Saving Grace (What Doesn’t Kill You, #1): A Katie Romantic Mystery

by Pamela Fagan Hutchins

Chapter Forty-three

  “We have to go!” Ava shouted as she ran into her bedroom.

  “Where? What?” I said.

  She emerged seconds later holding sandals, a skirt, a shirt, and underclothing. She dived for her purse and ignored the ruins of her phone on the tile floor. She grabbed my pocketbook and handed it to me.

  “I tell you in the truck. Please, hurry.”

  And then she was running out the door, barefoot and naked except for her towel. I sprinted after her, still wearing my sundress-over-bathing-suit ensemble, calling for Oso outside. He reached the truck at the same time as me, and I let him in. He scrambled to attention in the middle of the seat, ears forward. Ava was already in. I couldn’t move any faster, especially belting in over my sunburn, but she kept saying, “Hurry, Katie. You got to hurry.”

  I threw the truck into reverse and pressed the accelerator. The tires threw dirt and rocks in the air behind us as I whipped the truck into a turn, then stopped, shifted into drive, and accelerated again. “Where are we going?”

  “The Pelican’s Nest. You know where it is?”

  I did. I had eaten there on a night when Ava was with Guy, on the trip that seemed like a lifetime ago, but was only a month. The restaurant occupied one side of a clubhouse and overlooked through plate-glass windows all along one side the largest marina—and most expensive boats—on the island.

  “Now, Ava, tell me what’s going on. Please.”

  Ava drew in a ragged breath and put her hand on her chest. Then she dropped her towel and put on her bra. I hoped she wasn’t giving any passing drivers a heart attack. When she had clasped the hook in the back, she spoke.

  “That bitch Lisa kill Guy.”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa. I’m not following. Who’s Lisa?”

  “Lisa Guy’s wife.”

  “Oh, my.” I struggled to keep my attention on the road. “How do you know that?”

  “You know who Eduardo is? Guy’s assistant?” she asked, pulling a pink scooped-neck t-shirt over her head.

  “Yeah, the one who sold you out to the police, according to the seriously pissed off and jealous Jacoby.”

  “Right. Guy, well, Guy flipped Jacoby’s switch.” She bit a fingernail, something I’d never seen her do. I looked at her hands. All her nails were quick-short. “This not about Jacoby, though. That Eduardo on the phone. He said Lisa meeting her boyfriend at the Pelican’s Nest any minute now, and we should follow her if we want to know who killed Guy.”

  Ava had me so confused. “I thought Lisa killed Guy?”

  “Well, not her personally, maybe, but she involved.” Ava scooched off her towel and stuck one foot and then the other through the leg of her satin thong panties.

  “I’m not following you again.”

  “Eduardo set up my meetings with Guy. You know that. And he set up my last one, too. So, today he call to tell me he overheard Lisa on the phone talking lover-talk, making plans to meet a boyfriend. Well, Eduardo thought that he Lisa’s boyfriend.” Ava shimmied into her stretchy white miniskirt.

  Mrs. Guy had dumped Eduardo. Nothing turns a witness faster than getting dumped. The St. Marcos prosecutor was the one whose case had fleas this time. My pulse double-timed in the hollow of my throat.

  “Holy moly.”

  “Yeah, and Eduardo say he told Lisa about me a long time ago, the asshole. Pillow talk. He say she didn’t care. But for some reason, two weeks after Guy’s murder, Lisa ‘confess’ to the police about how she just found out Guy had a girlfriend. She tell them she confront him the day he die, and that he told her he dump his good-for-nothing tramp to save their marriage. Lisa tell the police she didn’t know who the girlfriend was. She make up some story about how she hadn’t told the cops up front because she want to protect Guy’s legacy, and that because he had a lot of enemies, she thought it could be anyone. But that she afraid that the girlfriend kill Guy and come after her, too.” Now Ava’s white gladiator sandals were buckled around each ankle.

  I hit the steering wheel with the palm of my hand. Pay dirt. “Did Eduardo tell her who you were?”

  “He say he did. He say Lisa made the whole thing up. In fact, he say that Guy and Lisa fight big the same day he die, but it over some bank records Guy find at their house.”

  “Did Guy catch Lisa spending money she shouldn’t or something?

  Ava removed a big-toothed green comb from her purse and started untangling her hair. “I don’t know. So, after Lisa tell the police about Guy having a girlfriend, the police re-question Eduardo. They pissed at him because he hadn’t told them about Guy meeting with me. He said they threaten to pull his phone records. So he tell them the truth. He say he told them that he would do anything to protect Guy’s reputation, and that he certain I didn’t kill Guy.”

  “Well, at least now we know why it took them so long to find you,” I said.

  “Yeah. That and because we talking about the St. Marcos police.” Ava put her comb back in her purse and pulled out her makeup bag. “True.”

  As we left town heading east, I accelerated. We flew past mangrove-filled saltwater ponds on either side of the road. The vegetation was short and sparse here, the salty ground untenable for most plants. Large stucco houses crowned the hills, but we’d left the Danish architecture behind in Town. We were almost there.

  Ava bronzed her cheeks like a housepainter on methamphetamines. “So after all that with the police, Eduardo suspicious of Lisa. And even more so when he hear her cooing on the phone. He confront her about it, all of it, and she fire him. He pack a bag and go straight to the airport to buy a ticket home to Guatemala. And he call me on the way.” She shoved the makeup and brush back in her bag.

  “So he doesn’t know that Lisa is involved.”

  “No, I guess not. But why she tell the police those lies if she not involved?” Ava leaned close to the mirror on the sun visor and quickly penciled black onto the lower rims of her eyes.

  And why would she wait two weeks to do it? I had a idea. “Did Lisa know Guy was meeting with you that night?”

  “Eduardo didn’t say. But why he tell her?” Hot-pink lipstick in hand, Ava slashed color across her lips.

  “People in love do strange things.”

  We pulled into the Pelican’s Nest’s parking lot, which surrounded the clubhouse and restaurant on three sides. The far side looked onto rows of docked luxury yachts in the marina. I parked on the broad side of the building, out of view of the front entrance. The parking lot was mosty empty, but to anyone familiar with the ebb and flow of this place, my big dirty truck was bound to be conspicuous.

  I asked, “What time was Lisa meeting her mystery man here?”

  “Three o’clock.” Now that my truck was still, Ava was applying mascara. No time for false eyelashes today.

  I glanced at my watch. Five minutes until three. “What an odd time to meet at a restaurant. I’ll bet they aren’t even open.”

  A shiny-clean late-model black Tahoe with tinted windows pulled into the lot and parked in front of the entrance. Its driver’s side door slammed and a petite woman with perfectly styled short hair came around the front of the car to the sidewalk, her black slingback sandals clicking on the pavement. She wore a blue knit suit with a short skirt and a short-sleeved top with gold piping around the hem and round neckline. She dropped her clutch purse and spun around to retrieve it from the ground. There was a decorative gold button adorning the kick slit in the back of her skirt. As she got closer, I recognized her as the woman who’d handled the Annalise closing. Ms. Nesbitt from the Bank of St. Marcos.

  “There she is!” Ava said.

  “Where?” I asked.

  Ava pointed at Ms. Nesbitt. “That’s Lisa.”

  The wife of the dead senator was Ms. Nesbitt. Bank officer. Sister of Junior. Lisa. Lisa Nesbitt was Mrs. Guy Edwards. Now I got it. It was a very small island. I didn’t waste time explaining the connection to Ava.

  Lisa walked past the sidewalk leading to the entrance of the Pelican’
s Nest, and came around the side of the building, headed straight toward us.

  “Crap. Lower your head like we’re looking for something on the floor,” I said. Ava and I both leaned forward and pretended we were searching. I grabbed Oso’s collar and pulled him to the floor with us. He whined and struggled against me. “Shhh, boy, want a treat?” I handed him a piece of banana chip from the floorboard, disgusted that it was in my car and satisfied that Oso was cleaning it up for me. To Ava I said, “Don’t raise up yet. Keep searching.”

  “Do you think she saw us?” Ava asked, looking at me from her folded-over position.

  Oso was now down on the floor hoovering for more banana chips. He couldn’t find anything, so he looked up and licked my face. I pushed him back and resolved to break him of his germy love habit.

  “Only if she’s standing outside our window staring in. Otherwise, she has no reason to know my truck, or that you and I are connected. OK, let’s sit up, slowly, and face each other. Up, Oso,” I said, and patted the seat. He complied immediately. The dog was learning fast.

  We straightened, and I saw Lisa from the rear as she stepped off the curb at the back edge of the restaurant. She looked all around her, then walked up to a car that was pulling to a stop. Aha. I activated the camera on my iPhone and snapped pictures as fast as I could. “You can look now,” I told Ava.

  She pivoted, and we watched Lisa get in the back seat of an older-model brown Lincoln Continental. Again, tinted windows. Tinting was technically illegal on St. Marcos, unless you worked for the government or were a thug. Or at least every thug that I saw had them, and they were never pulled over on the side of the road by a cop handing them a ticket. The Continental started forward.

  “We’re going to have to follow them, Ava.”

  “Yes, yes, follow them,” she said, her eyes glued to the car.

  ~~~