Murder on Tiki Island: A Noir Paranormal Mystery In The Florida Keys (Detective Bill Riggins Mysteries)

by Christopher Pinto

  That kind of threw me. “I thought that all ended when he lost his first wife?”

  “No, not entirely. Oh, some things changed…he no longer imported prostitutes or illegal drugs from Cuba. No, my mother wouldn’t allow that at all.” Melinda’s tone changed to something more mischievous, more playful. “But from what I hear, most of the girls he brought in as entertainment were ‘loose’. They weren’t prostitutes in the traditional sense. They just got paid an awful lot for dancing around wearing next to nothing, and had a habit of not spending their nights alone.”

  “There it is again. Tell me, is the seaside resort business really built on vice?”

  Melinda smiled. “This one was. But not all.” She handed me a glass of Jack. “Sorry, no ice.”

  “That’ll do.”

  “Eliot was…unique. He was the proverbial child trapped in a grown man’s body. When he was younger he wasn’t happy unless there was music and laughs and dancing and…well, you know.”

  “Sex?”

  “Yes. And lots of it.” She leaned closer and talked in a loud whisper, as if what she was saying was so naughty even the booze bottle shouldn’t hear it. “I’ve heard that the men would bring their wives and trade them off to other men, then rate them on performance!”

  “No way,” I said, feigning innocence. “Come on, that’s stuff made up for the pulps.”

  “No, really! Of course Eliot and my mother never involved themselves in that action, but I’ve heard from people who worked here that they’d trade two or three times a night! And sometimes they’d even get one of the dancing girls to join them.”

  “Yeah, right,” I said and took a long sip of my drink. “I’ve been a vice cop for five years and I’ve never come across anything like that for real.”

  “Then you’ve never come in contact with the idle rich, my friend,” she said, and knocked back her Jack. She winced, and poured another.

  “And they used to do that down here, huh?” I asked, looking around.

  “Well, no, I guess they went up to their rooms. Although I bet if they had the chance they would have made each other right up here on the bar.” She set her drink down, turned around and jumped up on the bar again, then spun around slinging one leg over my head and back down so she was sitting in front of me, her long, silky legs wrapped loosely around my waist. “Don’t you think so, William?”

  My head was spinning just a little from the liquor. Dull, muffled thuds pounded through the walls; thunder, shut out by the rock surrounding the Safe Room. Melinda slid off the bar in front of me.

  “You’re a bad girl for thinking such thoughts, kitten,” I said as her lips brushed against mine. “You better stop.”

  She tilted her head up so that her eyes were looking up into mine. Her arms found their way around me and she leaned in close. One of her thighs pressed up against me in just the right way. Those big, hungry browns bored into my soul. She wet her lips gently with her tongue in a way that made me glad God made me a man.

  “Make me,” she said softly.

  “Yes mam,” I said. Then I did.

  The room didn’t shake with the thunder but it sure felt like it did. We ravaged each other, more ravenously than ever, harder, faster, stronger. She was a tigress, I was a lion; together we brought down the jungle around us with a heat that could have melted the balls off a brass monkey. Her bare breasts quivered under my touch, and she moaned with more pleasure than I ever heard a woman moan before. She made a quick move and was on top of me like the tigress on her prey, and with taut muscles and beads of sweat she devoured her prey with a ritualistic jungle fever that carried me to places I never thought ever existed. My whole body shuddered with ecstasy, and with that final explosion we slumped to the floor and lay there panting in the heat.

  I fished the pack of Camels out of my pants, then decided against it. I turned to Melinda and asked breathlessly, “What the hell did you play down here when you were a kid?”

  She returned with that fantastic laugh, the one that brightened up the room and made me think of leaving my old life forever. “I used to play billiards. But I’ve always wanted to do that down here.” She was still smiling when I asked,

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “Never met anyone I wanted to bring down here. Not until now.”

  “Excuse me, but didn’t we come down here to look for a safe?”

  “Well, you did,” she said teasingly, and rolled over onto her stomach.

  “I did,” I said.

  “Are you complaining?”

  “Nope.”

  “Good,” she said looking back along her body. “Then I’m ready for round two whenever you are.”

  This girl was going to kill me yet.

  It was after ten when we finally had enough ‘go’ in us to get dressed. It was great and it was fun, but I still had that safe on my mind. “Where should we start looking?”

  “I don’t know,” Melinda said, “You’re the Detective.”

  “Keep reminding me. I keep forgetting.”

  “Why don’t we start with the obvious places, like behind the bar?”

  “Ok,” I said. We walked to the end of the bar and went behind, checking every sliding door, nook, and possible hiding place along the way. I said, “Do you think Bachman had enough character to hide a safe in the Safe Room?”

  “I think it would be more of a coincidence that the one room of the hotel that hardly gets any use, where it would make the best place for him to hide something like a safe would also be called the Safe Room.”

  “Good point,” I said. “Which brings us to another point.” I stopped Melinda from looking through a cabinet and we both stood up straight. “If he’d go all through the trouble of hiding it down here, away from areas of high use, he wouldn’t hide it behind the bar.”

  “No, I suppose not. So where do we look?”

  “Maybe you can tell me. You used to play down here, so I’m guessing you did some exploring. Any out-of-the-way nooks or closets?”

  She thought a minute, then said, “Oh, of course! The storage room!”

  “There’s a store room down here too?”

  “Yes, where all the emergency supplies are kept. You know, in case we get stuck down here for a couple of days… stuff like metal-spring mattresses, first-aid kits, stuff like that.”

  “I’m hip. Where is it?”

  “Behind the bandstand. Those doors on either side lead to it.”

  “Well let’s go,” I said, and we made tracks to the storeroom. The door was locked but Melinda had the key.

  She slid the thin strip of brass with the serrated edge into the slot in the lock, and twisted it clockwise. Metal slipped against metal, tumblers fell into place and the small machine worked its only purpose. The door opened.

  We peered inside the dark, musty room. Shadows jumped as we moved, backlit by the main room’s overhead lamps. Melinda found the light switch, but it didn’t work.

  “Figures,” she said.

  “Maybe intentional. Seems unusual the lights would have gone on the blink since October first.”

  “True. You have a flashlight with you, William?”

  “No. Do you?”

  “No.”

  “Look around near the door, there might be one hidden if these lights were blacked out on the know.”

  “Ok,” she said, and felt around by the floor. Something tumbled over with a big racket and Melinda let out a little scream.

  “What happened?”

  “I thought I saw something move. Just a trick of the light I guess. But look, here’s a spotlight.”

  She brought up one of those big commercial jobs with the can battery and focused lens. She snapped it on. It lit up bright.

  “Detective work. Exciting stuff when you’re right, ain’t it?”

  “Yeah. Here Dick Tracy, you hold the light. It’s heavy.”

  “Sure thing doll.” I took the light and spread it around the room. Creepy place, even creepier than the store
room full of Tikis. This one was stacked with surplus army cots, tables, wooden crates labeled canned meats, K-rations, candles, first-aid supplies and canned juice. There were also bed linens, towels and cases of toilet paper. Everything was clean as a whistle, no dust, no cobwebs. The Tiki Island cleaning crew was the best in the biz.

  “You ever play in here?”

  “I didn’t really play, but I’ve gone through the boxes a few times. The cots are from the big war. Before them we had feather mattresses. Eliot said they were terrible because they soaked up every bit of dampness down here and were always wet.”

  “Seem dry now.”

  “That’s science at work. He installed dehumidifiers in the late forties. The K-rations and the first-aid supplies are Korean War surplus. Those have a ten-year expiration. Before these he had stuff from 1944. He gave it all out to the employees in ’52.”

  “Fascinating history lesson doll, but that doesn’t help us find the safe.”

  “Well, it may. You see, Rutger was in charge of maintaining this level. He would have managed how to arrange the storage. Now when I was a kid, the mattresses were stacked up against the back wall, there.” She pointed to the far corner. “Then when we bought the cots, we stacked them in the same place.”

  “But now there are shelves with towels there,” I said as I shined the flash on them. “And the cots are on the other end of the room.”

  “Right. So he moved them. Maybe he moved them for a reason.”

  She was a sharp cookie, this one.

  “Maybe because it’s easier to move towels than it is to move army cots.”

  “Yes, my thought exactly, William.”

  “Let’s check that theory out, shall we?”

  We walked to the back of the room where the towels were neatly stacked on racks. I shined the light around, and found that the shelves were free-standing, not secured to the wall. Melinda and I each grabbed an end and pulled the shelves out.

  Behind the shelves at floor level was a crack in the wall, almost imperceptible but there. I shined the flash right on it and realized the crack was really the outline of a square panel. I pushed it, tapped, then pushed the top corner inward. The bottom swung out and the whole thing fell on the floor revealing a very old, very dusty iron safe mounted into the wall with a combination lock and a key.

  “Well I’ll be a Humuhumunukunukuapuaa’s uncle!” Melinda screamed.

  “A whatsahumuwhosit?”

  “It’s a fish.”

  “Right. Just hold the flash, will ya?” I gave her the light and she shined it on the knob. I took the paper out of my pocket with the combination on it. “Seven, nineteen, fifty-three,” I recited as I spun the knob. Then I slid the key in the lock and turned it, and held my breath as I twisted the old brass handle.

  Clunk. Nothing.

  “It didn’t open,” Melinda said.

  “Thanks, kid. I wasn’t so sure.”

  “Ok, smart ass, why don’t you try the key first, then the combination.”

  “Yeah, let me try that.” I did it. Still nothing. I spun the knob a few times past zero and tried again. Zilch. “What the hell? We finally find the hidden safe and the combination doesn’t work!”

  “Well, the key works, right?” Melinda asked.

  “Yeah, it turns all the way. It wouldn’t do that if it weren’t the right key.”

  “So then this must be Rutger’s safe, right?”

  “Yeah, makes sense. This was his key, from his desk. So, yeah.”

  “Then that must not be the combination. Maybe he changed it.” I thought about that for a minute. Maybe he did. But then again, this note was fresh, written on his desk pad recently. “Maybe it’s backwards or something. He was pretty shifty.”

  “Ok William, try it backwards.”

  I tried it backwards. Then I tried it front-wards again. Then I mixed the numbers up and tried it again. Still nothing. “Gad-friggin-dammit to hell! No dice, kiddo. He must have changed it recently, or that was never the combo to begin with.”

  “Damn, William. I really wanted to see what was in there.”

  “So did I. But if that combination died with Bachman, the only way we’ll get into this safe is with a really big drill or dynamite.”

  “I don’t think dynamite’s a good idea, William.”

  “Why not?”

  “The Gulf of Mexico is on the other side of that wall.”

  Sunday Night, August 30th, 1935

  The evening turned cool and breezy. Rose sat on the balcony outside of Eliot’s bedroom sipping an iced Coca-Cola and enjoying the view of the Gulf and lower Keys. She was in heaven. She’d never known such luxury, such opulence. Eliot’s bed was the softest and finest she’d ever laid on, and the quality of the food and liquor was so far beyond anything Rose had ever tasted that she wished this day would never end.

  She snapped on the little radio and waited for it to warm up as she gazed toward the setting sun. A single bird flew overhead, heading north. The radio came to life in the middle of a storm update.

  “…and rough seas expected starting tonight and lasting through Tuesday evening. Marine advisory in effect for all of the Florida Keys. Storm now eighty miles off-shore due East of Metacuma Key. Heading East-North East at twelve miles per hour. All Keys residents advised to evacuate to the north…”

  Rose turned the dial and tried to find some music, but every station was the same: storm warnings. She snapped the radio off and went downstairs to look for Eliot.

  “Oh, there you are sugar.” Rose found Eliot in the study, smoking a Cuban cigar and drinking brandy, reading a large book with a blue leather cover. “Sorry I fell asleep up there, you certainly know how to wear a girl out.” She looked around the room. It was covered in bookshelves, floor to ceiling, and each shelf was packed with books. There were two red and gold, overstuffed wing-backed chairs on an Oriental carpet. Eliot sat in one of the chairs.

  Eliot looked up from his book and smiled. “Go on back to sleep, Rose. I’m quite content to catch up on some reading here in the study. After all, once this storm is over, I may not have a study left in which to read.”

  “Oh, sug’ don’t go talkin’ like that. I’m sure this house will be fine in that lil’ ole storm.”

  “I wish I could share your optimism, but I’m afraid the power of this hurricane is stronger than anyone first suspected. It’s a small storm, yes, but very strong. Very strong.” Eliot’s voice trailed off and he went back to his book. Rose remained standing in the doorway.

  “Well, if it’s that strong, don’t you think maybe we should go?”

  “Go where?”

  “I don’t know, maybe Homestead? Or Miami?”

  “Homestead? Miami? What makes you think it will be any safer there? All that storm has to do is change its course at the last minute and head north. Miami will be just a memory.”

  Rose was nervous but she tried not to show it. “But are you sure we’re safe here?”

  Eliot closed his book and smiled. “Yes, completely. I told you, I have a Safe Room.”

  “Well, where is this Safe Room?”

  “In the basement.”

  Rose’s eyes widened and she gasped. “The basement! But that’s…that’s impossible, isn’t it? I mean, you dig two feet down here and you start to hit water!”

  “Four feet. And not everywhere. The core of the Island is pure, solid limestone. Part of an ancient reef, I’d imagine. The Safe Room is dug into the limestone.”

  “But what if there’s a flood? We’d drown for sure!”

  “Got that taken care of too. There’s a sixty-foot air vent that runs up the side of the chimney. Even the most treacherous winds and strongest waves couldn’t topple that piece of iron and masonry. And there’s never been a tidal wave higher than forty feet recorded here. It’s quite safe.

  Rose thought a moment, wondering. “Can I see it?” she finally asked, her curiosity getting the better of her. “Just for fun.”

  “Well,” Eliot
said cautiously, “It won’t be much fun if we have to spend the day in there.” He considered it some more, and realized he had no reason not to show her the secret chamber. “All right, come on!” he said and jumped from his chair. Rose lit up and clapped with excitement.

  “Oh goody!” she almost screamed. Eliot thought she seemed rather childish, but at this point didn’t care one way or another. He led her through the entrance room and into a small corridor behind the staircase. This hallway led to the servants’ quarters with a storage room at the end. He unlocked the storeroom and flipped on the light. Stacks of linens, glasses, cases of liquor, cooking fuel and dozens of other strange culinary items lined the walls. In the center of the room was a trap door, padlocked. He unlocked it and opened the door. A short staircase led down into the hole.

  Eliot flipped another switch and the staircase lit up. He brought Rose down to the bottom landing where a door that looked like it belonged on a submarine stood in silence. Eliot turned the giant wheel that unsealed it, and opened it up. He stepped through and Rose followed.

  “This is it,” he said, fanning his arm dramatically around the space. “It’s thirty feet long by twenty wide, a good size to ride out a storm. There’s canned food down here, fresh water, ice, liquor, and a radio. All the comforts of home.

  Rose didn’t much agree with that statement. The room stood in stark contrast to Eliot’s mansion. It was fashioned entirely of dark gray concrete, and had a damp smell. The floor was cold beneath her bare feet. There was a wooden bar with plenty of liquor, but it was very utilitarian, not at all inviting. The only furniture in the room were three well-padded chairs, a large metal cabinet and a full-sized bed. The cabinet had a padlock on it like the one on the trap door. Everything was dusty. Cobwebs clung to the corners of the ceiling. But the thing that really disturbed Rose, and she didn’t really know why, were the strange, large, dark stains on the floor.