Coastal Fury Boxset (1-3)

by Matt Lincoln

  “What about the so-called associate you mentioned earlier?” I asked. “We can look into that person and see where that leads.”

  “He was found dead a few days after that incident. I’m afraid he won’t be able to help you.”

  Either this guy thought of everything, or he really was another person under the thumb of the Trader.

  “Thank you for your time, Samuel.” I turned to Holm. “Do you have any questions, partner?”

  “Just one.”

  “Yes?” Wright regarded Holm with a mild gaze. “What can I answer for you, Agent Holm?”

  “Do you raise anything special in your greenhouse?” Holm asked. “Or have special plant collections?”

  “I work to cultivate endangered species of flora,” Wright answered. “Is this pertinent to the case?”

  “What about metastelma barbadense?”

  Wright brightened. “You’ve heard of it?”

  “Yeah, we have.” I nudged Holm and hoped he wouldn’t say more. “What do you know about it?”

  “It is odd that you ask.” He set the rod back in its holder. “I sponsor a top-rated horticulturist, and I brought her a box of seeds I found in the mansion during restorations a few years ago. We found that the seeds must have been at least fifty years old.”

  I saw where he was going. “Are you saying some of them are from that, how did you call it, Holm?” I was terrible at scientific names.

  “Metastelma barbadense.”

  “Right. So, this plant that hasn’t been seen in two decades, was that in your little collection?”

  Wright’s excitement waned. “Yes, and it sprouted. They are doing quite well, and we’re ready to donate some to the conservation effort.” He took a close look at our faces. “Why? Is something wrong?”

  “Who all knows about this?” I asked.

  “Only my horticulturist, Eileen Derringer, and myself. Gentlemen, if something is the matter, I need to know.” The man seemed genuinely alarmed. His property, his plants, his status, all of it pointed to him as the Trader. It was clear as day.

  “Dammit!” I stalked back to the shore.

  Holm apologized to Wright and then ran after me. “Ethan, what’s going on?”

  “It’s too obvious.” I wanted to punch something. “We’ve been led by the nose. Wright isn’t the Trader any more than we are.”

  Holm looked back at the dock where Wright looked bewildered.

  “They’re framing him,” he muttered. “Shit.”

  “Yeah. His metaphor with the fish? That wasn’t about trafficking. It was about how he tries to handle people in the street. Reel in the bad actors, deal with them, and let them go. This guy’s gonna be a damned saint if the Trader doesn’t ruin him.”

  “You think this Eileen Derringer slipped that plant to the Trader?”

  I nodded. “They probably threatened her. What’s a little cutting or a few seeds in exchange for your family’s safety?”

  “Oh, hell. We need to make sure Wright’s family is protected.”

  “Yeah, Robbie.” I kicked at the sand. “We gotta get this guy, or there are gonna be a lot more dead people.”

  29

  Nobody mentioned Luci’s growing comfort around Robbie Holm, and Emily felt good about that. Luci still wasn’t ready to be the center of attention anywhere, but she did seem to be finding some normalcy. After the guys left, Emily took Luci to the bathroom and had her sit on a chair.

  “Are you sure you want to do this?” She showed Luci the scissors. “It’ll take years to grow back.”

  Luci lifted her chin. “I will never grow it long again. Men think long hair belongs to them, but it does not. This is my hair, and they cannot tell me what to do with it ever again.”

  Although Emily loved her hair long and braided, she wasn’t about to debate it with Luci. Men really did get possessive over long hair. The bare spot on her scalp was proof of that. Maybe if she’d been put through what Luci had, she’d feel differently about her choice to keep her hair long.

  “Last chance to get it done at the spa,” Sylvia chimed in from the bathroom door. “MBLIS will pay for it, and they know what they’re doing.”

  Emily rolled her eyes and snapped the scissors in Sylvia’s direction.

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence,” she laughed.

  Sylvia shrugged. “You’re the one who said you’ve never done it before.”

  Luci put her hand on Emily’s arm. “I want to make the first cut myself.”

  Emily stopped joking around and gave Luci the scissors. Luci waited for her to do one last comb-through. Emily pulled out a wide section and held it up for Luci to see in the mirror. She watched Luci’s reflection and felt small next to the determination and strength in her new friend’s face.

  Luci took the section of hair from Emily and pulled it tight. She put the scissors to the strands and hesitated. Her chin trembled, but she did not cry. She took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and cut.

  The length that had gone from her shoulder to her waist dropped to the floor. Luci opened her eyes. She handed the scissors back to Emily and then put her hand over her mouth. At first, Emily thought Luci was crying, but laughter bubbled out instead.

  “Okay, let’s do this.” Emily tried to sound brave, but she was afraid of butchering the job.

  Twenty minutes later, Emily used a hand towel to dust hair bits from the back of Luci’s shirt. It was true, Emily reflected, that a drastic hairstyle change can make someone look like an entirely new person.

  “Me encanta.” Luci beamed and fluffed her hair. “It has never been so short, and I feel like I took a, um, helmet off my head.”

  Emily touched up a few last bruises that insisted on showing through the foundation she’d applied earlier. She ran another layer over the tattoo which was slightly visible through the first two applications, and then put the makeup in Luci’s handbag.

  “You look totally different, and it’s a great look,” she told Luci. “Hey, Sylvia, Birn? We’re ready.”

  Sylvia nodded her approval as Birn headed out to the hall.

  “Emily, I thought you were a brainy college type.” Sylvia playfully jabbed at Emily’s upper arm. “Now I know the truth, that you’re a stylist to the stars.”

  “If you want a trim—”

  “No, no, thank you.” Sylvia backed up with her hands out in front. “I like my hair fine, so you can just keep those scissors away from it.”

  An hour later, Luci was given the front passenger seat in the rental car so she could get a better view of where they drove. She wore a wide-brim hat and large sunglasses. Birn got the keys.

  “You better appreciate this,” Sylvia told her partner. “I’m doing you a favor so that your legs don’t cramp in the back.”

  “You don’t always drive.” Birn scoffed. “Just most of the time.”

  “And this is the not-always time,” Sylvia informed him. “Try not to run anyone over.”

  A look passed between them that suggested a story Emily didn’t think she needed to hear, so she got in the rear seat behind Luci. They had no real plan until lunchtime with Aunt Esme. Since the island was only twenty-one miles long, no one point was far from another. Esme lived in a tiny inland village they could access quite easily.

  “I’m going to loop south, toward the Wright estate,” Birn told everyone. “Miss Ramírez, if you see anything at all that is familiar, tell me to stop.”

  “Thank you, Agent Birn.” Luci was quiet as Birn pulled out of hotel parking. “You may call me ‘Luci,’ too.”

  “If that’s what you want, I will. My job is to keep you and Miss Meyer safe and as comfortable as possible.” He glanced into the mirror.

  “Please, call me Emily. Everyone on this trip seems to be on a first-name basis.” She glanced at Sylvia, who chuckled. “Well, with Luci and me, anyway.”

  Instead of answering right away, he turned right onto a more open road and took them southeast.

  “The estate is not far
. We’ll scan the neighborhood and see if anything else registers.” He took quick looks at Luci and Emily. “Everyone calls me Birn, even my friends, but you two can call me Lamarr if it makes you feel more comfortable.

  Emily smiled at him. “Well, it’s nice to meet you, Lamarr.”

  He cleared his throat and focused on driving. All too soon, they rolled through a neighborhood with a mix of private estates and high-end vacation rental properties. Nobody spoke, and Luci kept her sun hat pulled low as they meandered past gates and well-tended lawns.

  At one point, Luci put her left arm back through the space between the front seats. Emily held her hand like that until Luci sat up straight and pulled her arm back up.

  “Stop,” she whispered. “We came to this place one evening.”

  The property was a villa, painted robin-egg blue, and appeared to overlook the sea. Emily leaned over to see the map Sylvia pulled up on her phone, which showed the villa and its immediate neighbors sharing a small beach between karst outcroppings.

  “It’s a rental,” she confirmed. “Whoever owns the place probably has no idea what happened here.” She got Luci’s attention. “I know it’s hard, but do you have any idea when you were here? If we can narrow down the time frame, that might help us determine who rented it that night.”

  “Are all these houses rentals?” Luci asked.

  Sylvia consulted the tablet and looked up. “Yes. Why?”

  “They rented all three and brought almost all of us here.” She took several deep breaths. “In the houses, there were lessons. On the beach… Some were sent out on boats. We did not see them again. Some of us, they wanted to punish. When Maria, Sofia, and I made trouble the first time, and they tied us to rocks. By high tide, the water was at my chin. The three of us, we lived. Others, they did not.”

  Luci fell silent. Emily couldn’t think.

  Birn… No, Lamarr put the car into gear. Sylvia did some work on the tablet, but Emily looked away. Those innocuous villas housed horrible crimes against innocent people, and tourists vacationing in them on other days had no way to know. It wasn’t just the idea, but the simple notion that the Trader had enough money to invest in these “events.”

  “Luci?” Emily spoke so softly that she wasn’t sure she’d be heard. She wasn't sure she wanted to be heard. “Did this happen a lot?”

  “Not many times, no. Two or three times a year is what they told me.”

  Emily put her hand over her mouth and stared out the window. She didn’t want Luci to know about the tears that now rolled down her cheeks or the food that wanted to come up. Sylvia reached over and patted her arm with the awkward kindness of, well, a bodyguard.

  Emily wiped the tears away with her palms and blinked a few times.

  “It’s almost noon,” Lamarr announced. “Are we still going to your aunt’s home, Emily?”

  “Um, yeah. Yes, of course.” She coughed on the feelings she’d swallowed. “Aunt Esme is expecting us sometime between noon and one.”

  “Birn, get us there in one piece,” Sylvia said with a sigh. “I think we’ve had enough sadness for today. But pull over first.”

  Sylvia had Emily and Luci both get out of the car, and then she and Luci got back in. Emily saw what she was doing and crammed in the back with them. Neither Sylvia nor Emily minded the tight fit as they held a weeping Luciana Ramírez between them.

  30

  Holm refused to make the call to Forde. We argued about it while we waited for the blast furnace of a car to run its air to an acceptable temperature.

  “You’re the one who hated on him,” he reminded me. “You’re the one who should apologize.”

  “I have nothing to apologize for. Every clue pointed to Wright.”

  “Like it was supposed to. It was too perfect, and we should’ve seen that sooner.”

  I hated being wrong. Hated it. When I was wrong about the big things, people had a bad tendency to get dead. The only redeeming factor was that our covers weren’t blown. We were back to the plan which included a tour of the distilleries to provide rum for the Caribbean-themed club we were supposedly planning. Unlike Zest, my club would have more than rum, though.

  “It has to have whiskey,” I insisted as we got out at the first location. “I don’t care if rum is the thing, any club I put money into will have a great whiskey selection, as well.”

  Neither of us had called Forde yet, and that was the moment he decided for us. He called my phone, not Holm’s, the lucky bastard. My ever-so supportive partner waltzed into the distillery like the personal trainer he was not, while I got to have the dreaded discussion with Forde.

  “Wright isn’t the Trader,” I informed Forde. “He’s being framed.”

  “I told you!” Forde crowed. “I told you Mr. Wright could never be that monster.”

  “Yes, you told us, but we still had to make sure.” I hated being wrong, and this the other reason why. “Now, we move along. Do you have something new?”

  “I heard there was a fight at Zest last night. Your doing?”

  “Bar fights happen all the time. Why are you blaming me?”

  “You were on camera,” Forde said in a dry tone. “Not that it matters. The owner said your friend saved a drunk girl from serious harm. Is that your mission?”

  “No, Tomás, it is not the mission, but we still do what we can,” I countered. “It was obvious she wasn’t working the place. I’m sure the owner didn’t want a rich white girl being kidnapped under the club’s nose.”

  “Fair enough, but you must be careful. The Trader’s people are good at sniffing out police.”

  “I’m not normal police,” I said in a low voice. Tourists were gathering for the distillery’s daily tasting session. “Look at those videos again. I didn’t step in until my investment was in danger. I’m the money man, he’s the idealist. That’s what I’m hoping the Trader’s observer saw.”

  “I hope so, too, for everyone’s sake.”

  He ended the call before I did. I growled at no one in particular, although a nearby couple heard me and made a wide pass. I sure knew how to put on the charm at the worst times.

  I met Holm in the lobby.

  “Well?” he asked.

  I scowled. “I told our friend he was right. He had an update on the project, but it was nothing major.”

  “Cool, cool. Hey, Ben, you sure we can’t just serve rum?”

  I glared at him.

  “Shut the hell up, Carl.”

  31

  “I’ve never met Aunt Esme,” Emily explained to the others as they drove into the village where her relative lived. “She moved here before I was born. Mom wanted to visit, but we never got around to it.”

  “Why did she move here?” Luci asked. The tears had dried, and Emily was helping blend her makeup back over the tattoo. “It’s so far from Jamaica.”

  “Yeah, it is.” Emily tried to remember more of the story. It’d been a long time since she’d heard it. “She fell in love. Mom’s family got upset when she married Uncle… Joe, I think it was. But she followed her heart.”

  Emily’s extended family spoke of Esme seldom, as they felt abandoned by her decision to marry a Bajan man and move away with him.

  “How’d they feel when your mom moved to Miami?” Sylvia asked.

  “Gramma wasn’t happy, but it’s hella closer.” Emily smiled a little as another memory came to her. “When I was little, Mom got letters with dried flowers from Aunt Esme. It’s something they had in common, and they kind of bonded over it.”

  When Emily called her great-aunt two days earlier, Esme was ecstatic. Emily had gotten more excited since that call.

  “We’re here,” Lamarr announced as he parked. He turned to Emily with a smile. “I’m glad we could bring you here.”

  A petite, snowy-haired woman met Emily and the others at her door. Emily was struck by the resemblance to her gramma. The two women had the same dark skin, laugh crinkles at the corners of their eyes, round faces, and smiles. The
most striking difference was where Emily’s gramma had added weight with children and age, Esme was thin and had a bounce in her step that Emily had never witnessed in the handful of times she’d visited her gramma.

  “Oh, Emily Jada!” Esme ran off the porch and embraced Emily in a bear hug that nearly crushed her ribs. Emily didn’t mind one bit.

  “Aunt Esme, it’s so good to finally meet you!” Emily squeezed her right back, but with a little less force. “I wish I could’ve sooner.”

  Esme let her go and gave a little wave of the hand.

  “Ah sweet t’ing, don’t you worry. Barbados is so far away.” Esme sniffed through her brilliant smile. “I knew I might not see family. That’s the price of true love. I am happy here.” She opened her arms to indicate the rest of Emily’s group. “Tell me, who did you bring to visit an old woman?”

  Emily turned to Luci. Even though Luci had cried much of the drive, and her eyes were puffy, she was starting to relax. Luci wouldn’t be okay for a long time, but Emily respected her wish for as much normalcy as possible.

  “This is Luci,” she told Esme. “She’s a friend who has been through a difficult time.” Emily then gestured toward the other two. “Those two are Lamarr and Sylvia.” Emily froze and looked at the MBLIS agents. “Oh, I’m sorry…”

  Sylvia waved it off. “Your aunt is not going to blow our cover. We’re barely even using it.” She reached out to shake Esme’s hand and ended up in a hug. “Um, thank you.”

  Sylvia’s cheeks darkened. Emily wondered if the special agent had anyone close to her away from the job. Did any of them? None of them had talked about family other than Ethan telling her about his grandfather.

  Esme held her hands out to Luci, who allowed her to clasp them in her gentle grasp.

  “You are the girl from the Miami news, yes?” Esme asked with a soft, inviting tone. At Luci’s slow nod, Esme squeezed those hands and released. “My home is yours anytime you need, child.” She raised her voice for everyone else. “Come in, don’t mind the mess. Lunch is in the kitchen.”