Digging Up the Dead

by Jill Amadio

  “I am very pleased you have been so successful, Mr. Parnell. Has Karma been charged?”

  “Not yet, but we’re close.”

  “With the case so well wrapped up, would you have any objection to my seeing the murder weapon, the guitar string that strangled Oliver Swenson, the poor chap?”

  Tosca watched Parnell consider her request. He seemed puffed up with satisfaction and took on an aura of magnanimity.

  “Wait here,” he said, getting up and leaving the room. Parnell returned three minutes later with a cop holding a plastic evidence bag, which he placed on the table in front of her. Tosca leaned forward, peering intently at the thin wiry strings curled in a circle inside.

  “Could you turn the bag over, please?”

  “Sure,” said Parnell. “Looks the same from both sides, though.” He picked up the bag, flipped it and placed it back down on the table. Before he could stop her Tosca ran her fingers over the outside of the bag. Parnell snatched the bag away.

  “Mrs. Trevant! You are not permitted to touch evidence. This is a murder case, in case you’ve forgotten.”

  “Yes, it is indeed.” She got up and turned to the door. “I appreciate your cooperation. I can find my own way out. A very good day to both of you.”

  “What the hell was that all about?” she heard Parnell exclaim as she walked to the reception area. “And I don’t like the gleam in her eye when she touched the bag. Maybe it was a mistake to show it to her. I think she’s done it to me again with that air of innocence. Damn!”

  As Tosca reached the front door the cop at the reception counter called out. “Oh, ma’am, you’ve forgotten this jug.”

  “Give it to dear Inspector Parnell,” she said, “He’s going to need it.”

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  By the time Tosca returned home from her walk the next day, showered, changed into shorts and a halter top and ate a quick breakfast, it was close to ten o’clock. She picked up the large, heavy file that contained the print-outs of the three manuscripts she’d found on the flash drive. Should she bring them with her? She decided to take only the title page of each book.

  Tote bag in hand, Tosca arrived at Blair’s A-frame house. Sandwiched between a two-story colonial on the left and a Spanish-style hacienda on the right, the Swiss chalet appeared to be squeezed from both sides, causing Tosca to wonder anew at the eclectic architectural styles crowding Isabel Island.

  She knocked on the door. No answer. She shaded her eyes with her hands to look in one of the front windows, seeing only walls of shelves that held books and a few small sculptures, and minimalist modern furniture. No one. She strained her neck to look up at the topmost window in the steeply angled roof that came down almost to the ground-level outdoor balcony, half expecting someone to walk past the glass as if in a horror movie to see who was knocking. Determining that the entire structure was devoid of human life, she left the house and walked over to see if Blair’s boat was tied up at his dock.

  The Riviera bobbed gently at its moorings in the occasional swell that was rocking all the other boats. Admiring again its sleek, elegant design, Tosca called out a “Hello.”

  “I’m up top,” came the response from above.

  Graydon Blair, at the wheel in the flybridge cockpit, peered down at her, a small smile on his face. “Tosca! What a nice surprise. Come on up, you haven’t seen the view from here.”

  Tosca ascended the steps awkwardly, the tote bag on her arm banging against the handrail, and joined Blair in the cockpit. He patted the shiny white leather captain’s chair next to the one on which he was sitting in front of the controls. Everywhere she looked the wood shone with wax and the chrome sparkled, and Blair himself was dressed sportily in a white polo shirt and green, red and white plaid Bermuda shorts that looked freshly ironed with a sharp crease down the middle. Who irons shorts? she mused. Obviously, the man who is meticulous enough to keep his boat in such a pristine condition he probably never sat down for fear of wrinkling his clothes.

  “I’m just checking out a few gauges,” he said, “and making sure I batten down the hatches, so to speak. There’s a storm rapidly approaching from the Tasman Sea that promises to trigger some dicey swells over this side of the world in an hour or so.”

  “Oh, that’s hard to believe,” said Tosca, gazing at Santa Catalina Island visible twenty-five miles away. “The sea’s as flat as a pancake. Of course, I realize we’re in the bay, but the ocean from up here looks completely calm.

  “You’d be surprised how quickly the weather can change when a storm hits,” he said. “Surfers love the huge waves, but boaters know enough to stay home.”

  ”I suppose you study the weather, being a boater?”

  “As a matter of fact I am an official weather spotter and, as such, qualified to interpret weather conditions to help meteorologists make lifesaving warning decisions. I’m a trained member of the National Weather Service out of San Diego. They have a program that keeps a lookout for tsunamis, tornadoes, hurricanes and waterspouts.”

  “That sounds like a huge and important responsibility,” said Tosca. “Do you wear a uniform? Have you won any medals?”

  Blair snorted and ignored her question, saying, “Over there’s my NOAA marine weather radio for communicating.” He indicated a small side table where a square object was perfectly lined up to the table edge. Tosca reached out a hand to touch it and moved it slightly. Blair reached over and straightened it.

  “NOAA?”

  “National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.”

  “And what’s that piece sticking out on the side?”

  “A crank handle for charging in case the batteries go dead. It has a special alarm tone. That’s how I know that the storm that began way off in New Zealand is rapidly approaching the California coast and is due to hit here in half an hour or so. It’ll really kick up the waves.”

  “Oh, my goodness, I do hope it’s going to rain, too. Even if the storm hits us, I’m sure we’re safe enough here at your dock.” She looked around the flybridge and its hardtop. “How beautifully open it is. No plastic side curtains to obstruct the view.”

  “I have them, but they only need attaching when it’s raining. There are no current reports of that, just very strong winds, maybe of hurricane strength. Hey, it’s getting close to lunch. How about an aperitif, a dry sherry? I have an unopened bottle of Domecq manzanillo in the galley.”

  “Splendid.”

  She moved aside to allow him to pass and go downstairs. He returned in a few minutes with a tray that held two half-filled cordial glasses set into molded spill-proof holders.

  “And to what do I owe the pleasure of your company?” he said, handing her a glass. “Something we can toast to?”

  “To Sally and Oliver,” she said. “How odd that they have both passed on within a week of each other. Murdered, of course.”

  Blair raised his glass but said nothing.

  Tosca took a sip of the Domecq, then reached into her tote bag to retrieve the three title pages of Sanderson’s books.

  “I’ll get right to the point of my visit. As Fuller’s literary agent, perhaps you can explain these?” She displayed each page in turn. “Ever seen them before?”

  His mouth fell open, and he snatched them from her grasp. “Where did you get them?”

  “On a flash drive we found on the floor at Karma’s house the night of the party. Obviously, you recognize them. I was curious to read the document I found on the drive, thinking it could be the lost manuscript you were all looking for, but I soon realized there were three books, not one, and they had to be fakes. Who wrote them? Certainly not Sanderson.” She watched him quickly recover his composure. “Graydon, I see you know exactly what they are. Do you know the author, or should I say, the ghostwriter?”

  Blair was unable to hold her intense gaze. Eyes lowered, he said, “Why don’t you believe Fuller wrote them?”

  “There are a few things mentioned that didn’t exist when he was a
live. There’s also a different kind of humor, the kind Sanderson never possessed or wrote. I should tell you that I studied the flash drive with the so-called manuscripts on it. Own up, my friend. What’s going on? This is superb sherry, by the way.”

  He watched her empty the glass. “Let me get you a refill.”

  Blair went down the ladder, taking the title pages with him. No matter, Tosca thought, I can print out more copies. I bet he’s down there thinking up a story. Humph. Can’t fool me. It’s pretty easy to figure out that he, Sally and Karma were going to claim they’d found the lost manuscript and pretend to find two more later on. But Sally’s sudden death put a spanner in the works, and they have to wait. In the meantime, I’ve caught them out.

  A creaking sound came from the dock, and she leaned over to look down. Blair was unwinding the rope around one of the cleats that held the boat to the dock. The other cleat was empty. Perhaps the boat was tied up too tightly, she decided, and needed to be loosened a bit to allow for riding the storm that’s coming in. I really should learn a little about boats now that I am living on an island that’s surrounded by them. Our old fishing boats in St. Ives can’t compare with these sleek models.

  Blair came up the ladder, and she turned to take her replenished glass from his outstretched hand.

  “Thank you,” she said as he sat back down. “So please clear up this mystery for me. I’m going to get to the bottom of it, whether you tell me or not.”

  Chapter Fifty

  Blair suddenly reached toward the controls on the console and switched on the ignition. The twin engines roared to life. He pushed the throttle forward. The boat shot straight ahead, leaving the dock behind in a tall spray of water and Tosca clinging to the armrest as the momentum forced her back against the bench. She managed to keep the glass of sherry upright, but some spilled onto her bare legs.

  “Where are we going? Whale watching?” she said, unable to express her outrage at her kidnapping by the sheer audacity of it and saying the first thing that popped into her head.

  “We’re going for a little ride, Tosca. I’ll answer all your questions once we truly get under way.”

  He adjusted the speed, and the Riviera settled down to a slower pace to conform to the boating limit of five knots while in the harbor.

  “You haven’t even asked me if I am free to accompany you. In fact, I was on my way to the dentist.”

  Blair turned his head to smirk at her. “I doubt you’d go there dressed like that; you are much too proper.”

  “Proper? Really?” A smile of delight lit up her face. “I’m glad to hear you say that, because J.J. thinks I am a bit of a strange duck, especially with my parasol.”

  He made no reply, and once clear of the harbor and into open water, he increased the speed, steering the boat into a wide arc before slouching back in his seat with both hands resting lightly on the wheel. Within minutes the weather radio sounded its alert. A metallic male voice broadcast a brief advisory about the fast-approaching storm.

  Blair’s gaze was fixed straight ahead, but he kept the boat circling a few times as the waves began to rise higher and higher. Frightened, Tosca decided to go down to the deck. No knowing what this madman is doing, but I’ll feel safer down there, she thought, with the boat rocking the way it is. She got up from the captain’s chair and was immediately overcome with dizziness. She clutched the stair rail to steady herself. Blair put the controls on autopilot and grabbed her arms, forcing her back into the chair.

  “No, Tosca, you haven’t seen my favorite place yet.”

  “I have no interest in seeing it.”

  “Ready for another drink? I see your glass is half empty again.”

  “No, thank you,” she said, suddenly suspicious he might drug her. “The boat is rocking a bit too much for my comfort. Can you slow down?”

  “It’s not the boat, Tosca, it’s the swells. The storm has come in from the Southern Hemisphere, as predicted, and pretty fast, looks like. See those clouds out there? They mean no surfing at the Wedge today due to the riptide. No one goes in the water, it’s too risky. I’ll know more when we get closer.”

  “Shouldn’t we turn back?”

  “We won’t go much farther. I want you to see the Wedge at its most dramatic. ”

  “Graydon, while it is most kind of you to take me for a ride, I insist you take me back.”

  “Don’t you want to hear about the manuscripts?”

  Flustered at the abrupt change of subject, Tosca alternated between her panic at the turn of events, her anger at Blair’s refusal to turn back and intense curiosity about the books she’d discovered on the flash drive.

  “Ah, yes. The manuscripts. And Sally, of course. Let’s focus on the publisher’s murder first. I assume you were the one who poisoned her, and I believe I’ve figured out how. I noticed that you never use your cigar holder. I got a good look at it at Karma’s party when you left it on the table. It’s covered by a cap, so you certainly weren’t using it to hold a cigar. Does the cap on it serve to keep something inside? A large dose of giant milkweed sap, perhaps, that you added to the White Russian you gave Sally?”

  Blair twisted the wheel and made another sweeping turn, forcing Tosca to clutch the armrests with both hands as hard she could. The force of the action caused her feet to move back, kicking at her open-top tote bag under the seat. She gingerly released one hand from the armrest, reached down to steady the bag and make sure its contents were still inside. Her fingers touched her cell phone, her wallet, the keychain and the small cosmetic pouch holding a lipstick and tissues.

  The boat had been bucking and rolling for several minutes, caught up in the waves that had increased alarmingly in height. Although they were still well in sight of land, the Riviera was the only boat on the water. On the beach she saw a small crowd of people gathered far enough away from the surf to watch the towering waves safely.

  “I can tell you, Tosca, that you are right. I did poison Sally.”

  “Why?” For once she didn’t pepper her listener with extra questions.

  “Sally and I convinced Swenson to ghostwrite three books that we were going to claim were Sanderson’s lost manuscripts. Not one, but three. Swenson has been working on them for almost two years. He’d already ghostwritten Sanderson’s own last book when the author was too ill to finish it.”

  “Yes, I read it and was a little taken aback by the slight change in style, but I knew Sanderson’s health was failing, and I figured that as the reason for some of it being jumbled, and one or two threads in the plot left untied. Tell me more.”

  “Sally got cold feet about the three fakes we were going to claim were the lost books. She said it was too risky and, besides that, unprincipled. Stupid woman. Her business was floundering, and here we offered her a way out. That wasn’t too bad, though, because I thought, all right, I’ll break the contract and take the books to another publisher. I knew we’d get a big advance.”

  “I suppose Sally threatened to sue you,” said Tosca.

  “Oh, yes. She told us she was going to blow the whistle on the ghostwritten books. She also let slip she’d agreed to publish Swenson’s tell-all. She had to be silenced, of course.”

  “What about the poison?”

  Blair went on to explain how Karma told him about the toxicity of the giant milkweeds when he saw the blotches on her arms. When he commented on them out of sympathy, she blamed her own foolishness. She said her handyman had reminded her that the sap was poisonous, and she was a little anxious about the plants she’d added to her customers’ yards. Then she’d nicked one of the stems by mistake.

  “I jokingly asked her what the plants looked like,” he said, “so I’d know enough to stay away from them. A plan was already forming in my mind. Karma took me to one of the front yards on the island where she’d planted them, so all I had to do was to go around looking in the yards and come back at night to cut the stems to fill up my cigar holder.”

  As she sipped more of the Domecq
, finding its taste not so great after all and in fact somewhat sour, she listened to Blair’s tale with mounting horror as he set the boat straight and headed toward the coastline. Tosca breathed a sigh of relief that he was going back to the dock, but then her head began to spin again, and although she’d never been prone to seasickness before, she was feeling more and more groggy. Had he poisoned her sherry?

  She let her hand holding the glass slide to her side, spilling the rest of the drink on the floor and dropping the glass. She hoped that Blair would think she was becoming unconscious.

  I can hang on until we get back to the dock, she told herself, now that Blair has decided to give himself up by his confession to me. Through half-closed eyes she watched him standing up at the controls, gripping the wheel and barely able to keep his balance as the swells became higher and higher. He continued to head inland.

  “What about Swenson, Graydon?” she managed to gasp. “Tell me about Oliver.”

  “The Tubby Ghost? He had to go, too. He got cold feet, just like Sally. He told us he was backing out and letting the cat out of the bag. That would ruin our plans, so I took him for a boat ride up the coast where it was clear that, sadly, he didn’t know how to swim.”

  “But first you strangled him, didn’t you?”

  “Uh, yes, I did. But the cops can’t pin it on me, because there’s no proof. All they have is a guitar string.”

  “No, not quite, Graydon.” Tosca spoke with an effort, the narcotic taking more effect. “You didn’t use a guitar string. You strangled Swenson with the gut strings you were going to use as replacements on your Kinnor. I saw the difference when Parnell showed me the evidence bag. I know that gut has to be specially ordered from Europe. I’m sure Detective Parnell will very easily trace it back to you when I tell him how mistaken he is.”