“I think we’re about to find out,” Sadie said. She motioned Myrtle forward, and the two women approached the center of the room. Detectives Martin and Sloan had taken places in front of the champagne fountain. Several other officers stood near exits. Martin nodded to one of the officers, who opened the door behind him.
Gasps flew through the crowd as they watched Garrison Quinlan enter. James Chalinder grasped the table of champagne flutes for support, sending a chiming sound through the ballroom as crystal glasses clinked together. He leaned forward as if he’d been punched in the stomach. Kira swayed as if about to faint but regained her composure.
Garrison crossed the floor and stopped a few yards away from Kira. “I waited for you, just like we planned,” he said. “So we could be together, finally out of the spotlight. But when you didn’t show up, I came back to see what happened. Imagine my surprise to find out I was dead!”
“Imagine my surprise to find out you aren’t!” Kira sputtered. She shot Chalinder a dirty look.
“Of course I went straight to the police to find out what was going on,” Garrison said. “They filled me in.” He sent a nod toward Martin and Sloan and then turned back to Kira, his expression confused, dismayed, and angry all at the same time. “I don’t understand! You were going to join me!”
“No,” Chalinder said. “That’s where you’re wrong. She was going to go away with me. That was the plan all along.”
To both GQ and Chalinder’s surprise, Kira threw her head back and laughed. “You’re both idiots. I wasn’t going away with either of you!”
Sadie and Detective Martin exchanged glances, and the detective then addressed Kira. “You were going to ‘take the money and run,’ as they say, weren’t you?”
Chalinder’s face flamed red. He took an abrupt step toward Kira, but Martin restrained him. “You used me to get rid of Garrison!”
Kira shrugged her shoulders as if the plan made perfect sense to her.
“You let me think you wanted to be with me just to get him out of the way?” Chalinder continued. “Really?” He clenched his fists. “Just to get your hands on his money?”
Myrtle leaned toward Sadie and whispered, “Why do your own dirty work if you can get someone to do it for you?”
“Exactly,” Sadie said.
“So you never intended to go away with me?” Garrison said as if he still couldn’t believe it.
“Or with me?” Chalinder said. The two men exchanged a look of disbelief. For a brief moment an ironic sense of solidarity overshadowed their shock at the woman’s double betrayal.
“No, boys, sorry to disappoint you,” Kira said, smirking. “It’s been fun, but I’m leaving you both and going away with Toby Anders.”
“I don’t think so,” Sadie said. She turned her attention to Martin. “Isn’t that right, Detective?”
“Ms. Kramer is right,” Martin said. “You won’t be going anywhere with Mr. Anders.” He nodded to Sloan, who moved closer to Kira. “The body formerly identified as Mr. Quinlan here…” Martin extended an arm to indicate GQ.
“Very much still alive,” Garrison noted.
“…has now been correctly identified as Toby Anders,” Martin finished.
“What? No!” Kira’s face paled, and she staggered, bumping into Sloan. She recovered quickly, giving Sloan an annoyed look before turning to Chalinder, enraged. “You imbecile! You killed the wrong guy!” She flew at him, smacking him in the chest with both hands. He stumbled backward, tripped, and fell into the champagne fountain. Sloan, who was closest to him, reached in and pulled him back out.
“How was I supposed to know that?” Chalinder shouted, shaking the bubbly off like a wet dog. “Garrison was supposed to be on that boat, not Toby!” His voice trailed off as he realized the inherent confession in his statement, and his eyes widened as Garrison came at him with even more force than Kira had. Once again, he landed in the fountain, and once again, Sloan pulled him out. A nearby caterer tossed him a dry towel.
“I didn’t kill anyone!” Chalinder insisted as he mopped champagne off his face.
Kira turned to Garrison, tears now streaming down her cheeks. “You love fishing! Why weren’t you on that boat anyway?”
“Sorry to disappoint you,” Garrison said, his eyes narrowed. “I decided to leave town early to get our little love nest ready for us. The boat rental was already paid for, and it seemed silly to waste it, so I offered it to Toby. He loves fishing as much as I do.” He shook his head and revised his wording. “Loved.”
Kira shifted her gaze to Chalinder. “I don’t understand. How did this get so confused? The plan seemed simple enough.”
“I knew it. She was in on it,” Myrtle whispered to Sadie, who just nodded.
“That’s a good question,” Detective Martin said. “And we were stumped at first.” He turned to James Chalinder and then to GQ. “You, Mr. Chalinder, know Mr. Quinlan very well. It’s hardly feasible you could mistake someone else for him.”
Chalinder nodded. “Like I said, I didn’t kill anyone.”
“Not yourself,” Martin said. “The actual killer had to be someone who could confuse Mr. Quinlan and Mr. Anders. You would have recognized Mr. Anders, so we knew it wasn’t you. Thanks to Ms. Kramer here, we were able to figure out who did it, as well as how it went wrong.”
“As if murder can ever go right,” Myrtle interjected.
“Good point,” Sadie said.
“Care to explain it for us, Ms. Kramer?” Detective Martin looked at Sadie, who nodded.
“I’ll be glad to,” Sadie said. She began by looking at GQ. “It took some time, but I found a private boat rental company that had sent you out on a trip that afternoon. At least they thought they had. The rental was in James Chalinder’s name, but it was for you.
“He always arranged my schedule,” Garrison said, shooting his manager a pointed look.
“You’d rented from Cappy’s before,” Sadie continued. “They always arranged to leave the keys on the boat for you and to have you drop them off through an office slot when you returned.”
“Yes,” Garrison said. “It was very convenient that way. I could come and go quickly, without any fuss from the annoying paparazzi.”
“Exactly,” Sadie continued. “Only you decided not to go, and you offered Toby Anders your place, instead. He picked up the keys on the boat, just as you always did, and planned to return them through the dropbox.”
“We’d been out fishing together before,” Garrison said. “Toby knew the procedure for picking up and returning the boat.”
“Right, so there was no need for him to check in with anyone,” Sadie said. “Which means no one knew you weren’t the one who took the boat out.”
“Including the killer,” Martin added.
“So then who did kill me?” Garrison asked. In spite of the seriousness of the situation, his comment drew a few chuckles. They died down quickly. “I mean, who killed Toby, thinking it was me? And how could they get us confused? We don’t… didn’t… look that much alike.”
“I can explain,” Sadie said.
“Please,” Garrison said. “I entreat you. Do explain.”
Upon hearing a much-loved word, Coco’s head popped out of the tote bag. Sadie excused herself while she pulled a small treat out of a side pocket and dropped it inside. Coco disappeared along with the treat, and Sadie looked to Martin for permission to continue. He nodded.
“When the boat rental company released the security footage, the detectives were kind enough to let me look at the tapes,” Sadie said, “hoping I might recognize the second person on the boat.”
“And did you?” Garrison asked. “Because clearly, it wasn’t me.” He spread his arms out to both sides as if confirming his physical presence.
“No, obviously, it was not you,” Sadie said. “In retrospect, I can see that the man taking the boat out looked like you, but I was more interested in the second man.”
“The second man?” Garrison said. “
This was supposed to be a private rental.” He looked at his manager, who avoided meeting his eyes.
“Yes,” Sadie said. “As the boat started to pull away from the dock, a second man slipped on. He’s the one that looked familiar.”
“Clever,” Kira said, sending an eerie look of approval to Chalinder. “You never did say how you were going to take care of things. You just said you would.”
“Just like he said he’d take care of plans to cover up my escape from the public eye,” Garrison said. “I never imagined this is what he had in mind, however!” He turned to Chalinder. “Don’t tell me… A hitman? Is that where this is going?”
“A hitman?” Kira exclaimed. She clasped her hands together and pulled them to her chest, beaming at Chalinder. “You hired a hitman just so you could run away with me? How romantic!”
Chalinder reached up and rubbed his temples with both hands as if trying to ward off a headache.
“Continue, Ms. Kramer,” Detective Martin said.
“The second man was large but nimble.” Sadie remembered that had impressed her when she watched the security footage. She ran her hands over her ample hips, thinking the right exercise routine may give her the same advantage.
“Ms. Kramer?”
“Oh, yes, Detective, sorry.” Sadie picked up where she’d left off. “I recognized the man but couldn’t quite place him at first. Then I remembered the dinner affair—in particular, the table we sat at.” She waved a hand to include Myrtle. “Three men came to sit across from us—all very rude, all very chummy and cheerful—Jack, Buddy, and Marvin. These men right here.” She turned to face the three men. “The one who calls himself Buddy is the one who slipped onto the boat at the last minute.”
“Jack, Buddy, and Marvin?” Garrison shouted at his manager. “That’s the best you could come up with to bump me off? Those arrogant extras from the last film? Pinching pennies, I bet, as usual!” Chalinder simply shrugged, and Garrison continued. “At least you could have hired professionals. After all the money I’ve paid you?”
“Hey,” Buddy objected. “We are professionals!” Marvin whipped his head around to stare at Buddy in disbelief. Jack smacked his own forehead with one hand. Martin and Sloan exchanged looks and shook their heads.
“If you were professionals, you wouldn’t have killed the wrong man!” Chalinder shouted.
“He had the tattoo!” Buddy argued back. “That exact tattoo!” He pointed at Garrison’s arm and then looked back at Chalinder. “Who else could have a weird tattoo like that? You told me that’s how I’d know it was the right guy.”
Garrison looked down at his arm and back up at Buddy. “Weird?” he mouthed, seemingly offended.
“Toby wasn’t supposed to get that matching tattoo until next week,” Chalinder said. “He needed it for fill-in scenes shooting the following week since Garrison was going to be… er… out of town.”
“Wardrobe and makeup called him,” Kira muttered, shaking her head. “They moved the appointment up. Some sort of scheduling conflict. You’re the manager. You should have known that!”
“Okay, enough!” Detective Martin barked. He looked at Kira. “Before you wax poetic about someone hiring a hitman just so he could be with you, and before you,” he said, turning his head toward Garrison, “berate Chalinder here for not paying enough to bump you off, and before you”—he turned to Chalinder—“pat yourself on the back for accidentally getting rid of the man your girlfriend actually planned to run away with, let’s take this down to the station.”
Martin and Sloan handcuffed a seething Kira and a dripping Chalinder, as well as Buddy, Jack, and Marvin. They asked Garrison to accompany them to help clarify the muddled information.
“Any chance you’ll need us at the station?” Sadie asked. Detective Martin was shaking his head before Sadie even finished the question. But she was sure she saw him fight back a grin.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
“Well, that was entertaining!” Myrtle exclaimed as she and Sadie settled into seats at the Beach Bum. A drink in the hotel bar seemed well deserved after the hoopla at the cast party, and the champagne in the ballroom was certainly out of the question.
“I thought it went quite well,” Sadie mused. “A few surprises there, I must say.”
A server approached and took drink orders. She placed cocktail napkins and a bowl of salty snacks on the table before walking away.
“Yes!” Myrtle said. “All that weird on-and-off behavior between that manager and Kira Fairchild? Now it makes sense. She should consider going into acting. I wonder if the prison has a drama program.”
“Doubtful,” Sadie said. “But you have a point. Kira had to act distraught over GQ’s death, which she thought was real, even though she wasn’t upset.”
“That’s why she seemed cheerful when you saw her away from the hotel.”
“Exactly,” Sadie said. “And then she needed Chalinder to think she was going away with him, even though she wasn’t.”
“Hence the subtle closeness between them that you saw on the boardwalk,” Myrtle said. “But then why were they so distant in the hotel, like at the gift shop?”
“More acting,” Sadie said. “Neither one wanted others to think they were planning to go away together. That would have shown they had motive to get GQ out of the picture.”
“Which they had,” Myrtle pointed out.
“Yes, but not the same motive as each other. Pretty clever, actually. On Ms. Fairchild’s part anyway.” Sadie dropped a pretzel into her tote as their server approached and set drinks on the table. She charged both drinks to her suite against Myrtle’s protests.
“You should let me pay for these,” Myrtle said. “I haven’t had this much fun on vacation since I witnessed a jewelry theft in Cabo one summer.”
Sadie leaned forward, intrigued. “Oh, I would have loved to be in on that one! The solving of it, I mean. Not the theft itself, of course.”
“It sure caused a hullabaloo around the resort,” Myrtle reminisced. “They did catch the thief. It was just a setup for the insurance.”
Sadie took a sip of her drink. “Well, this hotel right here offered quite the hullabaloo itself.”
“Yes!” Myrtle exclaimed. “Imagine Kira planning to go away with Toby Anders all along! I didn’t see that coming.”
“Surprised me too,” Sadie admitted. “I had a hunch she was playing both Garrison and Chalinder, but it didn’t occur to me there was someone else involved.”
Myrtle shook her head. “Hard enough to keep track of two men, much less three.” She grabbed a pretzel from the snack mix and held it in front of her. “Can you believe we were sitting at the table that first night with three hitmen? How scary is that? Did you even suspect them, Buddy in particular?”
“No,” Sadie admitted. “Not until I saw the security footage at Cappy’s. But when I saw that, I remembered something that happened the first morning, when we were having coffee.”
“What was that?”
“Buddy approached Chalinder across the lobby and borrowed his newspaper.”
Myrtle frowned. “Everyone was looking at headlines that morning. Seems innocent enough.”
“Yes, unless there’s a payment hidden inside the paper for completing a job, which is what I now suspect,” Sadie said. “Not so innocent then. It didn’t seem like anything at the time, but Chalinder hadn’t been reading, and Buddy just tucked it under his arm and joined the other two guys in the coffee line. Neither one bothered to open the paper, even knowing the victim—or thinking they did.”
“That poor Toby Anders, GQ’s double and friend,” Myrtle said, shaking her head. “Talk about being in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“Unfortunate would be an understatement,” Sadie said. “The whole thing is sort of a comedy of errors, minus the comedy part.”
“Well, at least the guilty were apprehended,” Myrtle said. “Amazing how many confessions flew around that room in there.”
Sadie la
ughed in spite of the seriousness of it all. “There’s nothing like anger to make people blurt things out before thinking.”
A double buzz signaled an incoming text, and Sadie pulled her phone out of the tote.
Ms. Kramer.
Detective Broussard.
Sadie held the phone up to show Myrtle, and then turned it back to read the next text.
I hear there’s been some activity tonight.
Must be nice to have connections, Sadie typed. “He already knows,” she said to Myrtle.
“That was fast.” Myrtle helped herself to another pretzel.
Precincts keep in touch with each other. Especially when worried about someone’s safety.
Sadie smiled at Broussard’s concern. I was never in danger.
“He’s not going to buy that,” Myrtle said, looking at Sadie’s text as she sent it.
You could have been.
“Told you,” Myrtle quipped as she saw Broussard’s response.
Your concern is much appreciated, Sadie typed. And it was. Knowing Broussard looked out for her, even from a distance, was comforting.
I admit you did help this time, he sent back.
Really? Sadie was impressed he was willing to admit it.
You figured out the boat connection before the detectives did.
Sadie reached over her shoulder and patted herself on the back.
After about fifty phone calls, Sadie texted in return.
Sometimes that’s what it takes.
This time Myrtle, still watching the texts, patted Sadie on the back herself.
Sadie finished the text exchange with Broussard, assuring him everything was fine and she’d touch base once she was back in San Francisco. She put her phone away, finished her drink in a few gulps, and set her empty glass on the table. Myrtle did the same.
“So, I guess that’s it,” Myrtle said as they left the hotel bar and prepared to part ways. “End of vacation, end of mystery.”
“For now,” Sadie said. “But not the end of a new friendship.” She gave Myrtle a hug, which was enthusiastically returned. Coco’s head hung over the edge of the tote bag, eyes wide at the sensation of being squished between the two women.
A Flair for Flip-Flops Page 12
