Heavenly Honeymoon (Zoe Donovan Mysteries Book 15) (8 page)

“You’re worried about Pi,” Zak stated.

“It’s just that he’s sixteen. Are we ready to take on a teenager?”

“I’ll admit he could very well turn out to be a huge challenge, but I feel like he really needs us. He’s worth saving.”

I took a deep breath. “Okay. Let’s do this.”

Zak pulled me into his arms. “Have I told you lately how much I love you?”

“Yes. But I wouldn’t mind hearing it again.”

“Well, I do. Love you. And there’s more.”

“More?”

“Phyllis had agreed to take on the scheduling of all the Ashton Falls residents who have agreed to participate. It occurred to me that if we’re going to have access to the talents of this amazing group of people, maybe we should open the afternoon program to a few others.”

“You want to have other kids move in with us?”

“No, not that. I thought about asking Abby if she’d be interested in participating. She’s a bright girl who would benefit from an accelerated education, but she has a home. Hazel mentioned a couple of other local children who she felt would benefit likewise. Phyllis said she has a friend who’s concerned about her niece, who is bright but has had some behavior issues and was kicked out of the private school she attended last year. She hasn’t personally met the niece, but she spoke to the friend, who indicated that she believed the girl would do wonderfully in such an environment. Phyllis indicated that she was willing to have her move in with her if her parents were on board. As you know, Phyllis has a large home and has volunteered to allow a couple of other girls to stay with her if we identified additional students who needed to board. We discussed starting out with about ten students who would normally be in the seventh to tenth grades.”

“You’ve really thought this through.”

“I have.”

I looked at Zak in awe. “I brought up the idea for the Zimmerman Academy less than two weeks ago. We’ve gotten married and solved a murder in the meantime. How have you had time to arrange all this?”

Zak shrugged. “I’m efficient.”

As we rounded the point the wind picked up, as I’d predicted it would, so our conversation was stalled while Zak committed his attention to sailing the boat. Zak did manage to inform me that there was a building in town he hoped to rent to house the temporary academy, but if that didn’t work out, my parents had offered to allow him to modify their pool house, which was no longer in use, to serve as our temporary school. When had Zak had time to talk to my parents?

“I almost gave up on you,” Toad said when I checked in with him later than usual. I had to wonder about the specifics of Toad’s job. No matter what time of day I popped in, I found him sitting in a rickety old chair with his feet propped up on a desk covered with dusty files. Did the man never move? And if he was supposed to be investigating Ricardo Jimenez’s murder wouldn’t you think he’d need to go outside and talk to people at some point? The entire situation was extremely odd.

“I told you I had a busy day,” I reminded him. “But I’m here now and I have news. I don’t suppose Talin is around?”

“Nope. It’s just me. So what is your news?”

I really had hoped Talin would be in. He at least seemed more likely to do something with the information I had uncovered. As odd as it was that Toad never seemed to leave the building, Talin never seemed to be around. I hadn’t seen him again since the night of the murder and the interview.

“Did Talin tell you that I suspect the man I saw in the hallway who took the knife from me is actually the killer?” I asked.

“The man who wasn’t on the boat,” Toad stated with a voice filled with sarcastic disbelief.

“The man who was
on the boat
,” I corrected. “I found out today that the yacht carries two personal watercraft belowdecks. My friend Ellie was invited to have lunch on the yacht and I decided to tag along. While I was there I found out that one of the two WaveRunners is missing.”

“You just happened to score an invitation to have lunch on the yacht?” Toad looked at me skeptically.

“Ellie just happened to score the invite,” I told him. “I simply tagged along. Ellie is a chef back home and Chef Sebastian seems to have a thing for her. So what do you think?”

“About Sebastian and your friend?”

“No. About the missing WaveRunner. Isn’t it possible that the man I saw in the hallway that night snuck on board before we all boarded, hid downstairs, killed Ricardo, and then made his getaway while everyone was in a panic over the dead body?”

Toad seemed to be considering my theory. “Yeah, I guess it could have happened that way. I’ll talk to Talin about this new information when I see him next.”

“Thanks. It would be nice not to be the only suspect in this convoluted case.”

“Don’t worry. Talin and I have been doing more than sitting around on our backsides. We are now up to three solid suspects, and that was before you provided this theory as to how your mystery man could have pulled off what you believe he did.”

“Three?” I asked, thrilled to no longer be alone in this particular category. “Who are the other two?”

“I’m afraid I really can’t say.”

“Come on, Toad. You know I didn’t do it. Throw me a bone; at least give me a small hope that I’m not going to rot in your disgusting jail.”

Toad just smiled. I could see he wasn’t going to just spill the news without some sort of motivation. I wished I’d had the foresight to bring money, but the grocery took resort cash, so I hadn’t had a need for the real stuff.

“It has to be someone on the yacht that night,” I concluded.

Zak and I had narrowed it down to Charles, Park, and Jensen, assuming that Sebastian hadn’t been lying about the staff being together. Of course there was Captain Jack. He’d been piloting the boat, but I suppose he could have snuck away for a few minutes.

“One of the suspects must be Park.” I watched Toad’s face. He definitely didn’t have a poker face, so I knew I was right. “Park left to go to the bathroom and was gone during the entire window of death. In fact, the reason Kim found me with the body was because she decided to go look for him. I don’t suppose you might know why Park would have wanted Ricardo dead?”

Toad just raised an eyebrow over one beady eye.

“As for suspect number two, I’m going to go with Captain Jack.”

Bingo. I could tell by the huge effort Toad went to not to have an expression on his face that I’d hit it on the head.

“I know Captain Jack and Ricardo knew each other because I saw them talking on the beach. I also suspected Captain Jack was the first person on board that night, so he could have made whatever arrangements he needed to, including sneaking my mystery man aboard before anyone else got there. He was piloting the boat, but I’ve learned that the vessel is computerized, so he could have set the autopilot, killed Ricardo, and then returned to the bridge before anyone knew he was gone.”

“You seem to have thought about this quite a lot,” Toad observed.

“Of course I’ve thought about it. My freedom is at stake. Keep in mind that Talin said I shouldn’t investigate. He never said I couldn’t think about it. Are you going to the fund-raiser tomorrow?”

Toad seemed startled by my abrupt change of subject.

“Yes, I planned to. Why do you ask?”

“It just seemed like a good place to trip over information. If you’re there and I happen to trip over something important I won’t have to wait to fill you in.”

Toad actually chuckled. “You have a strange logic, Zoe Donovan.”

“So I’ve been told.”

After I finished talking to Toad I decided to call Jeremy to see how the new dogs were working out. I knew he would do everything in his power to make certain we were able to accommodate as many of the poor things as possible.

“So how’s it going?” I asked as soon as he answered the phone and we dispensed with the traditional pleasantries.

“Really good. Your idea about asking locals to help foster the dogs was brilliant. Not only did we take on the fifteen dogs we had room for at the Zoo but I had seven members of the community volunteer to foster one or more dogs. In addition to Nick, who agreed to foster three females with health issues, your pappy took on two mama dogs with active litters, and Tiffany took three pregnant females back to your house. I hope that’s okay.”

“That’s more than okay; that’s awesome. And Nick’s a retired doctor, so he was a good choice for the injured dogs. Has Scott had a chance to check all of them out?”

Scott Walden is our local veterinarian.

“He’s working on it. So far he’s cleared about half of the dogs for adoption and is going to work on spreading the word that we’re in need of qualified adoptive families.”

“That’s one of the reasons I love Ashton Falls so much. When there’s a need, the entire community pitches in to meet it.”

“Yeah. It’s a pretty awesome place to live. I think we might want to extend the adoption clinic we’ve planned from one day to two now that we have a full house.”

“That’s a good idea. Go ahead and change the ad, and put a notice in the Bryton Lake paper as well. We’re going to need to lure folks up the mountain if we’re going to place that many animals.”

Later that evening, after we’d BBQ’d burgers and shared a meal with Ellie and the kids, Zak, Charlie, and I decided to take a walk on the beach. It was a moonless night and the stars shone brightly in the dark sky. The tide was out, causing the waves to lap gently onto the shore.

“So how did your conversation with Jensen go?” I asked. I really wished Zak and I could be spending more of our time together as a newly married couple rather than focusing all of our energy on murder and motives, but we were scheduled to fly home in just five days and I really wanted to be allowed to leave the island when the time came.

“He was actually quite helpful,” Zak informed me. “The man really doesn’t hold his liquor well. It only took two drinks and he was blabbing anything and everything.”

“What did he say about Ricardo specifically?”

“I asked about his presence on the cruise, and he said Ricardo and Stefana were last-minute additions to the group due to a request from Chandella that they be included.”

“Did he know why Chandella asked?” I remembered Ricardo pulling her into the breezeway on the morning of the dinner cruise. Chances were that was when he was arranging for the invitation.

“He said she owed him a favor and he’d asked her to arrange for his invitation. He also verified that Stefana works for Chandella as an escort. According to Jensen, they hadn’t met prior to Chandella arranging for Stefana to accompany Ricardo on the cruise.”

“So I guess the million-dollar question is, why did Ricardo want to go on the cruise? We can’t ask him, but maybe Chandella knows. I’ll see if I can just happen to run into her tomorrow.”

Zak took my hand in his. “Please be careful. You’re supposed to stay away from the investigation. I don’t want you to end up back in jail.”

“I’ll be careful. In fact, I’ll fill Toad in before I track down Chandella. Maybe he’ll want to ask her about Ricardo himself. I just want this murder solved; I really don’t care who solves it.”

I watched as Charlie chased the waves as the water receded and then flowed back onto the beach. He was certainly having fun on this trip. He loved the fact that Scooter and Alex were there to play with him. It made me happy to see him having such a good time.

“Did Jensen say anything else that might prove to be helpful?” I eventually asked.

“No, but I did find out something interesting. I decided to run a check on Ricardo’s finances while I was waiting for you to get back from town, and I found an offshore account with five deposits into it for twenty thousand dollars each. The entire balance of the account was transferred out the day after the cruise. I haven’t had a chance to trace the source of the deposits, but I’m going to.”

“That’s a lot of money. It’s interesting that the money was transferred out the day after the man died.”

“I thought so as well, although the transfer would have had to have been initiated before his death.”

“I don’t follow.”

“There’s a forty-eight-hour holding period between the time a transfer is initiated and completed. The transfer was completed the morning after he died, which means it would have been initiated the morning of the day before he died.”

“That seems relevant,” I pointed out.

“Yeah, I thought so too. I’m working on tracking down both the source of the deposits into the account and the destination of the deposits out.”

“Hopefully, the information will help us to nail Ricardo’s killer. Do you think Talin will really prevent me from leaving the island if the case isn’t resolved by Wednesday?” I asked.

Zak squeezed my hand. “I don’t know. What I do know is that I’m not leaving without you. If Talin won’t allow you to go, I’ll arrange for Coop to come for Ellie and the kids. Let’s just hope it doesn’t come to that.”

I leaned my head against Zak’s shoulder as we walked. God, I loved this man. I’d managed to make a mess of our honeymoon due to my impulsive behavior, but he didn’t seem mad in the least. I vowed at that moment to find a way to show him just how much he meant to me.

“I almost forgot to tell you that I’m no longer the only suspect in the case,” I informed Zak. “When I checked in with Toad he indicated that they were up to three. He wouldn’t say who the other two were, but when I speculated that both Park and Captain Jack might be suspects his expression told me that I’d guessed correctly.”

“Neither of the two men have alibis,” Zak confirmed. “Maybe I should dig around in their backgrounds a bit. Park was out of the room when Ricardo was stabbed. He seems a likely suspect. If we can discover how they’re connected maybe we can figure out a motive.”

“Now that I think about it, Park is the one who requested that the remainder of the cake be cut. He’s the one who sent me to the kitchen for the knife. I wonder if he was intentionally trying to set me up.”

Zak frowned. “Why would he do that?”

“Because of all the people on board the yacht that night I was the easiest to frame. Everyone had witnessed my argument with Ricardo.”

I stopped to consider the idea further. “What if Park was working with the man in black? He sent me to the kitchen to fetch the knife. I picked it up, ensuring that my fingerprints were all over it. Even if Kim hadn’t found me kneeling next to the body, I would probably be a suspect once they dusted for prints. Park disappeared when I went to the kitchen the first time. If we assume he didn’t really go to the men’s room I wonder where he went.”

“Ricardo was missing from the room as well,” Zak pointed out. “Maybe the men arranged to meet while everyone else was in the lounge.”

“The question is, where did they meet and how did Ricardo end up dead in the hallway? I wonder if Kim was in on it. The timing of her deciding to look for Park couldn’t have worked out better.”

“The question I keep coming back to is, why the yacht?” Zak asked. “If the whole thing was an elaborate setup, why kill Ricardo on the boat, where there were limited suspects? It would make more sense to simply ambush him on the beach or in his room.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “You do have a point. I guess at this point we should find out what we can about Park and Kim Lee, as well as Captain Jack.”

“We could ask Park and Kim to lunch to get a feel for why they might be on the island, like we did with Charles and Piper,” Zak suggested.

“Okay. Let’s try to set it up for tomorrow. In the meantime, I’ll see if I can get anything more out of Toad. If Park really is a suspect they must have a reason for adding him to the list. Maybe their reason has to do with information we don’t yet have.”