Cruise to Murder (Z & C Mysteries, #2)

by Kane, Zoey

  Some people meandered around, while others went out to the beach.

  “I think I will take a closer look at the walls and sandy little divots to this cave, Mom. There’s something about this place; I’m drawn to it.”

  “Good idea. Me, too.”

  About ten minutes had passed when there was some excitement from the front of the cave and then a scream. “Where is she?!”

  Two men jogged into the cave, frantically looking around.

  “Matty! Matty! Where are you? Come to Mommy!” A woman, red faced with tears came running in after them.

  “Matty—your little toddler, pink sunglasses, hearts?” asked Claire.

  “Yes, I turned around, I didn’t have her and neither did her dad,” she cried, working for all the composure she could muster.

  Zo and Claire began to search with the others, their hearts in their throats.

  A long ten minutes later, Zo could hear Claire’s voice, from a muffled distance. “Over here!” Everyone ran.

  “Please God,” the mother pleaded as she ran to see.

  Claire was looking down into the ground, which alarmed everyone once again. “She is okay. But she is in this hole and needs to be lifted out.”

  The hole was two-and-a-half feet taller than the toddler. One man reached down, lifting the little girl out. Her dress was dirty, but sunglasses still on.

  The mother thanked everyone again and again. She walked away holding the child in a hug, short of a crush. Everyone was relieved and their hearts began to slow down. There was some light laughter amidst the crowd, people releasing their nervousness, as they walked out of the cave toward the bus.

  “Wait, Mom. Look at this.” Claire was pointing into the hole.

  Zo looked down into the rocky, sandy hole. It was dark inside, making it hard to see anything that meant anything.

  “Look in against that wall of the hole. There. Here, let me shine my cell phone screen down there.”

  Then Zo saw it. “Fingers!” Three gray digits protruded up through the sand. “Claire…”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  “I know… dialing!”

  “Hi, ladies. Whatcha doing?”

  “Butch!” said Zo.

  “I guess I’m too late for the tour.”

  Claire took a few steps away from them, to report her finding.

  “You live here, and you haven’t been on the tour or know all the history better than the guide?” Zo shook her head.

  “You expect too much of me, woman with soft fire hair.”

  “Take a look at that.” She pointed down.

  “What, did you find a big fighting crab? Oh, wow, Zo, an empty hole! Tourists are soooo easy to entertain.”

  “Take a little closer look down at the sand over there.” Claire was finished with her call, and flashed her cell phone’s light down for better vision.

  “Okay. I see a lot of dirty sand, big deal, and… What? What is that? Fingers? Aghaaa!” He jumped back and almost fell. “Who are you ladies? Everywhere you go there are bodies! Or, in this case, maybe parts of bodies! You guys are creeping me out!” He continued in a needy, wounded tone, “I will need some kisses all around my face, Zo, for comfort. But,” he continued in a more resolute voice, “I’m not going in any dark corners with either of you!”

  Two uniformed police soon came walking energetically toward their corner of the cave. “Someone found fingers?” they asked.

  The guide called over, “The bus driver wants to leave!”

  “I’ll make a phone call, see to it that you can get back,” volunteered Butch.

  “Go on! The police want to write a report on this hole,” announced Claire.

  The guide nodded and turned to leave, seemingly satisfied. Although, she did raise her brows in alarm when more people in plastic coats, with a shovel and gloves, came walking from a government van.

  “I’m glad they are going to fill that hole in so no one else falls in it,” the guide muttered to herself. That is what she explained to the bus driver, and the people who overheard felt that was the responsible thing to do.

  Butch, Zo and Claire stood around as observers, after the police received a rundown about Matty, the hole and how the fingers were discovered. One officer stopped the bus before it got out to the street to get on and ask the names of Matty, her mother and father, where they lived and their phone number. Everyone was impressed with how efficient the island police were about Matty’s fall.

  After some careful digging and picture-taking, one man in a full body suit and mask announced, “There’s an arm and head attached to these fingers! We can presume this hole is a sandy grave for an entire body—standing up.”

  “I feel faint,” Butch said dramatically, reaching a hand to his forehead.

  “What?” Zo looked him in the face.

  “I can’t help it if I am sensitive,” remarked Butch, whose large size would not hint of being the type prone to faint.

  The police began taping the surroundings, including the front of the cave. It was indeed a crime scene. More pictures were taken all around. The three observers were asked not to walk around except when it was time to walk out.

  “Okay, boys, let’s pull him out.” Two of the coroner’s entourage dragged the limp body out from its hole. It looked entirely dusted in sand, including the face and hair.

  “Mr. Belmont?!” Claire stepped closer for a better look.

  “My word…,” Zo uttered.

  “Oh, gross!” A voice came from behind.

  Zo turned. “Butch! I rather forgot you were here. Come on, let’s go get you some lunch.” The duo smirked at their big friend.

  “Right… Powdered Belmont between ham and rye, chased by orange juice murder.”

  The three sat in a booth at a beachside restaurant, The Pirate’s Galley. The girls ordered clam chowder with cob salad and fish and chips, while Butch opted for a double stack hamburger with dinner fries. Zo, a people watcher, was delighted to discover across the way and through a partition was Larry. He was standing beside a table of seated men of different backgrounds. He was sliding something across to those she determined to be his audience for a magic trick.

  “Your boyfriend is having lunch here.” Zo nodded in the direction for Claire to see.

  “Thanks, Mom. I will study his eating habits.”

  “Me, too.” Butch took a huge bite of burger, followed by an immediate stuffing of a fry into his mouth.

  The girls gazed at Butch’s chewing a moment and then returned to their own lunch, Claire giving a knowing smile to her mother.

  “Who went overboard last night, anyone know?” asked Zo.

  Claire shook her head, while blowing on a spoon of chowder.

  “Uh huh. This will make you feel better. It was the zombie guy. You don’t have to worry about him anymore. He’s a goner!” Butch took another big bite and stuffed a big fry dipped in ketchup, then talked around it. “You know how we know it was him?”

  Zo replied, “How?”

  “He had a grass doll stuffed down the back of his shirt and a bone necklace.” He leaned back and laughed. “By the way, did you have to give the pin you said the guy took to the police?”

  “No. He lost the loot, so the police were glad to give it back. I’ve got it here. Did you want to see it?”

  “Sure.” Butch took it and turned the pin over a couple of times. “This kind of jewelry has never wowed me… Old-maidish, grandma type.”

  “Well, look who’s here,” Larry said, smiling.

  One of the men from the table behind the partition came with Larry—an Asian with a classy suit. “Hey, Butch! Nice seein’ you here.” The man put forward a hand for a shake, which was eagerly accepted. He had an accent, and Zo wondered what nationality he was exactly.

  “Mike! You gotta come and twirl some fire swords with me at my next gig,” Butch regarded.

  “Just might do that.” A bit of a chuckle followed.

  Zo remarked, “We always come here for lunch wh
en discovering murdered bodies.”

  “Oh, you guys still creeping out over Blondie in my disappearing cabinet?” Larry mentioned. “Actually, her name was Janet. I’m thinking I’ve got to lose that part of my act for a while and get a new cabinet.”

  The magician picked up a salt shaker and napkin. “Want to see a quick trick?”

  “Sure!” they agreed.

  As he was placing the napkin over the shaker, Zo had the sudden urge to cough. It was complicated from inhaling a bit of food. She hacked loudly into her hands, which was very embarrassing for her. To add to the humiliation, Claire knocked over her ice water, in an attempt to reach a napkin. It made a horrible clatter with ice and water going everywhere.

  Everyone reached for napkins and Larry tried to summon a server. Butch had to slide over fast or get his pants watered. Even the man with Larry was dabbing with napkins that were volunteered from a nearby table.

  “I’m soooo sorry.” Zo continued coughing, but she was much better.

  Soon there were a couple of servers with towels and a tray for picking up left over ice. Some lunchers laughed over the sight once they saw there was no emergency.

  “Well, dang! You know how to get attention!” Butch exclaimed to Zo.

  “Oh, come on, I’m the one who interrupted the meal,” Larry protested.

  “Sure, and I saw three guys stand up ready to give the redhead here mouth-to-mouth!” Butch added.

  Larry’s friend excused himself, ending with a promise to get back to Butch with a call.

  “Just so you all know,” Larry warned, “I heard Customs is holding the ship further, because some dead guy showed up in a cave somewhere and they think it is related to our ship somehow.”

  Then, he said he needed to get to the ship and cautioned that it might not be that easy to get off again with all the investigation—something about terrorism. He quickly left.

  “A dead guy in a cave, huh? That guy will make up any kind of story!” Butch pushed his plate back and began to move out of the booth. “You two are murder magnets and yet so sweetly enticing, so thrilling and heart pounding, filled with scary adventure. It is terrifyingly interesting to be around you two. Goodbye, see you later. I have to go home now and cry like a little girl.”

  “Byyye, Buuutch,” they said in unison.

  “Claire, we might not be able to get off the ship, if Customs is holding it because of terrorism. I wonder what has made them think that. They get information that we don’t… Uh, oh. Where is it?”

  “Where is what, Mom?”

  “My broach. It’s not here.”

  Zo moved plates looking for it. Claire looked on the seat and under the table. After a careful search, Zo concluded, “Somebody took it! Anyone of the guys could have done it, including the friend of Larry or the waiters.”

  “What is there about that pin that makes everyone want it?!” Claire asked. “Do you remember what it looked like? It had an island-looking house and a well, with the words ‘Go the second mile.’”

  “Yes, I can tell you every detail. I’ve looked it over well enough. Look it up on your phone’s Internet. It looked like it could have been carved bone or shell.”

  Claire pulled out her cell phone and began typing and moving images on the screen. “So far there is nothing that even remotely is the same as that design.”

  “I want to go back to the cave again,” said Zo. “Everything happens in that cave. Well, except for the blondes; and, yet, one of them was found down in the ocean. It all seems to go back to the cave.”

  “We still have the afternoon. Let’s you and I go back and look together, and really analyze that place.” Claire signaled for their server.

  “The bill has been taken care of, including the tip, ma’am,” the waiter informed.

  They asked the cabby to drop them off at the area where they went down to the beach and found Mrs. Belmont. They would walk from there toward the Koona Caves.

  “I don’t know what we are looking for, sweetie, so look at everything.”

  “I’ve got my best smooth-ray sunglasses on, so everything will be clear. Nothing will escape my eyes, even to a can bobbing in the ocean.”

  As they walked and walked toward the caves, they noticed what people were wearing—or barely wearing—in sun and swim get-ups. There were boats near and far, lots and lots of footprinted sand and as they got close to the caves, they heard insistent barks and snarls of a nearby dog.

  “It sounds like a dog fight. It’s coming from way up there.” Claire started walking up a thin trail, to where an excluded beach house was perched behind the top of the caves.

  “Do you hear the viciousness in that dog’s bark and growl? What are you doing?!”

  “I just want to make sure that there is no one in trouble.”

  As Claire stood at the top of the hill, she waved her mother up. “Mother, you have got to see this.”

  When Zo reached the top, Claire was surprised that in spite of the dog’s maniacal barks, her mother’s eyes were fixed somewhere else. “What are you looking at?”

  “That is the picture on my pin!”

  The big, black, curly-haired dog was now in a frenzy behind a tall rail fence. He couldn’t quite push his head through, although he was trying. It pulled his eyelids back to slits, as his teeth flashed like a spiky bear trap chomping and drooling at them.

  The two walked up closer toward the property (and by extension, the dog). Zo, when close enough, began to speak to the dog in a high pitch, toddlerish tone. “Who’s a cutie? Oh, yes, a little pooky poo, babykins. You little cooty-cooty, sweetums!”

  The dog stopped moving and snarling a moment to look at Zo with a look of disbelief across his eyes. Then he took a couple of steps back and leaned forward again. Hair standing up on his back, he growled while gnashing his fangs, throwing spit.

  The duo stood with hands on hips, looking at the dog, when he suddenly exploded into flames.

  “What the…?” Zo’s mouth dropped open.

  Neither one of them had found words yet as they looked at each other and then at the remains of the dog. Amidst the smoke and ash was a collar.

  “Mom, you really ticked that dog off!”

  “He did seem to have anger management problems,” she agreed, then began to laugh.

  “It’s too bad that Butch isn’t here to see this.” Claire began to laugh, too; maybe because of nerves from the bizarre incident.

  The laughter was getting higher and higher, where it was hard for either of them to say their words.

  “I don’t think he could take any more, heee’d probably have a heart attack. Aghaha ha.” They were wiping away tears and bending over in laugh-weakness.

  “Should we… tell him?”

  In an exceedingly high pitch, Zo tried to master the answer “Noooo” through a laugh.

  “Okay, okay. We have to pull ourselves together and try to figure out what to do here,” Zo continued, wiping her eyes with her wrists from tears.

  “Are we going to call the cops on this dog explosion?”

  “I’m thinking, daughter, they aren’t going to accept that the dog had a bad case of gas and blew up in a fart.”

  The two began to laugh again.

  “You know I don’t like that word, Mom. Heh heh.”

  Zo continued, “They are going to begin to add up that we are at every violent occurrence and we might be hauled off; but, yes, call the police. Just tell them the truth about how we came up here. Don’t tell them anything about the broach and this house and well. We want to do a little surveillance ourselves.”

  “Surveillance?”

  “We’ll just follow along behind them. I know they will try to find someone at home here to ask questions. We will just happen to be standing in the corner. Tee hee.”

  “Tee hee,” Claire agreed.

  A police officer came and took information, bagged the ashes and bits of a collar. He asked Zo and Claire for a description of what had happened and the two began to do
a little giggling again.

  A few minutes later, Zo exclaimed to Claire in a whisper, “Well, that made us look like a couple of ghouls!” That started up more giggles.

  The house was a cottage with paned windows and hewn stone going halfway up its exterior. The women watched from a respectful distance as the police officer knocked on the estate’s heavy wood door. There was no answer. He talked on his shoulder radio to the local dispatch, asking for information on the house. A woman’s voice broke through a sound of interference, saying, “That is the residence of a Mr. Felix Lee Belmont.”

  “Whoa…, Mr. Belmont?” Claire said.

  “Thanks, Lucy. Do you have a phone number with that address?”

  Zo elbowed Claire in excitement. Claire snatched her cell phone from her pocket, opened her Contacts file and typed every number carefully.

  “If he’s dead, who do we plan on talking to?” Claire said in a hushed tone.

  “The man is rich. Maybe he has people taking care of the estate while he is away. That dog had to be fed by somebody.”

  “Good point, good point. I think maybe they shoulda laid off the salsa on the kibbles.”

  “Ya think?” Zo raised her brows.

  They watched further as the officer pulled out a phone from his pocket and made a call.

  Zo and Claire squished together, shoulder to shoulder, ear to ear, in excitement. The officer soon put his phone away and turned to walk back to his car. “Oh, you two ladies are still here.”

  “Yes, we are wanting to make sure there are no more hotdogs on the premises,” Zo joked.

  “Well, ladies, I think your job is done. You notified the police. You can go home now.”

  “Okay, okay.” Zo motioned Claire forward. They looked at each other knowingly. As they rounded a corner of the lot, they hid behind a bush, waiting for the cop car to zoom away. “We are not leaving here without seeing the inside of this place.”

  “For what? Why?” Claire asked.

  “I’ve already trespassed into Belmont’s stateroom aboard ship. I guess you can say, I don’t want to stop there. Come have fun with me.”