The Deadly Ackee

by Joan Hess

  Theo glanced at the windowsill above the sink. There were two hard, unopened ackees on one side, both glinting darkly. He found himself wondering how many had been there in the past. The immediate past. Even yesterday, if one chose to be precise.

  When the rest of the investigative team arrived, Theo and his charges were sent to the living room to wait until they were needed for questioning. The red velour furniture, although seemingly decadent, proved to be both scratchy and lumpy, and Theo gratefully accepted Sandy’s offer to bring a chair from the dining room. The uncompromising back seemed more appropriate.

  “He didn’t just have a heart attack and drown, did he?” Dorrie asked from a lounge with an elaborate headboard, several satin pillows, and a decorative fringe that resembled thready icicles. “There are about fifty cops out there, which seems a little extreme for an accident.”

  Theo saw no reason not to tell them what would be common knowledge before the sun rose. “Sergeant Stahl said he recognized the symptoms of ackee poisoning.”

  “But Eli’s a Jamaican, and a well-educated one at that; he ought to know better than to start munching on an unripened ackee. They don’t look all that appetizing when they’re ripe, for pity’s sake.”

  “Well-educated?” Sandy said. “He was just a pool boy, and I had to write down the words the first time I sent him out for a Wall Street Journal. Maybe he was into some island voodoo club where they eat things for a thrill, or maybe he got so drunk the ackee looked ripe. He did have a fondness for cheap rum.”

  “Well, he ran errands for you all the time. He wasted all sorts of time to find that boring newspaper every morning,” Bitsy said, “and half the time you didn’t bother to glance at anything but the headlines. You left one on that nasty train today. In any case, you don’t have to deal with the memories of finding his body in the swimming pool. Dorrie and I were both blown away.” She touched her cheek, then gazed at Dorrie with a thoughtful expression. “Some of us absolutely fell to pieces and began doing and saying all sorts of incredibly crude things. Some of us were inhuman and totally insensitive, like a Nazi soldier.”

  “While others of us squealed like a chubby little pig,” Dorrie responded sweetly. “But, Uncle Theo, Eli wouldn’t eat an unripened ackee. Surely he knew all about the effects of one and was trained to recognize the symptoms just like sergeant what-ever-his-name-is. Someone who lives in one of those horrid shacks in the mountains might not know any better, but Eli was fairly sophisticated.”

  “Are we discussing the same person?” Biff said.

  “Oh, he was an undercover narcotics agent,” Dorrie said in an irritated voice. “You must have been too occupied with Mary Margaret’s bikini to notice, but those of us with any acumen to speak of could hardly fail to realize it.”

  “What about Mary Margaret, sir?” Biff asked Theo, pointedly turning his back on Dorrie, who responded to the outrage with a toss of her chin and a discreet snort.

  “I don’t know,” Theo said. “When I called earlier, the police dismissed her disappearance as self-induced. The recent tragedy makes her disappearance seem more ominous now, but I don’t know what they can do until morning, even if they are more inclined to consider it relevant. She’s not next door, she’s not under a bush, and—well, I have no theories, myself.”

  Dorrie sat up. “What about Sitermann or Spitzberg or whatever we’re calling him? Could he have anything to do with Mary Margaret’s vanishing act—some terribly clever CIA scheme to … something?”

  “Sitermann or Spitzberg? The CIA? Eli an undercover cop?” Sandy stood up and crossed the room to stand in front of Theo. “I don’t understand what’s going on, sir, but I feel that we’re all entitled to an explanation. I thought we were here to party, not to get involved in some bizarre business with bodies and secret agents. I wish somebody would tell me what the hell’s going on. We deserve to be told the truth.”

  “So do I.” Theo sighed. Unable to offer any rebuttal to Sandy’s argument, he provided a brief synopsis of what he knew of Sitermann’s true identity and Eli’s occupation. Only Dorrie seemed unruffled by the information; the others listened with shocked expressions and a scattering of interjections.

  After an enigmatic look at Dorrie, Biff said, “Surely the local police department doesn’t bother with assigning an officer to bust a bunch of tourists for half a baggie of ganja. Eli didn’t strike me as a role model for Eliot Ness, but he must have been on something fairly important. He’d have had a good opportunity to keep a neighbor under surveillance, for instance.”

  “I was aware of that,” Dorrie said, stretching out her hands to inspect her fingernails. “Anyone not fawning over an overstuffed bikini would have picked it up eons ago.”

  Bitsy shivered. “I’d sort of like to see that overstuffed bikini stroll through the door right now.”

  Sergeant Stahl strode through the door. “All of you will have to come to the station for questioning. What has happened is very serious, very serious indeed, and puzzling. But we will get to the bottom of it at some point, even if it requires a lengthy investigation.”

  Dorrie raised an eyebrow. “You may require a lengthy investigation in order to sort this out to your satisfaction, but we’re returning to the United States on Saturday. We’re all students and we have classes on Monday morning. I’ve already had to cut classes in the past, and I simply cannot miss any more this semester. You may call Simmons if you wish. I don’t know her number off the top of my head, but she’s in the classics department at Wellesley.”

  “We shall do everything possible to expedite your departure,” the policeman said, retreating under the chilly blast.

  “I should hope so. Besides these bothersome classes all week, I’m scheduled for a permanent on Wednesday. I doubt you can imagine how difficult it is to get an appointment with Mr. Robert, rather than having to accept some neophyte right out of beauty college, but you can believe me when I tell—”

  “Let’s go, my dear,” Theo said. “You and Bitsy fetch your handbags while I make arrangements for transportation with the sergeant.”

  The sergeant, looking faintly bewildered, nodded.

  The police station had the ambience, if not the vastness, of the airport. Housed in a crumbling gray building on a narrow, rutted street in Montego Bay, it clearly had been in use for several decades, and had received no benevolent attention in its lifetime. A fan whirred gently, stirring the dust but doing little to alleviate the cloying humidity and heat. Flies made lazy circles near the ceiling. An incurious desk officer pointed at a row of wooden chairs, then returned to the thick paperback novel in front of him.

  “Shouldn’t we call the consulate?” Dorrie whispered to Theo.

  “I see no reason to become alarmed,” he said, patting her knee for the umpteenth time. “We’re only here to assist the police. We really don’t know much of relevance or value, but I suppose we ought to do whatever we can. Eli was a pleasant individual, if not precisely what he pretended to be. He was doing his job, however, so we mustn’t hold his pretense against him. I feel badly about his death.” Theo took off his bifocals to polish them, earning a fleeting, impassive glance from the policeman behind the desk.

  “What are you going to say about Sitermann?” Dorrie continued.

  “I suspect the officers are aware of Sitermann’s presence and involvement, so I think we’d better settle for the truth.”

  The door opened. Count D’Orsini, escorted on either side by uniformed policemen, gave those on the chairs a bleak nod as he was hurried past them and around a corner.

  Bitsy let out a muted yelp. “Oh, my gawd. Do you think Count D’Orsini murdered Eli? After all, he was a dope dealer and Eli was watching him … If the count learned that Eli had been spying on him, he might have hired a thug to—to bump him off.”

  “Come on, Bitsy,” Trey said from the end of the row, “you’ve been watching too much television. Dope dealers and thugs are passé now that ‘Miami Vice’ has slipped in the ratings. H
e might have hired a sitcom single parent to be so sensitive that Eli died of boredom, but not a thug. Jeez!”

  Before Bitsy could respond, the door again opened and Gerry came into the room. Her hair was rumpled, and her makeup had been applied with haste. She gave the desk sergeant a curt nod, then came over to Theo.

  “What on earth is going on?” she demanded in a low, hoarse voice. “The officer who came by my house gave me some garbled story about one of my employees, then told me to be here as soon as possible. While I was parking, I saw Hal being taken out of a police car. I’m trying to convince myself that this is a crazy dream, that I’ll open my eyes and find myself in my own bed, but I have a dreadful feeling I’m already awake.”

  Theo told her about the unfortunate events leading to the discovery of Eli’s body in the swimming pool. When she looked as if she might topple, he stood up and insisted she take his seat.

  She sank down with a distracted murmur of thanks. “Then this is not some sort of joke? Poor, poor Eli—and his family. I know very little about him, since he only applied for the position a few weeks ago, but he seemed to be a nice young man with a good mind. I believe he has a mother and several younger siblings in one of the villages. Has anyone told them about this horrible accident?”

  Theo handed her a handkerchief as her eyes filled with tears. “It does not seem to have been an accident,” he said gently. “Eli was an undercover policeman on an assignment, and his death is hardly apt to be a coincidence.”

  “He was a—what?”

  Theo repeated the information, keeping an eye on the desk sergeant. “The police are taking into consideration the fact that Eli was one of them, and the death of an officer while on duty is quite naturally suspicious.”

  “He was a police officer,” Gerry mumbled, shaking her head. “I can’t believe it, Theo. It makes no sense. There’s no reason why he would take a job at one of the villas. The tourists often purchase a bit of the local product, but not of any significant quantity to merit an investigation. The police quietly overlook this minor sort of indiscretion, since any harassment would have disastrous effects on tourism. You’re mistaken.”

  “I agree that Eli was not concerned with the small usage in the villas. I must warn you that Count D’Orsini may have been involved in drug trafficking, if not in the disturbing events surrounding Eli’s death.”

  “And don’t forget about Mary Margaret,” Bitsy added primly. “She’s managed to have lost herself in a thoroughly suspicious manner. If Count D’Orsini killed Eli, he might have killed Mary Margaret, too.”

  Gerry’s face sagged. Then, before Theo could realize the necessity of action, her eyes rolled back, her breath came out in a whoosh, and she slid out of the chair onto the floor. Her straw purse fell beside her, sending out a lava-like flow of wadded tissues, keys, pens, and female paraphernalia.

  Dorrie glared at Bitsy. “Well, that was tactful.”

  “What did I do?”

  “For one thing, you told her that her dear old chum might be a kidnapper and a murderer.”

  “That’s hardly my fault, is it? I mean, it’s pretty obvious that he snatched Mary Margaret and put her someplace, probably so that he could rape and torture her before cutting off her head with a machete.”

  “She’d enjoy some of that,” Trey said.

  Theo resisted the very real urge to take each one of them by the scruff of his or her neck, turn same over his knee, and paddle each until he elicited sincere promises that the bickering would end. Dismissing the fantasy with a sigh, he told Sandy to find a cup of water, and then, with Biff’s assistance, picked Gerry up and put her back in the chair. The desk sergeant watched wordlessly, offering neither suggestions nor aid. By the time Sandy returned with water, Gerry’s eyes had fluttered open.

  “Hal is not a criminal,” she said to Theo. “I’ve known him for twenty years, and he’s simply not the sort to harm anyone.”

  “But you must acknowledge the possibility that he earns his living in a variety of unsavory ways. Although it was quite unintentional, I happened to overhear a conversation from his villa the first night we were here. It was—well, informative in a disturbing way.”

  Gerry gulped down the water and squeezed her fingers around the cup. “What did you hear, Theo?”

  “A male voice making some rather unpleasant remarks about the count being a gigolo, I’m sorry to say. There were also some insinuations that led me to wonder if drug trafficking might be a secondary occupation of the men. It was none of my business, naturally, and I left the terrace immediately.”

  “I refuse to believe this. You must have misinterpreted what was said. Would you recognize this voice if you heard it again?”

  Theo toyed with the tip of his beard as he tried to reconstruct the conversation. “I recognized Count D’Orsini’s voice when you brought him over for a drink, but as for the second voice … I don’t know. I did tell myself that there was something about it that seemed vaguely familiar, which is absurd. It couldn’t have been Eli, because he drove up a minute or two later, having delivered Dorrie and her friends to the beach party.” He gave his beard a final tweak. “It’s nonsensical to think I had heard the voice before.”

  “Well, it’s unfortunate that we can’t locate this person in order to find out why these outrageous accusations were made, but I don’t see how we could find him.” Gerry looked down at the cup clutched in her hand and, with a surprised expression, slowly uncurled her fingers. “What did Bitsy say about Mary Margaret? Has something happened to her?”

  “She disappeared somewhere between the terrace and Count D’Orsini’s front door,” Theo said. He explained what had happened, adding that the police were now more inclined to worry about the girl. “I am at a loss to decide what I ought to do, however. I should hate to alarm her father if she is indulging in some sort of prank, but I should be irresponsible not to do so if she’s involved in all this and in very real danger.”

  Trey yawned loudly. “No problem, man. Any danger she’s in has to do with diseases that can be cured with a few doses of penicillin.”

  The desk sergeant looked up as the group hissed the word “disgusting.” Everyone, including Theo, contributed to the sibilance.

  As Theo and his charges straggled up the driveway the next morning, exhausted by the night of innumerable questions interspersed with frustrating idleness on the hard wooden chairs in the police station, Amelia came onto the terrace. “Mr. Bloomer!” she called, frantically waving both arms as if she were on a desert island and he were a rescue ship. “You have a long-distance telephone call. The lady keeps insisting you’re here, even though I told her otherwise.”

  Theo gave Dorrie a wan smile. “Although this is hardly the time for parlor games, would you care to hazard a guess as to the identity of the caller? I’m not sure I’m strong enough to deal with your mother, my dear.”

  “Sorry, Uncle Theo, but I’m heading straight for bed. I’m so totally exhausted I’m not going to wash my hair. I may even go so far as to skip the latter half of my skin care routine, but you can bet your platinum card I’m not going to do battle with the Dragon Lady.”

  She darted around Amelia and vanished into the villa. The others followed more slowly, since they had not been threatened with the wrath of Nadine. No one stopped to offer any advice. Or sympathy, which Theo felt was more than justly due.

  “I’ll take the call in the kitchen,” he said, resigned.

  “That is some crazy lady on the other end,” Amelia muttered sourly. She led him into the kitchen and pointed at the receiver, from which squawks erupted periodically. “Emelda and I will wait outside. I can use the fresh air.”

  Theo put the receiver to his ear. “Yes, Nadine?”

  “Well, Theo?”

  After a silence thick with tacit accusation, he took a deep breath and hurriedly said, “The villa is as charming as you’d told me it would be, and the view is spectacular. The yard is dotted with all sorts of fascinating flora, includ
ing a bougainvillea with a delicate shade of orange not unlike my night-blooming cereus.”

  “Well, Theo?”

  “Ah, yes,” he said, increasing the tempo out of some indefinable sense of dread, “and we’ve been to the beach several times, and we took an excursion on a private train into the interior, where I was fortunate to find a orchid of the family—”

  “I do not find these evasive tactics amusing, Theo. On the contrary, they are beneath you, although you’ve always had an inexplicable tendency toward deception. Even as a child, you often shirked responsibility.”

  “Did I, Nadine? I fear I don’t recall the precise instances to which you’re referring, but should you care to elucidate at some time in the future, I shall do my best to analyze them and profit from these youthful transgressions. It was nice of you to call, and I’ve enjoyed the conversation. If you’ll excuse me now, I was on my way upstairs to—”

  “Whomever you have answering the telephone in that place said all of you were at the police station. Why were you at the police station?”

  “There was an incident last night—nothing that directly involved any of us. The pool boy was discovered in the pool, and—”

  “We would hardly look for him in a banana tree, would we? Please stop rambling about the servants and get to the point, Theo. Pookie’s picking me up any minute so that we can discuss our bidding system on the way to the tournament. She dropped me in a cue bid yesterday, just stranded me in this idiotic contract, and then had the nerve to sit there pouting—while I went down three. It was so humiliating that I seriously considered feigning a heart attack so that she’d have to play out the thing. I intend to see that it does not happen again.”

  “How dreadful for—”

  “Even Charles was horrified, and he doesn’t know a thing about bridge, much less the more subtle nuances of Blackwood. I don’t know what got into Pookie; one would almost think she’d suffered a cerebral hemorrhage at the table. We were third in our section, but we’d have been first had she not made the error.” Nadine snorted several times as she relived the indignities. “But that is not the reason I called, Theo.”