Florida Is Murder (Due Justice and Surface Tension Mystery Double Feature) (Florida Mystery Double Feature)

by Diane Capri

  I tried the key again. No go. Nothing but dying whines from my little starter battery.

  Both men had dropped their scuba gear. I heard their big twin Johnsons roar to life. Shit.

  Yanking the cover off the Merc with one hand, I reached into the stern locker with the other and pulled out my can of quick-start ether. I sprayed the carburetor keeping my head turned upwind.

  Cesar was on the bow of the Sea Ray, bent over, pulling in their anchor line.

  The Merc coughed to life on the next try. The Whaler was pointing north, away from the inlet, but I jammed it in gear and shoved the throttle to the max.

  I looked back over my shoulder. Now both men were on the bow of their boat, their butts up in the air yanking on their anchor line. Whatever their anchor had snagged on, all that beef wasn’t budging it. The bigger guy looked up when he heard my engine rev up. I turned back toward the inlet in a wide arc and waved to them as I passed.

  Seeing them together had made me remember the night on the beach with Ely. I was looking at Big Guy and Shorty.

  Chapter XIII

  It was nearly one o’clock in the afternoon when I parked on the south side of Bimini Lane and fed the meter all three of my quarters before crossing over to Harbor House. I didn’t see James’s Jag anywhere on the street, but for all I knew there might be a fancy employees’ garage behind the buildings somewhere. It was my fervent hope that he wouldn’t be there on a Sunday afternoon and I’d get a chance to talk to Sonya alone. Minerva was on the desk again, and she buzzed me into the building with a smile. I didn’t smile back.

  “May I speak to Mr. Long, please?”

  “I’m sorry, he isn’t in on Sunday. Would you like to make an appointment to see him on Monday?”

  Excellent, I thought.

  “Damn,” I said.

  Minerva looked at me with arched eyebrows.

  I plastered an on-the-verge-of-tears look on my face. “I guess I’ll have to tell her parents that I just couldn’t do it.”

  “Who?”

  “The Daggetts. Elysia’s parents asked me to stop by and pick up some of her things.”

  “Well, miss, I don’t really have the authority . . .”

  “They wanted me to speak to her friend Sonya, too, because … well, you know how parents are. They just have to find out everything she did on that last day. It’s all they have left now.”

  Minerva scrunched her brows together and pursed her lips. The fine web of wrinkles deepened around her eyes and lips. “Well, I don’t see any harm in that. Specially seeing as the two girls were roommates and all. You should have told me right off. You don’t need Mr. Long’s permission for that.”

  She picked up the phone and dialed an in-house extension. “Sonya? There’s a lady here who’d like to talk to you about Elysia. You got a minute? … Uh-huh … Okay. I’ll send her on back.”

  James hadn’t mentioned Sonya was Ely’s roommate.

  Minerva pointed to the door opposite her desk. “Just go on through to room twelve. I’ll open it for you. It’ll be on your right. She’s expecting you.”

  “Thanks.” When I reached the door a buzzer sounded and the lock released.

  The bedroom door opened within seconds after I knocked. Neither one of us said a word at first, although we recognized each other. She was the blond girl who had run into James in the hallway yesterday. He’d called her Sunny. There was open distrust in her eyes.

  “May I come in?”

  I saw the gap in the door start to close, so I pushed my way in and just started talking.

  “Thank you so much for seeing me like this. I know it must be very hard on you, losing a friend like that.” I crossed to the far side of the small room, noticing the open suitcase on the unmade bed. I pointed to the other bed. “Was this Elysia’s bed?” She nodded.

  I sat down on the smooth navy bedspread. “Had you two been roommates long?”

  She closed the hallway door and leaned against it, crossing her arms under her ample breasts. She was wearing a white tank top and green satin jogging shorts. With her long blond hair and shapely legs, she looked like the type of model who is usually photographed draped over an outboard engine or a motorcycle.

  “I already talked to the cops, and I’ve got nothing else to say. Who are you?” she asked.

  “My name is Seychelle Sullivan. Maybe Elysia mentioned me.”

  I saw in her eyes that she did recognize my name, but her defenses weren’t down yet.

  “Yeah,” I went on, “we sure had some great times together. Did Ely ever tell you what we did on her seventeenth birthday?”

  A hint of a smile sparkled in her eyes, and she nodded. “She told you about the gorilla suit? She once told my friend B.J. that she loved gorillas. Well, I was complaining to him that I didn’t know what to get her for her birthday, and he said, ‘Let’s rent her a gorilla suit!’ And we did. We made her wear it all weekend—even to work. Only she’s such a shrimp, it was the funniest-looking, shortest-legged gorilla you’ve ever seen.” The room grew terribly quiet when I stopped laughing. “I mean was. She was such a shrimp. God, that’s hard to get used to.”

  After another long, uncomfortable silence, Sonya stuck out her chin and said, “She called you her guardian angel. But I don’t believe in angels.”

  “Yeah, she called me that because I was just trying to look out for her. I knew she didn’t have parents who were going to care, but I cared. A lot. And Ely knew that.”

  She shrugged. “Yeah, I guess.”

  “And I still care about her now. I care about what they’re saying about her, and I know it isn’t true. I don’t believe Ely’s death was an accident or suicide. I don’t believe she was willingly using drugs again, either. Someone killed her.”

  She walked over to the closet and began pulling clothes off the hangers, balling them up and throwing them into the suitcase. “I don’t know anything about that.”

  I stayed quiet for a while, knowing the silence would work on her.

  Finally she flopped down onto the bed and sat hunched over. She stared at the carpet and rubbed her toes across the fibers. Finally she looked up. “What do you want? I don’t know nothing. Leave me alone!”

  “Were you working the door when Ely came home Friday night?”

  Her blue eyes glanced up at me with a guilty look, the way Abaco used to look when she’d been left in all day and had peed on the floor in the cottage.

  “I don’t think I should be talking to you.”

  “Why not? I was a friend of Ely’s. I’m just trying to find out what happened to her. Don’t you want to know what happened to her?”

  I almost didn’t hear it, she spoke so softly. “No,” she said, and she started to cry. She had looked so tough, so invulnerable at first, that I had nearly forgotten she was just a kid.

  I pushed aside her suitcase and sat next to her. “What is it, Sonya?”

  “Sunny, call me Sunny. Ely did. I hate Sonya.” She wiped at her eyes trying to regain her composure, but the tears continued to spill down her cheeks. “Shit, I gotta get out of here.”

  “How old are you?”

  “Fifteen.”

  Oh, man, at fifteen, I was still playing on a girls’ softball team and hanging out on the river with my dad. I was tall and lanky then, dressed in cutoffs and T-shirts to hide what curves I had, and boys ignored me. I had no idea what it would be like to be a little girl in a woman’s sex-kitten body like Sunny’s.

  “Where are you from?”

  “Indiana.”

  “Don’t you think your family misses you?”

  She didn’t answer right away. Then she said, “I don’t have a family. My parents died when I was little.”

  “I’m sorry. I kinda know what that’s like. My mother died when I was eleven.”

  She didn’t say anything for a long while. The room was quiet aside from her occasional sniffles. Finally she looked up, her blue eyes now rimmed in red. “Do you still miss her?”

&
nbsp; Decades can go by and you can think you are so over it, and then one little question can just rip it all open again and make the wound as fresh and raw as it was that hot day on the beach. “Yes. Every day of my life.” She nodded and didn’t say anything more for a while as we sat there next to each other each essentially alone with our memories.

  She inhaled deeply. “I was raised by my sister and her husband.”

  “Where’s your sister now? Maybe you could go back to live with her.”

  “I don’t know where she is. Probably dead. She got on drugs, and then she tested positive. She just left.”

  There was more to the story, and though I felt pretty certain I knew what it would be, I had to let her tell it.

  “That was when Ray started going after me. Then he threw me out because I wouldn’t sleep with him anymore. Said I wasn’t good for anything.”

  It was a different variation of the story told by most of the girls in this place.

  “Is there anything I can do to help you?”

  She turned and looked at me, as though calculating what harm or good I could do her. “You helped Ely a lot. She told me.”

  I took a deep breath to keep the quiver out of my voice. “She was my friend. I’m really going to miss her.” Sunny stood up and went into the tiny bathroom. I heard the water running. When she returned, the tears had stopped.

  “I might know something that could help you a little. But see, I’m getting out of here. And I don’t have all that much time or money.”

  I opened my shoulder bag and pulled a twenty out of my wallet. Her offer hadn’t been well disguised, so I figured there wasn’t any need to try to be tactful. I put the twenty on the bed. She snatched it up and stuffed it in a tiny satin handbag hanging on the doorknob.

  “Okay. I came here about four months ago. That’s when I first met Ely.” Sunny went back to throwing things into the suitcase. “She didn’t talk much at first; she was always busy with her work and all. But after a couple of months, she started giving me some hints about how to make it and all. She told me the real story about this place, trying to keep me out of trouble, but by that time, it was already kind of late.”

  “What do you mean, the real story about this place?”

  She went on with the story, ignoring my question. “I thought I knew exactly what I was doing, and I wouldn’t listen to her at first. But it turned out she was right after all. This place isn’t what I thought it was.”

  “What are you trying to say?”

  She didn’t answer right away. When she did speak, the words came more slowly, more measured. “You asked me about if Ely was clean. Yeah, she wouldn’t ever have used drugs again. Even if she wanted to kill herself, she wouldn’t have done it like that.”

  Collazo now knew she hadn’t killed herself, but I didn’t see any reason to scare this girl with those kinds of details.

  She picked up a small stuffed dog off the bed and hugged it to her chest. “Promise you won’t tell anyone I told you this?”

  I nodded solemnly. “Yeah. I promise.”

  “Okay.” She took a deep breath. “I hope I’ll be gone out of this town by tonight anyhow. See, I was working the door Friday night when she came in. She signed in and went back to the room. An hour or so later, she left. She went running out, real upset like, crying and screaming and all. Then yesterday morning, Minerva calls me into the office and tells me Ely’s dead. She says the cops called and said they’d found Ely in the river and they were coming over here to talk to the people who knew her. She tells me I’m not supposed to tell anyone that Ely was here on Friday. She ripped the page out of the sign-in book where Ely signed in. She promised me something if I’d go along with them.”

  “What did she promise you?”

  “I can’t tell. It doesn’t matter. Ely told me not to trust them, but I didn’t believe her. I should have.”

  “What about James? Sunny, do you trust him?” At the mere mention of the name, she turned all teenage moony and lovestruck. It was obvious she had a big-time crush on him.

  “I can trust him all right. He’s not like the others. He doesn’t know everything that goes on here. He’s gonna help me get a new start and all. I know he will.”

  The phone rang and she picked it up.

  “Yeah? Oh, hi!” Her face stretched into a wide smile. “Uh-huh ... okay.” Her eyes flicked in my direction. “Yeah. Well, a little.” The voice on the phone grew so loud, I could hear the angry tones across the room, and Sunny’s smile slowly burned out. “Okay. I promise. Bye.” She hung up the phone and turned to face me. “You gotta go.”

  “Who was that? On the phone, did somebody just tell you not to talk to me?”

  She began scooping all the cosmetics on her bureau into a shopping bag, ignoring me.

  “Sunny, what did you mean when you said Ely told you the true story about this place?”

  She spun around to face me. “I can’t talk to you no more. Go on. And please, don’t tell anybody that I talked to you at all.”

  “Sunny, tell me what’s going on here. I want to help.”

  “Well, you’re not helping.” Her voice sounded strained, frightened. “You’re only getting me in trouble. Now go. Get out of here.”

  I set one of my business cards down on top of the clothes in the suitcase. “If you need help or a place to stay, or if there’s anything you want to tell me, that’s my phone number.”

  I found my own way out, and as I walked down the hall, I wondered why James had lied to me about Sunny. What had happened that night to make Ely so upset that she would flee—and then turn up dead?

  Since Minerva was on the phone, I just waved to her as I passed through the lobby area. As I went out the door, I heard her saying into the telephone, “No, Mr. Burns, don’t worry. I’ll see to it.”

  Okay. So Burns is a fairly common name. But like Detective Collazo, I no longer believed in coincidences.

  ***

  By the time I drove back over the drawbridge, it was past three o’clock, and my stomach was protesting loudly. At a red light, I checked my wallet. Thanks to Sunny, I was down to my last twenty. A drive-through would be cheaper but I was more likely to find work hanging out at the Downtowner. I headed for the restaurant and bar on the bank of the river.

  Pete smiled when I came through the door but then his expression turned serious, as though he had suddenly remembered something. He waved me over.

  “Hang on a minute, Pete,” I called out, and pointed to the back where the pay phone was. I wanted to talk to Jeannie first and find out how things were going on the legal front. I doubted she’d been able to do much over the weekend, but I hoped.

  She picked up on the seventh ring, just as I was getting ready to give up. She sounded like she’d been trying to run a marathon.

  “Jeannie, Seychelle here.”

  “Oh, hi,” she said in between gasping breaths. “I was outside working in the yard when the phone rang.”

  I imagined Jeannie running up the stairs to her place, her muumuu flapping in the breeze.

  “You catch your breath, and I’ll tell you what I’ve found out so far. Then you can fill me in on your side of things.”

  “Okay.”

  Jeannie hadn’t known Ely personally, but she had always had a good sympathetic ear. I found myself close to breaking down again as I told her about the events of the past twenty-four hours.

  “I went back up to Harbor House and spoke to Ely’s old roommate. She was working the front desk the night Ely died. She said Ely did come in and then ran out upset and crying about an hour later. The folks at Harbor House tore out the page in the log where Ely signed in. Then they made this girl hush up about it and lie to the police.”

  “Do you think they had something to do with her death?” Jeannie asked.

  “I don’t know.” I told her about my date with James and the face that I saw briefly at my kitchen window. “It was certainly not my imagination. Someone was spying in that window.” />
  “Maybe it wasn’t you they were spying on.”

  “James? I hadn’t thought of that. Hmmm. To be honest, I can’t figure James out. There’s definitely something going on at Harbor House, but I’m not certain he knows about it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I heard something strange when I was leaving Harbor House this afternoon. The lady at the front desk, Minerva, was on the phone, and she referred to the caller as Mr. Burns. I was wondering if it could be the same one. What have you found out about him?”

  “Not much. He has an office off Las Olas, very high-rent district. The scoop from friends of mine is that in spite of his upper-crust veneer he is a real scumbag. He likes to take criminal cases for the rich and famous, and he cleans up their messes. If some rich brat gets caught dealing dope in his prep school or a local commissioner is arrested for exposing himself up in Holiday Park, they call Burns. They like him because he’s not a publicity hound like a lot of these guys. I can’t get past his secretary, though, and he won’t return my calls.”

  “Well, he called me.” I told her then about the message on my answering machine. “Fifteen thousand is still chicken feed compared to what I could win if I took this to arbitration. They must know that or they wouldn’t be threatening me.”

  “Fifteen thousand is better than nothing.”

  “Don’t say that. You’re my attorney, for crissakes.”

  “I know. But I’m worried about you, Seychelle. These are not nice people.”

  “Anything more on who’s behind the Cayman Islands corporation?”

  “Nothing concrete, but I have my suspicions. I suspect that slimeball Benjamin Crystal never really sold the boat. I could be wrong, but I’ve been doing a little research on him. Crystal is the owner of record of several Top Ten Clubs, all strictly legitimate. That’s his public front. On the other hand, he is alleged to be involved with bookmaking, loan sharking, and prostitution through the clubs. They have been trying to gather enough evidence to close it down, but up until now, Crystal has been too smart. The only reason he’s in jail right now is because of a coke bust that was a bit of a fluke. Normally, Crystal doesn’t go near drugs—at least to import them. Not that he’s above it, but he’s making so much money on the sex business, why bother? But he did own this little interisland freighter so the cops began to suspect he might be running drugs. They’d been over it many times with drug-sniffing dogs, but that boat was always clean. A man named Zeke Moss was captain— Crystal’s cousin by marriage or something—and the cops now think he kept the freighter just to give this cousin a job. He was busted bringing a ‘gift’ to his cousin in the boatyard.”