Dirk’s face darkened, and Savannah cringed. Sergeant Detective Dirk Coulter had worked damned hard for that gold shield, and the last person who had slapped it away had wound up flat on his face on the floor in one and a half seconds.
“Look here, lady,” he said. “I’m investigating a homicide, and even out here in international waters, murder is murder, and can land you in some sort of prison somewhere. Now you better reconsider what you just said to me.”
“I haven’t murdered anyone, and I couldn’t release information to you about a customer here even if I wanted to. All of our banking is done with anonymous numbers and customer passwords. We, ourselves, don’t know their identities.”
Savannah stepped between them and adopted her most solicitous tone and expression. “Of course, you can’t,” she said. “I understand your position completely. But we’re not asking you for their identity. We need a record of their recent transactions. I already have the account number, even the password. Perhaps you could be so kind as to let us know what’s been going on with the account.”
“No.”
Savannah was a bit taken aback. Her down-homey routine almost always worked... at least a little. “No?” she asked. “That’s it? Just ‘no’?”
“No. And that’s not all. If you don’t leave right now, I’ll have security remove you.”
Suddenly, a couple of enormous guards materialized behind them. Savannah turned to look at them and was astonished that people even came that big! They were at least a foot taller than Dirk’s six feet, two inches, and their uniforms—khaki shirts and shorts with breast pocket insignia badges—showed off their muscular physiques with intimidating clarity.
“Let’s go,” she told Dirk. “If these folks aren’t interested in helping us, they deserve to have a murderer here on their little island, rubbing elbows with them on a daily basis.”
She grabbed Dirk’s arm and propelled him toward the front door before he could cause any trouble with Goliath and King Kong.
“But, but... he sputtered.
“Keep walkin,”’ she told him. “Make tracks, buddy.”
“I ain’t afraid of those guys,” he said, looking back over his shoulder.
“Well, I am, and you would be too, if you had the sense God gave a goose.” She shoved him through the front door and out onto the street. “We’ll find out what we need to know some other way.”
“How?”
“I don’t know, but—”
Her cell phone was buzzing inside her purse. She reached for it and looked at the caller ID. “It’s the kid. Hi, Tam. What’s shakin’, sugar?” She listened for a long time, a smile spreading across her face. Finally, she said, “Darlin’, you are worth your weight in gold. You have no idea how timely this little bit of info is. Consider yourself kissed and hugged.”
She flipped the phone closed, turned to Dirk and chuckled. “Turns out you didn’t need to go fifteen rounds with those heavyweights in there after all. Tammy’s better than Miss Grumpy could ever be.”
“Why? I thought she was having a hard time trying to access that account info. The password ‘rosarita’ wouldn’t work or somethin’ like that.”
“True, but she kept trying other passwords, and she found one that worked. She opened the account info online and discovered that three-hundred and twenty five thousand dollars was withdrawn, in cash, five days ago.”
“Five days ago? That’s two days after Suzette Du Bois went missing.”
“That’s right.”
They smiled at each other. They could practically smell their prey.
The trail was getting fresher by the minute.
“Good for the kid!” he said. “She’s getting better at this stuff all the time. What did the password turn out to be?”
Savannah laughed. “Sammy.”
“Of course.”
“Of course.”
They walked down the street, passing buildings more substantial than the slapdash huts that lined the beachfront areas. Here the businesses and houses resembled some that Savannah had seen in Key West, Florida, on a vacation there years ago. They had a combination of tropical and Victorian flavor, with lots of gingerbread-house details, verandas, and the occasional widow’s walk around the roof. Under different circumstances, she might have considered her surroundings romantic.
But strolling alongside Dirk, whose formerly buoyant mood had been replaced by his standard sullen one, thanks to the snippy manager at the bank, it wasn’t easy to get into any sort of romantic state of mind.
And that was okay. She was working.
Who needed romance when there was a bad guy—or girl, as the case might be—who needed catching?
Dirk stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, leaned against a palm tree, and took out his cell phone. “I just want to check something,” he said. A moment later he barked into the phone, “Coulter here. I’m on Santa Tesla Island... yes, all the way out here. Run a check with DMV. I want to know the name and address of everyone on this island who owns a BMW. That’s right.” He scowled. “What do you mean you can’t—”
Savannah elbowed him in the ribs. “Look around you, Dorothy,” she said. “You’re not in Kansas anymore... or California either, for that matter.” She pointed to a passing car that had no license plate, only a red sticker in the lower left corner of the rear window. “They’re not going to find any of these cars in the California DMV records.”
“Oh.” He grunted, then said into the phone, “Never mind.” Then he turned off the phone and shoved it back into his pocket. “I have to tell you,” he said, “I’m feeling a little out of my element here.”
“That’s because you are out of your element, kinda like wading through Jell-O. But don’t fret. This whole island isn’t even half the size of little San Carmelita. We’ll find the BMW that picked Suzette up at the dock, and we’ll find her, too. You wait and see if we don’t.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah... a friggen’ Pollyanna, that’s you, Van.” She laughed and laced her arm through his. That was what she loved about Dirk, that sunny disposition, that effervescent personality, and of course, the eternal optimism.
He shook his head and groaned wearily. “Nope, we’re never ever gonna find that gal. She’s gotten away with cold-blooded murder. Not if we stay on this stupid island for a hundred years, and look for her from one end of it to the other and then fall down dead in our tracks and rot right there. We’re just not gonna find her.”
Ah, yes. Savannah thought as she looked around her at the lush tropical foliage and breathed in the clean, salt-sea scented air.
This is romance at its finest.
Chapter
20
“Did you really think we’d run across somebody with a BMW in one of these swanky bars?” Dirk asked Savannah. “Or is this just a scheme of yours to see how many of those stupid umbrella drinks you can get me to buy for you in one afternoon?”
She sipped her piña colada and twirled the tiny paper umbrella between her fingertips. Around them, a large portion of the island’s population, or so it seemed, had congregated to enjoy equally festive beverages and, in general, make merry, here in a place called Coconut Joe’s.
If she used even a little bit of imagination, it was easy for her to look around and imagine that she was in a bar somewhere in the Bahamas. The music being piped into the place had a definite Caribbean flavor, as did the bright batik sheets of fabric that hung from the ceiling along with fishing nets and colorful paper lanterns. So many palmettos decorated the place that she felt she was in a jungle.
The patrons were equally exotic, dressed in bright floral sundresses and tie-dyed T-shirts, with more seashell necklaces than she had seen anywhere since the seventies.
“Apparently,” she said, “once the sun starts to set here on Santa Tesla, the natives run to the bars and get stinkin’ drunk before suppertime.”
“Like you?” he said, sipping on his Pepsi.
“I’m not drunk, I’ll have you know, boy
. I’m only barely buzzed, and after the week I’ve had, I think I deserve it. So hush and order me another one of these... only with just half the rum this time.”
“Such self-control,” he said, waving to the waitress. “I’m almost impressed.”
“Yeah, well, I’ve had a rum hangover before, and it wasn’t pretty. It was the morning after a bridal shower where we sampled half a dozen kinds of daiquiris. I felt like I had a coonskin cap on my tongue and a hive of angry wasps swarming around inside my head. I had to eat a three pound box of Godiva chocolates just to get my blood sugar level up to normal. But then, a self-controlled fellow like yourself wouldn’t know about such things.”
“I certainly wouldn’t. The only thing that gives me a hangover is tequila.”
“Yes, seems like I recall you missing work a few May sixths in a row.”
“What can I say? Cinco de Mayo’s a rough one.” He grinned at her. “Hey, you want something to eat?”
“Why? You buying me dinner?”
“Well, not exactly. I think they’ve got some sort of appetizer things over there at the bar for free. I could nab you a tray of them if you like.”
“What a guy! Dirk, you never fail to amaze me.”
“Why, thank you.” He flushed under the pseudo-compliment. He received so few, pseudo or otherwise. “It wasn’t that much, really, just some free hors d’oeuvres.”
“My point exactly.” She took another sip of the sickeningly sweet drink and wondered why she had ordered it. The Pink Squirrel at the last bar was much tastier. “What’s next?” she asked him. “Where do we go from here?”
“Like I said, I’m a fish out of water here. Nobody pays any attention to my badge, and I’m probably not allowed to wave a gun around and threaten them for information, so... I’m stumped.” The waitress walked up to them and asked what they would like.
“Something a little less potent than that last drink,” Savannah said. “When I turn my head, it takes my eyes five seconds to catch up, and that’s not a good sign.”
“How about a virgin seabreeze?” the waitress suggested. “What’s in it?”
“Cranberry juice and grapefruit juice.”
“Sounds good. And another Pepsi for my buddy.”
Before the woman could walk away, Savannah grabbed her by the sleeve. “By the way, you don’t happen to know somebody here on the island who owns a BMW, do you? I’m in the market for one.”
The waitress shook her head. “There aren’t that many cars on the island. It’s expensive to have them ferried over, plus there’s only one gas station and it charges a fortune for just a gallon, so...” She disappeared into the throng.
“Let’s forget about the BMW for a minute,” Savannah said, “and concentrate on other things.”
“Like what other things?” he asked
“Like why Suzette withdrew three hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars in cash from the bank. What on earth could you spend that much money on at once?”
“A fancy car.”
“That’s a guy thing. A chick wouldn’t pay that much for a car.”
“How come you can call a broad a ‘chick’ and I can’t?”
“For the same reason you can’t call a woman a ‘broad’ either.”
“Huh?”
“Think with me. What’s got that sort of high price ticket... other than real estate.”
They both looked at each other and perked up.
“She bought herself a house,” Savannah said. “And paid cash for it.”
“Or at least plunked down a hefty down payment.”
“She told the guys on the boat—”
“Catamaran.”
“Whatever... that she was moving here. Hence the boxes of stuff she brought with her.”
“Maybe the person who picked her up was a realtor. They tend to drive around in spiffy cars.”
Savannah grabbed her cell phone and called her house. Tammy answered. “Hi, babycakes,” Savannah said. “Go online and see how many real estate agencies there are here on the island. Yeah, I’ll wait.” She stirred the remainder of her piña colada and slurped the sweet frothiness off the end of the umbrella handle. “Huh?” she said. “No, we’re having a miserable time. You’d hate it. The music? I think it’s a bar down the street. Yeah, I’m holding. Go ahead and look.”
The waitress came over with her seabreeze and Dirk’s Pepsi. “No, we haven’t had dinner. Didn’t even have a chance to catch lunch.” She grinned at Dirk, who had helped her polish off an enormous basket of fish and chips earlier at one of the beachfront stands. They had each downed double-scoop ice cream cones afterward. “Yeap, all work and no play, that’s us. Dedicated professionals, all the way.”
“That’s me, is more like it, Miss Piña Colada,” Dirk grumbled. “Yeah, I’ve got a pen,” she said as she dug one out of her purse along with a notebook. “Four of them? Okay, give me the addresses and phone numbers.”
After she had written down all the information and said goodbye to Tammy, she tapped her finger on the notebook page. “Get that Pepsi down, buddy boy. You and I have work to do. Gome on now, no dawdling. I ain’t got all day here you know.”
Sitting in the back seat of a taxi that was hurtling around curved, dusty roads, Savannah dug her nails into the upholstery and tried not to look over the edge of the road. She had taken a peek a few minutes ago and had seen a sheer drop of at least one hundred feet to the churning sea. Her piña colada-filled tummy had done a flip and a flop, and she had vowed never to look again.
“You wanna slow this jalopy down, buster?” Dirk said for the third time. “We’d like to get there in one piece.”
The dark little man behind the wheel didn’t say a word. He didn’t slow down either. At this rate they would make it from one side of the island to the other in ten minutes... if they made it at all.
“This is the last one,” Savannah said, referring to the realtors on her list. “If they don’t drive a BMW, we’re back to square one.”
Dirk shrugged. “So, sometimes I feel like my house trailer is parked at square one. Familiar stomping grounds. All too familiar.”
“Whatcha say you let me handle this one?”
“You gonna do better than I’ve done?”
“Can’t do much worse.”
“Hey, those last three didn’t drive a BMW. Nothing I could have done about that.”
“Yes, but if you hadn’t been so abrasive with them, if you had just finessed them a bit, they might have told you who, if anyone, does drive one. Then we wouldn’t have to be in this cab, hurtling through space with Nascar Joe here.”
“They just don’t like us mainlanders here. You can tell. The whole island is like a giant clique that hates outsiders.”
“Oh, yes. You threatening to sic the Coast Guard, the Marines, and the Navy Seals on them wouldn’t have anything to do with their lack of cooperation.”
“I didn’t threaten them until after they refused to cooperate.”
“Anyway, I’m going to handle this next one.”
“How?”
“Girl-style.”
“You mean sneaky?”
“Exactly.”
They arrived at the realtor’s office relatively unscathed... if shattered nerves and upset stomachs didn’t count.
Savannah grabbed Dirk’s hand as she got out of the cab and walked up to the door of an establishment that was quite a bit more polished looking than the other three they had visited. A charming Queen Anne-style cottage, the business had an ornate, hand-carved sign in front of it that read, “Elizabeth Fortunato Realty.”
“Nice place,” she said, “Maybe Elizabeth is the BMW type. Ladies named ‘Elizabeth’ tend to be classy.”
“And that’s been proven scientifically?”
“Through empirical evidence.”
“Whose?”
“Mine.”
They walked through the front door and found a handsome young man sitting at a desk. He was speaking on the phone
to someone, discussing rental rates for a vacation property.
After listening for only a few moments, Savannah decided that she probably could never afford to vacation on Santa Tesla Island for longer than ten minutes. And only then if she brought her own tent.
When he hung up, he smiled at them, and ran his fingers though his thick chestnut curls. “How may I help you?”
“We’re looking for Elizabeth,” Savannah told him. “I met her a couple of days ago and we discussed a vacation rental, a place on the beach.” She turned and gazed up at Dirk lovingly. “For our honeymoon.”
“Oh, congratulations!” the young man gushed.
Dirk simply nodded, his poker face solidly in place. But he did squeeze her hand a little harder.
“Oh, thank you.” She batted her eyelashes at Dirk, then at the kid behind the desk. “We’re getting married next month, on Valentine’s Day. It was Dirk’s idea. We’re going to have lots and lots of red roses. Red roses are Dirk’s favorite flower.”
The pressure on her fingers increased to downright painful. She got the message.
“Anyway,” she said, “Elizabeth was telling me about this darling little beach cottage, and I told her I’d think about it, but I lost her card. I was keeping an eye out for her car as we were driving around today—it’s quite distinctive.”
The young man chuckled. “Yes, there aren’t many BMW’s on the island; they’re not exactly easy on the gas. I think she’s starting to wonder if she should have bought something else.”
Savannah smiled up at Dirk and this time, it was genuine. “Yes,” she said, “but she’s just such a BMW kind of girl.”
“True. True.”
“Do you have any idea where she is now? I realize it’s a little late, but I really wanted to talk to her.”
“Here, let me see if I can get her on the phone.”
The kid dialed a couple of numbers, then said, “Sorry, she’s not answering her home phone or her cell. She turns it off sometimes after office hours. There’s more to life than work, and all that.”
Corpse Suzette Page 21
