Marty Ambrose - Mango Bay 03 - Murder in the Mangroves (5 page)

“That’s not exactly true” I folded my arms across my rather
flat chest. “You asked for my help at one point.”

“Only to rescue a missing boy-not to apprehend his father’s killer.” His sharply planed features hardened. “Mallie,
let me do my job.”

“And I have to do mine. Bernice will want to make this a
front-page story.”

“That’s fine. You stick to writing your stories, and I’ll stick
to law enforcement.”

I heaved an exasperated sigh. Not so much at his implacable
attitude, but because I found myself-in spite of my recent
trauma-becoming aware of his tall, muscular shoulders and
handsome face. I was okay when I didn’t have to see him. But
as soon as I was in his presence, my senses flared with an attraction as powerful as a wildfire.

“By the way, you’re working on one heck of a sunburn,” he
commented.

“No kidding.” I placed my palms on my cheeks. They felt
warm-as well as sore and tender. Jeez. “I had no idea I’d be
on the hike from hell when I set out this morning; otherwise, I
would’ve slathered on my SPF 45. I’ll probably have a few
thousand new freckles from today.”

“You need to be more careful.” He fingered one of my curls.

My breath caught in my throat. “I thought you were still sort
of irritated with me about that murder case last fall.”

“When you barged into the elementary school to confront the killer without waiting for me? Almost got yourself knifed?
And jeopardized Madame Geri’s life to boot?”

I lowered my head in guilt. “That would be the one”

“I’m over it-as long as you learned something.” He
dropped the curl, his fingers brushing my shoulder.

“I did, trust me” My head shot up again, a tiny jolt zinging
through me. “Uh … when do you think you might know the
cause of Gina’s death?”

He paused. “In a few days.”

“I’ll drop by your office on Friday for an official statementif that’s okay.”

“Agreed,” he said, one side of his mouth turning up slightly.
“By the way, don’t mention the syringe to anyone. I don’t want
any rumors starting up before we have the facts” He took my
hand and held it gently. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah … Nick.” The word sounded odd coming out of my
mouth, as if I was overstressing the last consonant.

We stood under that mammoth mangrove in awkward silence for few moments, hands touching. A death had taken
place, and we had crossed a boundary.

Everything had changed.

I drove back to the Observer office and barely made it in the
door before Sandy leaped out of her chair. “Is it true, Mallie?
Is Gina the Mango Queen dead?”

My mouth dropped open. “How did you find out already?
No, don’t tell me. The Island Hardware store grapevine? Big
Benny at the Circle K hotline?”

Sandy shook her head. “Neither. Miss Rose and Miss Emily
from your Aunt Lily’s quilting group were at Detective Billie’s
office reporting a stolen rocker-only it turns out it wasn’t
stolen. While Miss Rose was filing the paperwork, she remembered that she had taken it to the hardware store for the owner to paint. Anyway, they heard the news come over the police
scanner in Nick’s office. As soon as they picked up on Gina’s
name, they turned up their hearing aids and heard everything.
Then they called your Aunt Lily, and she called here. She left
you a message to call her cell phone” She handed me a small
piece of paper. “She wants to meet you at the Seafood Shanty
for lunch and-“

“What?” Had Sandy suddenly taken on my motormouth?
Maybe all the ice cream had addled her brain.

“Which part didn’t you get?”

I blinked. “Did my aunt really say she wanted to meet me at
the Shanty?” Aunt Lily had sworn off that place months ago
when a palmetto bug sashayed across her table and flipped itself into her iced tea.

“Yup.” She leaned in closer and lowered her voice. “What
really happened out there on the trail? What happened to
Gina?”

I explained the sequence of events, ending with the last
tragic scene under Old Blacky.

“So it could’ve been heatstroke or something,” Sandy pondered aloud. “Speaking of which … uh … you’re going to be
peeling like a gumbo-limbo tree from that sunburn.”

“I know. But that’s not as bad as my poor feet” I raised one
crusty shoe. “Not to mention that my Keds have turned into
salt clodhoppers, thanks to Bernice’s-“

“Did someone mention my name?” Bernice stood at the
door to Anita’s office, fiddling with her bracelets.

Anger bubbled up inside of me. “It would’ve been nice if
you’d told me how long that stupid trail hike was, so I could’ve
picked up my hat and sunblock.”

“A little sun is good for you. Look at my skin-smooth and
supple as a baby’s bottom”

I tried not to recoil. She’d hit “bottom,” all right. Her face, legs, and arms had the texture of a dried-up riverbed-cracked
and shriveled.

“I heard you had some trouble?” A hopeful note entered
Bernice’s voice.

“Trouble?” I heaved my canvas bag onto my desk. “I guess
you could call it that. We spent two hours of torture baking in
the sun as we waded through the soggy wetlands, one of the
hikers ended up dead, and I was the one who found the body.
So I guess that qualifies as `trouble.’”

“Dead?” She frowned, deepening the lines between her eyebrows. “Who was it?”

“Gina Fernandez, the Mango Queen”

“Oh, no! I was there when she was crowned” Bernice’s body
stiffened in shock. “I can’t believe it.”

Some of my anger dissolved at her reaction. Maybe she was
more humane than the mean twin, Anita, after all.

“Hot damn! What an opportunity.” She whipped out a new
lollipop, her face kindling in excitement. “‘Terror on the Trail.’
Yes, I love it. But I don’t want a who, what, when, where thing.
I want a juicy, first-person narrative. `Mallie Meets Terror on
the Trail’-that’s even better. Talk about the hike-how you
trudged through the swamp water, roasting in the sun. Then the
emotion builds, and you relate how you found the body-a
beautiful young woman cut down in the prime of her life. Bittersweet. Sad. All that kind of sentimental crap. And every step of
the way, you’ll delve into your deepest feelings. That’s what
people want to read about as you plumb the depths of human
suffering. I want everyone to connect to your pain and-“

“I hardly knew Gina-not that I wasn’t upset. But I can’t
say I’m … grieving,” I protested. “Besides, this isn’t a tabloid.
We have to print the plain facts and unvarnished truth”

“Truth-schmuth” She waved a dismissive hand. “People
want the nitty-gritty, and that’s what we’re going to give ‘em.”

Sandy made a choking sound and reached for her candy bar
drawer.

“Bernice, we don’t even know how Gina died. At this point,
all we should do is print a story about her death and give some
details about her life. More like an expanded obit.”

” Boooooring! I want reality journalism.” Bernice waved
the lollipop in my face as if it were a weapon. “Look, Miss
Priss, if you refuse to do it, I’ll get someone in here who can.
Writers for a rag like this are a dime a dozen”

I glared at her. She was not going to drive me out of my job.
If I’d withstood the buffeting storms of Anita, I could ride out
Bernice’s turbulence too. I hadn’t learned to stand up to challenges over the last year for nothing. Bernice was not going to
find an excuse to fire me. “All right. But I refuse to write anything that could be considered libelous. I draw the line there”
I folded my arms across my chest in defiance.

“Agreed” She weighed me with a critical squint. “Keep
the sentimentality to a minimum, Miss Priss, and start writing that article-now. Chop-chop.” She ducked back into
Anita’s office.

I turned my face toward the ceiling and gave a soundless
scream. Could the day turn any worse?

Sandy handed me a large chocolate bar and started in on
one herself. “Eat up,” she urged. “It’s the last resort of the
downtrodden worker.”

“I guess one won’t hurt” I unwrapped the chocolate and bit
into the creamy, thick food of the gods. “Did you find out
where Anita went?”

She shook her head. “I checked her desk calendar, called
her voice mail at her house, even stooped so low as to ask
some of her neighbors. But no one seems to know-or carewhere she’s gone. Our last hope is Mr. Benton. I called his office, but he was out. His secretary didn’t know anything, but she said he might have a vacation address that Anita left with
him. So maybe he’ll call this afternoon when he gets in…

“In the meantime, we’ll have to cope with Butthead Bernice
on our own.” I finished off the chocolate bar, smacking my
lips. “We’ve got to keep the Observer going with some semblance of journalistic integrity-if for nothing else than out of
respect for Gina.”

Sandy reached for her candy bar drawer again.

“No, Sandy.” I seized her hand. “One bar only. You’ve got
to be strong and not let Bernice get to you. Remember how
long it took to reach your target weight on the diet? And how
many times Anita drove you to distraction? Bernice isn’t any
worse than any of that. You can’t give up now.”

Sandy’s lips trembled as she visibly fought temptation. “I’m
not sure how long I can hold out. She’s got me on the phone
every hour with potential advertisers, including that creep,
Fishin’ Frank, who runs the Anchors Away nautical store”

“Not the guy who snaps out his fake eyeball and tosses it
from hand to hand as he talks?”

“I’m afraid so”

I swallowed hard. He’d grossed out everyone at the last
Town Hall meeting, including me, with a new trick: removing
the glass eye and popping it into his mouth. The vision was
burned into my memory. “Listen, Sandy, I know it seems bad,
but chocolate won’t help. It’ll make you feel worse in the long
run. You’ll not only have to deal with Bernice, but you’ll have
to go back to wearing your clothes with the price tags tucked
in so you can return them when your weight starts going up.
You can’t go back to those days” I didn’t release her palm.

With a long sigh, Sandy withdrew her hand.

“That’s more like it. I’ll pick up an extra stock of Ozone
Bars to keep you on track until this crisis is over.”

She groaned. “I’m soooooo sick of those things.”

“I know, but they work.” I gave her a brief hug of encouragement. “Why don’t you try Mr. Benton again?”

As she moved back to her desk, I reached for my phone and
dialed Aunt Lily’s cell.

She picked up on the first ring. “Mallie? I heard that you
found Gina’s body this morning. Are you okay?”

“Sort of.” Visions of the Mango Queen’s lovely face frozen
in death rose up in my mind. I shivered and pushed the images
away. “It was a real shocker. I mean, for her to die so suddenly
like that-“

“It’s worse than you think,” Lily cut in with an urgency to
her voice I’d never heard before. “I need to see you as soon as
possible. I’m at the Seafood Shanty.”

“Sandy already told me. Are you sure that you want to meet
there?”

“I can’t take a chance of running into anyone I know, because what I have to tell you is top secret”

My fingers tightened around the receiver. “Aunt Lily, what’s
wrong?”

She paused, and I could hear a loud male voice in the background, shouting an obscenity. Some biker wanting another
brewsky?

“Hello? Aunt Lily?”

Her voice lowered to almost a whisper. “Gina’s death was
no accident. She was murdered.”

I gasped, clutching the phone tighter. “Are you sure?”

“I’m sure”

“I’ll be there in half an hour.” Hanging up, I sat back in my
chair. Was it possible? My aunt never lied, never exaggerated,
never even embellished. If she said something was true, you
could set your clock by it.

That meant one thing: a killer might be loose on Coral Island once again.

kay. In thirty minutes, I had to meet Aunt Lily at the
Seafood Shanty. But how to make a quick exit?

I pretended to work on my story for a few minutes, while I
formulated a plan to trick my temporary boss. I had to give
Bernice what she wanted while secretly doing my own thing.
She needed to think I was working on the “reality journalism”
expose of Gina’s death. After a few minutes of mock “work,”
I rapped on the door to her cubicle, then swung it open.