Murder at the Dolphin Inn

by C. S. Challinor

  Mike Free spun on Katya. “Have you done Ms. Lamont’s room yet?”

  “Don’t bother changing the sheets, lass,” Rex told her. “The police will want to take a close look.” Hopefully, not all traces of Free could be erased as easily as Connie’s name in the register.

  The wail and yelp of approaching sirens had the effect of propelling Mike Free toward the front door, practically knocking Helen off her feet in the process. Rex ran out onto the porch in time to see the innkeeper take off on a Steve McQueen-style motorbike parked at the curb, and cut in between two patrol cars blocking the Fleming Street intersection, roof lights flashing. Rex knew Diaz was with his sergeant in an unmarked vehicle positioned somewhere strategic to the proceedings, perhaps in the red Dodge Charger with the heavily tinted windows parked among the other cars on the street. As the matte black motorbike sped away in a throaty snarl, the cop cars executed a U-turn and gave chase.

  Rex watched helplessly as Mike Free tried to make his escape.

  ~TWENTY-FIVE~

  Rex darted back into the lobby.

  “Katya,” he asked the woman standing beside Helen and wringing her hands on her apron. “Where would he go? You must tell me. He in all probability murdered Connie Lamont. Don’t make yourself an accomplice.”

  “Why he kill her?”

  “I believe she saw him murder the owners of the Dolphin Inn.”

  Katya’s pale globular eyes widened. “He hated the Dyers. Big, big hate.” She swept her arms in an arc. “They lost him much business. They gossip about him, call him drug dealer. Connie, I find out from doing her room, came from Fort Lauderdale to be with him. He try to keep it secret from me! But I find folder with his picture and emails. She follow him at night. I see her go out when he leaves.”

  “Where would he go now?”

  “His fishing boat.”

  “I thought he’d sold it.”

  “A smaller boat, Night Hawk, he keeps at Garrison Bight. Sailing is in his blood. Never would he be without boat.”

  Rex ran out of the guest house holding the recording cell phone. He speed-dialed Captain Diaz. Unbelievably, he was directed to the detective’s voice mail. He relayed Katya’s information as succinctly as possible, cursing as he ended the call. Diaz must be on his radio or else on a more important call. At that moment, the thunderous roar of motorcycle engines approached from the north end of Frances, the direction Free had taken. He spotted a red bandanna on one biker, a round helmet on the other, and flagged them down. Twisted Angel grinned at him beneath a pair of aviator sunglasses and, swerving at the last minute in a blaze of chrome, skidded to a stop. His leather booted foot hit the blacktop. Rollin’ Roy pulled up beside him.

  “Can I cadge a lift?” Rex shouted over the revved throttles.

  “Where you going?” Twisted asked.

  “Garrison Bight. I’m chasing a man wanted by the police.”

  “That’s where we’re headed. Hop on.”

  As they took off, he heard Helen call after him. He turned and waved briefly, preferring to hold onto Twisted Angel’s midsection with both hands for safety. He did not have time to register her expression, but had no difficulty imagining it. They tore back up Frances onto Eaton and looped onto the Palm Avenue Causeway, crossing the bridge bisecting the inlet, all at terrifying and illegal speed, and caught up with the wailing police cars with their lights going berserk. Twisted Angel overtook them, weaving between the traffic that was attempting to get out of the way of the cops.

  The warm breeze ruffled Rex’s hair and inflated his short sleeve cotton shirt as the scenery streaked by, aquamarine sea and watercraft on one side; concrete strip malls on the other.

  “Where to now?” Twisted Angel yelled over his shoulder after turning the Harley into the marina, Rollin’ Roy on their tail.

  “Mike Free’s boat,” Rex shouted in his ear. “Night Hawk. You know it?”

  “Charter Boat Row.”

  Houseboats lined the dock, two and three-level structures on floating platforms attached to land by wooden gangways. The water trailer park displayed an array of colors, exterior wall ornaments with a nautical theme, and window boxes planted with flowers. Other house boats rebelled against such bohemian aesthetics, storing rusted bikes, crates, and coils of rope on their railed-in decks, while flotsam and jetsam rode the metallic gray ripples below.

  A tang of diesel, fresh paint, and low tide assailed Rex’s nose as Twisted Angel navigated the bike under the bridge and sped toward a line of charter boats advertising under the names of their captains emblazoned on large signs. Mike Free’s was not among them but, as they pulled up to the new wood dock, Rex spotted him leap onto one of the boats, Night Hawk, while a second man cast off the ropes amid a roar of engines and a surge of pungent fumes. The sturdy thirty-footer, equipped with a tuna tower atop a weathered wheelhouse, looked as though it had braved the elements on many occasions. Seagulls swooped and cried raucously in the vessel’s wake. Free had escaped once again.

  Rex dismounted from the motorcycle and, while the bikers compared notes on the breakneck ride, he tried Diaz’s cell phone again, and this time got his live voice.

  “I’m at Garrison Bight Marina at Charter Boat Row. Mike Free just boarded the Night Hawk and he’s getting away!” Twisted Angel had run every light and broken every speed limit, and still they hadn’t managed to stop Mike Free. Rex had entertained a fantasy of the Hells Angel wrestling Free to the ground and giving him a dunking in the oily water. “Your patrol cars got stuck in traffic,” he informed Diaz. “Wait, I think I hear them.” Not that they could do anything unless they were amphibious.

  “Don’t sweat it, Rex,” the captain said, all calm and coolness on the phone, his voice not rising one octave. “We got police boats. We’ll send out a chopper if we have to. Night Hawk, huh? Taffy Dyer must have known about the boat. By the way, how’d you get there so fast?”

  “You don’t want to know.”

  Diaz chuckled. “No tickets, I promise. Stay right there until we arrive. You did great.”

  Right now Night Hawk would be winging her way toward the mouth of the bight. “Ah, well,” Rex told Angel, punching his massive bicep in admiration of his motorcycling feats. “At least we know where he’s headed.”

  “Yeah, somewhere into the Gulf.” Seated on the motorcycle, the biker looked as dispirited as Rex felt.

  ~TWENTY-SIX~

  “I can’t believe you just took off like that,” Helen remonstrated after Twisted Angel had dropped Rex back off at the Dolphin Inn. This followed a couple or more beers aboard the Hells Angels’ psychedelic houseboat, where an assortment of Harley Davidson paraphernalia served as decoration befitting the mildewed shag carpet and retro furnishings. Rex had been unable to decide if the décor was meant to look retro or if, in fact, it was.

  “I had no choice but to take off,” he told her. “And it’s just as well I did. The police were too slow. I couldn’t afford to lose Mike Free. He could have sailed away to South America.”

  “You weren’t even wearing a helmet.”

  “It’s not required by law here in the States.”

  “That’s crazy. You’re required to wear a seatbelt in a car.”

  “I felt quite safe in Angel’s hands. In fact, it was the ride of my life.” Rex, under the anesthetizing effect of a few beers, had all but forgotten his terror on the loudly reverberating machine weaving and tearing along at breakneck speed.

  The effort to remain serious failed Helen, and she laughed. “Hardly a good example to set your son.”

  “I won’t tell him if you won’t. I think he prefers to think of me as a stodgy old fuddy-duddy.”

  “Come here, old Fuddy-Duddy, while I give you a kiss and show you how worried I’ve been about you.”

  The embrace was curtailed by the urgent ring of the cell phone in Rex’s pocket. He wandered out onto the balcony where the jasmine was beginning to sweeten the warm air and re-entered the bedroom some fifteen minutes later, beaming
as broadly as his mouth would allow. “That was Dan Diaz. He’s invited us round to his house for dinner tomorrow.”

  “You were on the phone for ages. It must have been about more than a dinner invitation. Plus, you’re grinning all over your face. Oh, Rex, can it be you have a soft crush on our charming Captain Diaz?”

  “A soft... What on earth do you mean?”

  “I detect a sort of schoolboy infatuation...”

  Rex pondered this surprising observation. “I like the man, that’s all. He’s personable and straightforward. And okay, I admire him. He never seems to get rattled.”

  “That’s all I meant. I think the term now is bro-mance. I think it’s rather sweet.”

  “Nonsense. Can we move on?” Rex asked, feeling uncomfortable. “There is more important news. Free has been apprehended offshore. The boat’s been impounded. It’s registered in the name of a mate of Free’s who is doing time for smuggling.”

  “Well, that’s certainly cause for celebration. Did the police find anything onboard?”

  “Aye, traces of contraband in a false compartment in the hull. They also found a computer-generated letter blackmailing Mike Free and signed ‘TD’ in typeface. If that’s Taffy Dyer, she was threatening to expose his new smuggling activities to Drug Enforcement. Seems like what she and Merle were saying aboot him was true, and he didn’t like it.”

  “Enough to murder them both in cold blood.”

  “Diaz obtained warrants for the first degree murders of the Dyers and hopes to get Free to confess to Ms. Lamont’s.” Rex paced the room, hands in his pockets. “Free apparently seized the opportunity of Fantasy Fest to suffocate the Dyers in their kitchen, hoping to implicate the son and generally confuse the police by adding the guests and any number of bacchanalians to the suspect pool.”

  “His plan might have worked, but for Connie.”

  Rex extracted his pipe from his pocket in preparation for a leisurely puff on the balcony watching the doves in the Poinciana trees. “Unfortunately for our lady in the red scarf, she witnessed more than she bargained for. Diaz’s team found a possible match for the boot print by the pool when searching Free’s closet at the Banyan Inn. It’s the connecting piece of evidence they need. Plus, the blue linen shirt he was wearing when apprehended has faint striations in the sleeves. Seems Connie might’ve clawed at his arms when he was strangling her.”

  The poor woman had struggled for her life. She had come to Key West looking for love and had found death. With any luck, the crime lab would identify microscopic red polish chippings in the material as a final nail in Free’s coffin.

  “It does not look as though he’ll escape justice this time around,” he assured his fiancée, who had shuddered at the mention of Connie attempting to defend herself from her assailant.

  “So, what happens now?” Helen asked. “Can you finally relax and start calling this a real holiday?”

  “I intend to. I should call Campbell and finalize arrangements for his trip. He left a message with Walt to say Melodie was coming too. Dan Diaz has granted me full use of this phone for the duration of our stay, courtesy of the Key West Police Department. After that and a smoke, I’m all yours until dinner.”

  “Promises, promises,” Helen said with a flirtatious smile.

  ~TWENTY-SEVEN~

  Rex and Helen picked Campbell and his girlfriend up from Key West International Airport, seven minutes’ drive away from the Dolphin Inn, and brought them back in the cab. To Walt’s gratification, Rex had reserved the Poet’s Attic. All but the students had left.

  “I’m a poet and I know it,” Campbell quipped, dumping his bag on one of the twin brass beds tucked beneath the skylight. A paperback tumbled out of a canvas pocket, the posthumously published Islands in the Stream by Ernest Hemingway.

  “Any good?” Rex asked.

  “I like it so far. The islands in the Stream are Key West, Cuba, and Bimini, Hemingway’s favorite fishing spots.” Campbell had always loved to fish. “I thought it would make for appropriate reading on the trip.”

  He had grown out his blond curls and sideburns, which accentuated the delicate angles of his face. He looked a lot like his mother, Rex reminisced with a tug in his heart.

  “This is so adorable,” Melodie said, her sweep of caramel-colored hair shimmering in the lamplight. The sloping ceiling was papered with bouquets of forget-me-nots on a cream background, the few sticks of knotted pine furniture lending a rustic charm to the room.

  “Scarcely big enough to swing a cat,” Campbell joked, bumping his head on a beam. “Ow.”

  “Enough with the cats,” Rex said, recalling Macavity and his less fortunate fellow felines. “And you’re next door to the students, Ryan and Michelle.”

  “Par-tay!” Campbell trumpeted.

  “A weekend in Key West! I can’t believe it,” Mel exclaimed. “Thank you.” Her remarkable violet eyes shone with emotion as she gave Rex a big hug.

  He had grown extremely fond of the girl since he solved the tragic case of her brother’s alleged suicide at Hilliard University in Jacksonville. She and his son had formed a bond during that distressing time, and Campbell had all but been adopted by the Clark family, where he had become a surrogate son. Their staying at the Dolphin Inn had been Campbell’s idea. He had allayed his father’s concerns that the murders might affect her. The circumstances of her brother’s death were so different, and it had been over three years since it happened. Notwithstanding, Rex had spoken to Walt and Diane, and no one was to bring up the recent events in Melodie’s presence, even though she knew the basic facts.

  “I’m glad of the chance to see you both again before the spring,” he told the young couple, who were due to visit for his and Helen’s wedding.

  Rex predicted other wedding bells in the not-too-distant future, but he hoped to have a breathing space in between. Dennis Barber had pointed out how grueling and expensive weddings could be. The Barbers had departed for Kansas, and the four of them had promised to keep in touch. Rex had filled in the Shumakers in Dayton about developments in the case, as promised. Hearing about the third murder, Chuck had joked on the phone, “So, Rex, you unmasked the serial cereal killer!”

  “Why don’t you both get freshened up and we’ll go out for dinner?” Rex suggested to Campbell and Melodie before rejoining Helen in their room.

  Half an hour later, as the two couples approached Sloppy Joe’s Bar, a thunderous swarm of bikers in motley gear led by Twisted Angel slowed down and, extending muscle-bound arms in unison gave Rex a thumbs-up salute. Rex waved back enthusiastically. A fitting finale to the case, he thought with intense satisfaction.

  “What was all that about?” Campbell asked, staring at the chromed rear ends of the receding Harleys.

  “Friends of your dad’s,” Helen explained.

  “You got in with a gang of Hells Angels?” Campbell shook his head in disbelief. “Yeah, right.”

  “You make them sound like a band of highway robbers.”

  “I don’t get it. How do you know them?”

  “It’s a long story.”

  Campbell, almost as tall as his father, clapped him on the shoulder. “You can take as long as you like over a couple of beers. And you never did explain how you figured out who murdered the people at the Dolphin Inn.”

  “I want to hear too,” Melodie insisted.

  “Rex found out that the killer had a black beard, and he also pieced together the blackmailing theory,” Helen said.

  “But you clinched it by remembering Mike Free,” Rex countered.

  “We make a good team.”

  They kissed.

  “Oh, my word,” Campbell said, rolling his eyes. “I think I’m going into sugar shock. Seriously, though, I’m glad he got caught before he could do more harm.”

  “Thanks to you guys,” Melodie added. “But wasn’t it all incredibly scary? I mean, wouldn’t you rather have gone on your cruise to Mexico?”

  Helen smiled brightly at Rex. “Not on
your life!”

  Rex had to wonder—had Helen caught the murder-solving bug?

  REX’S ENTRY IN THE DOLPHIN INN GUEST BOOK:

  “Wonderful hospitality is to be had at the Dolphin Inn where the capable new proprietors, Diane and Walt Dyer, provide a delectable breakfast in comfortable and cheery surroundings located close to the main tourist attractions. If ever we return to Key West, this is where we’ll stay once again. Highest recommendation.”

  Signed Rex Graves, QC, Edinburgh, Scotland

  OTHER BOOKS IN THE REX GRAVES MYSTERY SERIES:

  Christmas Is Murder

  *Starred* Review from Booklist:

  The first installment in this new mystery series is a winner. The amateur detective is Rex Graves, a Scottish barrister, fond of Sudoku puzzles and Latin quotations. In an old-fashioned conceit, Challinor begins with a cast of characters, along with hints of possible motives for each. Although set firmly in the present, this tale reads like a classic country-house mystery. Rex and the others are snowed in at the Swanmere Manor hotel in East Sussex, England. Being the last to arrive, Rex immediately hears of the unexpected demise of one of the other guests. By the time the police arrive days later, additional bodies have piled up and motives are rampant, but Rex has identified the murderer. At times, it seems we are playing Clue or perhaps enjoying a contemporary retelling of a classic Agatha Christie tale (And Then There Were None, or At Bertram’s Hotel) with a charming new sleuth. A must for cozy fans.

  Murder in the Raw

  Mystery Scene Magazine:

  In Murder in the Raw, Scottish barrister Rex Graves must expose—and I do mean expose—the killer of Sabine Durand, a French actress who goes missing one evening from a nudist resort in the Caribbean... Set on an island, Murder in the Raw is a clever variant on the locked room mystery, and Rex discovers that everyone in this self-contained locale has a secret when it comes to the intriguing Sabine. Who, though, would benefit from her disappearance or murder? With a host of colorful characters, a dose of humor and a balmy locale, you will want to devour this well-plotted mystery. I won't spoil your pleasure by divulging the solution, but suffice it to say that Challinor provides a most compelling answer.