Gnarly New Year (Corsario Cove Cozy Mystery #2)

by Anna Celeste Burke

  “Are you saying it was in there after all?” Anticipation shone on his handsome face like Brien was enjoying Mick's story. I just wanted Mick to get to the point.

  “No, Dude! That’s the thing it wasn’t there!” A wave of disappointment hit me. I had felt so sure that Owen Taylor had hidden that device in the cave. Owen had regarded that cave as a place of special significance for him and Willow, his girlfriend until she gave him the boot for refusing to renounce his scheming ways. My frustration with Mick had returned.

  “I don’t get it, Mick. The next day you left a message for Brien saying you knew where it was. You called Willow, later, and told her you would bring it to her.”

  “Yeah, that’s all true. That Opie was trickier than I thought, but I found it.”

  “Geez, Mick, if it wasn’t in the cave, where was it?” My voice had moved up in pitch, headed toward a whine or a rant.

  “Oh, it was in there all right—in the chamber of heinousness.”

  Brien and I stopped eating and looked at each other. Was this guy looser than we had ever dreamed? Or was he playing some mind game, taking us down the proverbial primrose path? A path I knew all too well since I had walked down it numerous times courtesy of the loathsome “player,” Mr. P. I was about to tell Mick to stuff it when the phone in our room rang. Brien ran to answer it.

  I peered out at the horizon. The mighty Pacific Ocean roared from a distance. It glistened as waves rolled into Corsario Cove, beckoning. I wished Brien, and I were out there surfing rather than trying to make sense of the story being told to us by an off-the-deep-end, self-appointed surf-tribe leader, beaten to within an inch of his life.

  Were we getting any closer to knowing what he had been up to since he ditched us on Christmas day? No matter what he said about where he found that GPS device, he didn’t have it now. Was he lying? What did we know about this guy? The rant in my head was building, and naughty Kim was fantasizing about Santa taking that shortcut off the balcony to the lobby level, again. Brien interrupted my troubled thoughts.

  “That was Mitchum. He’s on his way over to talk to you, Mick. The police have found a dead guy.”

  4 Joe Schmo

  “A dead man? Honestly, Brien? Not wearing a Santa suit, I hope.” I’m not sure why that mattered.

  “No Santa suit, but a couple of bullet holes, and he was beaten up, too. Just like Mick, here.” Brien nodded toward Mick as he said that. Mick was staring back at him like a tree full of owls.

  “Hey, don’t look at me—I didn’t do it. I was too wasted to kill anyone.”

  “How do you know?” I asked. “Sorry, Mick, but being drunk as a skunk is not an alibi.”

  “That wasn’t my fault either! They made me do it—poured booze down me. That’s how my Santa suit got soaked in it. They were going to dump both of us off the boat. I dove over the side before they could shoot me like they shot that Joe Schmo. Once they figured out the GPS device was in my bag, they were done with both of us. It ticked them off that it had been right under their noses for days. I’m surprised they didn’t shoot me first. When I dove off the side of that boat, I grabbed my bag and took it with me.”

  “Hang on, hang on. Who is Joe Schmo?” I asked.

  “If I knew his name, would I be calling him Joe Schmo? He was the owner of that bar in San Albinus where Opie used to work. That’s all I know.” My head spun almost like that Linda Blair chick in the Exorcist. My neck snapped in the process as I made eye contact with Brien.

  “Oh no! Is the dead guy the owner of Corsario’s Hideaway?” Brien nodded his head slowly, acknowledging the sad truth.

  “Yep, that’s what Mitchum said. He wondered if we’d gone back there. I told him no.”

  “Why did he ask that? Are we back on his list of suspicious characters? After all we did for that man!” Brien shrugged.

  “I don’t think so, but he is interested in the fact that Mick happened to reappear, looking like he’d been in a fight, right before a dead guy washed up on the beach not too far from here.”

  “That's a shame. Opie thought he was an okay guy until he fired him. Nobody told me his name, or if they did I forgot it with all the booze and drugs,” Mick said, holding up his coffee mug for me to refill it. Sober now, he didn’t seem all that upset about the poor man’s death. I got up and took the breakfast plate from Mick. Then, I handed him the coffee pot.

  “Pour it yourself. You’d better finish that story of yours before Mitchum gets here. I’d be very surprised if he doesn’t cuff you and haul you off to the San Albinus jail.”

  “Whoa, Kim, we don’t know that. You’re right, though, that Mitchum doesn’t supper fools.”

  “What?” I asked interrupting Brien. I stared at Brien as blankly as Mick did, still in hoot-owl mode.

  “You know, put up with fools—like we do. Feed them, even.” Brien’s face and voice radiated that struggling-to-communicate ardor. I melted at the sight and tried to address his misstatement in a gentle way.

  “Suffer fools, Brien, not supper them.”

  “That makes no sense. We all suffer from fools. We don’t all give them supper—or breakfast like we just did.” Brien stopped talking realizing that the fool he referred to was still staring at him. The black rings enveloping Mick’s unblinking eyes made him look more like a raccoon than an owl.

  “I’ll explain it later, Brien. What you need to do, Mick, is finish telling us your story. Maybe we can help sort this out before Mitchum shows up and gives you the third degree.”

  Mick’s hands that had already been a little shaky were worse now as he tried to pour coffee. I felt bad, took the pot from him, and filled his empty mug. As I filled our cups, I faced the fact that he wasn’t the only one shaken by another murder and the imminent arrival of a homicide detective. My level of tension rose as Mick continued his story. When he had finally worked his way back to that moment when he banged on our hotel room door this morning, I took a deep breath. Some of what he had told us seemed impossible to believe.

  “We’re going to need more coffee,” I said. “Let’s get this cleaned up before Mitchum gets here.”

  “I’ll do that, Kim, if you order the coffee. Mitchum sounded pretty worked up when I told him about Mick being here, and the condition he’s in. He says we should have taken him to the ER and called in a team of police to collect evidence before we cleaned him up.”

  “Oh come on, Brien. Who’s he kidding? If we had called him, he would have chewed us out for bothering him about a drunken surfer friend who got beat up in a barroom brawl. Not to mention Mick took that swim after diving off the boat. We've bagged his clothes but how much evidence could there be after that?" I smiled at Brien, and fully exhaled that deep breath I had taken moments ago. "I hear what you’re saying about Mitchum. I’ll see if they have cookies or some other treat to go with the coffee. Maybe that’ll sweeten him up.”

  That’s a trick I had learned from Bernadette, Jessica’s sidekick. Bernadette’s not only a primo baker but a skilled soother of the savage beast. She manages the Huntington estate and has amazing skills managing people. That includes the surly detectives Jessica attracts like magnets attract iron.

  Not that Mitchum was always surly. The detective could be affable enough, but he also had an unpleasant side to his nature when he got antsy. Somehow Brien and I made him antsy. As far as I could tell, for Detective Mitchum "not suffering fools" pertained to minimizing contact with most of the non-police-force population, including us. An occupational hazard, maybe. In a job where you’re always dealing with mean, stupid people doing mean, stupid things, pretty soon you see stupid everywhere and get a little mean yourself.

  “I bet you’re right, Kim. Mitchum probably would have told us to bug off if we'd talked to him about Mick before that dead guy showed up. Especially since we don’t have that GPS device, even though Mick claims he found it.”

  “What do you mean ‘claims’? I had it. I just don’t know what I did with it.”

  “Brien�
��s point is, Mick, that you can say whatever you want, but Mitchum’s not going to care unless you deliver the goods! I’ll be right back. I’m going to order the coffee and something that will appeal to Mitchum’s sweeter side. What do you think he’d like?” I looked at Brien, and it was as if our brains became one.

  “Donuts,” we said, in the same breath.

  “I bet they have some awesome holiday donuts at this place, Kim.”

  “Coffee and donuts it is, Moondoggie. What cop could resist that?”

  I hate to admit it, but that body on the beach made it easier to believe the story Mick had told us. Parts of it. I was still a little skeptical that he had found the GPS device since it was not in his possession. Where he claimed to have found it was even harder to accept. Supposedly, he had located the device the day after Christmas. Mick had no better luck than the police locating the thing in the cave until a bolt of inspiration struck him.

  “It was cold and wet, and I was getting hungry, so I gave up. I went back to my shack and fixed some grub. That’s when I remembered seeing Opie step out from between some bushes up near the cliff top one day—right across from this tall tree with a black scar from a lightning strike. At the time, I figured maybe he had dropped something and went in behind those bushes to get it back. He didn’t have anything in his hands though. So I started thinking, what if he was hiding something in those bushes? I went up there and poked around. That’s when I found another entrance to the caves.” Then his story took a truly bizarre turn—even for a guy like Mick.

  “It was dark, damp, and slippery. Steps cut into the rock led down toward the cove. I was wearing my reef booties, so I thought I could handle slippery, but not the dark. I went back to my shack, again, and got this heavy duty flashlight. It was still spooky and seemed dangerous. Those steps were narrow, and the ceiling was low in places. I banged my head once or twice. I kept going, though, down tons of steps before I found it. I would have missed it if I hadn’t started worrying about what would happen to me if I slipped and fell." I rolled my eyes.

  "Please, move this along, will you?"

  "That’s what I’m trying to do. What I’m saying is that no one knew I was in there. What if I fell and hit my head or broke something? I’d be a goner. I put one hand on the wall, leaning against it and feeling for roots or anything to grab onto in case I slipped. It's like I was that Indiana Jones dude, on his way to the Temple of Doom. No snakes but the walls were closing in on me. Then I got paranoid. What if the cove-runners Opie messed over were waiting for me when I got to the place those stairs were leading? I didn’t hear anything, but what if they planned to catch me and lock me in there? I got dizzy, and my mouth was dry. Crazy, huh?”

  "Hell, yes," were the words on the tip of my tongue when my sweet and patient Brien spoke up.

  “Sounds like a spell of cleithrophobia, Bro.”

  “Don’t you mean claustrophobia?” Used to correcting Brien’s malapropisms, I was shocked when he corrected me!

  “No, I don’t think so. It could be a fear of tight places like claustrophobia. What Mick’s talking about, though, is more like the fear of being locked in a closed space. That’s a little different.” Mick and I both stared at Brien. I think my mouth was hanging open, in fact.

  “I could be wrong, but I’ve been studying phobias, and I’m pretty sure I’ve got it straight.” Now I was puzzled. It was beside the point, and we needed to keep Mick moving on his bizarre tale, but I just had to know.

  “Why are you studying phobias, Brien?”

  “So I have exciting stuff to talk to Peter about that’s above brow. You know how he gets on my case saying I go on and on about burgers and beer or surfing.”

  Brien’s boss, Peter, was directly involved in a lot of Brien’s security training. That had included what Peter called “ride-alongs,” with Brien accompanying Peter to carry out surveillance activities. During those long periods of confinement, Brien’s chattiness got on Peter’s nerves. Brien had missed the point. It wasn’t so much the subject matter, but the relentlessness of his chatter that got to Peter. Now wasn’t the time to go into all that. I couldn’t let the above brow thing go by, though.

  “I get it, Brien, but I’m pretty sure that the proper term is highbrow not above brow. You can look it up later. I appreciate you setting me straight about the claustrophobia thing. It's great when you teach me new things.”

  Brien smiled. I meant that. Brien has a unique vision of the world and often delights me with an observation that completely changes the way I see something. Mick, of course, immediately jumped to conclusions, and was smirking at us both.

  “I bet you can teach him a few things too, huh, Gidget?”

  “Never mind, Mick. You’re walking down rock steps. It’s dark and spooky, yadda-yadda-yadda, and you almost missed ‘it.’ ‘It’ what?”

  “The chamber of heinousness,” he responded. Chamber of heinousness? Oh, no! A wave of dread hit me about Mitchum’s impending visit. Had Mick gone off the deep end?

  5 john doe

  The more Mick said about that “chamber of heinousness,” the surer I became that Mick ought not to mention it to Mitchum. I found it hard to believe much of what Mick said about the place he claimed to have found Owen’s GPS device. If I found it hard to believe, he wouldn’t stand a chance with Mitchum. Besides, we didn’t have that GPS device. I argued that he should keep the chamber of heinousness part to himself.

  "Don’t mention the heinousness. Just say you found it in another part of the cave."

  Unfortunately, despite my coaching, Mick did just the opposite. When he got to that point in his story about "how I spent my week between Christmas and New Year’s Eve," he launched into a surfer dude rant about it.

  “This is where things started to get all dark and edgy. Like I triggered a curse. Maybe, I never should have gone in there, Detective, but I found Opie’s GPS in the chamber of heinousness.” Mick bobbed his head up and down a little. I suppose that was intended to convey mystery or intrigue. He had barely uttered the words when Mitchum cut him off.

  “It’s Owen, not Opie! And please, none of that nonsense about a vortex of heinousness.” Mitchum’s feet and his mustache got all twitchy. Brien couldn’t stay out of it either.

  “Uh, no, that’s not what Mick’s talking about, Detective. Don’t you remember? The vortex of heinousness is what we get sucked into when we hang out with Jessica Huntington and help her hunt down rich, lowlifes. Mick here’s talking about a chamber of heinousness. That’s totally different.” Brien wreaked of sincerity. Mitchum’s twitching grew worse. The tapping of his feet registered like the tick of a bomb about to explode.

  “Vortex! Chamber! What do I care? Nor do I care about that imaginary GPS device that holds such fascination for you all. What I want you to explain, Mick, is how Corsario Hideaway’s owner ended up sleeping with the fishes.”

  Hoping to calm the man down, I used another trick I had learned from Bernadette. If the way to a surly detective’s heart is through his stomach, you have to stoke the fire in his belly from time to time. It worked for Bernadette, so I gave it a shot.

  “Another donut, Detective? I don’t think you’ve had one of these chocolate ones frosted like fireworks, have you? They are delicious.” Before he could answer, I put one on his plate and refilled his coffee cup. The twitching stopped as he bit into that donut, bathing him in a new burst of sugary bliss. I put one on Mick’s outstretched plate and winked at Brien as I passed the dwindling platter of donuts to him. When Mitchum spoke again, his tone had mellowed.

  “If you had that GPS device, I might find your story more compelling, Mick. You all can keep chasing the Maltese Falcon until the cows come home. Even if it does exist, I’m not convinced Owen Taylor discovered a darn thing worth tracking down. My guess is any marine coordinates saved on that device lead straight to an underwater loser-land inhabited by a whole lot of nothing, like the mountains of junk we hauled out of that cave.”

  “Don’t s
ay that! You don’t know what I went through to get that thing. It’s here at the resort, somewhere. I swear. That’s what those guys were after when they grabbed me and that bartender, Dude!”

  “Bar owner, not bartender,” Mitchum corrected Mick. He paused a few seconds longer before continuing. “I suppose you three might not be the only ones foolish enough to be chasing after Owen Taylor’s GPS device. Too bad you couldn’t hang on to it, Dude. Can we please get on with your story? Where were you when ‘those guys’ grabbed you?”

  “When I found that GPS I felt excited. I left the chamber of...” Brien and I shook our heads, no, stopping him before he could utter the heinousness word again. He heeded the warning.

  “I headed for San Albinus to give it to Willow. It’s hers. She should be the one to decide what to do with it. When I got to the hospital, two guys were standing around outside. One of them, I had seen before with Owen. I thought they were cove-runners waiting for Willow to be released so they could nab her. I had to warn her! Before they could see me, I went around the back of the hospital and put on my Santa suit. I had it in the bag with the GPS, just in case I needed to use a disguise again.”

  I tried not to harrumph as I heard that part of Mick's story a second time. That Santa suit made sense at the resort where Santas roamed the grounds by the dozen. In San Albinus, an aimless Santa would stand out. No wonder he got caught. I held my tongue. When no one else responded either, Mick continued.

  “My plan was to walk right by those goons with a ‘ho-ho-ho’—like I was making a delivery to someone in the hospital. All cheery-like, you know?”

  Okay, so maybe his plan hadn’t been completely bad. Brien and I nodded. Mitchum shifted in his seat.