Corpse Suzette (22 page)

“That’s because you are out
of your element, kinda like wading through Jell-O. But don’t fret. This whole
island isn’t even half the size of little San Carmelita. We’ll find the BMW
that picked Suzette up at the dock, and we’ll find her, too. You wait and see
if we don’t.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah... a
friggen’ Pollyanna, that’s you, Van.” She laughed and laced her arm through
his. That was what she loved about Dirk, that sunny disposition, that
effervescent personality, and of course, the eternal optimism.

He shook his head and
groaned wearily. “Nope, we’re never ever gonna find that gal. She’s gotten away
with cold-blooded murder. Not if we stay on this stupid island for a hundred
years, and look for her from one end of it to the other and then fall down dead
in our tracks and rot right there. We’re just not gonna find her.”

Ah,
yes.
Savannah
thought as she looked around her at the lush tropical foliage and breathed in
the clean, salt-sea scented air.

This is romance at its
finest.

Chapter

“D
id you really think we’d
run across somebody with a BMW in one of these swanky bars?” Dirk asked
Savannah. “Or is this just a scheme of yours to see how many of those stupid
umbrella drinks you can get me to buy for you in one afternoon?”

She sipped her piña colada
and twirled the tiny paper umbrella between her fingertips. Around them, a
large portion of the island’s population, or so it seemed, had congregated to
enjoy equally festive beverages and, in general, make merry, here in a place
called Coconut Joe’s.

If she used even a little
bit of imagination, it was easy for her to look around and imagine that she was
in a bar somewhere in the Bahamas. The music being piped into the place had a
definite Caribbean flavor, as did the bright batik sheets of fabric that hung
from the ceiling along with fishing nets and colorful paper lanterns. So many
palmettos decorated the place that she felt she was in a jungle.

The patrons were equally
exotic, dressed in bright floral sundresses and tie-dyed T-shirts, with more
seashell necklaces than she had seen anywhere since the seventies.

“Apparently,” she said,
“once the sun starts to set here on Santa Tesla, the natives run to the bars
and get stinkin’ drunk before suppertime.”

“Like you?” he said,
sipping on his Pepsi.

“I’m not drunk, I’ll have
you know, boy. I’m only barely buzzed, and after the week I’ve had, I think I
deserve it. So hush and order me another one of these... only with just half
the rum this time.”

“Such self-control,” he
said, waving to the waitress. “I’m almost impressed.”

“Yeah, well, I’ve had a rum
hangover before, and it wasn’t pretty. It was the morning after a bridal shower
where we sampled half a dozen kinds of daiquiris. I felt like I had a coonskin
cap on my tongue and a hive of angry wasps swarming around inside my head. I
had to eat a three pound box of Godiva chocolates just to get my blood sugar
level up to normal. But then, a self-controlled fellow like yourself wouldn’t
know about such things.”

“I certainly wouldn’t. The
only thing that gives me a hangover is tequila.”

“Yes, seems like I recall
you missing work a few May sixths in a row.”

“What can I say? Cinco de
Mayo’s a rough one.” He grinned at her. “Hey, you want something to eat?”

“Why? You buying me
dinner?”

“Well, not exactly. I think
they’ve got some sort of appetizer things over there at the bar for free. I
could nab you a tray of them if you like.”

“What a guy! Dirk, you
never fail to amaze me.”

“Why, thank you.” He
flushed under the pseudo-compliment. He received so few, pseudo or otherwise.
“It wasn’t that much, really, just some free hors d’oeuvres.”

“My point exactly.” She
took another sip of the sickeningly sweet drink and wondered why she had
ordered it. The Pink Squirrel at the last bar was much tastier. “What’s next?”
she asked him. “Where do we go from here?”

“Like I said, I’m a fish
out of water here. Nobody pays any attention to my badge, and I’m probably not
allowed to wave a gun around and threaten them for information, so... I’m
stumped.” The waitress walked up to them and asked what they would like.

“Something a little less
potent than that last drink,” Savannah said. “When I turn my head, it takes my
eyes five seconds to catch up, and that’s not a good sign.”

“How about a virgin
seabreeze?” the waitress suggested. “What’s in it?”

“Cranberry juice and
grapefruit juice.”

“Sounds good. And another
Pepsi for my buddy.”

Before the woman could walk
away, Savannah grabbed her by the sleeve. “By the way, you don’t happen to know
somebody here on the island who owns a BMW, do you? I’m in the market for one.”

The waitress shook her
head. “There aren’t that many cars on the island. It’s expensive to have them
ferried over, plus there’s only one gas station and it charges a fortune for
just a gallon, so...” She disappeared into the throng.

“Let’s forget about the BMW
for a minute,” Savannah said, “and concentrate on other things.”

“Like what other things?”
he asked

“Like why Suzette withdrew
three hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars in cash from the bank. What on
earth could you spend that much money on at once?”

“A fancy car.”

“That’s a guy thing. A
chick wouldn’t pay that much for a car.”

“How come you can call a
broad a ‘chick’ and I can’t?”

“For the same reason you
can’t call a woman a ‘broad’ either.”

“Huh?”

“Think with me. What’s got
that sort of high price ticket... other than real estate.”

They both looked at each
other and perked up.

“She bought herself a
house,” Savannah said. “And paid cash for it.”

“Or at least plunked down a
hefty down payment.”

“She told the guys on the
boat—”

“Catamaran.”

“Whatever... that she was
moving here. Hence the boxes of stuff she brought with her.”

“Maybe the person who
picked her up was a realtor. They tend to drive around in spiffy cars.”

Savannah grabbed her cell
phone and called her house. Tammy answered. “Hi, babycakes,” Savannah said. “Go
online and see how many real estate agencies there are here on the island.
Yeah, I’ll wait.” She stirred the remainder of her piña colada and slurped the
sweet frothiness off the end of the umbrella handle. “Huh?” she said. “No,
we’re having a miserable time. You’d hate it. The music? I think it’s a bar
down the street. Yeah, I’m holding. Go ahead and look.”

The waitress came over with
her seabreeze and Dirk’s Pepsi. “No, we haven’t had dinner. Didn’t even have a
chance to catch lunch.” She grinned at Dirk, who had helped her polish off an
enormous basket of fish and chips earlier at one of the beachfront stands. They
had each downed double-scoop ice cream cones afterward. “Yeap, all work and no
play, that’s us. Dedicated professionals, all the way.”

“That’s
me,
is more
like it, Miss Piña Colada,” Dirk grumbled. “Yeah, I’ve got a pen,” she said as
she dug one out of her purse along with a notebook. “Four of them? Okay, give
me the addresses and phone numbers.”

After she had written down
all the information and said goodbye to Tammy, she tapped her finger on the
notebook page. “Get that Pepsi down, buddy boy. You and I have work to do. Gome
on now, no dawdling. I ain’t got all day here you know.”

Sitting in the back seat of
a taxi that was hurtling around curved, dusty roads, Savannah dug her nails
into the upholstery and tried not to look over the edge of the road. She had
taken a peek a few minutes ago and had seen a sheer drop of at least one
hundred feet to the churning sea. Her piña colada-filled tummy had done a flip
and a flop, and she had vowed never to look again.

“You wanna slow this jalopy
down, buster?” Dirk said for the third time. “We’d like to get there in one
piece.”

The dark little man behind
the wheel didn’t say a word. He didn’t slow down either. At this rate they
would make it from one side of the island to the other in ten minutes... if
they made it at all.

“This is the last one,”
Savannah said, referring to the realtors on her list. “If they don’t drive a
BMW, we’re back to square one.”

Dirk shrugged. “So,
sometimes I feel like my house trailer is parked at square one. Familiar
stomping grounds. All too familiar.”

“Whatcha say you let me
handle this one?”

“You gonna do better than
I’ve done?”

“Can’t do much worse.”

“Hey, those last three
didn’t drive a BMW. Nothing I could have done about that.”

“Yes, but if you hadn’t
been so abrasive with them, if you had just finessed them a bit, they might
have told you who, if anyone, does drive one. Then we wouldn’t have to be in
this cab, hurtling through space with Nascar Joe here.”

“They just don’t like us
mainlanders here. You can tell. The whole island is like a giant clique that
hates outsiders.”

“Oh, yes. You threatening to
sic the Coast Guard, the Marines, and the Navy Seals on them wouldn’t have
anything to do with their lack of cooperation.”

“I didn’t threaten them
until after they refused to cooperate.”

“Anyway, I’m going to
handle this next one.”

“How?”

“Girl-style.”

“You mean sneaky?”

“Exactly.”

They arrived at the
realtor’s office relatively unscathed... if shattered nerves and upset stomachs
didn’t count.

Savannah grabbed Dirk’s
hand as she got out of the cab and walked up to the door of an establishment
that was quite a bit more polished looking than the other three they had
visited. A charming Queen Anne-style cottage, the business had an ornate,
hand-carved sign in front of it that read, “Elizabeth Fortunato Realty.”

“Nice place,” she said,
“Maybe Elizabeth is the BMW type. Ladies named ‘Elizabeth’ tend to be classy.”

“And that’s been proven
scientifically?”

“Through empirical
evidence.”

“Whose?”

“Mine.”

They walked through the
front door and found a handsome young man sitting at a desk. He was speaking on
the phone to someone, discussing rental rates for a vacation property.

After listening for only a
few moments, Savannah decided that she probably could never afford to vacation
on Santa Tesla Island for longer than ten minutes. And only then if she brought
her own tent.

When he hung up, he smiled
at them, and ran his fingers though his thick chestnut curls. “How may I help
you?”

“We’re looking for
Elizabeth,” Savannah told him. “I met her a couple of days ago and we discussed
a vacation rental, a place on the beach.” She turned and gazed up at Dirk
lovingly. “For our honeymoon.”

“Oh, congratulations!” the
young man gushed.

Dirk simply nodded, his
poker face solidly in place. But he did squeeze her hand a little harder.

“Oh, thank you.” She batted
her eyelashes at Dirk, then at the kid behind the desk. “We’re getting married
next month, on Valentine’s Day. It was Dirk’s idea. We’re going to have lots
and lots of red roses. Red roses are Dirk’s favorite flower.”

The pressure on her fingers
increased to downright painful. She got the message.

“Anyway,” she said,
“Elizabeth was telling me about this darling little beach cottage, and I told
her I’d think about it, but I lost her card. I was keeping an eye out for her
car as we were driving around today—it’s quite distinctive.”

The young man chuckled.
“Yes, there aren’t many BMW’s on the island; they’re not exactly easy on the
gas. I think she’s starting to wonder if she should have bought something
else.”

Savannah smiled up at Dirk
and this time, it was genuine. “Yes,” she said, “but she’s just such a BMW kind
of girl.”

“True. True.”

“Do you have any idea where
she is now? I realize it’s a little late, but I really wanted to talk to her.”

“Here, let me see if I can
get her on the phone.”

The kid dialed a couple of
numbers, then said, “Sorry, she’s not answering her home phone or her cell. She
turns it off sometimes after office hours. There’s more to life than work, and
all that.”

“Good attitude,” Dirk said.
“And when she’s working at living instead of working at working, where does she
do that?”

“Huh?”

“Where does she hang out?”
Savannah clarified.

“Oh, that’s easy. If she’s
not here or at home, she’s at Coconut Joe’s.”