Literally Murder (A Black Cat Bookshop Mystery)

by Ali Brandon

  “I’d like to say a few words about old Ted. Sure, he had his way about him, but he was the only board member who stood up for the rest of us. He’s the only one who tried to find out what happened to the money that someone took out of our association account.”

  A general murmur of assent followed that pronouncement. Another old man stepped forward and talked about a weekly golf foursome with Ted. Still another mentioned the monthly cookouts sponsored by the association, which had been instigated by Stein when he joined the board. Then a spindly old woman in a shockingly short pink tennis skirt waved veined fingers.

  “Ted took care of my Maltese, Mitzi, when I had to visit my sister in the hospital for a week. And once, when I was late on my monthly association dues, he paid them for me so I wouldn’t get fined.”

  At that last, Darla opened her eyes wide in surprise. Why would Ted Stein have paid this woman’s dues? For it had been his signature as board member on the letter Hamlet had snagged that she’d read—a letter threatening to place liens on all condominiums whose owners were in arrears when it came to monthly association fees.

  “Oh, yeah?” another voice piped up, this one male. “Well, that son of a gun slapped a lien on my place because I missed my dues payment one month while I was on a cruise. He threatened to sell my condo right out from under me! I had to get a lawyer to stop it.”

  “He brought me cookies when I broke my hip!”

  “He said someone else’s dog poop was my dog’s and made me pick it up!”

  “He bought everyone a round of drinks one night at the Divers’ Hut!”

  “He made me repaint my door; said red wasn’t on the approved-color list!”

  With that, the somber service promptly devolved into a Team Ted versus Team Not-Ted bit of verbal flurry. Darla prudently retreated behind the tiki bar, hoping the bamboo barrier would keep her out of the way of retirees gone wild. Jake had the same idea, for she grabbed Nattie by the sleeve and pulled her out of harm’s reach behind the bar as well.

  “People, people!” Rosalind cried over the growing hubbub. “This is a hallowed occasion! Please stop fighting. You know that Ted wouldn’t want us to—STOP!”

  That final shriek was in response to a scrawny, six-foot-tall geezer with a tonsure haircut who had snatched the Ted poster board off the bar top and ripped it into quarters. Then, with a manic grin, the man flung the pieces skyward. As the poster board fluttered into the pool, he stomped off to a chorus of mingled hisses and cheers.

  That act of petty vandalism was enough to send half a dozen retirees diving for the flower spray. The winner proved to be a little white-haired woman wearing a daisy print muumuu and compression socks. Before she could carry the flowers off, however, Mitzi the Maltese’s pink-skirted owner rushed over. A struggle ensued between the pair until the arrangement they were fighting over erupted in a cascade of blooms that were promptly trampled beneath their sneakered feet.

  And then a shrill whistle rent the air, the sound so piercing that Darla slapped her palms over her ears.

  She looked around to see Nattie with two fingers in her mouth emitting the kind of whistle made to summon a cab from two blocks away. The high-pitched noise stopped the bickering condo owners in their respective tracks.

  “You oughta be ashamed of yerselves,” the old woman shouted. “Here, Rosalind tried to do something nice, and yer acting like schoolkids. Now go back to yer condos, all of you.”

  To Darla’s surprise, the scolding worked. Attitudes deflated, and the crowd began to disperse shamefacedly. A few of the more responsible ones stopped first to blow out the candles and toss bits of crushed flowers into the poolside trash bin.

  Mae patted Nattie’s arm in approval as she walked by. “Good job. Someone needed to give them all a kick in the tush.”

  “We can always count on you for that,” Georgie agreed with nod as he filed past.

  Rosalind, still looking a bit shaken and carrying a few carnations that had survived the stampede, stopped long enough to say much the same thing.

  “I know you and Ted didn’t care much for each other,” she added, “but it was good of you to break up that scene. You’ve got to wonder about people sometimes.”

  “Yer right, Roz. Me, I just try to do the right thing” was Nattie’s pious reply. “Say, looks like we got a vacancy on the board now. Are you thinking about running?”

  Linking arms with the woman, Nattie led Rosalind off toward the building, leaving only Darla and Jake remaining behind at the pool.

  “And that is how you hold a memorial service,” Jake said with an appreciative grin. “If mine goes that good, I’ll be thrilled. I’ll bet our buddy Ted is feeling pretty proud right now.”

  “Probably,” Darla absently agreed, watching the man’s floating images being chased about the water by the automatic pool sweeper. “You know, Jake, it seems like he sure stirs up a lot of strong feelings in people. Do you know if Detective Martinez is checking out any of the condo people as possible suspects?”

  “I’m sure she’s got all the bases covered.” Jake gave her a keen look. “Why, did you notice something?”

  “Not specifically, but Hamlet turned up something I think points at someone who lives here.”

  Ignoring Jake’s smothered smile—the PI fluctuated between believing in Hamlet’s seemingly psychic-kitty skills and dismissing them as coincidence—Darla settled on the pool’s top step and pulled off her sandals so she could dangle her bare feet in the water. Jake joined her, casually kicking off her boat shoes to soak her feet in the cool water as well.

  While the pool filters gently hummed, Darla explained how Hamlet had knocked down a box of Nattie’s papers, revealing the letter written by Ted Stein. On the surface, the missive had seemed merely an impersonal notification of association policy. But reading between the lines, Darla sensed more than a little spiteful bullying at work.

  “Something in the way it was worded. It was like he couldn’t wait for someone to get in arrears with their payments,” she explained with a moue of distaste. “And his signature was this big flourish, like he was almost giddy with excitement at being the one to set the policy. That’s what some of the people here tonight were complaining about. He actually threatened to put liens on people’s condos if they got behind on their association dues.”

  Jake raised a dark brow. “So you’re saying Ted was the designated hitter, so to speak, for the board?”

  “Right. Remember the article about corruption on condominium boards? I wonder if Ted Stein actually got his hands on any units and resold them for a tidy profit. Maybe one of those foreclosed-on condo owners was still holding a grudge.”

  Jake thought a moment, then grimaced. “Not a bad theory, but how would any of the condo people get into Billy’s hotel room to kill Ted? It’s not like the good old days when you could swipe a hotel room key off the pegboard.” She leaned back on the pebbled concrete. “Those keycards have to be programmed at the front desk, and half the time they get demagnetized when people put them too close to their cell phones and so forth.”

  “What about Billy’s granddaughter, Cindy?” Darla asked. “I saw for myself that she has a thing for threatening people with glass objects. And maybe she didn’t like the way Ted tried to blackmail her grandfather. Billy could have given Cindy a key to his room.”

  Jake shrugged. “Could be, but from what you’ve told me about her, it seems more likely she’d try to get in on the blackmail action, not put a stop to it.”

  “How about Alicia?” Darla gave the surface of the pool an idle kick that sent a nearby floating stalk of red snapdragon bobbing. “Remember how she was standing right outside the hotel room when we went to rescue Hamlet? Just because she claimed to be going in doesn’t mean we didn’t actually catch her leaving after she’d done in Ted.” Then, as another thought occurred to her, Darla added, “Oh, and she used to be a ‘Pope�
� before she got married, so that still works for the Shoes of the Fisherman book clue.”

  “Good point.”

  Jake gave Darla an approving nod as she fished out part of the poster board that had drifted to the shallow end. “Alicia would be high on the radar for me if this were my case. But sometimes the simplest explanation is the right one. And that pretty well narrows it down to Billy, despite what Ma thinks.” Then the PI shook her head. “But we’re still missing some of the basic puzzle pieces. We don’t know for sure that Ted was the one who attacked me and took Hamlet, and we don’t know how he got into Billy’s room either.”

  “So all we really have is a whole bunch of ‘don’t knows’.”

  “Exactly.

  Darla sighed. “We might as well settle on ‘Mrs. Peacock in the library with the candlestick’ and be done with it. Tell me again why we’re doing this on our vacation?”

  “Because you and Ma decided you wanted to play private eye.” Groaning, Jake dragged herself upright again and picked up her shoes. “Let’s leave the detecting to Sam, okay? We can go back upstairs and stream a Gidget movie or two to get us in the mood for the beach tomorrow.”

  “Works for me,” Darla agreed with a final splash as she also stood and gathered her footwear. Glancing up at the screened balcony, she added, “And I owe Hamlet a walk, too. Let me see how restless he is when we get back upstairs.”

  They found Hamlet still peacefully snoozing, so Jake did as promised and downloaded the movie via Nattie’s surprisingly sophisticated entertainment center. Nattie was already camped out on the sofa. The three of them settled in to watch a lighthearted little beach film, which Darla had never seen before. They’d just reached the part where Gidget hired one of the surf bums as her date to a luau to make Moondoggie jealous, when Hamlet decided he needed an evening walk after all.

  “Me-oooow!” he called from where he had planted himself at the front door and was scratching at the panel with his front claws.

  “Count on you to wait until I’m all comfortable,” Darla grumbled, shooting the cat an aggravated look as he continued to meow and scratch. Finally, she rose from where she’d been curled up in the rattan chair. “Fine, we’ll go for a walk, but it’s going to be a short one.”

  “We can pause the movie if you like,” Jake volunteered from her own cozy spot on the sofa next to Nattie, raising the remote control in preparation.

  Darla shook her head. “That’s okay. We won’t be gone long.”

  Hamlet, satisfied that he’d gotten his way, deigned to sit quietly while Darla found his harness and leash, and then fastened them on him. The look he turned on her was angelic as, with a final pat on the door and a little meow-rumph, he waited for her to open it. Tapping into her inner Sandra Dee, Darla gave Jake and Nattie the “hang loose” pinkie and thumb wave—made famous by Hawaiians, surfers, and one president—then followed Hamlet out into the hall.

  A brief elevator ride later, they were in the lobby. “Pool or driveway?” she asked the cat.

  He didn’t ponder the question but made an immediate turn toward the front doors. Hoping that Mitzi the Maltese or the old white poodle hadn’t chosen this same time to take a potty break, Darla trotted after him and opened the doors.

  The fountain splashed before them, its cascading water glowing blue from the underwater lights in each tier. She caught a faint whiff of chlorine, overlaid by the inviting scent of night-blooming jasmine that wafted from somewhere nearby. After the hoopla of the memorial service, it was nice to simply enjoy the South Florida night.

  Hamlet seemed pleased with their little jaunt as well, trotting down the lighted drive with his black tail streaming behind him like a banner. Occasionally he stopped to sniff the night air, perhaps catching the scent of a Florida mouse on a night mission. It was cooler out now, but Darla didn’t mind the faint chill. Apparently, she’d been in New York long enough that temperatures in the fifties constituted shorts weather, she thought in amusement.

  Hamlet trotted over to the nearest patch of lawn, springing back with cat surprise when an equally startled toad hopped away from the spot he’d been sniffing. He would have pursued it, but Darla gave a firm tug on the leash.

  “No toads, Hammy. I overheard some of the people at the cat show talking about a nasty little toad species here in Florida that’s deadly poisonous to animals who lick them.”

  Hamlet shot her a disappointed look but seemed to understand that amphibians were verboten. Still in search of adventure, however, he made a detour up a secondary drive. This one led from the showy circular driveway to the rear of the property, dead-ending at the condo building’s single-level covered parking structure. The drive ran parallel, first to the building and then to the waist-high stone planter spilling over with broad-leaved tropical plants that separated condo traffic from the rear landscaping. The wrought-iron fence a few yards on the other side of the planter wall was the same fence that enclosed the pool where the ill-fated memorial had been held. Even at a distance, Darla could see in the blue-lit water the remains of the poster and a couple of blooms that still swirled there like garnish in an oversized cocktail glass.

  For safety’s sake, Darla coaxed Hamlet from the driveway onto the grass, though the uneven ground along the fence was not quite as conducive to walking.

  Could use a few lights out here, Darla groused to herself as the toe of her sneaker caught on a protruding stone, almost tripping her. Hamlet, with his feline night vision, had no such difficulty and kept a steady pace going. Once or twice, he glanced back her way as if to say, Pitiful human, can’t you keep up?

  They had not gone far, however, when a movement from the corner of her eye drew Darla’s attention. She glanced toward the pool again to see that someone—a woman—was walking around out there, carrying what appeared to be a cardboard box the size of an old-style computer monitor.

  The newcomer looked up just then, light glinting off a pair of steel-rimmed glasses. It was Nattie’s friend, Mildred.

  Pleased, Darla gave her a little wave. She started to call out to the woman when Hamlet abruptly leaped in front of Darla as if pouncing on another toad.

  Momentarily distracted, she checked to see that the feline hadn’t caught some critter he shouldn’t have. When she looked up again, Mildred had left the gated pool area and was moving toward the drive.

  At first, Darla was certain the woman must have seen her and Hamlet standing there in the shadows. Then she realized the old woman’s attention was focused on the parking garage. And something almost furtive in her body language made Darla hesitate to hail her now.

  Scooping up Hamlet, Darla shrank back farther into the shadows. She watched as Mildred, still cradling her box, made her way through a gap in the wall and walked into the parking garage.

  Hamlet began to struggle in her grasp, a sure sign he wanted down. Darla complied, reminding herself it was none of her business what Mildred was doing. Chances were the building’s trash container was located nearby, and the woman was simply throwing something away. Still, given the strange events of the past few days, Darla knew she wouldn’t be able to sleep that night if she didn’t satisfy her curiosity.

  Hamlet was already ahead of her on this plan. Crouching like a panther on the prowl, he moved forward toward the parking garage, putting one soft paw in front of the other without rustling a single blade of grass. Holding on to his leash, Darla trailed after him. She could see Mildred simply standing there, box still in her arms as she surveyed the half-empty structure.

  Probably just throwing out some trash, she inwardly repeated. Though, if that were the case, why was she lingering there in an empty parking spot? And then a set of headlights a few rows from her blinked twice.

  FIFTEEN

  A SIGNAL?

  Sure enough, Mildred started toward the car that had flashed its lights. Darla took a deep breath and then looked down at Hamlet. “Come
on,” she whispered. “Let’s see what old Mildred is up to.”

  Hamlet gave a soft meow-rumph and led the way. Keeping to the shadows, Darla reached the parking structure as Mildred paused beside a rusty blue Volkswagen Beetle that had duct tape patching its torn cloth top. The driver had left the vehicle running, and even Darla’s nonexpert ears could tell the Bug needed a tune-up. Not the sort of car the condo folks regularly drove, she noted, spying several dozen high-end automobiles parked in owners’ slots.

  Darla crouched lower and moved still closer. She was relieved that Mildred and the VW had chosen to meet in an illuminated spot; standing as she was in shadow, Darla knew she would be less visible to them. Hamlet, small in profile and already camouflaged in black fur, had no such worries.

  Darla was a row away when the driver abruptly shut off the engine and opened the door, while Mildred handed over the box. Then Mildred turned and scampered back toward the pool area again before Darla ever got a glimpse of the driver.

  Drat!

  Darla hesitated, then slid a couple of more cars down the row until she was directly opposite the VW. Staring through the windows of a lower-end Lexus, Darla had a clear view of her target. Unfortunately, the driver was bent over the passenger seat so Darla still couldn’t see the person’s face.

  Then two things happened almost simultaneously. The driver straightened, revealing herself to be a young woman with bleached-blond hair—Alicia’s daughter, Cindy. At the same time, Darla heard a tiny but distinct meow emanate from the battered Beetle, the sound causing Hamlet’s ears to flick curiously. The girl fired up her car and backed out of the parking spot. As she maneuvered around, Darla made a crouched sprint to the end of her row, arriving just in time to see the VW pass by.

  “Darn it, Cindy’s gone,” she whispered to Hamlet, who appeared tired now of playing spy and was sniffing an interesting twig. The odd cat exchange she’d witnessed had to mean something . . . but what, she had no idea. Her best bet would be to brainstorm the situation with Jake later that night, after Nattie was asleep.