talking about? I felt fairly
certain at this point that they weren’t the killers, so I
strode down the hallway and burst in on them. “What
are you doing in here?”

Betty screamed and dropped the papers in her hands.
Burt grunted and clutched his chest. His knees buckled
and he slid to the floor.

“Oh, no ” Betty rushed to his side. “Now look what
you’ve done. You should know better that to sneak up
on us like that. Burt has angina.” She pressed her hands
to the side of his florid face.

I shifted from one foot to the other, not sure if I
should call the police or the paramedics.

She glared at me. “If you’ve killed him, I’ll never
forgive you.”