Murder at the Dolphin Inn

by C. S. Challinor

  “Male, six-one, two hundred pounds. Forty-one years old.”

  “That’s specific, certainly. Is this a character in your novel?”

  “Uh-huh.” Diane bit into her sandwich and chewed thoughtfully for a minute. “It’s also my ex.”

  “And you want to kill him off in your book?”

  “Passionately. Along with his skanky girlfriend.”

  “How much do you want to make him suffer?”

  “Enough to make him sorry.”

  “I’m sure you could get imaginative ideas on how to do away with your character in any number of novels.”

  “That’s fiction. And usually in true crime books the perpetrator has been caught, so the murder had a flaw. My heroine must get away with it.”

  “The simplest ideas usually work best in real life,” Rex suggested from his experience as a prosecutor. Diane prepared to make notes in her pad. “The means of death,” he continued, “is probably less important than the execution. Problem is, in the case of a murdered ex, the first person the police look at is the partner, unless the victim was killed during a bank hold-up or in a car accident, or some such random circumstance. Otherwise the spouse has to have a watertight alibi.”

  “That’s why a lot of spouses resort to contract killers.” Diane speculatively tapped her pencil against her teeth. “But my heroine wouldn’t derive the same satisfaction from that. She’d much prefer to see him squirm firsthand.”

  “Well, I hope I’ve given you something to think aboot,” Rex said with certain misgivings. “I hope it becomes a bestseller, and then you can name one of the suites at the Dolphin Inn after yourself!” If you don’t go to prison first. “And be careful of libel,” he cautioned, the lawyerly side of him coming to the fore. “If your ex recognizes himself in your book and doesn’t like what he reads, he could sue.”

  “I’ll disguise him so no one will know it’s him.”

  Rex regarded Diane with curiosity. Was she over her ex? She certainly held a grudge. “I hope you have better luck with a man next time,” he said.

  Diane gave a snort of derision. “Fat chance. I’m saddled with two kids. When do I get the chance to go out?”

  “Working at a bed-and-breakfast must give you an opportunity to meet people.”

  She gave this some thought. “It’s mainly couples staying here. Quite a few Germans, some Brits. You’re the sort of guy I’d like to meet if you were single. Steady and dependable. Helen is very lucky to have you. And she knows it.”

  “I hope so, and thank you.”

  “You said you had something I might be able to help you with?” Diane resumed munching on her sandwich while Rex refilled their iced tea.

  It was another long shot. “Black-beard,” he said.

  “Black beard or Blackbeard, as in the pirate, Edward Teach?”

  “Either.”

  “Hm.” Diane wiped a crumb from the corner of her mouth with a folded napkin off the table. “Are you referring to Taffy’s little joke?”

  “What joke would that be?”

  “It’s dumb. She told me she had a fancy man on the side. This was after I found her with an expensive bottle of gin, the blue one with the portrait of Queen Victoria on the label. My father would never have gotten Bombay Sapphire for her, and she couldn’t have bought it herself since he held the purse strings. He made a note of every purchase in a ledger. But she was getting it from somewhere and hiding it from him. Taffy was very cunning.”

  Apparently so, Rex thought, remembering the stash found in the nooks and crannies of the Dyers’ private suite.

  “I know I shouldn’t talk about her like that, but she made our lives miserable, Walt’s and mine. At least I got away for a while.”

  Out of the frying pan into the fire, Rex thought, reflecting on how Diane’s marriage must have been, toward the end anyway. He pushed his empty plate away and leaned in toward her, elbows on the table, receptive to hearing what else she had to say.

  “She said this Blackbeard guy bought her the booze. He was probably named for Captain Morgan. Though I don’t know why she didn’t call him Gordon or Stoli after her favorite tipples. Rum gave her migraines. But then again, she wasn’t the most rational person on the planet. She acquired a new clown figurine from somewhere, which broke in a fight with Chuck Shumaker.” Diane shook her head slowly. “I know for a fact my father didn’t buy that horror for her. They didn’t have any spare cash. Either she drank it all or she was in rehab, which was even more expensive.”

  “If Lover Boy didn’t exist, how did she get hold of the items herself?”

  “Good question. I gave up asking because she always gave me the same answer, along with her knowing little smirk. She could have shoplifted the stuff, for all I know.”

  Rex sat back in his chair, headachy from the refrain of black beards that kept playing like a catchy and annoying tune in his brain.

  When shortly afterward he went upstairs, he found Helen back from her shopping date with Rosa. She kicked off her sandals, complaining of tired feet from all the walking. The hum of a vacuum cleaner started up on the landing, forming a tightening in front of his strained eyes.

  “We had fun,” Helen told him. “I’m no longer miffed about not going to Mexico. I’m having a fabulous time, and I hope you are, too, in your own peculiar way.” She stepped up on her tiptoes and kissed him.

  “It’s a very peculiar case.” He told her about the recurring theme of black beards that day, first from Willie and then from Diane, leaving out the more sinister details. If Taffy did know someone by that name, who was it? he kept asking himself. And was it the person Willie saw hustling the Dyers into their guest house on Saturday night at knifepoint?

  “Chuck Shumaker was dressed up as Captain Morgan for the parade, and Dennis Barber wears a fake black beard for his book signings,” he pointed out to Helen.

  “Barber. That’s interesting, you know.”

  “What is?” Rex rummaged in his wash bag for aspirin.

  “The word barber—as in beard. Do you think the name is a coincidence?”

  Rex had to admit it had never occurred to him. Sometimes Helen came up with a gem.

  ~NINETEEN~

  That afternoon at happy hour in the guest lounge, Rex suggested to the Barbers that the four of them take the wine out to the patio. He could not abide to stare at the clumsily executed paintings of tigers stalking in the tall grass, which he had learned from Diane were painted by Taffy in the days when she harbored illusions about becoming an exhibiting artist. Rex wondered why Walt didn’t take them down off the walls, but then he might have substituted them with his moth collections—a dubious improvement.

  The guests migrated to the tiki bar, a massive umbrella of thatched fronds with a wooden counter beneath, and four stools. Peggy wore a pair of white Capris, a modern version of her pirate pants. Helen modeled the black cotton dress she had purchased the day before, but on her curves it no longer looked simply like a long T-shirt. Changing into it in their room, she had said it felt “cool and comfy.” Rex had added something else, especially with her tanned legs and new gold sandals.

  Walt brought out a couple of Citronella Candles to ward off mosquitoes. After the fraught past few days, the Dolphin Inn was beginning to settle into a more relaxed atmosphere, although Walt had requested that his remaining guests keep the front door locked at all times to avoid thrill-seekers and reporters from wandering in at will.

  “Don’t know if these candles actually work,” Peggy said when he had left. “But they certainly smell nice and lemony.”

  “We’ll find out soon enough,” said Rex who was highly susceptible to mosquito bites. He offered the Barbers some wine.

  “We’re having pineapple juice,” Peggy said, covering her glass with one hand.

  “You don’t mind if we do?” Rex nodded at the bottle he held over Helen’s glass.

  “Heavens, no.”

  He poured a glass for his fiancée and then for himself. “Walt m
entioned you stayed here two years ago...,” he began.

  “Well, we did,” Peggy said in so natural a manner that her earlier omission of the fact now seemed perfectly innocent. “Taffy and Merle were away that time, so we, uh, never had the pleasure,” she trailed off diplomatically. “Walt said his mother was at a clinic and we assumed she was sick. It’s obvious now she must have been drying out someplace. Walt did a great job running the guest house with that young man—what was his name again?” she asked her husband.

  Dennis thought for a moment and shrugged.

  “We asked after him this time around,” Diane said. “But he had just left.”

  “Raphael,” Rex supplied. “According to Walt, he was let go.”

  “That’s it. Raf.” Peggy took his measure with quick, green eyes. “My, but you have been doing your homework.”

  As you’ve been doing yours, Rex thought, recalling how Peggy had Googled his name and found out about his private murder investigations. She had presumably told Diane about it, which was why Walt’s sister had asked him about committing the perfect murder. He still felt a little uneasy about that in light of the double homicide that had occurred under this roof.

  “He was an obliging young man and very eager to improve his English,” Peggy continued. “We liked him a lot, didn’t we, Den?”

  Dennis nodded in the affirmative. Rex asked if anything untoward had happened during that stay, and the Barbers said no, not that they remembered.

  “Anyway, we enjoyed the Dolphin Inn enough to book again this year,” Peggy said with a rueful shrug. “And Walt was kind enough to give us a special rate. Last year, we stayed home in Wichita on account of our son getting married.”

  “How did the wedding turn out?” Helen asked to Rex’s chagrin. He wanted to stay on topic.

  “Oh, it was beautiful, with a theme of fall colors,” Peggy replied.

  “How lovely,” Helen said. “We have gorgeous autumns in England too, the leaves turning russet and gold. But we’re thinking about a spring wedding.”

  Here we go, thought Rex. He offered to refill her wine, but she made a face. It wasn’t very good chardonnay. Rex topped up his glass and added ice cubes from a bowl on the bar top.

  “Spring is coming up pretty fast,” Peggy warned. “There’s a lot to arrange for a wedding.”

  “Not ours,” Rex interjected. “It’s going to be simple.”

  “They always start out that way,” Dennis remarked darkly.

  “Is it your first wedding, Helen?” his wife inquired.

  “Yes, and Rex’s second.”

  The Barbers wished them the best and said they just knew they would be very happy together. The women hugged. Dennis reached over and shook Rex’s hand in a rare show of warm fuzziness.

  “We should go somewhere for dinner to celebrate,” he suggested. “There’s a rib joint that’s not expensive, an olde-worlde sort of pub within walking distance. What do you say?”

  “Lead on, my good man,” Rex said with jovial humor. The word “pub” generally got his attention, and ribs sounded spot on, too.

  As they rose from their stools, Helen chatted to Peggy about how she had almost finished the Barbers’ book, and found it riveting. Peggy glowed with pleasure in the candlelight. She and Helen walked ahead, while he and Dennis followed, discussing American beers. It promised to be fine evening, with no threat of showers, as they made their way to the restaurant among the throngs of tourists.

  Half an hour later, they were comfortably and convivially installed in their booth gnawing on Charlie’s World Famous Baby Back Ribs, when Peggy suddenly blurted, “I know that man,” her recollection apparently stirred by someone she saw passing in the crowd outside the window.

  The person, whom Rex strained, but failed, to see could have been the visitor to the bed-and-breakfast two years ago, Peggy proceeded to explain. Rex pricked up his ears. She might not have noticed him tonight at all had Rex not asked about their previous stay at the Dolphin Inn, which sort of put her on alert, she said.

  “It’s as if I sensed rather than saw him just now. I only saw the back of his head. Do you ever get that feeling?” she asked the other people at table.

  “A visitor, you said?” Rex queried. “Not a guest?”

  Peggy could not be sure, jokingly blaming the “onset of senility.” But this man, she had thought at the time and whom she described as “a swarthy devil,” was perfect for her pirate hero in The British Brigand, were he to be featured in a movie. Beyond that, she could not recall any further physical details. He had come to the Dolphin Inn looking for Taffy and had left dissatisfied with Walt’s explanation that his mother was “recuperating” somewhere in preparation for the busy season. If Peggy had to guess, she would have said he was a bill collector. Rex asked if there had been words.

  Peggy shook her head slowly, remembering. “No altercation between the two men as such, just an air of unpleasantness—and perhaps a veiled threat? But perhaps I’m imagining that, in retrospect. Dennis is always saying what a fertile imagination I have!”

  Her husband dutifully agreed, and Helen smiled into her tankard of root beer. Dennis was the perfect foil to Peggy’s more extrovert nature.

  Had Taffy been the main target all along? Rex wondered. Peggy had not mentioned Merle in her account. As far as the murders went, the husband could have been a bonus, a precaution, or else collateral damage.

  Having exhausted the topic of the Barbers’ first stay at the guest house, the conversation reverted, at Peggy’s prompting, to Rex and Helen’s wedding and their respective families. Rex talked about his son and about his aged mother, who lived in a grand old terrace house in Edinburgh with an equally aged housekeeper, whom he had called Miss Bird since boyhood. She made phenomenal sponge cake and scones, but her eyesight, sadly, was failing, and she had been known to put salt instead of sugar into her baking. Helen, in turn, explained that her own mother had died of a stroke five years ago. Her father had remarried and emigrated to Australia, but he was going to make the trip home to walk his daughter down the aisle. She laughed a little.

  “I don’t think he ever thought he’d see the day. My two sisters got married eons ago.”

  “They say later marriages have a better rate of success,” Peggy told her, squeezing her hand in encouragement.

  “We can’t decide to have the wedding in England or Scotland. Rex has his elderly mother to consider. She’s as fit as a fiddle, but doesn’t like to travel. And he has colleagues he’d like to invite. I have the staff and some kids at my school. Still, I like the idea of a Scottish wedding, with a tartan theme.”

  “You’re leaving it a bit late,” Dennis said, echoing his wife’s earlier words and shaking his head in disapproval. “Spring is right around the corner.”

  “We plan on diving right in when we get back from holiday,” Rex said. “We thought we’d take a break first.”

  “You’ll need a break after,” Dennis predicted gloomily. “Our son’s wedding was a logistical nightmare. Who to invite, where to put them up. Flowers, food, photographers. It never ends.”

  Rex and Helen had attended a nightmare wedding in Derbyshire that didn’t bear thinking about, but for different reasons. It had almost given Rex cold feet.

  “Den, stop putting a damper on everything,” Peggy chided. “Don’t pay attention to him,” she told Helen and Rex, who, for his part, was not paying him much attention at all. His mind was on other matters.

  After dinner, they parted company as the Barbers wanted to return to the guest house, being early-to-bed and early-to-rise folk. Rex and Helen preferred to stay out a while longer.

  At the cupola that marked the Southernmost Point of Key West, Helen asked someone to take their picture while she and Rex posed, arms around each other. Afterward, they strolled the length of Duval. It was not quite dusk yet, but the air had cooled, and it felt good to be out and about among the cheerful crowds. A man and his German Shepherd begged on the sidewalk. The dog, dressed in
a Captain Morgan hat, sunglasses, and Mardi Gras beads, lay nonchalantly, forepaws extended, as tourists took photos and filled the bucket with dollar bills.

  The tourist couple gazed in leisurely fashion at the elegant guest houses and into windows displaying souvenirs, swimsuits, and T-shirts. They passed ice cream parlors, a homemade cookie and fudge shop wafting tantalizing aromas onto the street, and smoothie stands stocked with exotic fruit. They listened outside bars to live music, and peered into hand-blown glass and picture galleries.

  “Are we looking for anything in particular?” Helen asked after a while. The sun had disappeared behind the façades of the buildings in a vermilion ball of fire, and she pulled her cardigan out of her shoulder bag.

  “Just thought it would be nice to walk off those ribs and garlic mashed potato.”

  “And fried onion rings,” Helen added. “And banana split.”

  “I confess to a weakness for American food. Except grits.” The Americans could keep their grits, though he had to concede they probably felt the same way about kippers and kidneys for breakfast.

  “It’s so unlike you to wander about aimlessly, and I spent the better part of today walking around the shops with Rosa.”

  Not like Helen to complain either, but she was right. “Fair enough,” he said. “Well, to be perfectly frank, I’m on the look-out for a certain establishment.”

  “What sort of establishment?”

  “I’m not altogether sure, but a biker at the police station referred to it as the House of the Rising Sun, and mentioned girls. I assumed it would be on Duval.”

  “It’s probably a knocking shop,” Helen said. “Perhaps that’s why there’s no big sign over the door. I’ve been up and down Duval a dozen times and I don’t remember seeing anything by that name.”

  “The girls could be waitresses working at a folk-rock bar.”

  “Rex, I know you had a strict Presbyterian upbringing, but sometimes you can be so naïve.”

  “It’s just that I can’t see Walt being associated with a place such as you describe.”

  “Walt?” Helen expressed surprise. “Well, you never know. Though I’d have thought he’s more likely to be looking at naughty pictures.”