The Baron Blasko Mysteries | Book 4 | Tentacles

by Howe, A. E.

  “I don’t have any idea what’s going on. But I will tell you that, unlike some people, I believe your story that a man was killed this morning.”

  “What do you know about it?” Josephine couldn’t decide whether Brock was warning her about a threat or if he was the threat.

  “I just know that, whether it’s smuggling or something else, there are folks who will kill to keep it a secret.” Josephine heard the ring of truth in what he said. “Ignore my advice at your peril.” Brock gave a dramatic wave of his hand and walked back toward the porch.

  Pompous ass, Josephine thought. His dark suit, shining black shoes and grey fedora seemed out of place on the coast. She thought he looked more like a gangster than a tourist, and his arrogant attitude was infuriating.

  Back inside the hotel, the heat was oppressive, with no breeze from the Gulf to cool the air. Brock was the only person in sight, having come straight in and headed for the liquor cabinet to pour himself a large whiskey. Tired from their excursion, both Josephine and Grace decided to head to their rooms to lie down and wait for the world to cool off.

  Chapter Eleven

  Josephine was surprised at the long shadows in the room when she woke up. Looking at the clock, she saw that she had only a couple of hours to wait before she would be able to talk with Blasko.

  She bathed and dressed for the evening, then headed downstairs for a cocktail while she waited for sunset. After pouring herself a glass of cool water with a little bit of gin and lime, she went out on the porch, managing to avoid the other guests. Sitting in a soft chair and watching as the sun slowly slipped below the tree line, she soon drifted off again.

  “Are you asleep?”

  Josephine awoke with a start to see Blasko’s face inches from hers.

  “No,” she lied.

  “Come on. Let’s go up to my room where we can talk,” he whispered. The other guests were starting to wander into the dining room.

  “We should talk about what happened this morning. Jolly bad luck,” Captain Hume said as Josephine and Blasko walked past him.

  “We’ll be back down for dinner,” Josephine said, feeling light-headed as she climbed back up the stairs.

  “Afraid it’s a cold dinner this evening. The cook didn’t show up or something or other,” Hume called over his shoulder.

  Once upstairs, Josephine told Blasko about the trip to the rental house and her search for the missing postmistress.

  “You were almost killed this morning, yet you went back out knocking on strangers’ doors?” Blasko growled, his green eyes flashing with anger.

  “What was I supposed to do? I couldn’t just sit around here all day. Grace was with me.”

  “People are being murdered. Was it worth the risk? Did you learn anything?” he challenged.

  “Only one person has been murdered since we got here,” Josephine muttered, then went on to explain everything they hadn’t learned.

  “One person dead and one person missing. As I said earlier, whoever killed for that letter will most likely come back for the rest of it.” Blasko went to the door and looked suspiciously at the second-floor hallway, then he came back and rapped once on the door connecting his room to Anton’s before opening it. “Take a chair and sit in the hall. Let me know if anyone approaches Josephine’s or Grace’s rooms.”

  “Do you think that’s necessary?” Josephine asked after Anton had dutifully carried a chair into the hallway.

  “I think that you and Grace should return home.”

  “No. At least I’m not. I’ll give Grace the choice.”

  “There is something very dangerous lurking below the surface of this island. And I mean that both in the figurative and literal sense.”

  “I’m not disagreeing with you. Don’t forget that I saw the dead body.”

  “If you’re going to stay then we need to push our investigations forward as fast as possible,” Blasko said, doing his Sherlock Holmes impression. “Both the one into the death of your Uncle Petey and the one into the murder of the thief.”

  “I feel sure that there’s a link between the thief stealing my letter and his own murder. And since the stolen letter was the one from my uncle then, if only in a circumstantial way, his death is linked to the murder this morning.”

  “But is the dark miasma hovering over this town related to it?” Blasko wondered.

  “Without knowing the source of the underlying malevolence, it’s hard to make a judgment,” Josephine said, teasing him. She found him both amusing and, though she hated to admit it, a bit exciting when he became enthused with his own deductive reasoning.

  “Exactly! I will try to learn more tonight.” His excitement had eroded his earlier anger.

  “You can start with the stranger in town who wouldn’t answer his door.”

  Blasko nodded enthusiastically. “Yes, I’ll…” He stopped and a puzzled look crossed his face. As if talking to himself, he said softly, “That smell… I could smell blood on you this morning and when I was downstairs…”

  “What?”

  Instead of answering her, Blasko strode out into the corridor with Josephine at his heels. He marched past Anton, sitting stoically in his chair, and opened the door to Josephine’s room. In three strides, he was across the room and picking up a white cloth bag.

  “Wait a minute, that’s my dirty… things,” Josephine protested.

  Without a word in response, he opened the bag and started digging through her clothes.

  “I smelled the blood when you woke me, but I was too groggy to give it much thought.”

  “What the hell are you talking about? And put that down!” she yelled in an attempt to get him to drop her camisole.

  “Here!” he said, holding up the blouse she’d worn that morning.

  Josephine moved to grab it away from him until he pointed out several spots of blood on the dark blue sleeve.

  “That must have happened when I checked the dead man’s pockets for the letter,” Josephine said. Neither spot was larger than the end of a pencil eraser.

  Blasko put the cloth up to his nose and inhaled like a wine connoisseur with a cork. “Yes. Follow me.” He tossed the blouse onto the bed before hurrying back out of the room and down the stairs. Josephine jogged to catch up with him.

  “Whatever you’re doing, please do it discreetly,” she hissed in his ear.

  “Bah! I am the soul of discretion.”

  “You have got to be kidding me.” Josephine rolled her eyes.

  At the bottom of the stairs, they could hear conversation coming from the dining room. Like a weathervane following the wind, Blasko turned toward the voices.

  “Here they come!” Eric Donavan hailed them.

  The other guests were seated round the room in two groups. Wallace Brock was playing cards with Donavan and the Egyptian woman, while Captain Hume, Jamila and Elliot Zhao were sipping cocktails. The latter three looked flushed, as though they had been in a heated argument.

  “Please come in and tell us all about your adventures.” Hume waved them toward his table. “Not that I’m making light of the assault on your person.”

  “Go on. Sit and tell them about your… adventure,” Blasko urged, receiving a dirty look for his efforts.

  “I’m sure you’ve heard everything that I can tell you.” Josephine didn’t want to get trapped in a conversation at the moment.

  “Rumors are all that anyone deals in around here. We heard you saw someone get killed.” Jamila looked like she was trying very hard to appear sad, but without much success.

  Hume stood up and pulled a chair out for Josephine. “Have a seat, my lady,” he said with a toothy smile.

  “I don’t know…” She looked at Blasko.

  “Sit. Would you like me to make you a drink?” he asked with just enough inflection to suggest that he wanted her to say yes.

  “A whiskey sour.”

  “Tell us all that happened to you,” Jamila encouraged.

  Josephine went into som
e detail, giving them the same story she’d told the sheriff. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Blasko take a drink stirrer out of a glass and bend forward to place the glass on the table in front of her. As he leaned over, he dropped the stirrer and it fell at Josephine’s feet.

  “Clumsy of me.” He knelt down to fetch it and Josephine was sure that he lingered for a moment before standing up. Then he drifted over to the table where Brock, Donavan and Neith were playing a laconic game of cards.

  “We can deal you in if you want. All penny ante,” Donavan said, nodding toward the cards.

  “They’ve been teaching me how to play poker.” Neith pushed a quarter toward the pot. “I call.”

  “You’ve been teaching us lately,” Brock guffawed, dropping a quarter next to hers.

  “I’m out. Care to join us?” Donavan looked at Blasko.

  “Maybe a couple of… What do you call it… rounds?”

  “Hands.” Brock turned over his cards to reveal a pair of sixes. Neith smiled and showed three fours.

  Blasko sat down to join them.

  Now Josephine was sure that he was up to something, but she had no idea what. She couldn’t watch him without drawing attention to herself, so she sipped her drink and parried questions from the three people at her table.

  “Could you see the face of the man who attacked you?” Zhao asked.

  “And he was stabbed?” Jamila said.

  “What kind of knife?” Hume asked.

  This went on until the whiskey sour was only a fond memory.

  “Enough!” Josephine finally heard Blasko exclaim. “I’ll need to make a little study of the game before playing again.” His tone was light and good-natured as he stood up, looking across the room at Josephine and nodding his head toward the stairs. She excused herself from the group and followed him up to her room.

  “What was that performance all about?” Josephine whispered once they were alone.

  “The drops of blood on your sleeve. I smelled that same blood twice today. Once on your sleeve this morning and later this evening when I came down looking for you.”

  “The dead man’s blood?” Josephine was still surprised at the power of Blasko’s senses.

  “Yes.”

  “So who had the blood on them?”

  “I didn’t pay that much attention earlier. You would be surprised how often I smell blood when I’m around… people. And remember, I didn’t have any reason at the time to associate it with the murder.”

  “That’s why you dragged me back down to the dining room.”

  “Precisely.”

  “Ahhhh! It was on their shoes! That’s why you had to get close to the floor.”

  He smiled. “I smelled it as soon as we entered the room, but I couldn’t tell where it was coming from. I narrowed it down to the three playing poker. Joining them, I managed to drop a card. When I bent down, I was able to discern that the blood was on Donavan’s shoes.”

  “Not Brock’s?”

  “Why him?”

  “I get an odd feeling from him. His arrogance is part of it.” Josephine was having a hard time quantifying her suspicions.

  “I am sure that it was on Donavan’s shoes.”

  “Which doesn’t mean he’s the killer. He could have stepped in it when he followed me back to the body.”

  “True. Did you see him get near it?”

  “Not close enough to stand on it. But I don’t see how this gets us anywhere.”

  “It places Donavan at the scene of the crime and on the top of the list of suspects.”

  “Only because the suspect list is short.”

  “Currently composed of one, yes,” Blasko admitted. “Unless you want to include everyone who is acting suspicious, which would include the entire population of this island.”

  “Especially the man who’s locked himself in that house.”

  “Tonight I will confront the mysterious boarder.”

  “Which might tell us if we can cross him off of our list of suspects. What’s bothering me is that this isn’t getting us any closer to finding out what happened to Uncle Petey.”

  “If we can find out who killed your attacker, then we should be able to find the other half of the letter.”

  “I’m angry with myself for losing it.”

  “You did not lose it. Someone tried to take it from you. A lesser person would have lost all of it.” Blasko reached out and took her hand. “Remember, the killer only has as much of the letter as the thief was able to get from you.”

  “Which means that if they want the information in the letter, they’ll come back for the rest of it.” For the first time, Josephine realized the danger she might be in, but being cautious didn’t come naturally to her.

  “I don’t want to leave you alone tonight,” Blasko told her, squeezing her hand.

  “You need to find out what you can about Mr. Phillips. Grace will be with me. And I brought a .45 revolver.”

  “Anton will sit in the hall.”

  “He can’t stay out there all night.” Josephine thought she was stating the obvious, but from the look Blasko gave her, it hadn’t occurred to him.

  “Anton is able.”

  “Even if he is, I think he’s going to draw attention from Mrs. Lachlan and the other guests.”

  “You might have a point,” Blasko said thoughtfully. “Don’t worry. I’ll take care of it.”

  “I’ll be fine,” Josephine reassured him. The truth was that she was worried, but she really wanted Blasko to find out what he could about the stranger. The man had gotten under her skin when he’d refused to open the door for her.

  “If I run into Donavan again tonight, I’ll press him for some answers,” Blasko said.

  “Tomorrow I’m going to the mainland to call Bobby,” Josephine said suddenly, making a quick decision. “I’ll give him the names of all the other guests and see if he can find out if any of them have a criminal background.”

  “Assuming they’ve told us their real names,” Blasko pointed out.

  “We can only do so much.”

  “It’s convenient that your old beau is a deputy.” There was no sarcasm in the words, but Josephine couldn’t help but wonder if she heard the smallest bit of jealously.

  “Hopefully we’ll learn something useful.”

  “Be careful.” Blasko gave her a stern look.

  “I didn’t think there was any risk in simply going to the post office,” she responded. “What do you think is really going on here?”

  “Something ominous. The docks and the homes near the water have a putrid odor that reminds me of the pit that opened beneath Mrs. Rosehill’s place.”

  Josephine shuddered. “I hope you’re wrong.”

  Blasko pulled her into his arms and kissed her lightly, his lips lingering on hers for a moment. “I have to go. Please be vigilant. Let Anton watch over you and Grace.”

  Before she could say a word, he turned and left the room.

  Chapter Twelve

  Once he was gone, Josephine knocked on the door connecting her room with Grace’s. Quickly she warned the maid to be on her guard in case someone came looking for Josephine’s half of the letter.

  “Where is it now?” Grace asked.

  “Let’s just say that it’s close to my skin.”

  Grace squinted. “Just give the letter to whoever wants it and let’s go home.”

  “I can send you home,” Josephine offered.

  “If you stay, I stay.”

  “Right then. I’m going for a stroll around the hotel. I’ll check in when I get back. If you haven’t heard from me by midnight, go tell Anton.”

  “Is that man still sitting in the hall?”

  “I told Blasko that isn’t going to work. He’s going to cause a scene sitting out there and watching everyone.”

  Josephine left Grace doing needlework and shaking her head, still convinced that they should all pack up and leave.

  Out in the hallway, Josephine was glad to see tha
t Anton and the chair he’d been sitting on were gone. Satisfied, she started for the stairs, then stopped short as she passed Blasko’s door. There was a hole in the door, about chest-height and just large enough to push a pencil through. Josephine leaned over to look at it, trying to remember if it had been there before, and saw a flash of movement on the other side of the door.

  Frowning, she knocked on the door. She was feeling like she’d spent the whole day on the wrong side of various doors.

  “Open up, Anton,” she commanded, softly but firmly. “Now.”

  The door slowly opened to reveal the little man. Not far behind him was the chair he’d been using in the hallway.

  “Who drilled this hole in the door?” Josephine asked, knowing damn well who had done it.

  “The baron said watch the hallway. You tell him I have to be out of the hallway. He was very anxious that no one creep up on you. I was worried. A little hole, no one will even notice,” Anton explained, gesturing to the very obvious hole in the door.

  “You can tell the baron that I’m not paying for the door.”

  “He doesn’t know I drilled hole. My idea. I regret if I cost you for door.” Anton was obviously ashamed and his English suffered for it.

  Josephine rolled her eyes and sighed. “Don’t worry about it.”

  “May I sit here and watch now?”

  “I suppose the damage is done.”

  “Good! I want to see when they come out.” Anton smiled.

  “Who?”

  “Them. Other guests.”

  “Where are they?”

  “All go into that room across the hall. Very sneaky.”

  “Are you telling me that all of the other guests are in Mr. Donavan’s room?” Josephine’s curiosity was roused.

  “They each come upstairs and, one by one, they go inside.”

  “Close the door and keep an eye out,” Josephine told him as she left the room. Anton nodded enthusiastically and shut the door behind her.

  Josephine walked slowly and carefully over to Eric Donavan’s room. Trying to be as quiet as possible, she leaned in and placed her ear against the door while also trying to keep a lookout for anyone coming up the stairs.