Marty Ambrose - Mango Bay 01 - Peril in Paradise (7 page)

“Oh,” Chrissy responded. She nibbled on an allnatural granola bar. “If you need an interview or want
to include a picture of me from my blog for the story,
I’d be happy to oblige. Anything for Jack.”

“Thanks. I might take you up on your interview offer.” Anita would probably burn down the newspaper
office before she’d let me promote a blog in the paper.
“What are all of you going to do now that the Writers’
Institute is … defunct?”

“We decided to still meet-right here at Starfish
Lounge” Burt waved his hand in a wide arc around the
table. “We figured that we’d have to give statements to
the police and remain on the island for a while, so we
thought we might as well keep critiquing each other.”

“I have to keep working on my poetry if I want to
make my blog a success by the end of the year,”
Chrissy said.

“I want to keep going on my b … b … book on
shyness,” George added.

“And Betty and I have every intention of finishing our short story collection.” Burt gave a broad smile.
“We all felt it would honor Jack’s memory to keep writing since he believed in us so strongly.”

“That sounds like a plan.” I smiled back weakly.

“Hey, how ‘bout you joining us, Mallie?” Burt said.
“We could review your newspaper stories and help you
become a better journalist-not that our critiquing skills
are in the same league as Jack.”

I opened my mouth to dissent, but then closed it
again. Coming to the critique sessions would keep me
in contact with them, and give me access to any information they might come up with about Jack’s murder.
“Why not? Count me in.”

“Wonderful” Betty clapped her hands. “We’ll meet
you here tomorrow morning and get started”

Everyone joined in with a chorus of approving
exclamations-except Burt. He simply lifted his glass
in a silent toast. I swallowed hard, and not because the
pancakes were lumpy, but because I had just committed
myself to more endless mornings of literary commentary with four strangers any one of whom could’ve been
Jack’s murderer. Oh, goody.

A few hours later, after hearing the group discuss
Chrissy’s “Ode to Jack Hillman: Man of the Earth”written that very morning-I headed back to the Twin
Palms Resort for a swim. I needed to feel the cleansing
calm of the Gulf of Mexico.

I pulled up to my Airstream, noticing the honeymooning couple next door in the behemoth RV still hadn’t made an appearance. They’d opened their
awning and put out two padded lounge chairs, but were
nowhere to be seen. I sighed. It must be nice to be so in
love. I just hoped they had a good AC unit.

Torn between amusement and envy, I entered my
Airstream. Kong greeted me with a few happy, highpitched barks.

“What do you think, Kong?” I looked down at his
large brown eyes. “What are the odds that our honeymooners will actually make an appearance today?”

Kong lowered his snub nose to the floor and crossed
his paws in front. I turned my back to him and pulled
on my one piece, racerback swimsuit.

“Maybe ten to one?” I slathered on a new sunblock
with a SPF of thirty. “Well … fifty to one. They’re in a
top-of-the-line luxury motorhome, after all”

Kong sniffed audibly.

“Okay, one hundred to one..

I fastened a leash on Kong’s collar and led him out of
the Airstream. He eyed the beach warily. “At least we
have each other,” I murmured to my pooch as we strolled
toward the surf.

That was something wasn’t it?

After my swim, with Kong anxiously watching from
shore, I decided to follow up on Chrissy’s lead about
Hillman’s argumentative neighbor. He might not have
been angry enough to commit murder, but then again,
he might’ve seen the person who did. I threw on my jeans and a fresh T-shirt and drove over to Hillman’s
house.

As I approached The Mounds, a lump rose in my
throat. Was it only last night that I’d driven up to find
the house empty and Hillman dead in his study? I shuddered inwardly. It seemed like weeks ago rather than
less than twenty-four hours. Then, my eyes followed
the yellow tape that the police had strung around his
house. DO NOT CROSS. Like I was about to go in that
house. Like I’d ever want to go in that house again.

I parked Rusty on the street in front of Hillman’s
house and hiked up toward the low, flat stuccoed
dwelling next door. Before I had the chance to make it
halfway up the driveway, an elderly man with a gray
beard came charging out of the front porch waving a
cane.

“That’s far enough,” he exclaimed. “This is private
property, missy.”

“I’m from the Observer and I’d like to talk to you.” I
noted the man’s plaid shorts, black silk socks and wing
tips. This attire was de rigueur for retirees on the island. Sometimes they wore a Hanes white cotton undershirt or a striped golf shirt. But Hillman’s neighbor
had chosen neither-he was shirtless. What was it about
the Mounds that seemed to cause men to wander
around half naked?

“I’ve got nothing to say,” he grumbled. “I already
talked to the police, and the only thing I could tell them
is I’m glad somebody finally did that jerk in.”

I assumed the “jerk” he was referring to was Hillman.

“That dadblamed troublemaker was the worst neighbor I’ve ever had-with his loud music and giggling bimbos coming in and out of here at all hours.”
He shook his head. “My poor little Mabel couldn’t take
all that noise-it upset her to no end.”

“Your wife?”

“My cat”

“Oh” I moved a little closer and quietly reached into
my canvas bag for my handy-dandy official reporter’s
notepad. “What happened?”

“Mabel’s whole system was thrown out of whack.
She coughed up hairballs something fierce every time
Hillman had a party” He clucked his tongue and pulled
on his gray beard.

“That must’ve been very upsetting.” My fingers
fished around in the jumble, and I made a vow for the
hundredth time to clean out the black hole that passed
for my bag.

“I was half crazy. And would that good-for-nothing
Hillman even listen? No way. He didn’t care if my Mabel’s little heart gave out while choking on those hairballs.”

“Is she all right now?”

“She’s holding her own” He held up a hand to shield
his wrinkled forehead from the afternoon sun as he
fastened a speculative gaze on me. “You must be a cat
person.”

“Let’s just say I’m an animal person.” Actually, I was allergic to cats-big time. “I’m Mallie Monroe” I held
out my hand.

“Everett Jacobs” He kept his hand firmly fixed to his
forehead.

“Pleased to meet you” I waved my fingers in lieu of
shaking hands. “And my best wishes for Mabel’s speedy
recovery.”

“She’ll be fine now that things are quiet again.” A
note of triumph entered his voice. Was he so obsessed
about his cat that he’d actually kill to protect her good
health? It hardly seemed possible. But, then again,
Everett certainly gave the impression of being a cranky
old codger who might not need much of a push to become a vindictive old killer. “I heard that you and Mr.
Hillman had some kind of dispute over the boundary
line-“

“He was fixing to encroach on my property” The old
man’s arm came down, hand curled into a fist. “I saw
him out here one day with a surveyor and I knew what
the two of them was up to”

“But why would he want part of your land?”

“He said it was for some damn privacy fence, but I
think he wanted things that weren’t his-that’s just how
he was. But I wasn’t about to give him one foot of my
property. I already lost part of my acreage to that Henderson Research Center.”

My ears perked up. “Research Center?”

“Yep” He pointed to the back of his property where
the shell mounds were the highest. “Some archaeologists from the University of Florida got a grant to go digging
up there, and I had to let ‘em-something about the
area being declared a historic site. Next thing I know
people are poking around at all hours, turning up things
they shouldn’t be messin’ with.”

“That’s an archaeological dig?” I followed his glance
toward the highest mound and noticed a roped off area
on the top. “I had no idea.”

“Well, now you know, missy.” He emitted a loud
cackle and wagged his head. “The only good thing is
they also dug up Hillman’s part of the mound, too. He
didn’t like it anymore than I did.”

“So you had something in common”

“Yeah, we hated trespassers.” His fierce old eyes fastened on me again. Pikes!

“Would you mind if I took a look at the dig?”

“Why?”

I smiled, stalling for time until I could think of a
good reason. “I’ve never seen one before.” Oh, wow,
was that a compelling reason. I mentally kicked myself
for the lame excuse, but I never was good at lying.
Maybe that’s why I wasn’t as successful as my sister. I
could never fib enough to get the kind of job where you
had to stretch the truth so thin just to make it through
the day that reality became a distant dream. It had been
hard enough for me to tell people “Welcome to the
Magic Kingdom-Where You’ll Have the Time of Your
Life,” when I knew the reality was that they’d be dragging screaming kids around with them for ten hours and then stagger back to their hotels as food-splattered,
foot-aching zombies.

I waited to see if Everett would order me off his land
faster than you could say “burial mound”

“All right, but don’t whine if the prickly pears
scratch your arms to smithereens.”

“I’ll be careful” But I’d also be sniffing around.
Maybe something about the dig held a clue to Hillman’s
murder.

Everett turned on the heels of his scuffed wingtips
and motioned for me to follow with his gnarled old
cane. We started up a narrow shell path flanked on either
side by gumbo limbo trees and huge bougainvillea
bushes. An occasional prickly pear cactus stretched its
long, thin barbs toward my arms, but I successfully
dodged most of them. Higher and higher, we climbed.
Perspiration beaded on my forehead and my breath
came in ragged gasps but, surprisingly, my intrepid
guide scrambled up the path with the alacrity of a
mountain goat-even in his unsuitable footgear. When
we reached the top, I bent over and took in a couple
deep breaths.

“Looks like you need to work up a sweat a little more
often, missy,” Everett said. He wasn’t even breathing
heavily. Old coot.

“Seems so” Breathe in, breathe out. Whew. The oxygen struggled to get into my lungs, but they weren’t used
to that much exertion and almost screamed in outrage. Okay, I know I should exercise more, but marching on a
treadmill wasn’t my idea of fun, and I wasn’t outdoorsy.

Gradually, my breathing settled down and I could
take stock of my surroundings.

We were standing about thirty feet above the shoreline
on a giant mound of crushed shells and, as I scanned below, I realized I could see almost from one end of the island to the other. “This is incredible. I can make out
Mango Bay”

“Nothing to see there but a bunch of tourists and fishermen” He pulled a red bandana out of the back pocket
of his shorts and blew his nose in a loud, honking sound.
Charming. “I try not to drop into Mango Bay but once a
week”

“Probably just as well,” I mumbled. Strolling around
the top of the mound, I halted in front of the neatly
roped off area. The dig comprised about a twenty-foot
square, with a depth of maybe ten feet. It didn’t look
like much more than a big hole with bits of black pottery and broken shells at the bottom. I sighed in disappointment. There was nothing up here to provide clues
to Hillman’s murder. People generally don’t kill for
pottery chips. “It’s not … much, is it?”

“Actually, it’s quite an important site,” a quiet voice
said from behind me.

I turned and spied a man approaching with stiff
dignity. He wore neatly pleated dress pants, a polo shirt
and loafers. On his head he sported a wide-brimmed straw hat. “This mound used to be almost sixty feet high
with a canal at the base that led to the Sound.”

“Wow.”

“Hello, Everett,” the man said. “Is everything going
well?” Probably in his mid-thirties and small-boned; of
medium height, he had a beaklike nose and wore thick,
square glasses that seemed too large for his thin face.

Everett mumbled something that could have been
“hello” or “hell no” I supposed the latter.

“Mr. Jacobs brought me up here to see the dig.”

“If you want to know more about the site, you can
take a tour. The Henderson Research Center gives a
two hour presentation on the dig and their findings.”

“Do you work for them?”

He nodded. “I chair the board that oversees the dig
and I also run the Coral Island Historical Museum” He
stretched out a hand. “Bradley Johnson”

“Mallie Monroe. I work for the-“

“Observer,” he finished for me. “I’ve seen your byline on the bike path stories.”

I groaned.

“Hey, that’s important news on Coral Island. We all
want that bike path to happen” He grinned and I noticed a slightly crooked front tooth. “You doing a story
on the dig?”

“No-I just wanted to see it.”

“People shouldn’t be digging on the mounds, disturbing history.” Everett kicked a couple shells with the
toe of his shoe.

“But this is an important site-archaeologically
speaking, of course,” Bradley protested.

“Who built the mounds?” I asked, wondering if
Everett should actually be kicking artifacts around as if
they were crumbled pieces of garbage.

“The ancient Caloosa Indians,” Bradley informed me.
“They lived here about five thousand years ago and built
these for their villages and temples. Pretty ingenious
really. They hauled tons of sand and shell to build their
mounds and the sides were held in place with rows of
white conch shells. At the base of the mounds there was
an intricate system of canals so they could canoe
between villages.”

“And if they were high and dry up here they were
protected from the storms and high water,” I reasoned.
“So why are the mounds only about half as tall?”