Death on the Wind

by M. J. Mandrake

  “Sorry. Sorry,” she said, breathing hard. “Chica usually tells me when someone is coming.”

  “Except for me,” Leander said.

  Chica cocked her head, an innocent expression on her dark face.

  Kitty glanced around, making sure nobody was coming from either direction and leaned close, speaking quickly. “I saw the video when we were all on the bus. Juan’s cousin unhooked the harness, then pulled her fingers from the bar. He had it downloaded to the phone, and on the GoPro.”

  “Who touched the camera?”

  “Everybody. We all looked at it.” She lowered her voice again. “I just ran into Reagan. She said she’d taken Duke outside just now. I wonder if anyone else passed the front desk where the GoPro was.”

  “I went to get some paperwork and passed both Ralph and Judy in the main lobby. They clearly haven’t been keeping anyone in the rooms.”

  Kitty made a noise in her throat. “What a mess. Completely inept.”

  “I agree. But the good news is that I think I can get them to release everyone to a local embassy house.”

  Kitty rolled her eyes so hard to hallway spun. “Really? We’re going to do that again? We almost died the last time! How about you take everybody back to wherever this house is, and Chica and I stay here where it’s safe?”

  “Do you really think―?”

  “Yes, yes, and more yes. Heather stole Reagan’s boyfriend after she got her drunk. Then she made Reagan be her maid of honor and help plan the whole wedding. She bullied Zoe for years in school. She made all of them wear these terrible shirts. I don’t think any of them are sorry she’s dead, no matter how many tears they shed. My money is on Reagan, but I can’t prove it.”

  “What about going back to the ship?”

  Kitty thought about it. She’d have a room that locked. “That’s better. Are you coming?”

  He paused. “I―I suppose I can. I’m not one for cruise ships.”

  “Well, it’s not like I’m asking you to go on vacation with us,” Kitty said. “I really think we need you. At least someone more official than I am, and not the ship’s security. Jim McAllister is the head and he’s great, but I don’t know him that well. He might think I’m crazy for saying somebody in this group killed Heather.”

  “True,” Leander said. “When does the ship leave port?”

  “Not until tomorrow evening. That could give us enough time to find the killer. Otherwise we’re all stuck here. Or worse, we all go back home together.”

  “I’ll see if I can get him to agree, but he might think there’s too much circumstantial evidence to let anyone leave, even just to the ship. There are too many suspects,” he said, quietly.

  Chica pressed against her leg and she looked up to see the chief watching them from a doorway down the hall. He jerked a thumb toward the room.

  “Too many?” Kitty asked, walking as slowly as she dared. “Only three. I really don’t see why Juan or Anne would have anything to do with it. Or Penny and Elaine.”

  “The Barneys are suspects now, too. Apparently he has a connection to Heather. Something about losing all his savings when Otto Jousmal bought out his company and the pensions disappeared.”

  Kitty groaned. So that was the rest of the story Judy wouldn’t share. And it was surely no coincidence that the Barneys were on the same cruise with Heather.

  The mystery was getting deeper by the moment, but Kitty refused to consider being left behind by the cruise, again. She was going to stick her nose into every possible relationship and examine every motivation, no matter how insignificant or petty. With Leander and Chica on her side, she didn’t need to be scared. She’d be cautious, but determined, and soon they’d be headed back to Miami.

  Chapter Eight

  “Death should take me while I am in the mood.”

  ― Nathaniel Hawthorne

  Ralph rested his head in his hands, shoulders slumped and eyes focused on the dented metal table. He’d refused to answer any questions after admitting his connection to Heather.

  Chief Sonora loomed over him and said again, “Did you know Heather Jousmal would be on this cruise?”

  “He can’t hear you,” Kitty reminded him. Ralph had tuned out the chief simply by averting his gaze.

  The silence in the room stretched painfully thin. Judy looked from Kitty to Leander to the officers. She seemed petrified, her brown eyes wide and her face very pale. If Kitty had control of the interview, she’d be focusing on Judy. That was a woman who had something to say and was too afraid to speak first. She’d offered several important details the one time they’d spoken alone on the deck. Surely she would be easier to interview than Ralph. But she wasn’t in charge, so she was forced to stand by and watch Chief Sonora try to get blood from a stone.

  “Mr. Barney,” Leander said softly, touching his shoulder.

  Ralph looked up. Kitty moved to stand next to Leander so Ralph could see her when she translated.

  “Did you know Heather Jousmal would be on the ship?” Leander asked.

  Kitty had always thought the Barneys were critical and angry types. Now they just seemed scared and tired. Ralph nodded. “Yes, we both did. We were going to confront her about what her father had done.”

  Shock flashed through her. She could imagine Ralph cornering Heather and demanding some kind of compensation, but not Judy.

  “Did you kill Heather Jousmal?” the chief asked.

  “Why would I?” Ralph signed angrily. “Now I’ll never get my pension. She was our last chance.”

  Chief Sonora leaned forward, eyes narrowed. “Perhaps you already asked her and she told you to go away.”

  “No, we hadn’t. Not yet. We were still trying to decide the best time.” Judy looked to Kitty for support. “Everybody would have heard if we’d annoyed Heather. She wasn’t the type to keep anything quiet.”

  “Perhaps she was embarrassed about her father’s thievery,” the chief said.

  Ralph rolled his eyes. “Not that girl. She was proud of it. She bragged about how he’d bought factories just to close them so he didn’t have competition.”

  “Didn’t that violate anti-monopoly laws?” Leander asked.

  “He has friends in high places,” Ralph said. “They won every court case, and every appeal. We didn’t have anything left to try.” He glanced at Judy and she nodded. “When we saw a magazine article about her taking a cruise, we kept digging until we found out the month. It wasn’t too hard to narrow it down after that.”

  “If you have no money, how did you afford the cruise?” the chief asked.

  “We took out a reverse mortgage on the house.” Judy’s eyes filled with tears. “We thought if he got even half his pension back, we could pay off the loan.”

  The chief sat back, face expressionless. Kitty was starting to think that Chief Sonora held a lot of his opinions close to the vest. “We need to take the rest of the statements.” He paused. “You may not leave this city, or even this station, until you are given permission. Understood?”

  “But we didn’t do anything―” Ralph started.

  The chief was on his feet and moving toward the door. He gestured and Leander and Kitty. “Both of you. Come.”

  Kitty saw Leander’s eyes narrow just a little but he obediently followed. She hurriedly signed to the Barneys before she hurried after them. “Don’t worry.” She could tell her reassurance was worth very little, and she couldn’t help feeling the terrible seriousness of the situation.

  A few feet down the hall, the chief turned and looked at Leander. “I’m glad you’re staying out of the way and letting me do my job. We don’t need American police interference.”

  Kitty could see Leander considering a few responses and rejecting each one. This was probably where the diplomacy came in to the job description. A normal person might point out that he was an embassy official, not a police officer. Or he might say that as long as Chief Sonora did his job, Leander wouldn’t have to get in the way, and so far so good, r
ight? Or maybe he’d go low and say that he hadn’t realized the chief was already doing the job, that he’d been waiting for the real work to begin.

  “I’m only here to protect the interests of the Americans involved, and that includes Heather Jousmal, who, it appears, was murdered today by a Mexican citizen while she was enjoying her vacation,” Leander said.

  Ouch. Kitty tried not to smile. Leander wasn’t as diplomatic as she’d thought. Everyone in Cancun knew that crime was the kiss of death to the tourism industry and they did their best to make sure it was the safest place in Mexico. A twelve billion dollar industry didn’t take kindly to random acts of violence, especially when the tourist was killed in such a highly visible and dramatic fashion.

  “I have a phone call to make. You may sit with the witnesses until I return.” The chief pointed toward a room and then continued down the hallway, the young officer right on his heels.

  Leander leaned toward Kitty and whispered in her ear, “I want to know how the Barneys discovered Heather was taking this trip.”

  “You’re thinking it might have been a set-up?” He was too tall for her to whisper back in his ear, so she settled for talking to his shoulder.

  “Maybe someone poked the bear, to see if he would snap, I don’t know. Something just doesn’t make sense.”

  Kitty could feel the hair move at her temple as he spoke. It was funny. When he spoke Spanish, she never heard his accent. Either accent. He didn’t sound American and he didn’t sound European. Maybe it was because she hadn’t grown up speaking Spanish and she’d never have the ear to hear the slight variations the way native speakers did. Whatever it was, he sounded fluent to her. But when he spoke English, every now and then she caught the slightest softening of a consonant, or a vowel that was too pure to be really American.

  He cleared his throat and leaned back.

  Kitty snapped out of her reverie. Ugh. She would have stood there, nose to his shoulder for another ten minutes, maybe forever. “Right. Doesn’t make sense.” She fumbled at the doorknob. “Who’s in here?”

  “Penny and Elaine,” he said. His cheeks looked pink. He was clearly embarrassed for her. Well, she was back on track now, focused, ready to do her job. As long as he didn’t whisper in her ear, apparently.

  Kitty steeled herself before entering. She loved the two old ladies, but they had a biting, sarcastic wit that caught Kitty by surprise. She needed to be as professional and in control as she could manage. Especially after her momentary lapse in brain activity.

  “Oh, Kitty. I’m so glad you’re here.” Penny stood up, reaching out for her.

  Kitty translated into spoken English for Leander, but not Spanish for young officer stood near the door. It wasn’t a formal interview yet. They had a few more minutes of privacy. If he didn’t speak English, of course. That was an assumption that too many people made, and that always came back to bite them in the rear end

  “Are you guys okay? Do you need the bathroom or something to drink?” Kitty knew that the police weren’t prone to offering refreshments to detainees.

  “We’re fine, dear.” Elaine lifted her chin. “Toto has been wonderful. An officer got too close, it seems.”

  “How close?” Leander asked. His tone held a note of warning.

  “It was nothing,” Penny said. “A misunderstanding.”

  Leander raised an eyebrow at Kitty, his meaning clear. He was leaving it up to her whether he would press the issue. Kitty looked at Penny and Elaine. They wore matching expressions of satisfaction. Toto was her usually impassive self and didn’t seem to be drenched in blood, so Kitty decided to let the matter rest for the moment.

  “I knew something like this was going to happen,” Penny said.

  “To Heather, you mean?” Leander asked.

  “She was spoiled, shallow, a bully, overly concerned with her appearance, and wasn’t very smart.”

  Kitty winced. She didn’t think Penny or Elaine could ever hurt anyone―let alone pay for them to be murdered―but they were giving the police a good reason to be suspicious.

  As if Elaine knew what Kitty was thinking, she rolled her eyes. “You probably think I’m being harsh. Well, I guess I should apologize for the mean, awful, and accurate things I just said.”

  Kitty hadn’t finished translating the sentence when Leander snorted at Elaine’s comment. Penny saw him laughing and stared. He seemed to realize his mistake and forced the smile from his face.

  “Shallow. I’ve met puddles deeper than her,” Penny said, agreeing.

  “I didn’t really get to know her,” Kitty said. She felt a wave of guilt. She had spent so much time avoiding Heather that now she wasn’t sure of anything except what Reagan or Zoe had told her.

  “I didn’t try. I don’t speak crazy.” She looked at Elaine. “Or maybe I do. Remember that girl who used to walk her shih tzu in the park? The one who wore the stripper heels even in the rain? What was her name?”

  “D-e-z-t-e-n-e-e,” Elaine said, finger spelling the name. “You two got along okay. Maybe you’re bilingual after all.”

  “Quadrilingual. English, Southern, American Sign Language and Crazy. I should be a translator.”

  “You’d be a very entertaining one, I’m sure.” Kitty couldn’t help smiling. This was their second cruise together and she was starting to think she should deputize Penny and Elaine as her official helpers. They certainly knew how to keep the other members from panicking.

  Elaine said, “You know what I don’t understand? Why Reagan ditched that traitor.”

  “I agree,” Penny said. “It’s healthy to cut some people out of your life. And honestly, if I’ve cut you off, it’s probably because you handed me the scissors.”

  A knock at the door and the chief entered the room. Sitting at the table, he flipped open his folder and scribbled at the top of a fresh sheet of paper. “Did you hear anyone make any threats against the victim? Do you know if Heather had any enemies?”

  Kitty quickly translated for Penny and Elaine. They exchanged glances.

  “Not any more than most people, I suppose,” Penny said cautiously.

  “What do you mean?”

  Elaine shrugged. “As I said, when you’re as old as we are, you just accept you’re going to have a few enemies.

  “Did you know the victim well?” His voice was overly formal, as if he were reading off a list of questions. “There seemed to be tension between the friends.”

  “You could say that,” Penny said.

  “Enough for one of them to want to kill her?”

  “I don’t know. The one she betrayed seemed to be okay with still being her friend.” Elaine put her hand on Toto’s head for a moment, looking thoughtful. “Maybe she had a hard time letting go. Betrayal never comes from your enemies. It’s a complicated thing, you know. Some just don’t know how to past it, or through it, and come out the other side in one piece.”

  In one piece. Kitty hadn’t moved past her best friend’s betrayal. She had simply removed herself from the area, and stopped speaking to everyone involved. That included family, old friends, work colleagues, anybody who had an idea that her fiancé was cheating on her and never said anything. And even though Chica had healed much of the hurt, she still didn’t feel whole. Her heart had been shattered that day. She would never trust so completely again.

  Chica had pressed herself against Kitty’s leg and she hadn’t even noticed. Kitty gave her a quick scratch. Thanks. I’m fine. Back to work.

  She snapped to attention and finished translating. The power of her own memories had sucked her away from her work. It had been a long time since that had happened. It was likely the stress of the situation. Her second time dealing with a murder investigation and it hadn’t gotten any easier.

  The chief frowned as he made notes. “When we speak to these friends, what do you think they’ll tell us about you two?”

  Penny and Elaine exchanged confused glances.

  “That we have great clothes?” Elaine said.


  “That they wished they were as pretty as we are,” Penny said, smirking. “Tell them to wait fifty years.”

  As Kitty translated, she tried to keep her tone light but it made no difference. The chief leaned forward. “You seem to think this is a laughing matter. I can assure you, it is not. Every member of this tour has some connection to the deceased.”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” Elaine said.

  The chief looked down at his notes. “Two years ago, Otto Jousmal bought out Green Circle Energy Corp, then cut most of its staff and all of its alternative energy research. Your nephew, Anthony Webb, was the head researcher there. You lost a million dollars in stock.”

  Kitty’s stomach dropped into her shoes. She watched Leander’s gaze slide from the chief to the two old women sitting at the cold metal table. Their bright outfits looked garish in the overhead lights and the whimsical makeup smacked of subterfuge. Kitty had been so sure that Elaine and Penny were above suspicion. She’d trusted them.

  “A million dollars is not that much,” Penny said.

  Both the chief and his young officer chuckled at Kitty’s translation. “That is simply not true,” he said.

  “Money is relative,” Elaine said. “There is not that much difference between, say, eighteen and nineteen million dollars. But there is a difference between,” she made a slight motion between the chief and herself, “not much and one million. Perhaps enough to kill for. But that’s simply not the case for us.”

  The chief said nothing, staring across the table as if he thought he could break them with the force of his will. After a long moment he picked up his pen and made a note. Kitty found herself letting out a shaky breath.

  “We will want to question you again.” He pushed his chair back and stood. The officer followed his lead.

  “Is there any coffee here? Or maybe a small snack?” Penny asked. “And I have to go to the bathroom.”

  “Me, too,” Elaine said. “And Toto, too.”

  “We don’t need to be here all the time,” Elaine signed to Penny. “Like he wants us to solve the murder for him.”