Danger at the Dive Shop

by Mary Jane Hathaway

Penny and Elaine were giving her matching expressions of glee. Kitty ignored them and focused on her tomato. It was the exhaustion talking. Chica nudged her leg and looked up at her as if to ask if she was okay. She wasn’t really, but she would be when she got something to eat. “It’ll be okay,” she whispered to Chica. They just needed to catch a killer, that was all. No big deal.

  Half an hour later, the four of them sat back with a satisfied expression. Chica and Toto still looked hopefully at the empty plates on the table, eager to lick them clean.

  “And he can cook,” Penny signed.

  “I’ll fight you for him, Kitty.” Elaine put up both fists.

  “Forget about it.” Penny giggled. “You’ll need a reverse aging potion. He doesn’t want an old lady like you or me.”

  Leander’s face had gone red and Kitty took a moment to be grateful they weren’t teasing her for once. Sending him a sympathetic look, she tried to change the subject. “I love your dresses. I didn’t get a chance to tell you earlier.”

  “Thanks. They have pockets,” Elaine said.

  “And if she has a dress with pockets, she has to tell everybody. It’s like a rule with her.” Penny rolled her eyes. “I’m going to have her buried in a dress with pockets so she’ll be happy in the afterlife.”

  “Better not. I’ll still be telling people at the funeral. I’ll sit up and say, ‘It has pockets’ and they’ll all be amazed.” Elaine nodded confidently. “And make sure my shoes are good, too. I don’t want to be buried in ugly shoes.”

  “So you want flippers.”

  “No, no flippers.” Stacking the plates, Elaine frowned so furiously that Kitty started to laugh.

  “We’ll get the dishes. You two go get ready,” Leander said. “It’s almost seven. The boats are probably headed out.”

  “We’ve just got to change. Ready in a jiffy.” Penny tugged Elaine from the table and Toto followed them to their room.

  Kitty and Leander gathered up the plates and took them to the kitchen. A few minutes of rinsing, stacking in the dishwasher, and wiping down surfaces and they were done. Just as Leander reached for the kitchen towel, his phone buzzed.

  He glanced at the screen. “Detective Soledad,” he whispered to Kitty and pushed the button. She stayed quiet as he had a short conversation.

  “More autopsy results,” he said, looking thoughtful. “The blood found on the side of the Freedom Ring I was his. So he was killed on that boat, then it was brought back to the dive shop, and your group went out in the morning in Freedom Ring II. Also, no water in the lungs, like we suspected. He was dead before he went into the water.”

  “Back in,” Kitty reminded him. “There was no oxygen in his tank. He’d already been out and returned to the boat.”

  Leander rubbed his head. “So, he goes out with someone. They dive separately. The killer returns first. When Coleman tries to get in the boat, he’s stabbed, then pushed back in. Most likely for the treasure. And if Angelina’s poisoning is related, it has to be someone from this group.”

  “But if the killer has the treasure, then they wouldn’t want to go diving again. That rules out Andrew, Jenny, and Ren.”

  “Unless they were hiding it from the others.” Leander looked around the kitchen. “We should search the―”

  Lisa popped into the kitchen. Kitty would have said she walked, except the way she stuck her head through the doorway was more of a jack-in-the-box effect.

  “There you are,” she crooned. “We never got to go out last night. I hope you’re going to be here this evening. The Blue Dolphin is so much more fun when there’s someone to dance with other than Andrew.”

  Leander smiled. “Sounds fun. But I’m hoping we can place someone under arrest today for the murder of Coleman Larson, and if that happens I’ll have to go straight back to Playa del Carmen.”

  She looked disappointed, her bright red lips turning downward. “Any ideas?”

  “Nothing firm yet,” he said.

  “Well, then let’s say eight o’clock.” With a wink, she disappeared.

  Leander grimaced. “In case I needed incentive…”

  ***

  Kitty and Leander stood with Chica and Toto, watching the boat take Penny and Elaine out to the reefs once more. There was heavy police presence, but the waters were dotted with local divers. Kitty had been prepared for resistance from the local police chief, but either he was charmed by the elderly women, or their “contribution” of one hundred dollars had been enough to make them locals.

  Scanning the coast, Kitty spotted several signs advertising scuba diving trips. The dock stretched out into the reefs, and she’d heard most boats moored there during the night dives when they didn’t bring a crew to stay aboard. If Coleman had gone out with just a few people from the group, he would likely have moored the boat and taken personal dive lights when he went down to the reef.

  She couldn’t see Andrew, Ren, or Jenny, but that wasn’t surprising since they had left several hours earlier. The lighthouse stood tall in the distance, its faded red and white stripes begging for a photo.

  Leander must have had the same idea because he took out his phone and snapped a few pictures. Glancing at Kitty, he hesitated before asking, “Do you― I’m not much for selfies, but maybe we can…”

  “Sure,” Kitty said a little too quickly. She wasn’t a selfie type, either. Her curly hair always morphed into something untamable when someone pulled out a camera, and her perpetually pink nose turned redder, it seemed. But a picture with Toto, Chica, and Leander seemed too good to pass up.

  After several minutes of trying out possible combinations, they settled on Toto and Chica in front with Leander and Kitty in back. Chica understood she was to stand perfectly still, but Toto kept glancing back at the two of them, like a confused toddler. After the tenth perfect picture of Chica, Kitty, and Leander that was ruined by the back of Toto’s head, Kitty decided to throw a pebble just as Leander took the photo. Miraculously, it worked, and Toto looked forward just as Leander snapped the picture. Unfortunately, Kitty’s face was contorted with the effort of throwing the stone, but at least the dogs looked good.

  They moved toward the row of businesses lining the dock. The first one was manned by an elderly gentleman with few teeth.

  “Buenos dias,” Leander said. He spent a few minutes trading comments on the sky, the temperature, and the number of tourists. The first time Kitty had heard Leander speak Spanish, she’d noticed a little bit of an accent but now it was more pronounced, as it was when they were in the hospital. It reminded her of how her signing grew looser and less exact when she was tired.

  She shifted her feet, trying not to look bored as the topic turned to fishing. Kitty knew how rude it was to launch into a question without some pleasantries, but she felt her stomach knot with nerves. They were going to be there all day if they had to shoot the breeze with every mom and pop shop on the dock.

  “I was wondering―” Leander said, moving slowly into his first question.

  “I don’t know where the treasure is.” The old man tipped his hat over his eyes as if that was the end of the conversation.

  “Of course not. I was wondering if you’d seen some friends of mine.” Leander pulled out his phone and scrolled through his photos. Kitty saw he had copies of the group’s passport photos, and several informal ones, as well. She wondered if he had any of her, before the awkward-faced selfie she’d just produced.

  The man peeked out from under his hat. “No.”

  Leander pulled a few bills from his pocket. “Perhaps you could look again?”

  He frowned but leaned forward to snag the money from his hand. After a few moments of Leander scrolling, the man shook his head again. “No.”

  “Thank you,”

  And so it went. They took turns approaching the business owners. Some refused to speak to them at all, but most were happy to receive a few dollars and look at the pictures. They were nearing the end of the dock, and Kitty felt her hopes fading. In other
countries there might be CCTV, or some kind of charting the boats would have to complete. Here in Punta Molas, they were lucky if the police checked for boat licensing.

  Stopping in front of the second to last sign, Kitty smiled at the young boy sitting on the stool. She decided to skip the pleasantries. It didn’t matter if she seemed rude. The answer would be ‘no’, as it had been for almost an hour.

  “I was wondering if you could look at these photos and tell us if you’d seen any of these people here two nights ago.” Kitty paused, rethinking a verb tense, then deciding it didn’t matter, either. She was tired, and the dogs needed a cold drink.

  He leaned forward and looked at each picture closely as Kitty scrolled past.

  “Sí,” he said, his brow wrinkled.

  “Which ones?” Kitty asked, excitement blooming in her chest.

  He hummed and scrolled backwards. “This one. And this one. And this one. And that one. Oh, and that one.”

  “When?” She didn’t believe him. Coleman, Andrew, Jenny, Ren, and Lisa went on a night dive, and none of them had said anything?

  “Two nights ago. The mean one pushed over my sign because it was in his way. The tall one laughed. The young one gave me one of his candies. The lady with the red lipstick was mad because her light was too small.”

  Kitty felt her eyes go wide. That certainly sounded like Coleman’s unpleasant personality, Andrew’s childish sense of humor, and Lisa’s negative attitude.

  Leander passed him a few dollars. He shot Kitty a look and she knew exactly what he was thinking, as clearly as if he’d said it out loud.

  Was it possible they had been wrong, and they shouldn’t have been looking for a single killer all along? As horrible as it was to consider, Kitty had to admit that it seemed more than likely that the lure of riches had turned them into murderers. As Hawthorne said, a mortal man, with once a human heart, had become a fiend. But it hadn’t been out of jealousy, but greed.

  Chapter Ten

  “Women were different, no doubt about it. Men broke so much more quickly. Grief didn't break women. Instead it wore them down, it hollowed them out very slowly.”

  ― Cornelia Funke

  They walked along the beach in silence for a while, both of them thinking hard.

  “I don’t understand,” Kitty said finally. She could hear the shock and sadness in her own voice. “How could so many people be willing to murder for money?”

  “It’s probably a lot of money. We don’t know what they found yet.”

  “Something’s not right,” she said.

  “People are disappointing,” Leander said. “Sometimes I hate my job.”

  She turned to face him, the warm Caribbean wind blowing her curls into her face. She brushed them back impatiently. “Why would they kill Coleman? He’s only one man. They’d still have to split it between the four of them. I could understand if Angelina were part of it, because then they were picking off members and making their portion of the pie bigger.”

  “Maybe Coleman demanded a larger percentage. He owned the boat and the equipment.”

  “True,” Kitty conceded. “Okay, if this trip out here today is to cover their tracks, why isn’t Lisa here? She was the one who sat next to Angelina.” Kitty threw up her hands. “And Angelina. She’s really the key here, isn’t she? If we can find out why she was poisoned, we’ll be able to figure out the rest.”

  Leander blew out a breath. “Maybe there are two different crimes?”

  They looked at each other.

  “No,” they said together. It made even less sense for Angelina to have been poisoned and Coleman stabbed, with no connection between the two.

  They reached the lighthouse again and found a place to sit on the rocks. Chica and Toto chased each other in the sand, and the sun sparkled off the pale blue waves. If they hadn’t been chasing a psychopath, it would have been perfectly romantic. Kitty sighed. Someday it would be nice to sit with Leander and talk of something other than murder. Then again, maybe they wouldn’t have anything to say to each other.

  She shook off the thought. Angelina deserved her full attention. The poor girl had done nothing wrong. “Angelina,” she said slowly, turning the syllables over in her mouth. “She wasn’t there that night. What did she see?”

  “If it was enough to convict someone, wouldn’t she have said?”

  “Yes, unless she didn’t know what she’d seen, exactly.”

  Leander leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. “She sees something and the killer thinks she knows.”

  “Ok. We’ll just assume that for now.” Kitty couldn’t sit still. She had to walk. Pacing in front of Leander, she said, “Let’s erase everything else. Let’s forget about Coleman’s brother being a senator, and forget about the treasure.”

  He frowned. “That doesn’t really leave us with anything.”

  “It leaves us with something,” she said, waving her hands in the air in front of her. “We still know something about it. Seven stab wounds is a crime of passion.”

  “Revenge? He was a pretty unlikeable person, it seems.”

  “He was rude, but I couldn’t see someone stabbing him for kicking over a sign or yelling at the customers.”

  “Maybe Angelina’s brother? Could he have killed Coleman to convince Angelina to come work for him?” He hesitated. “Then poisoned her when she refused?”

  “Someone at the table poisoned her.” It still gave Kitty chills to say it so baldly. She rubbed her bare arms, feeling goosebumps under her fingers. Maybe Jenny had worn long sleeves and jeans because the weather was turning, and not because she was out of laundry.

  Long sleeves… Kitty froze.

  “On a black background, the red letter ‘A’,” she murmured. And as if conjured by her thoughts, three figures approached them across the sand. Andrew was talking, or she assumed by the motions he was making with his hands. Ren had his arm around Jenny’s shoulder. She looked dejected and small.

  Leander stood up beside her and watched them come closer. “Is someone wearing the scarlet letter of shame?” he asked quietly.

  “Not that we can see, no.”

  Chica stopped playing and came to stand beside Kitty. Her ears were up, back straight, and she was staring intensely at the group.

  Ren waved, and called out, “We didn’t find a thing, so I guess we’ll go back as poor as we came.”

  “Poorer,” Andrew corrected. “I’ve spent more on this trip than I have on any others.”

  Kitty looked at Jenny, wondering if it was possible that such an unremarkable face could hide such heartache and grief. It had been a crime of passion, but not what she’d been thinking.

  Reaching out, she slowly lifted Jenny’s sleeve. Chica growled low in her throat.

  Slapping it back down, Jenny stepped away, her face furious. “What the heck?”

  “Why aren’t you wearing a Tshirt and shorts?” Kitty asked.

  Jenny laughed, but it sounded hoarse and angry. “None of your business what I wear. You have a real problem, you know that?”

  “Today on the boat, did you make some excuse to change in private like you did yesterday? I bet you took a larger wet suit again today, like Andrew’s, and left him to take the old suit that nobody wanted. I’d wondered why he was using such a loose suit. I thought maybe he’d torn the good one.”

  Andrew frowned at Jenny. “I asked you if that was the one I’d used this week and you said it wasn’t. Why’d you lie and make me use that old floppy one? It doesn’t fit me at all.”

  Her eyes looked wild. “I didn’t. I told you that I have no idea where yours is. We’re one short, that’s all.” She turned to Ren. “Why is everyone being mean to me?”

  Wrapping his arm around her, Ren glared at them. “Back off. She’s had a really rough week and you two are ganging up on her for no reason.”

  Leander said softly, “I want to know how you slipped the puffer fish into Angelina’s dish, Jenny. It would be easy enough for you to get ahold of o
ne and extract some toxin, but you weren’t anywhere near her at dinner.” He snapped his fingers. “Yes, you were. You went to the kitchen for a bit. And then you served her before passing the platter.”

  Ren started to laugh. “Okay, this is really funny. Good joke. There’s no reason for Jenny to hurt Angelina or Coleman.”

  “But I think she did,” Kitty said. In a way, she could understand. She’d never been a mother, but she understood betrayal. “I think Jenny came here to ask Coleman for help. And he refused.”

  “Nobody would ask him for help. He was a jerk.” Ren shook his head.

  “You’ve been to Coleman’s Dive Shop before, haven’t you, Jenny?”

  “So? A lot of people have. Andrew’s been here a bunch of times.”

  Kitty almost hated to say what she did then, but the vision of Angelina’s twitching body had not faded from her memory. “How old is your child, Jenny?”

  Her face went pale. “What?”

  “Coleman’s child. Your family is raising him, but he could have so much more. A private school education, a relief from the financial worry.”

  “Jude isn’t Coleman’s kid,” Ren said, laughing. “Coleman was, like, old.”

  “He refused to support him?” Leander said. “That’s against the law, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” Jenny burst out. “He refused to come back to America because there was a judgment against him for child support. I wasn’t asking for much. Just enough for school and a better apartment for my mom. She was spending so much on child care and I was in school all the time.” Now that she’d stopped denying it all, the truth streamed from her like lava.

  Ren took a step backward, and then another. Sinking to the sand, he stared unseeing at the ocean in front of him. “Why?” he whispered.

  “I didn’t mean to,” Jenny said, starting to cry. “You said you wanted one more look, and my tank was empty so I went back to the boat. We started arguing. He didn’t want to pay a penny for Jude. He said he couldn’t even be sure it was his kid.”

  Andrew took a few steps away. “You― you said he went with some other divers. But he didn’t, did he?”