Diver Down (Mercy Watts Mysteries)

by A W Hartoin

  “That’s the idea, but do you like it?”

  “It’s a little shocking, but I do. It’s growing on me by the second. Why did you do it?”

  “My life is different now. I thought I should look different.”

  “I like it, Mrs. Flouder,” said Mauro. “You look like a fifties bombshell.”

  “Hey, that’s my shtick,” I said.

  “Not today,” said Dixie. “Take a shower and, for goodness sake, put some ice on your forehead. You’re starting to look like a unicorn.”

  Mauro went into the bar and got me a ziplock bag of crushed ice. I gingerly put it on my forehead and winced in spite of myself. “Well…I guess I’ll go take a shower, since everyone seems to think I need one, for some reason.”

  “We’ll talk later,” said Mauro with a smile that made me think of him in his tiny swim trunks.

  I didn’t trust myself to answer. I was beat up, smelly, and exhausted in the middle of an investigation that wasn’t exactly going well, and, worst of all, Pete was a million miles away. I could barely picture his face at that moment and that wasn’t a good thing.

  Dixie frowned and took my arm. “You have a boyfriend. Don’t forget that.”

  “I knew it,” said Mauro.

  I groaned.

  Dixie pushed me away from the bar. “Go take a shower. A cold one. And call Chuck. He’s been pinging me every ten minutes, but he won’t say why he has to talk to you. It’s driving me nuts.”

  “I killed my phone,” I said.

  “Take mine and go,” she said, turning to Mauro. “You’re quite the looker, but stop looking at Mercy.”

  I caught the words, “I can’t” as I headed down the path to my room. Great. Now I had to control myself, not one of my gifts. The to do list in my head kept growing longer and longer. Find the source of the sweet tea. Fix the locations of the Gmucas and frat guys during the tea delivery and everyone else that had been on the boat. I assumed antifreeze was widely available on Roatan, so there was no use chasing that down.

  I hung a right onto Lucia and Graeme’s path and knocked softly on their door. Aaron opened it a crack. His eyes darted around like he was expecting a visit from the boogeyman.

  “You alone?” he asked.

  “Duh. Let me in.”

  “Alright then.”

  I passed Aaron and went to the bed. Lucia and Graeme were both asleep. Graeme snored like a sick buffalo while I took his pulse. It was back into the safe range. He smelled pretty boozy and the ethanol bottle I’d left with him had a cup less than before. I’d insist that he see a nephrologist when we got back to the States just to be on the safe side, but I thought he’d recover fully without liver damage.

  I checked Lucia’s wound without waking her somehow. The redness and fever were down and no additional pus. Her pulse was good. I would’ve liked to take both of their blood pressures, but lacked the equipment. Instead, I tucked them in as Dixie’s phone started vibrating against my hip. Chuck and he wasn’t happy. I think he would’ve been texting curse words if it hadn’t been Dixie he was talking to. Dad would hurt him, if he found out.

  Chuck would just have to wait. My shower was long overdue.

  “Hey, Aaron,” I whispered. “Can you stay with them?”

  “Huh?” He was bent over a small pad of paper and writing so fast I’m surprised the paper didn’t catch on fire.

  “Can you stay here? I have to shower, then I’ll take over.”

  He looked up from his pad, but I couldn’t see his eyes. His glasses had become hopelessly smudged again. “Yeah. Yeah.” He closed the pad and pressed it against his chest. “Can I trust you?”

  “I should hope so. We’re the couple who humps next to trash cans.”

  “Don’t tell anyone about this notepad.”

  I hesitated for a moment, but I just had to ask. “Why?”

  “I just developed my recipe for lionfish hot dogs.” He glanced around the room. “It’s top secret.”

  “You really think there’s a market for lionfish hot dogs?” I asked.

  “There will be when I make them.”

  I thought about it. Everything Aaron made was wicked good, except crab. There was no hope for crab. “It’s hard for me to imagine, but you’re probably right. Just promise never to tell me what’s in them or how they’re made.”

  He pressed the pad harder against his chest. “But I can trust you, right?”

  I rolled my eyes and opened the door. “I’ll be back.”

  I stepped outside and found the Gmucas walking up the path. For a second, their bathroom caterwauling echoed in my ears and I shuddered. If I could’ve avoided them, I would’ve. But they were also prime suspects what with the trying to get into the Carrows’ bungalow and all that talk about money. I had to head them off.

  “Hi, Mercy,” said Linda. “How are they doing? We brought get-well treats.”

  Frankie held up a basket with baked goods and various bottles.

  Over my dead body.

  “That’s so nice of you,” I said.

  “Can we see them?” asked Linda.

  “They’re asleep. Why don’t I take that and we’ll tell them you came by?”

  Frankie gave me the basket reluctantly. “Can’t we come in for just a minute?”

  Hell no!

  “Maybe in about an hour. They’ve had a rough couple of days,” I said

  Linda lowered her voice. “Is it true? Did someone try to poison them?”

  “Yes. The police are involved. We’ll catch them.” I gave them a hard look. “They won’t be leaving this island free.”

  “I should hope not.”

  “Let us know if there’s anything we can do to help,” said Frankie.

  “I will.” I slipped back inside, closed the door, and looked through the peephole. They were pretty smooth. Were they lying? I couldn’t tell. There was no head nodding or anything obvious, but it was a short interaction.

  I carried the basket past Aaron, who was back to scribbling on his pad. “Don’t give them anything from this basket.”

  He grunted and kept scribbling. I hugged the basket. What to do with it? Hell, I would’ve thrown it out the back door, but the Gmucas were known to lurk around on the back paths. I took it into the bathroom, got a bath towel, and tied every single item up in it with a knot. Lucia had one eyeliner pencil and I used it to write in big black letters on the towel. “Do not eat or drink contents. May be contaminated.” I put the bundle in the shower and pulled the curtain closed.

  I left out the back door, so I wouldn’t have to have a conversation about lionfish hot dogs or anything else in a hot dog. I turned to the left and spotted two of the frat boys. Andrew had his head down with his hand over his eyes and Joe guzzled a beer. Neither looked happy. I tiptoed between two bungalows and peeked at them from behind an overgrown hibiscus. I hadn’t seriously considered those guys. They mostly seemed like drunken idiots out for one last screw before getting Andrew married, but since Graeme wasn’t a suspect anymore, everyone else had to be. They did have access.

  “We have three days left,” said Andrew. “Three days.”

  “No shit. Anything can happen.” Joe finished his beer and tossed the bottle into the sand.

  “Anything will happen. He’s fucking crazy.”

  “He’s desperate.”

  Andrew looked up at the sky. “We can’t keep him in the room forever. Maybe we shouldn’t help him.”

  “You want to give him tough love or whatever that shit is?” asked Joe. “That’ll get him killed. I say we pay the debt ourselves.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  “I don’t think we have a choice. Come on. Let’s talk to him before he comes up with some other idiotic plan.”

  “You know what?” asked Andrew. “This is the worst vacation of my life. If Anita finds out, she’ll kill me.”

  “She won’t find out. We’re in fucking Roatan, Honduras. What happens in Roatan and all that. The cops don’t even know we�
��re alive.”

  Andrew and Joe walked around the bungalow and Andrew said, “For now.”

  Great. Three more suspects and no waiting.

  I went back to the main path and saw Andrew and Joe talking to the maid on their bungalow’s front porch. Then they went inside and slammed the door. The maid stood there for a moment, holding her basket of cleaning supplies and sporting a worried frown. She walked off finally. No one came out and I’d have to wait until they left to search it. The thought made me overwhelmingly tired. The only thing I wanted to search out was a bed and a new ice pack. My bag was now a bag o’ water and not terribly useful.

  I dipped my feet in our bucket and trudged up the staircase. I swear it was getting taller and taller every time I went up it. And every time I went up, a new disaster awaited me. That time was no different.

  “Mercy. My girl. Come sit with me,” said Aunt Tenne from the hammock. She was so heavy, her rear was firmly planted on the porch.

  “I have to take a shower.” I couldn’t have been less enthusiastic, but that didn’t deter Aunt Tenne. She smiled and pointed at the lounge.

  “Just for a minute. We need to talk.”

  “No offense, but I have had about as much talking and listening as I can take.”

  Her mouth tightened around the edges and she raised her eyebrows. “Mercy. I need to talk to you.”

  I sat on the lounge and wished a coconut would hit me on the head. Being knocked out was starting to sound restful. “What is it?”

  “I want you to help me with your mother.”

  “What makes you think I have any influence? She’s my mother. She gives me orders, not the other way around.” I leaned back, closed my eyes, and took a deep breath. The smell of barbecued lionfish still lingered in the air. Way to ruin breathing, Aaron.

  “You have influence. Talk to her. Tell her how happy I am. Tell her how wonderful Bruno is. He loves me. He does.”

  “Aunt Tenne, you’ve known him for six days. Six days. That’s barely enough time to know what his favorite color is much less fall in love.”

  “How long do you think it took your parents?”

  I squinted at her. “I don’t know and I don’t care. Can I shower and go find a murderer now?” I didn’t mention the nap, but I had a nap coming in a big way.

  “They haven’t murdered anyone yet, have they?”

  “Let’s not get into semantics, okay?” I staggered to my feet and Aunt Tenne rolled out of the hammock, a lot more graceful than me, that’s for sure.

  “I’m sorry to put this on you,” she said.

  But you’re still going to do it.

  “But I really need you to make her understand.”

  “Fine, but you owe me.”

  Aunt Tenne smiled, the big light-up way she did when looking at Bruno and my hard heart melted just a teenie bit. “I’m counting on you.”

  That’s what I need, another person counting on me.

  “Stay away from Mom for a while. Okay? Don’t poke the bear.”

  She touched my shoulder with one finger. I guess I was too gross for more. “I’ll tell Bruno.” She jogged down the creaking stairs.

  I went inside and got in the shower. I was in there a good five minutes before I realized I hadn’t taken off my clothes. I’d sunk to a new level. Wet clothes are amazingly hard to get off. They wanted to stay on. They really did. In retrospect, somebody might’ve been trying to tell me something because staying dressed really would’ve been better. But I did take them off, squeezed them out, and rolled them into a tight bundle. I pulled back the shower curtain to toss them in the sink and saw Dixie’s phone start vibrating. Probably Chuck. It had that insistent, annoying kind of buzz and started bumping across the counter toward oblivion. I heaved the bundle at the sink and lunged for it. My feet slipped and I did a slow motion twist, grabbing for the shower curtain, tearing it from its rings, and landing half in the shower and half out.

  “Ow,” I whispered.

  Dixie’s phone jumped off the counter and clattered to the tile. The faceplate shattered, but it continued to buzz next to me, and then my clothes, which had not made it into the sink, fell off the counter and landed with a wet splat on top of the phone.

  “Hey.” Aaron stood in the doorway. “What’s ya doing there?”

  “Oh my god! Cover your eyes!” I rolled over and yanked the torn curtain over me.

  Aaron did not cover his eyes. He said, “Lucia wants to go to the beach.”

  “What the what? Get out!”

  He chewed on a ragged fingernail, which was apparently more interesting than my half-naked body. Thank goodness for that bit of weirdness. “Can she go?”

  “No.” I struggled to my feet and wrapped the curtain around me. “She has an infection and we need to keep an eye on the both of them.”

  “He’s going, too.” More fingernail biting.

  The water still spraying into the shower turned from hot to lukewarm. Fantastic. “No, he isn’t. What is wrong with these people? Go stop them. I’ll be right there.”

  Aaron didn’t leave. I really didn’t expect him to, because it would’ve been somebody else’s life. Water was flooding the bathroom. I wasn’t close to clean and the water was now cold.

  “What are you waiting for?” I asked.

  “You hungry?”

  “What do you think?”

  That’s when he looked at me. “Yeah. Let’s go to The Aviary tonight. They got good crab.”

  The Aviary had a great reputation, but crab was a deal-breaker.

  “Aaron, if you don’t get out of here, I might rip your nostrils off.”

  “They got soft shell and Alaskan King Crab.”

  “Aaron, if you think I won’t kill you and make it look like an accident, you’re wrong.”

  “And crab kabob and crab po’boy.”

  I almost told him I hated crab with the fiery hell of a thousand venereal infections, but I just couldn’t. The little weirdo loved to feed me crab and somehow I couldn’t ruin it for him. If he wouldn’t leave under a threat of death, I would have to distract him. “Do they have steak? I’d like a good steak.”

  He rubbed his hands together. “I can find out.”

  “You do that at Lucia’s bungalow. Go on now.”

  “I gotta go over to The Aviary.”

  “You can call them on Lucia’s phone. Leave me your phone. I have to call Chuck. I’m pretty sure I killed Dixie’s phone.”

  He went back to his biting. “I gave it to Lucia, so she could call me if something happened.”

  “How’s she going to call you, if she has your phone?”

  “Huh?”

  “Never mind. Get over there and call the restaurant.”

  Aaron left with a quickness, probably not because he had left two invalids alone to make a jailbreak. I dropped the curtain and flinched as I stepped under the icy water. Who knew the best part of my shower would be the part where I was wearing clothes. I made Guinness World Record time for the fastest shower, mopped up the floor with every towel we had, got dressed in the last clean dress I had. And finished up by smearing triple antibiotic cream on my forehead, which made it nice and shiny, just in case someone happened to miss the lovely purple and green surrounding the stitches.

  Dixie’s phone was indeed dead. One more casualty of the worst vacation ever. Oz Urbani owed me big. There was no avoiding it. How he would decide to pay me back, scared the crap out of me. Of course there was the possibility that I wouldn’t catch the killer and the more I thought about it, the more that freaked me out. Oz sent me to Roatan to protect his sister. I had a feeling the Fibonacci family wouldn’t care if Lucia survived Roatan, only to be killed in St. Louis because I couldn’t catch the guy. What would they do then? I ran out the door determined not to find out.

  Chapter 12

  I MET LUCIA and Graeme halfway down their walk. Aaron was on the phone, not stopping the crazy invalids like I asked. Graeme was so drunk, he was embracing a palm tree like a
lover. Lucia was still pretty pale, but she’d gotten a cane from somewhere and was moving at a pretty good clip. By good clip, I mean six inches a minute.

  “Do you two have a death wish?” I asked with my hands on my hips.

  “We’ve been talking,” said Lucia.

  “Don’t talk. No good can come from it.”

  “We’re not letting him win,” slurred Graeme.

  I took Lucia’s arm. “You know they say living well is the best revenge. Well, in your case it’s living at all. Get back in that bungalow.”

  “We want to go to the beach, so he knows we’re not defeated.” Lucia’s eyes were fiery. It was the first hint of what I assumed was Fibonacci spirit.

  “What can happen?” asked Graeme. “You’ll be there.”

  “In case you haven’t noticed, I’m getting pretty worn down,” I said.

  “You look good to me.”

  “Then you’re blind drunk.”

  Lucia rammed her cane into the sand. “He’s not ruining our vacation.”

  “Well, he’s ruining mine. Please go back for me, if not yourselves.”

  Aaron trotted around Graeme. “They can take us in fifteen minutes.”

  Graeme perked up. He almost held his head straight. “Take us where. Where’re we going? I’m ready.”

  I rolled my eyes. “He wants to have dinner at The Aviary.”

  “Oh, we don’t want to intrude on your romantic dinner,” said Lucia. “We’ll have dinner at the regular restaurant.” She hobbled forward an inch.

  Groan.

  “Fine. Aaron, call them back and see if they can seat us all. Drop the words victim and poison. That should help.”

  Aaron called The Aviary back and got us in. Then I had him call the front desk and ask for a golf cart. Lucia and Graeme protested, saying they could walk. By the time we got to the restaurant I was seriously questioning their sanity. If anyone had an excuse to stay in bed, it was them. Instead, they hobbled up the wide stone staircase, read the sign that shoes weren’t allowed, and kicked them off as the sommelier opened the door to best restaurant on the island all smiles and charm.

  The Aviary was as I expected having eaten at a lot of best restaurants with Myrtle and Millicent, starched tablecloths, clean lines, good art on the walls, but not great. The difference was the staff. They were dressed in casual island wear and all barefoot. Lucia and Graeme chatted up the bartender and found out the no shoes policy had to do with the atmosphere they were going for and a strong dislike of sand on the floor. Lucia proceeded to meet three of the five other tables. She was as bad as Dad. We couldn’t get through a meal without meeting someone new or talking to someone he knew on a case eight years ago in Seattle.