South Seas Shenanigans

by Abby L. Vandiver

  “How he was murdered,” Miss Vivee corrected.

  And maybe not.

  “Yes. That’s where the problem lies for me.” He brushed his hands together and licked his lips. “A few things have been nagging at me, but I tell you, if what I’m thinking was the cause, it would be quite a cunning feat and would take a mastermind to pull it off.”

  “Is it something diabolical?” Miss Vivee said, her eyes gleaming. She fixed them ahead as if she was trying to think of what it could be.

  “Quite,” Mac said.

  “Well, spill it,” Miss Vivee said. “What you got?”

  “I’d rather tell you the pieces of this puzzle that has led me to this estimation and see if you can come up with the same conclusion.”

  I knew this little game of theirs, “Guess the Cause of Death by Just Looking at a Dead Person,” was only between the two of them. No way could I compete. And with the things I’d seen and heard since the deaths, I couldn’t think of one thing that I thought could be any kind of “clue” about how Campbell Gruger died. Especially, one that screamed “murder.” So I just stood by and listened.

  “When I spoke with Campbell the other day, he was interested in discussing his health. Said he was trying really hard to get into shape for this biking competition. And that as part of his training he was going to take a ride around the island.”

  “The entire island?” Miss Vivee asked.

  “Not sure, those were his words.”

  “Okay, he was worried about his health,” Miss Vivee said. “You’d already told me that.”

  “Well it just didn’t seem to be working out for him.”

  “Was what Gregory Can said right?” Miss Vivee asked. “He just didn’t have what it took to compete?”

  “I don’t know, maybe he was trying too hard,” Mac said, his face serious. “He told me that his spirits were good, he was happy, but he kept a headache, and was feeling crummy. Low energy. Having some muscle cramps. But, he said he was working out every day, riding ten miles or more on a regular basis, and even confided in me that he’d start taking steroids. He couldn’t understand why he wasn’t feeling better.”

  “Steroids?” Miss Vivee said. “He seemed pretty serious about getting into shape.”

  “Yes it seems so. I did notice a slight discoloration in his hands and lips, too. But I didn’t know him well and couldn’t say then that it was significant of anything.”

  He let his words linger, and seemed to contemplate over what he wanted to say next.

  “Is that the whole puzzle you’ve put together?” I asked because that didn’t mean anything to me and he didn’t seem like he was offering anything else.

  “Well part of it.” He spoke again and looked at Miss Vivee. “I tell you, I half-jokingly told him to be careful not to have a heatstroke.”

  “Heatstroke.” Miss Vivee nodded. “It sounds possible with all he was doing and the humidity on the island,” she said. “Summer months are too hot to train in.”

  Mac nodded. “But then I saw what was inside of his tent when we visited Harley Grace with Sassy.”

  What did he see?

  In my mind I visually revisited the area. Workout equipment. Boxes shipped from Amazon dot com, water, canisters of protein powder.

  Maybe the protein powder did him in? Poison? In the powder?

  Maybe it was laced with arsenic, or cyanide?

  I smiled. Maybe I was learning to follow their logic after all.

  Miss Vivee gasped. “Hyponatremia!”

  “That’s what I was thinking,” Mac said.

  “Hypo what?” I said, my voice cracking from the confusion going on in my brain.

  “The water,” Miss Vivee said, seemingly understanding.

  “The water,” Mac agreed.

  “The water?” I asked.

  Miss Vivee shook her head, a smile crept up her lips. “That’s it,” she said.

  “What’s it?” I asked.

  “He died from water intoxication,” Miss Vivee said. “Those symptoms do look a lot like a heatstroke.” She nodded her head in agreement. “And yes, Mac, that would take quite the mastermind to pull off.”

  “Hey Siri,” I said into my iPhone. It was all I could do. Google the answer. If I hadn’t had a friend in that search engine, I wouldn’t have ever been able to keep up with the two of them. “Water intoxication,” I queried holding down the home button.

  A condition that occurs from drinking too much water, upsetting electrolyte balances.

  “It’s drinking too much water?”

  “Yes,” Mac said.

  “And you die from that?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  I clicked on Symptoms. Headache, adrenal fatigue, and muscle cramps were a few of the ones listed. Then it read: Severe cases can cause seizures, coma and death.

  Well, I guess I was wrong about possibly being able to keep up with them. Arsenic laced protein powder was just too simple a way to die for them. Water intoxication. I shook my head. I didn’t see that coming at all.

  “So somebody killed him with water?” I asked. My words edged in sarcasm, probably to mask my ignorance. I couldn’t believe that was what they thought.

  “Are you hard of hearing?” Miss Vivee asked. “That’s what we’ve both been saying.”

  “No one can force someone to drink water . . .” I just couldn’t wrap my brain around murder by water. “Not without putting a gun to their head. And then, if you’ve got a gun, why not just shoot them?” I shook my head. “Wait. How much do you even have to drink for it to kill you?”

  Miss Vivee opened her mouth to speak, but I put up my hand. “Hey Siri. How much water does a person have to drink to have water intoxication?”

  Siri started to answer, but Miss Vivee interrupted my investigation. “You tell me,” she said.

  I turned down the volume. “Huh!” I blew out a breath. For some reason their method of murder was frustrating me. I started the paragraph over – reading it aloud. “It takes six liters of water to kill a 165 pound person.” I looked up from my reading. “Six liters is only about . . .” I did the math in my head. “1.5 gallons,” I said. “That couldn’t be right.” I looked down at my phone.

  “What couldn’t be right?” Mac asked.

  “Everyone knows that a person should drink eight, eight ounce glasses – or more – of water a day. Eight, eight ounce glasses is half a gallon. The amount to kill a person isn’t that much more.”

  “People really shouldn’t drink all that water,” Miss Vivee said, scrunching up her face as if it was such an awful thing. “Young people carrying around water bottles all the time, it isn’t healthy.”

  “Not healthy?” I squawked. “To drink water?”

  “It killed Campbell Gruger,” she said.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “Here, let’s sit down for a minute,” Miss Vivee said. “I want to see some birds.”

  Had she taken up Madda Crawford’s dubious pastime?

  We were on the return trip, halfway back down the walking trail. I thought maybe Miss Vivee was tired, we had walked a ways, and as she said, getting me to understand things could be exasperating. It was easy to presume with her newest murder-modus-operandi, and my total lack of understanding, she was probably worn out.

  Miss Vivee sat on the bench, and patted the seat next to her. “Come sit by me Mac, see if you recognize any of the birds.”

  I sat at the end of the bench, straddling the sides. I was happy to sit, Googling wasn’t easy while walking.

  “What was that other word you said, Miss Vivee?” I asked absently, still reading about the newest method of death I’d learned.

  “What other word?” she said and furrowed her brow.

  I looked at her. She knew exactly what I meant. “That hypo word.”

  “I’m trying to watch birds,” she said, suddenly her voice going down to a whisper. “I think you have to be quiet, or else you’ll scare them away.”

  “Hyponatre
mia,” Mac said.

  “Shhh!” Miss Vivee smacked Mac on the knee. “I think I hear a bird.”

  H-y-p-o-n-a-t-r-e-m-i-a. I typed it into Safari.

  “Do you know how to spell it?” Miss Vivee bent forward to see past Mac. Her voice normal. “It has an ‘n’ in it,” she said.

  I held up my phone, although I knew she couldn’t see it. “I have it.”

  She gave me a fake smile.

  What happened to being quiet?

  I found that hyponatremia was a condition that occurred when the level of sodium in the blood was too low.

  Osmosis.

  That was the first thing that came to my mind. I remembered it from high school biology.

  I knew that during osmosis, water moved from an area where there were fewer molecules of a solute – in this case sodium – to the area where there were more of them. I also knew that there were cells inside the blood that had water and sodium in them.

  Sooo, I reasoned, if hyponatremia meant there was a low level of sodium in the blood, then I knew that that meant that the water would move from the blood – the place of fewer molecules of sodium – to a place where there was more sodium, that meant to the inside of the cells.

  Water moving inside cells. I blinked, trying to work out the science in my head. Too much water in cells would make the cells fill up – swell.

  Then what?

  I scrolled down through the article, it seemed I had gotten it right so far. Water trying to even out the concentration of sodium by moving into the cells. But I didn’t know what happened next. How would a person die from too much water going into the cell?

  Then I found it. It read: In the brain, this swelling increases intracranial pressure (ICP). As the cells in the brain swell from the influx of water, the blood flow is interrupted resulting in cerebral edema.

  Cerebral edema. Now I’d heard of that.

  Okay, I think I got it.

  I finished the rest of the paragraph. The pressure on the brain from the edema could lead to headache, personality changes, changes in behavior, confusion, irritability, and drowsiness, which results in seizures, brain damage, coma or death.

  Those were the symptoms that Mac had observed the day he talked to Campbell Gruger. Then he saw all the bottled water at the biker’s campsite. He put the two together and figured . . .

  Figured what?

  I racked my brain while they bird watched and typed in – no more talking to Siri, I might scare the birds away – all the search terms I could think of. They all said pretty much the same thing.

  I looked up from my reading and over at Miss Vivee. She and Mac were holding hands.

  Bird watching by the love birds. How cute.

  But I needed to wrap my head around this theory they’d come up with. So quiet time was over.

  “So, Miss Vivee,” I cut into the silence. “Are you saying that somehow . . . Okay.” I turned around on the bench and looked at her. I crossed my legs, uncrossed them, scratched my head, took in a breath and swallowed. “Okay. You’re saying that someone purposely made Campbell Gruger’s sodium drop, and then, on top of that, they – the murderer – made him to drink enough water to kill him?” I frowned up my face, and squinted my eyes. I shook my head the entire time I laid out the scenario.

  The ludicrous scenario.

  “Yes,” she said and nothing else.

  How could she only say ‘yes?’

  Doesn’t she think she should have to explain that?

  “Miss Vivee,” I said my voice pretty loud for her to be only two feet away. “That is insane!”

  “Murder is insane.”

  I waited for her to say more.

  She didn’t.

  “How would anyone do that, Miss Vivee? It’s just not possible.”

  “It happened,” she said. “It happened to Campbell Gruger. That makes it possible.”

  “Ugh!”

  “So who do you think could do that?” I asked. “Gregory Can?” I crunched up my face. “What reason would he have,” I said before Miss Vivee could answer. “If it were a love triangle,” I continued. “It would be Elenoa.”

  “Have you seen her?” Miss Vivee asked and shook her head. “She can’t walk and chew gum at the same time. There is no way she could have put together such a complicated scheme. What you think? She’d tell him, ‘I’ll give you some la-la if you drink some wa-wa?’”

  I laughed. “What is ‘la-la,’ Miss Vivee?”

  “If you don’t know that by now, child, you ain’t got no business getting married.”

  I didn’t even know how to respond to that.

  Chapter Fourteen

  It was Bay Day!

  I woke up with a smile on my face. I couldn’t wait to see him. I had given up trying to make any sense of Miss Vivee’s murderous scheme. I just had to make it through breakfast and lunch (although with all the butterflies flitting around, I didn’t know how I was going to get food down my throat and into my stomach) and then Bay would be here!

  I decided to hang out with Miss Vivee, fingers crossed that she wasn’t going to want to have any “Destination Murder” conversations with anyone. Once one o’clock came, the time of Bay’s arrival, we could go our separate ways.

  I soon found out that no murder talk was too much to ask for from Miss Vivee.

  “Look at her,” Miss Vivee said and smacked me on my arm. Her being excited about something usually meant I had to suffer some kind of pain.

  Mac, Miss Vivee and I were just on our way to eat breakfast when her homicide antennae rose from the top of her head.

  “Well, I’ll be. She’s still crying.”

  It was Elenoa. I watched her, she was sniffling, her eyes were red, and she kept wiping her nose with a tissue that had no fluff left, she tripped over something and it appeared that upset her even more. She was coming out of the back of the Restaurant Complex, I assumed leaving work.

  “Maybe she has a cold,” I offered. It seemed like I needed to shield her from Miss Vivee’s wrath.

  “You know with you born and raised in Cleveland, you are awfully naive.”

  I rolled my eyes. It wasn’t like Cleveland was the Wild Wild West.

  “She’s grieving over that cheating Campbell Gruger,” Miss Vivee said. “Another woman’s husband. It’s shameful, is what it is.” Miss Vivee shook her head.

  “I thought you said you didn’t believe Elenoa was having an affair with Campbell Gruger.”

  “I never said that,” Miss Vivee said.

  “Yes you did. Right after we talked to Greg. You said you ‘couldn’t be sure you believed it.’”

  “Well. I’ve changed my mind.”

  I was all for a man shouldn’t cheat, but in all the cases (did I really just say cases?). In all the murders I’d seen with Miss Vivee someone had been cheating. It seemed like human nature. And it was always a love triangle that motivated Miss Vivee in her pick of whodunit.

  But looking at Elenoa, you couldn’t help but feel for her. She looked pitiful.

  Instead of a hardcore, man-stealing vixen, Elenoa looked more like a wounded doe.

  And I’ve heard people say before that it’s never the “other woman’s” fault.

  I wondered how badly would Miss Vivee tear into me if she heard me make that little comment out loud.

  “I want to see if I can’t rustle a confession out of her.” Miss Vivee’s broke through my thoughts and by the time I had caught the realization of what she was saying, she was already marching off, hunting knife poised, ready to gut Bambi.

  “Did you kill Campbell Gruger?” Miss Vivee blew down on her. No pomp. No circumstance. Straight to the chase.

  “What?” Elenoa said looking confused. “Cam died accidently. What are you talking about?”

  “Murder. That’s what I’m talking about. The police are not thinking it was an accident at all. And from what I’m told, you’re their number one suspect.”

  “Me?” she said, eyes wide. “Why would I be a suspe
ct?” She looked at the three of us. I lowered my eyes. I didn’t want to be in this lie.

  “Because you were having an affair with him.” Miss Vivee said.

  “I loved Cam,” she said. “I would never hurt him.”

  “So you don’t deny it?” Miss Vivee said.

  “Would you poison him?” Mac asked, not surprisingly falling right in line with Miss Vivee’s tomfoolery.

  “No!” she said and stepped back. “Is that how he died? He was killed?”

  “Yes,” Miss Vivee said.

  She was convinced, and it appeared, she didn’t care if anyone else, including me and probably that Inspector she’d accosted the day before, believed her. But what she thought she’d gain from lying to the possible murderer about the mode of death, didn’t make sense. Because if Elenoa did kill Campbell Gruger, why would she confess to it knowing that it appeared no one knew exactly how it was done? I’m sure, even over in Fiji, they couldn’t convict her without the right evidence.

  But I didn’t say a word.

  “Oh that’s awful,” Elenoa said as a tear ran down her cheek. “This is too much for me to take. Him dying,” she looked at Mac, then Miss Vivee. “And now knowing he was murdered.”

  “So it wasn’t you?” Miss Vivee asked. Her face said that she didn’t believe one word the girl was saying.

  “No. It wasn’t me.”

  Did Miss Vivee really think she’d say it was?

  “Well, maybe you can help us figure out who did it then,” Mac said.

  “Aren’t the police looking into this?” Elenoa asked.

  “They asked us to help,” Miss Vivee said.

  Oh crap! Here I was, thinking I was going to get breakfast, while away the time until my man came, practically promising myself I wouldn’t get involved with Miss Vivee’s interrogations, and I was suckered into yet another one.

  Why do these things happen to me?

  “I’m sure you noticed how well Mac and I get along with all the guests.” Miss Vivee was on a roll. “So, they, the authorities in Nadi,” Miss Vivee nodded, “thought we’d make good undercover agents. Find out some info they could use. We’re retired government.”

  I almost choked when she said that. I had to cough to disguise my shock at her assertion. Retired government? Really? Ex-government detainees, now I’d believe that.