Invalid Evidence

by Stevie Mikayne

She imagined getting up, getting dressed, and getting confronted with the fight of her life. Should she get in the ring? Did she even have the right, anymore?

  “Are they still there?”

  “They’ve been here since last night. He’s had someone by his side all the time.”

  She let out a breath. “Thank you.”

  Jess looked at her wedding ring on the side of the bed, held in the box she’d originally received it in. What would she do with it? Would she just bury it in the bottom of a drawer somewhere? Sell it for charity? Put it in his coffin?

  With a heavy sigh, Jess leaned back on the pillow and stared out the window. The crescent moon was a mere sliver over the elm tree in her front yard, the sky a starless black.

  The morning would dawn without Mitch in it.

  After a few moments, she got up, got dressed again, and went to say good-bye.

  * * *

  “I’m sorry for your loss.”

  They handed Jess the bag that contained the final items that she had left: his shaving kit, his wedding ring, his comb. She tucked it into her bag and left the nurses’ station, past the door to the room where Mitch had lain sleeping for the past five years.

  The bed was stripped. Remade. Tight hospital corners and a single pillow. They should burn the mattress, used as it was. Air out the room. Cast some sort of spell to remove the ghosts and cobwebs of all the guilt and past conversations.

  But someone else would move in there, like he’d never been there at all.

  Tears began to flow down her face and she couldn’t stop them.

  She ducked into the locker room, into the stall and sat on the toilet seat, weeping.

  For a few minutes, she sat, pressing a tissue to her face, then she ran a cold stream of water to splash over her nose and eyes. It was only when she reached for the paper towel and caught sight of the u-bend that she thought of it. Something was sticking out of the PVC attachment. She squinted. A tiny piece of gold chain.

  Why not? What better hiding place than inside the bathroom itself?

  She bent down to examine the plumbing and popped the u-bend right off. A necklace fell onto the floor, followed by a ring. She tipped the piece of PVC over in her hand. It all fell out.

  “Jackpot.”

  Quickly, she replaced it all, snapped the PVC piece back into place, and dialed Padraig.

  “I think I’ve solved your case.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “No, I’m not. I’ve found the stash, and I have a pretty good idea who it belongs to.”

  “Can you wait there?”

  “For a few minutes, yes. Mitch died last night, and I’m heading home.”

  “So sorry to hear it, Jessica. My condolences. I’ll get someone there as soon as I can.”

  Within ten minutes, the police were in the locker room with her.

  “Hey!” Morgan, Jil’s old friend from the police force, slapped her on the back. “How are you? Long time, no see.”

  She returned his hug. “And look, another crime scene.” She smiled ironically.

  The first time she’d seen Morgan had been when she was principal of St. Marguerite’s. The last time had been some sort of retirement party and he’d had a few too many hard lemonades.

  “What did you find here?”

  “Oh, you know, a good old stash of goods.”

  “Souvenirs?”

  “Apparently. Though some of them are pretty valuable, so I don’t understand why she wouldn’t have sold them.”

  “Sometimes it’s better to wait,” Morgan said. “They can be offloaded six months, a year later, when things have cooled down. And it’s also pretty smart not to have taken them home with her. I’d say this is probably a career thief.”

  “Yeah, I’ve met a few of those. I seem to attract them in my life.”

  “Maybe you’re meant to be a PI.”

  She winked at him. “You never know.”

  An hour later, Jess and Zeus were seated in the living room, watching the breaking news clip. Zeus’s giant head was in Jess’s lap and he kept turning his face to look at her.

  “Missed you too, you giant suck.”

  He burrowed in and pawed her leg.

  “A long-standing problem at the Rockford Memorial Hospital has finally been solved. Former volunteer and prayer meeting coordinator Mary-Ann Beecham has been charged with theft and concealment of private property. She is accused of stealing from the staff and patients of our downtown hospital for years. A citizen tipped off investigators earlier today, and several hundred items of stolen property were found and returned to their owners. Other pieces are still awaiting collection. If you think an item of yours might have been taken from Rockford Memorial, you are asked to call police to file a report.”

  Chapter Twenty-five

  When Jil woke up, she was lying in the semi-lit staff room, cocooned in a blanket with the air conditioning on full blast. Low voices came from across the room, and for a moment, she just lay still, listening.

  “No word yet?”

  “No. Carole says patrols have been out all afternoon and there’s no sign of him.”

  “What was he thinking? What were we thinking, believing him like that? It’s obvious now…”

  “I know, I know. But he was pretty upset about having to leave her there. We should’ve—”

  “Yeah, remembered that we’d seen him toss off his leg in three seconds flat? He could’ve saved her if he’d wanted to.”

  “And the way he took off out of here, like a bat outta hell.”

  “Exactly. I wish I’d thought to stop him. I was just…”

  “I know. Me too. We all were just focused on getting the boat on the water.”

  “How far can you get on a Sea-Doo?”

  “Far enough,” Jil said, sitting up. “Especially if you have help.”

  Rebecca and Ramone looked up from their conversation, and Ramone got up from the table.

  “Hi. Glad to see you’re alive.”

  “Takes more than a bullet to stop this train.” She winked.

  He grinned. “That’s a good one. Here.” He handed her a glass of water and she gulped it down.

  “Thanks.”

  For a second, nobody spoke. Jil took note of her throbbing hand, her aching arm, and the empty, hollow feeling in her gut from having retched up seawater.

  “Now that you’re awake, Carole is going to have a few questions for you,” Rebecca said.

  Jil leaned back on the couch. Her legs still felt like jelly. And she wished Jess was here.

  “Tell me what happened,” Jil said.

  Rebecca looked at her, confused. “What do you mean? We should be asking that of you!”

  “No, when Leonard came back here.”

  Ramone and Rebecca exchanged a look. Ramone bowed his head. “He came through here like a storm in a teacup, yelling to everyone that you’d fallen out of the boat. That you drowned. And the dolphins were on the lam.”

  “So naturally everyone panicked,” Rebecca said, shaking her head. “We got crews together. Got everyone out on the water looking for you and for the dolphins. We turned around to get Leonard to point us in the right direction. Tell us where you were at exactly when you fell out of the boat. Then we realized he was gone.”

  “Like a bat out of hell,” Ramone added.

  “We didn’t even see him go. Didn’t have time to think to send anyone looking for him,” said Rebecca. “So we all flanked out. Then by the time we figured it out, he was gone.”

  “So sorry, Jil.” Ramone patted her shoulder. “We should’ve clued in faster. It was just—”

  “Hey, don’t be sorry,” Jil said. “It must have been a total shock. Which is exactly how he planned it to be. Now, the only question is, what the hell is he covering up, and why? That’s my first priority to figure out.”

  “Um, no,” Rebecca said. “Your first priority is to go home and get some rest. And some food. And a hot bath.”

  “And maybe a dr
ink on the beach, which is what St. Emeline is all about,” Ramone added.

  “Actually, you’re going to come home with me tonight,” Rebecca said in a way that didn’t invite any discussion.

  Jil let out a deep breath. “Okay,” she said. Besides, it would be easier to work out the details with other people than all alone in her head. “Ramone, you’re coming too. And Max.”

  Rebecca nodded. “Yes, that’s a good idea. We’ll order pizza and make those margaritas Ramone was talking about.”

  * * *

  Rebecca pulled the open-topped Jeep through a gate that closed automatically behind them. She maneuvered up a steep white driveway and into a porte cochere.

  “Wow,” Jil breathed under her breath. Rebecca’s beach house was a mansion.

  Ramone looked at her and opened his eyes wide.

  Jil hopped out of the front seat and Max pulled up behind them in his own beat-up four-door.

  “Nice pad, Rebecca,” he said, whistling.

  She rolled her eyes. “Thanks. Bought when property values here hadn’t yet skyrocketed. C’mon in.”

  They sat around on the porch, looking down on the open water.

  “Look. Another bust-cum-theft,” Max said dryly.

  Jil watched as a harbor master’s boat made contact with a bigger vessel.

  “Is corruption a big problem here?” she asked.

  Rebecca snorted. “It’s a joke,” she said. “Half the harbor masters are on the take, from what Carole tells me. The gendarme spend half their time investigating real crime and the other half trying to figure out which of the authorities are squirreling away the merchandise.”

  “Nice,” Jil said.

  “It’s hard to blame some of them,” Ramone put in. “St. Emeline is a poor country. A lot of the people live in poverty. Even the ones who are working. I knew a guy. He told me he made ten times as much smuggling as he did at the job he had. And he only kept the job so he wasn’t busted for smuggling.”

  “Any word from Carole?” Max asked.

  Rebecca put down her phone she’d been checking and shook her head. “Nothing. No sign of him.”

  “Where the hell could he have gone?” Ramone said. “He’s just vanished into the wind. Do you think he got off the island?”

  “How? He couldn’t have gotten on a plane. They were at the airport. He’d have had to have gotten on a boat.”

  “Or disappeared into a cabin or a house somewhere,” Jil mused. “It’s unlikely that he planned this. So probably he didn’t exactly have an escape plan.”

  Just then, her phone buzzed with an incoming video call. “Hey,” she said softly.

  “Hey,” said Jess. “You’re alive? I talked to Rebecca.”

  She ducked out to the porch. “I am. Though I did swallow half the ocean.”

  “So where are you now? Where is this lunatic? Are they going to catch him or what?”

  “I’m at Rebecca’s house. The police thought maybe he’d come to my place looking for me if he found out I didn’t drown.”

  “Right,” Jess said tensely.

  She looked like she hadn’t slept for days, Jil noted.

  “Have you been to the hospital?”

  “Yes. I’m going straight to the funeral home tomorrow morning.”

  “So sorry, love.”

  “Me too. I wish I could be there with you.”

  “Same. I’m just going to get done with this case ASAP and get home.”

  “Good. Okay, let’s get on with that goal. I’ve been thinking about that insurance issue you brought up. Then I did a little more digging.”

  “Well, I think that’s what set him off, finally. I asked him for the documents just as we were heading out on the water. He probably figured out who I was and didn’t want me asking any more questions.”

  “That’s what I think too. Luckily, Rebecca is a pretty good sleuth and found the documents. She sent them to me while you were sleeping.”

  Jil headed back inside and grabbed a slice of the pizza that had just arrived. She was suddenly starving.

  “Were you talking to my girlfriend?”

  Rebecca blushed. “Your phone was ringing. I answered it.”

  Ramone moved over to make room for her to sit back down. She put the phone on the table and they all crowded in to talk to Jess.

  “Hi, everyone.” She ran a hand through her hair.

  “Sorry. Didn’t mean to put you on the spot.”

  “No, it’s fine. Nice to see you, Ramone.”

  “Hi.”

  “So what do you think?” Rebecca asked. “I feel like an idiot, but this was Leonard’s department, not mine.”

  “Insurance isn’t for everyone,” Jess said.

  “Numbers are Jess’s thing,” Jil said. “She’d have been much better suited to this cover than I was.”

  Rebecca smiled. “Well, at least one of us is on the ball.”

  “It’s a pretty basic policy,” Jess said. “I mean, as basic as you can get for a sea aquarium. But it’s not a motive for murder.”

  “But why did he have it in the first place?” Rebecca asked. “We have insurance on the aquarium through the business. I don’t understand why he needed a separate policy.”

  “Yeah, I saw that. Tell me if we’ve got all this right. The sea aquarium is insured for ten million.”

  Rebecca nodded. “Like, fire, flood, acts of God you mean?”

  “Yes, and also catastrophic business loss.”

  “Okay.”

  “I’ve never heard of that,” Jil said.

  “I’ve only seen it a few times. Or a variation of it,” Jess said. “It’s not really surprising. This insurance company specializes in terms of operations and commodities. A lot of these policies are tailor-made for large corporations.”

  “Of course,” Jil answered. “Not everybody needs loss of life insurance on their dolphins.”

  “Exactly. You can get an insurance policy for anything, really, as long as you have an insurer willing to accept the risk.”

  “But Leonard’s policy is something specific. It’s only on the whale. And not only on the life of the whale, but also a rider on its ability to perform.”

  Jil exhaled slowly. “Okay. So, if it got injured or refused to do its routine?”

  “Right. Or if word got out that your prize whale ate a trainer and couldn’t be in shows anymore?”

  Jess nodded. “I’d say that qualified.”

  “I don’t get it, though. The only people who would know the terms of the policy—and benefit from them—are the owners. And why would Leonard want to shut down his own business? Surely he’d make more money than that over the long term.”

  Jess shrugged. “Wanting all the money at once? Wanting to cover something up?”

  Jil thought for a moment.

  “Embezzlement?” she said.

  “I was thinking the same thing,” said Rebecca.

  “That’s what I suspected,” Jess said.

  Jil waited while she riffled through the papers.

  “Everything makes sense,” Jess said. “The whale’s life was insured for a million dollars.”

  “What? That can’t be right,” Rebecca said. “It was only half a million to buy.”

  “Right, but that doesn’t take into account the loss of income over the long term. Which is what the policy covered.”

  “It seems like double insurance.”

  “Kind of. But you can insure the contents of your house and also insure an expensive piece of jewelry separately. There’s no reason you can’t do the same on something like this. There aren’t any special qualifications to take out insurance on something. You only have to prove you’d be out of pocket with a loss.”

  “And since Leonard negotiated the purchase of the whale, he took out insurance on it without me knowing. God. I’m so stupid.”

  “No, not stupid. It was a bold move.”

  “So that’s why he’s been trying to kill my whale. So he can collect his money.�
�

  “Yes.”

  “Asshole.”

  “Did he have these policies on all the whales?”

  “Yes, but the other ones were insured for a lot less.” Jess squinted down at some numbers.

  Jil remembered the breach in the tank of the smaller sisters. He could have collected a two-for-one there.

  “Okay, so now we know why he wanted to kill the whales. We just don’t know why he needed the money.”

  Rebecca yawned. “Do you mind if we try to figure it out in the morning? I want a plate of appetizers, a stiff martini, and a good night’s sleep.”

  “We see eye to eye,” said Ramone. “Minus the martini. I’d like a beer.”

  “I’m signing off too,” Jess said. “For much the same, but with wine.”

  “I’ll call you later,” Jil promised.

  Later, when everyone had gone to bed, she texted Jess.

  Skype?

  Almost immediately, her tablet began to ding. Jess’s face popped up on the screen. In the dim lamplight, she looked gorgeously disheveled, and Jil felt a stab of homesickness.

  “How’s the funeral planning going?”

  Jess ran a hand through her hair. “Done, really. Myra already had most of it sorted. Funny, though, we really had no idea what he wanted. We’d never talked about it.”

  “Why would you?” Jil said quietly.

  “There was this one song he mentioned, though…”

  “How does it go?”

  “You know I can’t sing,” Jess protested.

  “Which is strange, since you play so well.”

  Jess chuckled. “Well, that’s where the talent ends.”

  “Do you know ‘His Eye is on the Sparrow’?”

  Jil sang the opening bars, and Jess’s jaw dropped.

  “That’s quite a voice.”

  “Ha. Yeah right,” Jil said shortly. “Haven’t sung since I was a kid. But I know that hymn.”

  “From Sister Act?” Jess guessed. “That’s where Mitch heard it. He said to me specifically—sing that at my funeral.”

  “That’s probably where I heard it later, but my mother used to sing it to me as a bedtime lullaby.” She looked down, away, trying to look back into her past for a moment.

  “I think Mitch might have had a bit of a crush on Lauryn Hill,” Jess confessed.