by Junie Coffey
OTHER TITLES BY JUNIE COFFEY
Sunbaked
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2017 by Junie Coffey
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Lake Union Publishing, Seattle
www.apub.com
Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Lake Union Publishing are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.
ISBN-13: 9781542046459
ISBN-10: 1542046459
Cover design by Danielle Christopher
CONTENTS
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
1
Nina woke up with a loud banging reverberating through her skull. She rubbed her eyes and sat up, trying to get her bearings. It took her a moment to realize that she was on the faded chintz sofa in the cottage she had recently bought on the island of Pineapple Cay. She was still wearing her black silk party dress from the night before. She gingerly held the sides of her head with her fingertips and looked out the window at the beach. The sun was already high in the sky. The tide was out. Fronds of coconut palms swayed in a gentle breeze. With great physical effort, Nina shifted her gaze from the vista of white sand, palm trees, and turquoise water that constituted her backyard to survey her surroundings.
The room was a mess. Half the contents of her bookcase were scattered across the floor. A trail of wet towels led from the bathroom to the bedroom door. There was a half-eaten birthday cake on the kitchen table, the candles melted all the way down into pink wax puddles on the creamy-white icing. Next to the cake sat Ted Matthews’s battered wide-brimmed khaki hat—the one she rarely saw him without. Nina’s eyes widened, and she was suddenly jolted fully awake. What happened last night? Had Ted been there? Ted Matthews, the handsome neighbor who owned the fishing lodge on the point up the beach from her. Ted Matthews, with whom she had only recently shared a knee-wobbling kiss after many days of meaningful looks. Surely she would remember that.
Nina stood up cautiously and tiptoed across the room to her half-closed bedroom door. She paused for a second, listening for the sounds of Ted’s breathing. Nothing. Then she heard the rustling of sheets as someone rolled over in bed. She pushed the door open with the tip of her finger and peeked in. Danish Jensen, her mailman/yoga instructor/bartender, lay sprawled across her bed sound asleep, wearing only his boxer shorts. Nina closed the door quickly and silently, then stood in the small hallway in her bare feet and wrinkled party dress while she tried to figure out what was going on and what she should do now.
She wasn’t aware that the loud pounding in her head had stopped until it started again. This time it was not coming from inside her head, but from the front door. Through the sheer curtain covering the window in the door, she could see the tall, rangy outline of Deputy Superintendent John “Blue” Roker, the Pineapple Cay chief of police. He appeared to have a constable in tow.
Nina hesitated, then crossed the varnished pine floor to the door. He must be here about Les. Les was her recently arrived neighbor. The neighbor with the hot tub. The one with whom she had recently had words. But the look on Blue’s face as she opened the door was far too serious for his visit to be about Les.
“Morning, Nina,” said the ever-polite Blue Roker. He had the good looks of a movie star, tall with searingly blue eyes that contrasted with his smooth brown skin. He was not the chatty type, and this trait combined with his height gave him an intimidating presence. He’d been unfailingly courteous to Nina since she’d moved to Pineapple Cay a month and a half ago, but she still found him a little unnerving at close range.
“Hello, Blue,” said Nina, careful not to stare directly into his eyes for too long. Her voice was a bit scratchy, it seemed.
“May we come in?” he asked, taking off his hat. His deputy did the same. She became very aware of the holstered gun on Blue’s hip.
“Of course,” said Nina, stepping aside to let the police officers enter. They made their way into the house’s common area—an open living room/dining room/kitchen that ran the length of the cottage facing the beach and the Caribbean Sea.
“Please, sit down,” said Nina, gesturing to the sofa and the matching chair beside it. She prayed that Danish would not choose this moment to make his appearance. She watched them sit, and the younger officer extracted a notebook and pencil from his pocket. They both studied her without speaking.
Trying to fill the silence, she asked, “Would you like tea or coffee?”
The constable opened his mouth to speak, but Blue cut him off. “No, thank you.”
Nina watched Blue methodically sweeping the room with his eyes, logging the pile of books, the wet towels on the floor, the collapsed birthday cake, and Ted’s hat on the table. His eyes rested on the hat for a couple of seconds and then flitted briefly to the bedroom door before he returned his gaze to Nina. She sat uncomfortably on a wooden kitchen chair. His gaze drifted over her mussed hair, bare feet, and disheveled dress, and then he glanced over to the high-heeled shoes discarded by the back door that led out onto the veranda. The shoes. Right. Nina wiggled her toes and felt sand between them.
“Nina, I have to ask you a few questions,” said Blue. This was beginning to sound serious.
“OK,” said Nina. “What’s going on?”
“Are you a close friend of professor Philip Putzel?” asked Blue.
Philip. Nina almost laughed.
“No. I wouldn’t say that, exactly,” she replied. “He’s the head of the department at the college in New York where I taught before moving here. I know him quite well, I guess, as a colleague. I sort of worked for him—or more precisely, under him. I was a junior instructor. He’s a full professor with tenure. Untouchable.” Blue looked at her intently as she spoke. The constable made a note in his notebook.
“Philip Putzel was attacked last night,” said Blue evenly. “Someone tried to kill him and came very close to succeeding.”
Nina breathed in sharply and covered her mouth with her hand.
Blue continued, his eyes fixed on hers. “He was found unconscious this morning by a hotel guest on the beach at the Plantation Inn. His injuries indicate foul play. You had dinner with him there last night, is that correct?”
That’s right. The banquet. They had all been seated together around a candlelit table, the warm night air floating in through the open windows. Nina was seated with Philip on one side and Philip’s ex-wife Sylvia on the other. Victor and Razor Hudson were there, and so was Philip’s research assistant, Bridget. Bubba Delancy and his wife, the owners of Delancy’s Distillery, had joined them. Nina recalled the moon on the water and the glittering lights from Bubba’s yacht moored out in the cove. There had been a piano player dressed in a white dinner jacket playing old jazz standards in the bar. She remembered taking a sip of her wine as she settled into her seat, finally relaxing after the busy weeks of planning the symposium. The setting was magical, and the evening was unfolding nicely. She’d done her job well. And now someone had tried to murder Philip Putzel. A dead conference delegate would not be a sign of a successful event.
“Yes, I was t
here,” said Nina. “Philip gave the keynote speech at the dinner last night. We were all there. It was meant to be a highlight of the conference. What happened? Is he all right? Do you need his wife’s contact information?”
Nina glanced around for the three-ring binder in which she’d been keeping all the bits of paper related to organizing the conference. She felt slightly nauseous from the combination of her hangover and the shock of hearing about Philip. She was even woozier when she realized her binder was in the bedroom; getting it would mean opening the bedroom door. She sat for a moment, trying to take it in.
“I can’t believe it. What happened? He was fine at dinner. Well, I mean he was in good health and content with the way things were going. He gave his speech, the dinner party broke up, and the last I saw him, he was regaling someone with a story in the bar, looking like he was having a good time.”
Then another horrifying thought dawned on her.
“Wait a minute, Blue. You’re not thinking I tried to kill him, are you?” She stared at him incredulously, temporarily immune to his mesmerizing gaze.
He looked at her without speaking for a second, rubbing his temples with the tips of his fingers.
“I’m asking for your assistance in solving this crime, and in preventing a second attempt on Philip Putzel’s life. He’s here on Pineapple Cay as a result of his connection with you. As far as we know, he has no other ties to the island of any kind. This is the first attempted homicide on Pineapple Cay in over twenty years. Therefore, I consider it unlikely that the perpetrator is a member of the local criminal class. They generally confine their activities to petty theft, small-time smuggling, and poaching. Whatever light you might be able to shed on the circumstances surrounding the events of last night would be very much appreciated.”
“So, I’m a person of interest, assisting the police with their inquiries,” said Nina matter-of-factly. She felt a bit insulted. “I didn’t have to kill Philip Putzel to get away from his petty feuds and drama, Blue. I moved to a beautiful tropical island a thousand miles away.”
“And shortly after you relocate, he also arrives; then, within forty-eight hours, someone tries to kill him. What feuds did you need to get away from?” asked Blue.
“Well, none in particular. He wasn’t a factor in my moving to Pineapple Cay. I hardly ever think about him, to be honest, and I’m sure he thinks of me even less. He just isn’t one of my favorite people. Unfortunately, he rubs a lot of people the wrong way, I’m afraid you’ll discover. That doesn’t mean I’m glad someone tried to kill him. Obviously.”
Blue sighed. “Nina, look. I know you didn’t try to kill him, all right? But I need a lead, and we’re losing valuable time. We’re a small detachment on a small island. I’ve grounded flights at the airport temporarily while we check out all arriving or departing passengers, and I have officers watching the marina and marine traffic, but as time passes, the attacker’s trail will go cold. He or she could be anywhere on that big, wide ocean in no time flat. Worse, I have a terrible feeling that the perpetrator is still hiding somewhere on the island, watching and waiting for the opportunity to try again—and even more determined to succeed the next time. Whoever did this meant business, but the physical evidence at the crime scene is, so far, inconclusive. I need a motive. That’s where I need your help. Who might want him dead? You know these people, don’t you?”
“There are about fifty participants in the conference. I don’t know all of them, and neither would Philip, but I have their names. I know the group seated at my table last night, some better than others. They would also be the people who know Philip best. Offhand, I’d say that most—if not all—of them have, at some point, been victims of Philip’s breathtakingly callous treatment of anyone he feels is beneath him. Which is to say, pretty much everyone. It was some speech he gave last night. Ripped open a few festering wounds. But I can’t really see any of them as a murderer. They’re a bunch of book-toting college professors!”
“You might be surprised what your otherwise average human being is capable of doing on an otherwise average day,” said Blue. “Let’s start with the people who sat with Professor Putzel at dinner last night, then.” He turned to the constable. “Mandy, will you please go get us some coffee? I think we’re going to need it.”
“Yes, sir.” The younger officer started to rise. Nina thought of Danish slumbering in the bedroom a few feet away, and she jumped to her feet.
“Blue, I just woke up, and I think I’d be a lot more use to you if I could take a quick shower and change my clothes. I promise to be in your office in twenty minutes. If I’m not, you can always arrest me.”
Blue hesitated for a moment, glancing at the bedroom door. Maybe he was weighing the odds of her harboring a murderer in her boudoir against a reasonable request to bathe. Maybe he was just wondering if his friend Ted was in there.
“Of course. We’ll wait outside and give you a lift to the station. I appreciate your cooperation,” he said. Blue rose, and his constable followed him out the door to a red Jeep with a police insignia on the door.
Nina saw a woman walking her dog on the opposite side of the street, her head swiveling to take it all in. Great, thought Nina. The Pineapple Cay bush telegraph has been activated.
As a rule, not much happened in the quaint village of Coconut Cove, population three thousand. The police chief’s Jeep parked in front of Miss Rose’s cottage, so recently bought by that lady from New York, would be a juicy tidbit to chew over down at Carrie’s beauty salon this morning.
Nina showered as quickly as she could, letting the warm water run over her tender skull and wake her foggy brain. Wrapped in a towel, she stepped over the debris scattered across the living room floor, opened the door to the veranda quietly, and went out to snatch a clean pair of jeans and a pink flannel shirt off the clothesline. The air smelled sweet and soft, and the blue sky was dotted with puffy white clouds. She glanced up the beach to the point as she gathered her clothes. There was no movement in front of the fishing lodge. Only the roofs of the guest cottages and the main lodge were visible above the fringe of palms and casuarina pines that lined the sandy beach. The four or five outboard motorboats that were usually pulled up onto the sand in the evenings and on windy days were gone. It must be business as usual today at Matthews Bonefish Lodge.
Inside, she tiptoed past her bedroom door and slid on her flip-flops. She’d have to get to the bottom of the Danish issue later, when Blue Roker wasn’t parked in front of her house. She shut the front door gently behind her. No one bothered to lock their doors on Pineapple Cay. That was how rare crime of any sort was.
As Nina approached the police Jeep, the constable hopped out of the passenger seat and held the door open for her. She slid in front beside Blue, and the constable shut the door behind her without speaking. Blue turned the key in the ignition, glancing into the rearview mirror as he pulled away from the curb. Nina looked back to see the constable still standing on the sidewalk in front of her house.
She turned to Blue. “So, you’re watching my house? Is he waiting until we’re out of sight to go rummaging through my underwear drawer looking for a smoking gun or a bloody knife? Or maybe there’s a to-do list stuck to the fridge door with ‘Kill Philip Putzel’ written on it?”
Blue sighed again. “Right now, and until we can complete a thorough search of the inn and interview all the guests and staff, the only lead I have is you,” he said without taking his eyes off the road. “It’s possible the assailant has ties to both of you and will seek you out.”
“Great!” said Nina, alarmed. “Now you think some incompetent but frustrated murderer is going to turn up at my house?”
“I just have to cover all the bases,” said Blue. “And for the record, you need a search warrant authorized by a judge to examine the contents of someone’s drawers.”
Nina snorted. The situation was so surreal she felt giddy. Blue didn’t seem to notice that he’d made a junior high school joke. She wondered if
she was still a little drunk. Punch-drunk, maybe.
Blue glanced over at her, his eyes hidden behind police issue mirrored shades. “Also, for the record, you need to be a police officer to execute a search warrant and to examine another individual’s property.”
Was he alluding to her past exploits as an amateur sleuth on Pineapple Cay? She waited for him to continue, but he had reverted to his strong, silent-type mode. Apparently, she would have to wait until they were at the station to find out more about Philip.
Nina echoed Blue’s sigh and rolled down the window, resting her head against the frame and letting the soft, fragrant breeze soothe her temples. She watched the scenery roll slowly by. Nina’s house was on the edge of town; to drive to the police station, they passed through neighborhoods of candy-colored cottages tucked in behind white picket fences and stone walls draped in cascades of pink-and-purple bougainvillea.
The speed limit in the village was twenty miles per hour, and the golf carts that made up most of the local traffic topped out at fifteen miles per hour. Nina could sense rather than see the impatience building in Blue as they crawled along behind a banana-yellow golf cart rental driven by a pair of tourists in matching beige shorts, red T-shirts, and bright-white sneakers. They both had their eyes on the prettily painted clapboard cottages and tidy flower gardens that lined both sides of the narrow lane. The woman touched the man’s shoulder and pointed to a hummingbird feeder hung from the eaves of a deep veranda. He pulled the cart over to the side of the road, digging out his camera with one hand as he went. Blue swerved out and around them.
As they rolled through the small commercial district with its row of shops and striped awnings shading the sidewalks in front, Nina mulled over the chain of events that had seemingly culminated in Philip Putzel’s near demise here in this sleepy island paradise.
2
It had all started a couple of weeks ago. Nina had just returned to Pineapple Cay after a two-week magazine assignment on an island farther south. The assignment had involved trekking across the densely forested interior of the island alongside an actor famous for his portrayal of Mafia gangsters in movies, and a naturalist revered for rescuing orphaned animals and nursing them back to health at her wildlife refuge. The idea was that the gentle, animal-loving naturalist would help the tough, hard-drinking actor get in touch with his never-before-revealed feminine, nurturing side, and he would teach her a few street smarts that might come in handy in the jungle. The editor was counting on the inevitable clash of personalities to generate some entertaining anecdotes over the ten-day trek across the island, which Nina would be on hand to record and then write about.
