Murder on Naked Beach: A Lucy Ripken Mystery (The Lucy Ripken Mysteries Book 1)

by J. J. Henderson

  She went down to the water. The tide had dropped, and she had to walk a dozen yards farther to reach the edge of the sea. The energetic surge told her the tide was on the way in again. She got her feet wet, and then strolled west along the hard low tide sand. Snatches of music, the throb of a reggae bass line underpinning shreds of faint laughter, drifted past. On her right, the black silhouettes of the tower and the catamaran and the yacht were etched against the moonbright sky. Ahead of her, dim pole lights cast a sodium glare on the dock. One of the motorboats was beached by the low tide, and the pilings which supported the dock were exposed. To the left she could see a couple of people still hanging out at the bar, unwilling to let the evening go. Now the bar music, Marley and the Wailers doing "No Woman No Cry," hit her full on. Two heads leaned close together in the hot tub next to the pool. Watching them, awash in late night dreaminess, Lucy’s heart ached for romance.

  She ascended to the pool deck. She stopped to snap a few Hopper-goes-Caribbean shots of the isolated cone of light from a sodium lamp, the beached motorboat captured in it, white edge of tidewater rising into the frame. The slides would be green and dark, but the rich, lonely mood might survive the sodium glare. Then she continued along on the promenade to the west. She could hear, beneath the music, the sweet high birdlike sound of Caribbean whistling frogs. Ahead, the restaurant pier loomed, a multi-layered silhouette. She headed out onto it. She strolled through the open air dining rooms, in search of unusual angles. She would shoot it by day, of course, but sometimes darkness revealed interesting elements. The pagoda-like Colonial Regency roof was supported by an exposed understructure, a maze of angular wooden struts, support beams, and poles, and even in the faint moonlight Lucy picked out a couple of architectural details she could shoot in the early morning, when the sun would reach up under the roofline.

  Then she spotted a wonderful night picture. She made her way through the tables and chairs to the end of the restaurant, pulled up a chair facing out, and sat down to have a better look. She could hear Marley clearly drifting across the water now, singing "Songs of Freedom." Joined to its own reflection, the moon appeared full, a disc of white fire afloat in the water. She set the camera up on a wooden railing and peered through the lens, quickly framing her composition before the moon disappeared. Suddenly a piercing shriek came from out in the bay. From somewhere in the vicinity of Naked Island.

  Lucy looked up, for an instant froze...and then leaped into action. She snatched up her camera and charged back towards the shore, knocking tables and chairs aside. She ran down to the beach, on the way passing a kayak lying on the sand. A woman's hysterical voice came from the island, repeating "Omigod omigod omigod." Lucy ran out to knee-depth, then stopped—the onrushing tide had filled in the channel—and hustled back up the beach. She grabbed the kayak and a paddle and dragged it into the water. She jumped in and began paddling.

  The island dock was forty yards away. She got there fast. Just before she reached it, the bottom of the kayak scraped across the top of a coral reef with a shuddering jerk, almost turning over. She righted herself, took another stroke, and hit the dock. She grabbed a ladder and climbed. A few seconds later she set foot on Naked Island, and stopped short.

  She felt a surge of fear, crouching low as she quickly took stock. Between the palms she could just make out a wooden sunbathing platform raised up a foot above the sharp coral rocks surrounding it. Before her rose the round black stone tower. Light glowed from an arched opening in its base. She stepped softly to the tower entrance. On both sides, black coral rock glittered in starlight. The moon had disappeared. She crept up to the entrance and looked in.

  Stone interior walls gleamed in the dull light. A pile of sun mats on one side, a self-serve bar with a beer tap and a stack of plastic cups on the other. The light came from a dim red lamp attached to the wall. A stone stair wound up from the back of the circular interior. She followed it with her eyes. There was another level above. She heard crying close by, stepped back, and quickly circled the outside of the tower.

  On the other side she found another sunbathing platform, visible in the dim glow from a pair of lights hung from wooden posts that flanked a wooden bench on the far side of the platform. On the bench, Allie Margolis—Lucy recognized the long, beaded braids instantly—huddled, hugging herself and softly sobbing. She was naked, and blood flowed from a large, bright red scrape on her left leg, just below the knee. Between the two women, steam rose from a hot tub built into the sundeck. Lucy could see the back of a man's head resting on the edge of the tub, his arms spread out and slung over the edge. A pile of neatly folded clothing sat just to the right of his head. Allie suddenly looked up, spotted Lucy, let out a sharp cry, and burst into tears again. "I didn't do anything," she wailed. "I just...I was swimming, and cut myself on the coral so I had to come onto the island to..."

  "It's all right, Allie," Lucy said, putting aside the questions that arose as she surveyed the odd scene. "It's just a coral scrape. There's a hotel doctor. I've got a kayak, and the..."

  "In there," cried Allie, as Lucy crossed the deck to get a better look at the mystery man lounging in the tub, so rudely ignoring this injured, naked, hysterical girl. "I tried to help him, but...it's Angus Wilson, and he's dead!"

  "Oh shit," Lucy cried, when she saw his distorted, bug-eyed face. "What...Angus...Angus, wake up!" She knew it was ludicrous, the man's eyes bulged open, unseeing, past caring, he was a dead and ugly duck, but she went on anyway. "Angus..." She moved closer to him.

  "He's dead..." wailed Allie. "I cut my leg, and came in, and he was face down in the tub. I..."

  "Did you see anyone else?" She looked around, suddenly fearful again. "What..."

  "There was no one. He was drowned, already...face down dead in the water when I got here. It was just a minute ago. I...I pushed him up and got his arms out to hold him up. I thought he might be passed out or..." she burst into tears. "But he was gone. He must have had a heart attack and...I don't..."

  Lucy could see red welts on his neck. His head tilted back at an awkward angle. "Did you touch anything? I mean besides..."

  "No," she wailed. "I didn't know what to...Oh, God, why did I..."

  "Jesus Christ, calm down, Allie. We've got to...Here, cover yourself with this," she hissed, grabbing a towel off a pile next to the tub, and tossing it to Allie. "We've got to get off this island and talk to the management. And the cops. Now hush up," she said sharply, whispering. "There might be someone else around."

  "What makes you say that?" Allie asked in a scared voice.

  "I don't know," said Lucy. "But I'd rather not stick around to find out. Let's go. We've got to get to the police." While Allie wrapped herself in the towel, Lucy, moving quickly, took six flash pictures of the platform and the surrounding area—and of Angus as well, blithely seated in the steaming hot tub, naked, dead.

  Then she took Allie by the hand and led her down the path and onto the dock. When they reached the end, Lucy looked around, then cursed. "Oh hell, the kayak's gone. Well, the tide's higher now. We'd better swim for it. Come on."

  "But what about the coral...and the body?" Allie cried. "I don't know what to..."

  "Forget about the body for now, Margolis," Lucy snapped. "We'll have to finesse it over the coral. We've got to get out of here. Come on. I'll go first," she said, and stepped onto the ladder and down. She lowered herself gingerly into the warm water—ever since JAWS she had a bad habit of seeing herself from the shark's point of view when swimming at night, when sharks feed—and turned around to watch Allie, who paused atop the ladder and unwrapped the towel she had draped around her body. She had a great figure, Lucy couldn't help but notice. Nothing like being 24 years old. "You'd better bring the towel. Wrap it around your neck. No, the other way, so it flows behind you. Now follow me...and slow. The coral's just ahead." She breast stroked softly, not splashing, and kicked short, rapid kicks to keep herself close to the surface. As she moved away from the dock, she reached carefully out in fr
ont of her under the black water, feeling for coral. The water and the task of swimming seemed to calm Allie, who followed her, stroking strongly. Lucy hit a sharp rock with her right hand. "Ow! OK, here's the reef. Now stay close, and keep yourself on the surface if you can." She kicked underwater, dog paddling tentatively to check for coral, and passed over it without a scrape. Once she'd reached deeper water, she stopped, turned over on her back for just a second, and waited for Allie to pass over the coral. Overhead, a million stars twinkled in the warm black sky, and Lucy thought, he was murdered. And whoever killed him was there when I was, and then took the kayak. Or had it simply drifted away? She hadn't tied it up, the tide was moving, anything could have happened.

  "Ow, damn," Allie hissed. "I've done it again. My arm. It's bleeding."

  "It's OK, Allie." Shark thoughts again. Blood in the water. Shit! Stay calm. "Come on, we've got to get to the beach." Lucy waited for Allie to catch up to her, then began swimming strongly. Allie kept pace with her. They reached the shallows and hurried up onto the beach. Lucy helped Allie wrap herself in the towel and then they ran down the promenade, headed for the bar, screaming like characters out of a bad movie: "Heeeelp, help! Murder!! There's been a murder!"

  Maybe, maybe not, Lucy thought, even as she yelled—but either way, there was definitely a dead guy out there.

  By the time they reached the bar Allie's hysteria had infected Lucy as well, and the two of them speed-babbled at the bartender and the one man sitting at the bar—of all people, it was the unctuous one, Mike Nack, his head sunk in a glass of rum and coke. He smirked at the nearly naked, hysterical Allie, until a look from Lucy cut his look off at the knees. The bartender called the office, and within minutes Jefferson Hababi and the General Manager, a short, heavy-set fortyish black man named Miles Russell, arrived on the scene. Miles sat them down at the bar, the barkeep poured brandies, and Jefferson dashed to the hot tub area to fetch towels and robes off the stack of freshly-laundered ones kept close at hand.

  Then Jefferson called the local police from the bar telephone. He was doing his best to stay on top of the situation, but it was Miles Russell who told him to fetch the robes and call the cops.

  Shortly thereafter Acting Corporal Chauncey Billingsworth, neatly uniformed in his Green River Substation cop garb, arrived with a tense-looking Jackson Hababi leading the way. The senior Hababi dashed up to Lucy, "Oh, Miss Ripken, so sorry, so very sorry about..."

  "She's the one that's hurting," Lucy said with a nod at Allie. "She's the one that found the dead guy. He's out on the island. Maybe you want to go out there, Corporal Billingsworth is it, and see what you can find."

  "Yes, that is a good idea," said the young cop.

  Then he glanced at Hababi, who shook his head just once. "Better we tend to the ladies first, don't you think, Corporal?"

  Later, thinking about the chain of events, Lucy thought this was about where things slid sideways, into the realm of the surreal, or at least unreal. And she was too tired and hysterical to challenge any of it.

  "Yes, the ladies." The cop nodded. He tried to appear serious, but he looked like a boy playing soldier, like he didn't know what the fuck he was doing and Hababi would have to tell him.

  Hababi shifted his attention to Allie. "Ah, Miss...Margolis, is it? My goodness, what a terrible thing to have happen to you at our hotel. We are so sorry. My dear, what shall we...perhaps we can extend your stay a day or two...yours as well, Miss Ripken, since this day has ended so very badly, so very, very badly. Let's move to a table, please, so that Corporal Billingsworth here can take your statements, please." He helped Allie up. Lucy declined similar help from Jefferson. They moved to a dining table. Hababi sat close by while the nattily-uniformed constable, not more than 25 years old and so deferential to the hotelier you would have sworn he worked for him, interviewed them. Jefferson Hababi perched at the next table, behind his father, and like his father he listened carefully to both their statements. They told it as they'd seen it, no more, no less...well, a little less, since Lucy did leave out the fact that she'd shot a few pics.

  After the interviews Billingsworth asked to be taken out to the island. "Yeah, let's go," said Lucy, who'd recovered from her shock and now felt alert and into the scene, in spite of her exhaustion. "I'll show you where the corpse is." She wanted another look around out there. View the dead guy and all. It wasn't every day, after all, that you saw a corpse on location.

  "That won't be necessary, Miss Ripken," Jackson said, smiling smarmily. "You beauties need your beauty sleep. Please, I insist that...Jefferson, why don't you escort the ladies back to their rooms? We'll take care of the matter from here on out. Again, ladies," he said, ushering them to their feet, "We're very, very sorry about this matter, but don't worry, please don't worry. Corporal Billingsworth and I will handle it."

  Against her better instincts Lucy gave in—to her weariness more than anything else. She bid goodnight to them all, and even managed a "sleep well" to Mike Nack, who'd lurked at the bar the entire time, picking up on the whole drama being played out. Well, nothing wrong with that, death was often the most interesting thing around, especially when least expected.

  Jefferson Hababi left her at the door of her room and started up the stairs with Allie. "Allie wait," Lucy said as they reached the stair landing. They stopped and looked back. "Are you going to be all right?" she asked the younger woman.

  "She'll be fine," Jefferson said before Allie had a chance to answer. "She'll be just fine." Lucy was too exhausted to push the point. What was the point, anyway? Allie looked tired and scared, but safe on the arm of Jefferson Hababi. Lucy closed her door, locked herself in, checked her patio door lock and pulled the curtains. A quick shower to rinse off the salt, and then to bed. At 3:17 a.m she set her alarm, and quickly fell asleep.

  CHAPTER THREE

  DESIGN CHATTER, POLITICAL MATTERS, BARROOM BLATHER

  The beeping alarm saved her. 7:30 a.m. She slapped it off and sat up, immediately possessed by a re-run of...The Night Before! Featuring a chorus line of corpses high-kicking across the moonlit stages of fabulous Naked Island.

  How could she not be possessed by that lurid scenario? Still aching from yesterday's manic sail, she dragged herself into the bathroom to put on a face and get organized. Her official morning would commence at eight a.m., when she was due to meet the architect, William Evans, in the lobby lounge for the grand architectural tour of the Grand Strand. It always seemed to work out that way: on a day she needed to be on full alert, she was running on empty.

  She dressed in light cotton pants, flip flops, and a pale blue cotton t-shirt. She brushed her hair for about ten seconds, and left the bathroom. Into her purse she put a lipstick, a notebook, and two pens. She took the memory card out of her camera, replaced it with a fresh one, and stuck a spare in her pocket.

  She marched out of the room, William Evans and the grand tour of the Grand Strand awaiting her. Words and pictures. Work.

  But first, a cup of coffee. This involved a plunge into La Terrazzo Grande. Beneath the ruggedly beamed ceiling, the huge, skylit space, by night a dance hall and schmooze and booze zone, was by day a cafeteria. Lucy paused by the bar and had a look. The place was shot through with morning sunbeams, lovely in the cool early air. Several groggy-looking guests milled about in front of the long foodservice counter, with its diamond-tiled front, and a dozen servers dressed in white stood behind, ready to dish, while white-shirted waiters roamed from table to table with coffee and orange juice pitchers. Lucy, wandering in search of coffee, eyed the goods as she passed.

  The cornucopia began with an array of silver trays heaped with slices of cantaloupe, honeydew melon, watermelon, papaya, mangoes, pineapples, and oranges, as well as halved grapefruits and huge bowls of figs, grapes, blueberries and strawberries. Next to that stood a multi-stacked rack of cereal boxes, and pitchers of milk and cream. Then the heavy geography started, with a mountain of sweet rolls and danishes, flanked by smaller hills of croissants and d
oughnuts. Next came the serviced area, with its white-clad cooks standing coolly behind the counter. Vats of hot cereal flanked pans of scrambled eggs and trays laden with waffles, pancakes, ackee and eggs with salt codfish. French toast, steak, bacon, sausages, and ham were lined up atop steam tables.

  She shoved a slice of papaya in her mouth and legged it for the lobby, a fragrant cup of Blue Mountain coffee steaming in her hand. Tomorrow, maybe, she'd indulge.

  In the lobby lounge she spotted her new pal Michelle Stedman, in a flowered blouse and jeans, with a short, handsome, pale-skinned black man. They stood by the waterwheel on one side of the lobby. The man wore an immaculately pressed seersucker jacket with short pants, a white shirt, white suede shoes, pale yellow socks, and a jaunty straw hat.

  "Michelle," said Lucy, approaching them, her voice raised over the rhythmic splash of the waterwheel. "How are you? God, what a night, eh?"

  "Lucy, good morning," Michelle said. "This is William Evans, the architect."

  "Hello, Lucy," said Evans, offering a hand which Lucy shook. It was warm and dry. Evans had slightly Asian eyes. "I'm happy to meet you. Loved your piece on Columbus in Jamaica in T & L. A fascinating and little known—up there in North America anyway—tale. This should be of interest to you," he went on, not missing a beat. His voice blended the training of English public school with an island lilt. "I was just explaining to Michelle the...symbolic importance of the waterwheel in the history of Jamaica. I insisted that they install this here so that the guests could at least, for a moment, reflect on that history."