Overboard on the Ocean

by Ellen Jacobson

  I took a bit of pride in the fact that what Chief Dalton liked to label as my “unwanted nosiness” had actually helped bring killers to justice in the past. Unfortunately, this time, whoever had killed Fletcher and Anthony was out there free as a bird, laughing at how stupid the rest of us were.

  Scooter interrupted my thoughts, wrapping his arms around my waist and kissing my cheek. “Are you ready to go, my little super sleuth?”

  I frowned. “I’m no super sleuth. Maybe you should go back to one of your other pet names for me.”

  “Just give it time,” he said. “You’ll figure it out when you least expect it.”

  I smoothed down my skirt, then slipped on a pair of cute flats. It was a refreshing change of pace to get dressed up after days of working on boat projects. Unfortunately, there were still lingering traces of grease on my hands from working on the diesel engine.

  “Ready,” I said, grabbing a cardigan. “Although to be honest, I’d rather stay home cuddled up in bed watching old movies. Can’t we just make a donation instead of going to the fundraiser?”

  Scooter smiled. “Oh, I think you’ll change your mind once I tell you who’s going to be there tonight.”

  “Well, go on, tell me. The suspense is killing me.”

  “Sylvia, Madison, and Herbert.”

  “Wow, all three of them.” I furrowed my brow. “I can see why Herbert is going. He’s an avid sailor. But why Sylvia and Madison?”

  “According to my source, Sylvia wants to check out the yacht club as a potential wedding venue. Madison is accompanying her.”

  “You’re kidding. For the Daltons’ wedding?”

  “I assume so,” Scooter said. “They’re coming tonight, right?”

  I grinned and rubbed my hands together. “Yes, it should be fun, watching the chief try to avoid Sylvia.”

  Scooter motioned toward the door. “Come on, we’re going to be late.”

  “Hang on a minute, I can’t find my phone.”

  “Did Mrs. Moto make it disappear again?” Scooter crouched down and pulled up a small door set into the floorboards. We didn’t know how she did it. Though we were convinced that, despite her lack of opposable thumbs, Mrs. Moto had figured out how to open the door on her own and knock our stuff into the bilge. I wondered if this was some sort of payback for the fact that she hadn’t been as involved in this investigation as she had been in past ones. Cats have their special ways of letting you know that they don’t like being left out.

  Scooter reached his hand into the bilge, then presented my phone to me triumphantly, “Abracadabra!”

  After wiping it off, I popped it in my purse. “Abracadabra,” I mused while I petted Mrs. Moto. “That’s what magicians say. Magic, magic, magic. What is it about magic that’s bugging me?”

  “You mean besides our cat performing disappearing tricks with our possessions?”

  “No, that’s not it.” I shook my head. “Never mind, let’s get going.”

  * * *

  When we got to the yacht club, Ned and Nancy were seated at a table by the entrance. After Scooter paid Ned for our tickets, Nancy stamped our hands.

  “Ouch,” I said. “I don’t think you needed to do that so hard.”

  Nancy peered at me over her reading glasses. “We want to make sure the ink doesn’t come off, don’t we, dear?”

  “I’m not sure why you’re stamping people, anyway,” I said. “Don’t you know everyone who’s attending the fundraiser? It’s not like people are sneaking in. Especially with you sitting out here. No one would dare to try to get past you.”

  Nancy beamed, proud of the fact that people were terrified of her. If she and Ned really did sell the marina, she should consider a career change and become a bouncer.

  “Do you want to buy some raffle tickets too?” Ned asked. “The grand prize is a cruise to the Bahamas.”

  “On the same ship that we took?” Scooter asked. “I can’t say that I’d really want to do that trip again.”

  Ned looked sheepish. “You’re not the first person to say that. But when the cruise line offered us the tickets, well, how could we say no?”

  “Not many people want to go aboard a boat that someone was murdered on,” I said.

  “Fletcher wasn’t murdered,” Nancy said. “It was an accident.”

  “Or so they want you to believe,” I muttered.

  “So, what about those raffle tickets?” Ned said. “Second prize is a fifty-dollar gift certificate to Melvin’s Marine Emporium.”

  “Count us in,” Scooter said. “This will be the first time I’ve ever hoped to win the second prize instead of the grand prize.”

  “You better hurry if you don’t want to miss the magic show,” Nancy said.

  I furrowed my brow. “Magic show?”

  “A local magician is performing. Then, later in the evening, Ben’s band will be playing.”

  “The magician’s name isn’t Hypnotist Hank by any chance?”

  “Yes, that’s the one.” Nancy looked pointedly behind us. “There are other people waiting. Are you going to stand here all evening?”

  As we walked into the main room, Scooter nudged me. “There’s Sylvia and Madison.”

  “We need to find a way to have a quiet word with them,” I said. “I think I figured out something important about the case.”

  Scooter’s eyes widened. “How did you do that?”

  “A magician never reveals her secrets,” I said, waving my hands mysteriously in front of me. Then I turned and pointed at a hallway. “The boardroom is back there, isn’t it?”

  “Uh-huh. What did you have in mind?”

  “We need to find a way to get Sylvia in there by herself. I’ll have a little chat with her while you’re standing outside with Madison, eavesdropping. I want her to hear what Sylvia says. If I’m right, then the case will get blown wide open.”

  Scooter ran his fingers through his hair. “How are we supposed to manage that?”

  “I’ll tell Sylvia that I want to talk about the Daltons’ wedding. Make sure that you and Madison are standing outside the door to the boardroom in, say, ten minutes. I’ll leave the door ajar.”

  “Getting Sylvia to go with you sounds simple, but what am I supposed to say to Madison?”

  “Flirt with her.” I grinned. “You’re a handsome guy. She’ll be putty in your hands.”

  Scooter’s jaw dropped. “You want me to flirt with another woman?”

  “Do you want to nab the murderer? Then, trust me on this.”

  Scooter was right. It was easy to convince Sylvia to come with me. When we walked into the oak paneled room, she made a beeline for the far corner.

  “I think those chairs are broken,” I said, crossing my fingers behind my back. “Apparently, the last time they had a meeting in here, several people ended up on the floor.”

  “Did anyone get hurt?” Sylvia asked, looking dubiously at the leather wingback chairs.

  “Uh, yeah. Broken tailbones all around.” I motioned to two chairs at the end of the conference table closest to the door. “It would be safer if we sat here.”

  After Sylvia took her seat, she asked, “What was it you wanted to discuss? The wedding cake?”

  I always wanted to talk about cake. Except if we went down that path, I was likely to get distracted from keeping an eye on the time. Scooter and Madison would be here any minute. “You mentioned the bridesmaids wearing eye patches.”

  “Yes, pink lace ones.”

  “Well, I’m the matron of honor. Shouldn’t my eye patch be different?”

  She pursed her lips. “Well, I can see where you’re coming from. I assume you’re a bit older than the other girls?”

  I stifled a laugh. There weren’t actually any other girls lined up. When Anabel had first started talking about her wedding, she asked me to be her matron of honor. “I want to keep things small,” she said. “Just you and Tiny’s best man.”

  “I suppose I will be the oldest,” I said. “Is t
here anything you can do to make me look younger?”

  “With an eye patch? Sure. Let me pull some photos up on my phone.”

  While she scoured her go-to wedding sites for eye patch ideas for older ladies, I kept an eye on my phone, watching the time. I heard a slight rustling from the hallway, then I said loudly, “It was nice to meet Hypnotist Hank the other day. He mentioned Ragno’s trick with the boa constrictors. I didn’t get to see the act. Could you tell me about it?”

  Sylvia furrowed her brow. “I thought you wanted to talk about eye patches?”

  “Well, the chief mentioned something about having a magic theme for the wedding. It might help to hear more about Ragno’s act.”

  “Magic, hmm . . . we could do some interesting things with that.” Sylvia leaned back in her chair. “Well, let’s see. After his trick with the tarantulas, Ragno—”

  “Do you mind speaking up? I’m a bit hard of hearing,” I said.

  “That happens to all of us as we get older, dear. I can give you a lead on some great hearing aids. They make all the difference.”

  “Okay, maybe later,” I said. “But what about Ragno?”

  Sylvia leaned forward and said loudly, “Ragno takes a boa constrictor and puts it in a large velvet sack. First, he shows the audience that the sack is empty. Then he invites some members of the audience up on stage. He passes the sack around, asking each of them to confirm that there is only one snake inside. Next, he says a magic spell and there’s some smoke, then abracadabra. When he opens the sack back up, there are multiple snakes inside.”

  “Just to be crystal clear, you saw Ragno perform that trick on the cruise ship?”

  “Of course, we were sitting right next to the stage. I saw it as clearly as I see you sitting across from me.”

  “And Madison saw the snakes too?”

  Sylvia pursed her lips. “I’m going to let you in on a little secret. Madison didn’t stay for the magic act.”

  The door burst open, startling Sylvia. She spun around in her chair and gasped when she saw Madison standing there. “What are you doing here?”

  Madison strode into the room, Scooter following closely on her heels. She leaned down and jabbed a finger at the older woman. “You’re lying. There weren’t any boa constrictors that night.”

  “Of course, there were.”

  Sylvia attempted to push her chair back, but Madison grabbed hold of the armrests. She took a moment to flick her long hair back, then said darkly, “No, there weren’t. If you had actually been at the magic show, you would have known that.”

  I waved my hand in front of Madison’s face. “Excuse me, I have a question.”

  Madison took a step back, then looked at me. “What’s that?”

  “Are you saying that Sylvia wasn’t at the magic show?”

  “No, she left, saying that she was going to the ladies’ room. But she never came back.”

  “Okay, it’s true. I wasn’t there. I was feeling ill,” Sylvia said. “I went to my cabin to lie down.”

  “Hah, that’s what you want them to believe happened, but we both know that isn’t true either,” Madison said. “You were too busy killing your husband to have a chance to go back to your cabin.”

  Scooter pulled me back and whispered. “If Sylvia killed Fletcher, what was Madison’s cigarette butt doing at the crime scene?”

  Sylvia’s hearing aids must have been super powerful, because she got to her feet and took a step toward Scooter. “You found a cigarette butt?”

  “Um, yes.”

  “What did it look like?” she asked.

  “It was pink,” Scooter said slowly.

  Sylvia waved her hands in the air dramatically. “Pink cigarettes. I know someone who smokes pink cigarettes. And that person is Madison. Remember? I told you how I ordered them from Paris for her.”

  Madison snatched Sylvia’s purse off the floor, then shook the contents onto the table. She pulled a foil pack out of the pile, then popped a piece of gum out of it. Holding it up, she turned to Sylvia. “Want to tell them what this is?”

  Sylvia folded her arms across her chest and stared at Madison without saying a word.

  Scooter looked at me sideways. I said quietly, “It’s a special kind of gum.”

  Madison seemed too young to be wearing hearing aids, but who knows. In any case, she spun around, clearly having heard what I said. “Yes, it is special gum. Nicotine gum. Sylvia is a smoker.”

  “Ex-smoker,” Sylvia said.

  Scooter arched an eyebrow. “Oh, is that why you were at Hypnotist Hank’s? To quit smoking?”

  “Go on, tell them,” Madison urged. “Tell them how you’ve tried to quit smoking for years. You’ve tried everything—gum, hypnosis, even patches.”

  “The patches didn’t work. They gave me a rash,” Sylvia said.

  Madison rolled her eyes. “Nothing worked. When you’re not next to me inhaling my secondhand smoke to get a nicotine fix, you’re always bumming cigarettes from me. Sometimes, you don’t even bother to ask first, you just steal them.”

  “So Sylvia took one of your cigarettes,” Scooter said.

  Madison nodded. “That’s right. She knew about the secret smoking spot I had on ship. I don’t know if she lured Fletcher up there, killed him, then had a cigarette or if she had a smoke, then killed him. Either way, she was stupid and left the cigarette butt at the scene of the crime. I would have never done that.”

  “Done what?” I asked.

  “You mean would I have killed Fletcher? Of course not. And I always pick up my cigarette butts. I wasn’t born in a barn.”

  I pursed my lips. “But I overheard you on the cruise talking with Fletcher. He made you promise to take care of Herbert or else. You didn’t seem very happy about it.”

  “Where was this?” Madison asked.

  “Outside the ladies’ room. You guys were on your way to dinner.”

  Madison shook her head. “Oh, that was nothing. Fletcher had wanted me to try to convince Herbert to retire so that he could take over the business. Besides, as I already pointed out, I couldn’t have killed Fletcher. I was at the magic show. Sylvia wasn’t. She’s your murderer.”

  Sylvia put a hand to her chest. “Me? Kill my husband? You’re out of your mind.”

  “You hated him,” Madison said. “And when he told you he was going to divorce you, you lost it. You went up on that deck and pushed him overboard.”

  “Mollie, Scooter, the two of you know me,” Sylvia said. “You know that I believe in the sanctity of marriage. I’m a wedding planner, for goodness sake.”

  “How do the vows go, Sylvia?” Madison said dryly. “Until death do we part, that’s how. There was no way you were going to let Fletcher divorce you. You couldn’t bear to be humiliated like that. You had put up with his affairs, always turned a blind eye to the other women, but divorce, no, not you. Murder, though? No problem.”

  Scooter raised his hand, as if to ask a question.

  “What?” Madison barked.

  “Why would Sylvia kill her own nephew?” he asked. “He was her flesh and blood.”

  “Because Anthony knew what she had done. He had finally decided he couldn’t bear to keep lying for her and had decided to turn her into the police.”

  “What?” Sylvia spluttered. “That is absolutely not true.”

  “Of course, it is. He told me. Don’t you remember that conversation we all had? The one where you made us swear to cover for you? The one where you tried to get us to pin everything on Herbert? I was supposed to pretend you were at the magic show with me.” Madison gave a bitter laugh. “That was fine for you. But Anthony needed an alibi too.”

  “So, that’s why he tried to pay off Velma,” I said.

  “Exactly. But that didn’t exactly go as planned,” she spat out. “As usual, Anthony blew it. He didn’t pay that girl enough. He let us down. And not for the first time. I think that’s when he realized that he couldn’t keep trying to cover for his aunt.”

&
nbsp; “You can’t pin Anthony’s murder on me. Like Scooter said, he was my own flesh and blood. I would have never killed him.” Sylvia fiddled with her necklace for a moment, then added, “Besides, I was on Destiny Key when he died. How could I have killed him from there?”

  “Madison was there too,” I said. “You both had a very convenient alibi.”

  “Don’t let the old lady act fool you,” Madison said. “You know that it was her charger that killed Anthony. It was green, wasn’t it?”

  I held up my hands. “Hang on a minute, I have a question about the charger. Was it one of the ones the company was testing?”

  “That’s right. Anthony gave each of us a charger to try out. We all had a different color. Mine was pink, Anthony’s was blue, and Sylvia’s was green. She switched out her charger with Anthony’s.”

  “Wouldn’t Anthony have noticed the switch?” Scooter asked.

  “He was color blind.” Madison shrugged. “Sylvia was his aunt. She knew that.”

  Sylvia made a low guttural noise, then she grabbed a marble statue from the sideboard and flung it at Madison. When it missed the younger women, Sylvia screamed, “You stole the charger from my room. You switched them. You’re the reason why my nephew is dead.”

  The older woman paused for a moment, her shoulders slumping. After taking a deep breath, she glared at Madison. “You get seasick on boats. I should have known something was up when you invited yourself to Anabel’s party on Destiny Key.”

  “What in the world is going on in here?” a deep voice said behind me.

  I turned and saw Chief Dalton looking at the broken statue on the floor.

  Sylvia rushed over to the chief and put her hand on his arm. “You have to arrest Madison. She killed my husband and my nephew.”

  Madison straightened her shoulders and said coolly, “No, Sylvia killed them.”

  I stepped forward. “Actually, they both did it. Sylvia killed her husband and Madison killed Anthony.”

  17

  Here Comes the Bride

  After my pronouncement, both women were speechless for a moment. Then they lunged at each other, fighting like cats and dogs. Hair was yanked, nails were used as weapons, and shrill screams punctuated the air. Somehow, Chief Dalton and Scooter managed to pull them apart. A couple of off-duty police officers, who happened to be at the fundraiser, heard the ruckus and rushed in to assist. Chief Dalton told them to escort the two ladies to the police station and hold them for questioning. Then he turned to me and shook his head.