Killer Colada: a Danger Cove Cocktail Mystery (3 page)

By the time Ruby and I got back to Smugglers' Tavern, the dinner crowd was in full swing, and we only had time to have a quick chat with Vernon and let him know what had happened, before we were rushed off our feet. At 9:30 p.m. the crowd was filtering away, and I sat down on a stool behind the bar, giving my feet a much-needed rest while I waited for Ruby and Vernon to join me. The front door opened, and I glanced in that direction, my breath catching in my throat.

Harvey.

He gave me a cheeky, lopsided grin that made my heart beat a little faster, and for a second, he made me forget about the horrors of the day. He rounded the bar and pulled me in toward him. I melted into his firm chest. As always, he smelled of the sea and outdoors—earthy and briny, mixed with his unique Harvey scent.

"I missed you." He kissed me on the lips.

"Missed you too." I held on tight, closing my eyes and savoring the tingling that erupted inside. 

"How was your day?"

"Pretty awful, actually. Ruby and I discovered one of her friends who'd died. It's likely she was murdered." I explained what had happened as Harvey's eyes widened.

"Blimey! That's terrible. Ruby must be gutted." In Harvey's Brit lingo, that meant devastated. He squeezed me tighter. "Are you okay? Must've been a big shock for you both."

"I will be. I didn't know Pandora, but I like to believe she's gone to a much happier place now. How was your day?"

"Busy again, as usual. There's still so much to recover from the caves, and I can't wait to get back out in the ocean and search for the ship. I spoke to Steve, my boss at Portsmouth Naval Museum, and he thinks he can spare another member of our department to come over and help. They should be here in the next few days, which is wicked news."

"Oh, that's great!" I said.

Ruby joined us behind the bar, and Vernon, whose shift was now over, sat on the opposite side. Ruby had a faraway look in her eye.

"Earth to Ruby." Vernon waved a hand in front of her face.

She twisted in her seat to face us. "Sorry, I was just thinking about Pandora and Jenna. I can't imagine how terrible it would be not knowing what happened to your daughter all these years. I mean, even if Tim did kill Jenna, wouldn't it be better to actually know that, rather than wondering and hoping that one day she could walk through the door?"

"It would eat you up inside," I said. "At least if you knew for certain, you could go through the grieving process."

"So do you really think Tim Baxtor killed Pandora?" Harvey asked.

I shrugged. "We don't know. She'd been pumped full of some kind of drug. The syringe was still in her arm. We saw Tim leave the house just before we found her, and he's a pharmacist with access to all sorts of stuff. And obviously they had some unpleasant history between them. The ME said what she found was lethal. It sounds like she might've been poisoned."

"Exactly," Ruby said. "He must've done it. Otherwise, why would he have been there? Pandora would never have let him in the house."

"Catherine Cooper will probably finish the postmortem by tomorrow morning," Vernon said. "I'll get in touch with my contact at Seattle PD and find out the results. But it does seem highly suspicious, going by what you've told us." From Vernon's FBI days, he had contacts in law enforcement agencies all over the place.

Harvey's brow knitted at Vernon. He wasn't aware of Vernon's past, and it wasn't my secret to tell. "What kind of contact?"

"One of the parents of the kids I used to teach works there," Vernon said without missing a beat.

"Oh, right." Harvey pursed his sexy lips with a thoughtful expression. "Well, I don't know about you, but I think I need a drink after hearing all this terrible news." He drummed his fingers lightly on the bar.

I grabbed a bottle of cider from the fridge and filled a glass with ice, placing it in front of him.

"Couldn't agree with you more," Vernon said. "I'll try one of those Smugglers' coladas, please."

"I thought you stopped drinking!" Ruby said.

It was no secret Vernon liked a drink. Before he began helping me out in the tavern, he was usually propped up on the other side of the bar every night. He was a happy, fun drunk, though, and after hearing some of the things he'd been through in his time at the FBI, I couldn't really blame him. He'd been shot in the knee in the line of duty and in considerable pain for a long time. When the painkillers didn't work anymore, he'd turned to booze. The only thing that had stopped him drinking was when we'd been investigating Bob's murder and he needed to have a clear head. But in the last few weeks, he'd slipped back into his old habits.

Vernon shrugged. "And now I started again."

Ruby shot him a worried look. She opened her mouth to say something, but Vernon cut her off.

"You're not my mother, so don't look at me like that."

"No, but I am a friend, and I worry about you." She rested a manicured hand on his arm and gave a gentle squeeze.

Vernon glanced down at her hand for a moment, a wistful look on his face. He placed his over hers and patted gently. "I know what I'm doing."

"You need a distraction again to stop you drinking," Ruby said decisively.

"No, I need a Smugglers' colada." Vernon looked up at me expectantly.

I sighed. I worried about his drinking too. With alcoholic parents, it stayed on my mind a lot. And it was ironic that I'd ended up owning a bar. But Vernon was a big boy, and I was a bartender. As much as you like to help your friends, you can't live your life for them.

The door opened, and Duncan Pickles, hack reporter extraordinaire, walked in wearing a rumpled suit. I recognized him from his byline photo in the
Cove Chronicles
. He zeroed in on Ruby and me behind the bar and waltzed over.

"Hi, Duncan Pickles from the local paper. I heard you two found Pandora Williams today." Holding his hand out to me, his eyes gleamed with the sniff of a good story.

I ignored his hand, so he swung it in Ruby's direction. There was no way I was talking to a reporter about what I'd seen, especially one as unscrupulous as him.

"I've got nothing to say to you." Ruby glared at his hand like it was poisonous. "Knowing you, you'll put some kind of nasty slant on things. Pandora should be able to rest in peace." She pointed toward the door, her silver mandala bracelet jangling. "You know the way out."

Duncan shrugged casually. "You know I'm going to report it anyway, so you might as well tell me what happened." He swung back to me again. "So?"

"So, what?"

"How did you find her? What position was the body in? How did Tim Baxtor look when he was running away from the scene?"

I held a hand up to silence him. "You won't get anything out of me. I've got no comment."

"But you think he's guilty, right? I mean, no one else could've got into that house and killed her, could they? It's pretty impossible. So, I heard some kind of drug was used to bump her off. What do you think it was?"

"Right, that's it." Vernon grabbed hold of the collar on Duncan's jacket and steered him toward the door.

"Hey! That's assault, that is! I'm only doing my job."

"Well, go and do it somewhere else. You heard the ladies. They're not talking to you." Vernon opened the door and calmly ejected Duncan. Then wiped his hands down his trousers, as if Duncan had contaminated him with scum, before heading back toward us.

Two hours later, I closed up the tavern and flicked off the lights. Harvey followed me down the private corridor behind the bar and along the internal entrance to the apartment above. I unlocked the door and found Zen, my black tomcat, sitting behind the door, waiting for me with a look on his face as if to say
where've you been, human? I'm starving!

I scooped him up in my arms and kissed his head.

"Where's Karma?" Harvey asked, closing the door behind me as we walked up the stairs that led into an open plan lounge/kitchen. There were windows along the length of the front wall facing the ocean. Sometimes I'd sit here and just stare at the waves, trying to empty my mind of thoughts and just meditate on the ever-changing scenery. It was amazing how the sea never stayed the same color. It seemed to have moods, just like humans. Some days it was fiery and argumentative, some days tranquil and easygoing.

Hearing his name, Karma's head popped up from behind the tiny sofa that I'd brought with me from the cottage. It looked ridiculously small in the large room, but Elise and Carter had sneaked in one night and removed all of Bob's furniture to sell, and even though they didn't have the right to do that since he'd left his estate to me, I didn't want to rock the boat by challenging them over it. With what Bob had left me, I could buy a million sofas and still have change. When the estate was all finally settled, I was going to be a rich woman. I still couldn't get my head around that. I needed to do some serious thinking about what to do with all that money. I knew I was going to donate some to the Second Chance Animal Rescue center, but apart from that, I didn't have a clue yet.

Harvey slumped on the sofa and moved Karma onto his lap. Karma rolled onto his back, offering Harvey his soft belly, and meowed until Harvey gave the obligatory stroke. Even though he only had three legs—Karma, not Harvey—it didn't seem to deter him from being a normal, agile cat. After he'd found his way into my life, I'd taken him to the vet for a checkup and to start his inoculations, and the vet said he was perfectly healthy. I curled up next to Harvey, resting my head on his shoulder, savoring the moment alone. With both our work schedules lately, it had been hard to get any private time together. Zen, determined not to be left out, sat in between us, nudging me with his head.

Harvey laughed, exposing that sexy dimple on his right cheek. You could tell a lot about a man by how he treated animals, and I felt a warm rush of contentment as I watched him talking to Karma as he rubbed the cat's belly gently. I was pretty sure I was falling in love.

"Pandora was killed with pentobarbital," Vernon said as soon as he walked through the door of the tavern. It was just after 9:00 a.m., and I was retrieving cutlery from the dishwasher and winding napkins around it. "I just got off the phone with my contact."

Ruby stopped wiping down the tables and gasped. "So it's true. Tim killed Pandora?" She walked toward us, hand on hip, an angry red flush creeping up her neck. "That poor woman. After all she went through with Jenna."

"What's pentobarbital?" I asked, mouth agape.

"It's a barbiturate," Vernon said. "It's used for several things, like treating seizures, but most importantly, it's used in the euthanasia of humans and animals. It's been used a lot as a lethal injection for death penalty cases. Administered intravenously, death is pretty much instantaneous."

"How awful." Ruby slumped onto a barstool. "I just hope it was painless and she didn't suffer."

"Lester Marshall has arrested Tim Baxtor," Vernon said.

"But if Tim had administered the drug intravenously, how did he get Pandora to sit still long enough to stick a needle in her?" I said. "Surely she would've put up a fight."

"There were no defense wounds mentioned in the autopsy report," Vernon said. "And no traces of any other drugs in her system, like a sedative. There were also no other injuries that might've rendered her unconscious first."

"So how did he manage it, then?" My forehead crinkled. "Surely she would've been struggling."

"Unless she was asleep," Ruby said.

"At the kitchen table?" I asked.

Vernon shrugged. "I've been known to nod off on the odd occasion there."

"Yes, that's because you were drunk, most probably." Ruby quirked an eyebrow.

I remembered the bottle of rum on the table. "How much alcohol did they find in her system?" I asked.

"She was way over the legal driving limit, so that might explain it," Vernon said.

"Maybe she'd been drinking the rum all afternoon. The bottle was almost empty," I said.

"But we don't know when she bought it," Vernon said.

"True, but she'd obviously been drinking a hefty dose of something alcoholic." I put the cutlery on a tray underneath the bar.

"I think Tim must've got inside Pandora's house, found her passed out, and stuck the drug in her vein." Ruby's eyes flashed with sadness. "And obviously the police must think the same if Tim's been arrested."

"That doesn't make sense," Vernon scoffed. "What? You think Tim just happened to walk around all the time with a vial of pentobarbital and a syringe in his pocket, hoping for the off-chance to whack someone? How did he get inside the house in the first place if, like you say, Pandora wouldn't have let him in?"

"The back door was open. He could've got in that way," I said.

"Then kill Pandora and walk out the front door in broad daylight?" Vernon shook his head.

"Why not?" Ruby asked. "Criminals do some dumb things sometimes."

Vernon rubbed his chin between his thumb and forefinger, deep in thought. I noticed the same spark of intrigue and excitement in his eyes I'd seen when we were investigating Bob's death. I guessed it must be hard to be a special agent all your working life, then give it up and do nothing. Vernon seemed to come alive again at the hint of a challenge, especially one that involved investigating a murder.

"Did Pandora have any other family?" I asked.

"Yes." Ruby nodded. "She had a son, Ian, although they've been estranged for years. Not surprisingly, when Jenna went missing, Pandora sank into a depression. She was obsessed with finding out what happened to her daughter and couldn't think of anything else. I guess Ian felt neglected, and they drifted apart. I didn't know Pandora well at the time, so I've never met him. Ian left town a few years after Jenna disappeared, and I don't think he's been back since." Ruby poured herself a bottle of water, added a slice of lemon, and took a sip. "Pandora had such tragedy in her life. First, she lost her husband to an aneurysm ten years before Jenna disappeared, then she lost her daughter, and eventually her relationship with Ian broke down. After Jenna, Pandora became kind of a recluse, spending most of her time in the house. She didn't really get involved with other people, apart from the healing treatments. She seemed to be able to help other people but was totally unable to help herself.

"She trained to be a nurse at first before taking up holistic therapy, but she was far too down after Jenna to carry on working for a long time. From what she told me, she could hardly get up in the mornings for years. Her husband was very wealthy, so at least she'd had the family money to fall back on."

I pictured Pandora's modest three-bedroom home with the outdated and worn furniture and lack of new technology or equipment. It didn't look as if she'd modernized it in years, so I wondered briefly what she'd done with her money.

"So if Tim did kill Jenna, not only did he ruin one life, he ruined three," I said. "Ian must've been just as devastated as Pandora when Jenna went missing."

"I wonder how Ian's taking things now," Ruby said. "Even though he and Pandora didn't have a good relationship any longer, she was still his mom. Maybe I should get hold of his number and phone him. Make sure he's okay. Give him my condolences at least. I could help him arrange the funeral. I feel like I should be doing something useful."

I smiled at my friend who had a heart of gold. She was fiercely loyal. "That's a nice idea. Ian's welcome to have the wake here, if he likes. I doubt very much he'd want to hold it at Pandora's house, after she died there. Tara and Clara can easily handle the catering."

"Good idea. I'll phone Lester and get hold of Ian's number."

"Hmmm, rather you than me." I'd rather have my appendix taken out than talk to Lester. "Do you really think Tim did it? Jenna, I mean?"

"I guess we'll never know for certain, but it is very suspicious that Jenna was never heard from again," Vernon said.

"Exactly," Ruby agreed.

"It would be easy to get rid of a body here." Vernon glanced through the window toward the ocean. "We're surrounded by water. You could just take a boat out, weigh the body down, and throw it overboard. It would be fish food in no time, and the skeleton would be scattered everywhere with these tides. Just look at the trouble Harvey's having locating the rest of the
Ocean's Revenge
."

I shuddered, a sudden image of Jenna being picked apart by sharks and fishes popping into my head. I blinked it away. What a sad story.

The front door opened, and Tara, the recently promoted chef, walked in, laden with some bags of produce and closely followed by Clara. Luckily, they weren't identical twins, so I could easily tell them apart. Tara was tall and slim, with a shock of red curls. Clara was the opposite. Short and slightly overweight with fine, lank, black short hair.

"Morning all!" They both said together. They did have a tendency to say the same things at the same times and finish off each other's sentences.

Vernon slid off the stool and limped toward them, taking the bags. "Let me give you a hand."

"Thanks." Tara gave us a huge smile. "Okay, so today I'm doing grilled miso salmon with rice noodles, and honey and orange sea bass with Le Puy lentils, as the specials," she said to me. "What do you think?"

The specialty of the tavern was its fresh, locally sourced seafood. "Sounds yum." I licked my lips. "I'll write it on the board out front."

Tara looked at us expectantly. "Anyone want a—"

"BLT before we start?" Clara finished off for her.

Tara carried on as if nothing had happened. I guess she was used to it, but it could be a bit disconcerting sometimes. "I can rustle up some breakfast for you before we start our—"

"Prep work," Clara finished. "Sounds like you've had a busy—"

"Time of it," Tara butted in. "What with finding poor Pandora and all."

Ruby gave them both a look of horror. "I'm vegan."

Tara waved a hand through the air. "Oh. Yeah, sorry. I forgot. You want an LT sandwich instead?"

"No, I'll pass, thanks," Ruby said.

"Anyone else up for a sandwich, then?" Clara and Tara said at the same time.

"Not for me, thanks," I said. "I've eaten." I'd already been up for ages, doing an hour's yoga and meditation before polishing off some organic muesli and almond milk.

"Not that rabbit food healthy stuff again." Tara chuckled at me.

"I'll have one. No, make that two." Vernon disappeared into the kitchen with the bags. "Heavy on the bacon, mayonnaise, and ketchup," he shouted.

"You're going to die of a heart attack one day!" Ruby called after him.

"What about Harvey?" Tara jerked her thumb in the direction of outside. "Shall I make him one too? He looks like—"

"He could do with something to warm him up," Clara finished. "That wind's—"

"Freezing today," Tara added.

"I'm sure he'd love that," I said, not quite knowing which one to answer.

We busied ourselves for opening, until the food was ready, and Tara plonked two plates of sandwiches onto the bar.

Vernon sat down and picked up a slice of bread, seeing how much mayonnaise and ketchup were underneath. It was obviously lacking the Vernon taste test as he grabbed a bottle of mayo and squeezed a heavy dollop on both his sandwiches. Satisfied they were drowned in gloop, he studied the mammoth item, looking for the best angle to stuff it in without it falling apart. Ruby shook her head at him as he tucked in.

I wandered outside to find Harvey, making my way through the tavern's garden and over to a privacy tent that had been erected over the excavated entrance to the caves. I poked my head inside but couldn't see him. On the ground inside the entrance was a large plastic sheet weighted down at each corner with large rocks. Several human bones with a light layer of earth had been placed in a large plastic box. I stared at the bones, a chill running through me as I wondered again what had really happened to Jenna.

"Oh, hi!" Harvey poked his head out of the entrance to the cave and climbed up a ladder he'd placed there. His hands were gloved, and he was holding a mesh basket filled with what looked like finger bones.

"Hey." I grinned. When Harvey was around, I couldn't help grinning. "There's a BLT with your name on it inside."

"Great. I'm dying for some grub. All this sea air makes you hungry."

"How are you getting on?" My gaze strayed to the bones again.

"Slowly. I'm finding more and more down here every day as I excavate through the collapsed cave." He removed his gloves and put them inside a hold-all bag, then fell into step beside me as we walked inside. I filled him in on Pandora being killed by pentobarbital and Tim being arrested.

"Wow. I'm getting a bit worried about this town. It's like being on a set of
Midsummer Murders
. I'm starting to realize why it's called Danger Cove. Do you think I'm safe here?" He shot me a coy look.

"Not from me." I giggled with a sly grin.

"I've got a mini crisis!" Tara popped her head out of the kitchen, a dusting of flour covering her hair. She slapped a palm to her head. "I can't believe I've run out of miso paste. Can someone pop out and get me some?"

"Sure," I said, retrieving my bag from under the bar. "Be back soon." I hopped onto my bicycle that was stashed behind the tavern and rode down Craggy Hill into town. I was just passing Cinnamon Sugar Bakery when I saw Detective Bud Ohlsen coming out, laden with a bag of goodies, his salt-and-pepper hair shining in the sunlight. I wondered how many donuts were in there for Lester.

The few times I'd met Bud, he'd always struck me as methodical and competent, preferring to take his time with cases, examining all the evidence and not jumping to conclusions, unlike Lester.

I skidded to a stop next to his car. I hadn't been able to get Jenna's disappearance out of my mind, and if anyone had a guess as to what had really happened to her, it would be Bud, who'd worked the case.

I was just about to approach him when a tall, big-boned woman rushed up to him on the street with a Labrador on a leash. She was in her midforties, not overweight but very thickset, with thick glasses, her long brown hair mussed up in matted tangles, wearing lime-green sweatpants and a glaringly bright-red T-shirt, as if she'd thrown the mismatched clothes on in a hurry.

"Detective Ohlsen!" she cried out.

He stopped. Turned to face her.

"Tim's just called my cell and said he'd been arrested!" Her cheeks were pink, nostrils flared. "I was just out taking the dog for a walk, so I'm on my way as fast as I can. He said he needs a lawyer! What's going on? This is outrageous."

Bud steered the woman away from the entrance to the bakery and into a doorway of a closed shop, talking so quietly I couldn't hear anything else. I watched her body language, the arms flailing around, her eyes shining, her lips firing words at him. After a few minutes, she took a deep breath, then left him there and dashed up the street, dog in tow, heading in the direction of the police station. Bud stood watching her for a moment before approaching his car.