Chapter One
Sheriff Frank Marshal guided his cruiser to the curb of a gray modular home located a few blocks south of his own in the Pineapple Port fifty-five-plus community. He hated getting calls about his own neighborhood. Even a simple robbery like a missing lawn ornament put him on edge for weeks. He’d start peering through his windows at intermittent intervals each night, scanning the darkness for the juvenile delinquents responsible.
The missing lawn ornaments were almost always taken by juvenile delinquents. They liked to pose and dress them up for social media posts. His own fishing frog had been forced to wear a wig and perform lewd yoga poses in locations all over the county before the thief’s mother finally turned in the little brat.
Lawn ornament molestation was bad enough. This time, instead of someone losing a stone alligator or a gazing ball, someone had found a person, possibly dead. In Pineapple Port. He held his breath, waiting to hear the address crackle over the radio. When it did, shoulders he didn’t realize he’d bunched, released.
He didn’t recognize the address.
No one I know.
Frank flipped off his siren. A Hispanic woman stood on the sidewalk outside the home, pointing towards the house with increasing urgency as he folded himself out of the car.
“Did you call an ambulance?” he asked, hustling as fast as his aging legs would move him.
The woman shook her head, her eyes wide with what looked like both fear and confusion. “No. Es muerto.”
“Marto who?”
“Muerto.”
“Okay. It doesn’t matter what his name is. Where is he?”
“Alrededor del costado de la casa.”
Frank perked.
Casa. I know that one.
“Ah, in the house, got it,” he said, pleased with himself for frequenting Taco Casa enough to pick up a smattering of the language.
Frank entered the home through the wide-open front door.
Whoever Marto is, he’s going to be furious when he finds out someone let out all his air-conditioning.
“Where?” he asked the woman who’d followed him inside. She seemed frustrated, waving her hands in the air, when she said, “No aquí.”
“I don’t need a key, the door is wide open.”
“No, over there,” she pointed while hooking her arm out and around, as if she were trying to hug a bear. Frank realized she meant around the outside of the house.
“Outside?”
“Si.”
“Got it.”
He trotted back down the front steps and around the side of the house to find a man lying on the ground at the foot of a tall ladder. The dead man lay on his stomach, his head turned away from Frank’s view, but otherwise straight and proper, every snow-white hair in place. If he’d been bare-chested and not stretched across his muddy, ant-ridden lawn, he could have been tanning, getting a little color on his back.
Frank only needed to touch the body to know help had arrived too late. Even in the morning sun, the old man’s flesh felt cold. He wore what looked like work shorts, cargo-style, stained with multi-colored paint blotches, as if this pair had been his go-to outfit for home projects. Walking around the opposite side of the body, Frank saw the man’s lips were blue, his cheeks the color of a fish’s belly.
Frank’s gaze climbed up the ladder propped against the side of the house and back down to the body.
Cause of death seemed pretty obvious.
“Hello?”
Frank heard a familiar voice calling from the front of the house.
“Around the side,” he shouted.
Charlotte Morgan appeared, long brown ponytail swinging, their resident neighborhood orphan-turned-detective. As usual, she seemed unable to hide the spring in her step.
The girl loves crimes. And a body… Boy, this is her lucky day.
He’d let Charlotte shadow him during her private eye training and allowed her to help investigate the scene of a suspicious death. He’d never seen anyone so happy to poke around a dead guy. That case had been a little strange, and he’d assumed that was why she seemed so excited, but seeing her now, fighting to look somber—he had to wonder if any old body made her day.
He also had to wonder if she’d bugged his cruiser. Every time he had a case more interesting than graffiti, Charlotte managed to show up moments after he did.
“Hey, I heard the sirens—oh. Hm.” Charlotte’s gaze dropped to the dead man. Her lips curled into a tiny smile and then dropped as if someone had turned on the gravity.
Frank chuckled to himself.
Nice try. I saw that.
He motioned to the ladder. “I hate to be the one to break it to you, but this one’s an accident.”
Charlotte scowled. “Very funny. It’s bad enough a man died here, Frank. I’m not hoping it’s a murder.”
“Uh huh.”
Charlotte seemed to notice the Hispanic woman for the first time and flashed her an empathic smile.
“Are you his wife?”
The woman looked offended. “No. House cleaning.”
“She found the body,” explained Frank, before turning his attention to the housekeeper. “What’s your name, ma’am?”
“Corentine Flores.”
“Do you know him?”
She shook her head. “No. First time here.”
“He left quite a first impression,” mumbled Charlotte trying to peer around Frank to get a better look at the body. He stepped in front of her and grunted with disapproval.
Frank continued his interview. “You found him like this?”
“Muerto,” she said, nodding.
Frank mumbled to Charlotte. “I think his name is Marty and she calls him Marto, near as I can figure.”
“Muerto means dead,” said Charlotte, ever helpful. She motioned at a square, canvas casing on the ground. “Looks like he was trying to cover his skylights for the hurricane.”
Frank heaved a sigh. “Why these old people crawl up on their roofs like they’re still twenty, I’ll never know.”
Charlotte used Frank’s attention on the ladder to move around him and squat beside the body. “I guess he thought he could do it. I mean, when do you know you’re too old to do something?”
“When you fall and kill yourself,” muttered Frank.
He turned back to the woman. “When did you find him? You called right away?”
She nodded.
“Do you have any idea when he fell?”
The woman shook her head and her expression dropped, as if she felt guilty for being unable to help more than she could.
Poor thing. She’s probably had quite a shock.
“It hasn’t been too long. There’s no lividity,” said Charlotte. She wrapped her hand in her shirt and shifted the man’s arm. “He’s in rigor, so three, four hours?”
“Can you not touch him please?” said Frank.
“But I covered my hand, and you said yourself, it isn’t a crime scene.”
“It’s still creepy. Just cut it out.”
Another police car arrived and lanky Deputy Daniel soon strolled over to the group.
Late and useless as usual.
“Thought you might need some help,” he said. He was talking to Frank but his eyes were on Charlotte. Frank stepped into his frame of view.
“You. Listen up. Call the coroner for me.”
Daniel snapped out of his Charlotte-induced trance. “Huh? Oh. Yeah, sure...” He tipped his hat at Charlotte as she looked up and acknowledged his presence. Daniel beamed.
Charlotte held up a hand. “Hold the phone. Stop the presses.”
Frank put his hands on his hips. “I can’t let you play crime scene with this guy all day long. We need to call the coroner.”
“It’s not that. I think it might not be an accident.”
“What? Wishful thinking doesn’t make it so, sweetheart. He fell off the damn roof. He did everything but leave a note that said I’m going to fall off the roof now.”
“But I think he did leave a note.”
“That he wrote on the way down?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Charlotte, looking smug. “I don’t know if he had time to do that and eat it.”
Frank closed his eyes and prayed for strength. “Will you make some sense?”
“Come here. Look.”
Frank moved around to Charlotte’s side of the body and squinted toward where she pointed near the man’s mouth. He could see now something beige rested between his lips.
“That his dentures? Popped out of his mouth maybe?”
“Put your glasses on. It looks like cloth.”
Frank felt inside his shirt pocket for his eyeglasses and slipped them on his face to peer again at the object pressed between the man’s lips.
“What is it?” asked Daniel.
“Make yourself useful and get me a pair of gloves out of your car,” said Frank.
Dan jogged to his trunk and returned with two pairs of latex gloves.
“I’ve got the gloves,” he announced, as if he’d just found the cure for the common cold.
Frank shook his head and took a pair.
I guess when you’re that useless fetching gloves is a win.
“Thank you,” said Charlotte, reaching up for the second pair.
Daniel’s chest puffed another inch.
Frank slipped on the gloves and peeled open the man’s blue lips. Pinching the edge of the flat object he slid out a round, cloth disk with a stitched edge. At the top of its design, sat a yellow plus-sign, a blue house occupied the lower left corner, and the lower right sported what looked like green lightning.
“What is this?” he asked aloud.
“More importantly, how did it get in his mouth? Hold it still, let me get a picture.” Charlotte pulled her ever-present phone from her pocket and snapped a photo.
Frank addressed Corentine. “Ma’am, I’m afraid we’re going to have to ask you to stick around. Do you understand?”
The woman wrapped her hand around the waterspout and rested her shoulder on the wall, resigned to waiting.
Frank returned to musing on the mysterious patch. “Maybe his hands were full and he needed a way to hold this while he was on the ladder.”
“But why would he need a patch on a roof?” asked Charlotte poking at her phone.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m doing an online image search. Here it is.” She held the phone up for Frank to see. “It’s an emergency preparedness Boy Scout badge.”
“Huh,” said Frank. The badge on Charlotte’s phone did look exactly like the one in his own hand, but for the traces of watery blood on his version.
“How did they solve any crimes before the Internet?” she asked no one in particular.
“No Internet and we were all so busy hunting dinosaurs,” said Frank, rising. He gazed up the ladder. “You think he was going to award himself a patch for putting on the hurricane covers?”
“You’re suggesting he’s the world’s oldest boy scout?”
“I dunno. People are weird. Nothing surprises me anymore.”
“I think it’s more likely someone left a message.”
“Oh you and the murderers.”
She shrugged and Frank looked at Dan. “Skip the ambulance. Call in the FDLE.”
Dan nodded and jogged back to his cruiser.
“Florida Department of Legal Eagles?” asked Charlotte.
Frank chuckled. “So, you don’t know everything after all. It’s Florida Department of Law Enforcement. They’ll need to take a look. Sheriff’s department doesn’t have the resources for a full-blown investigation.”
“But you have me.”
“Right. My mistake, cancel that order.” He threw out an arm and pulled Charlotte to him for a quick side-hug and she giggled.
She’s so adorable.
Frank stretched his back with another, deeper groan and by the time he’d looked back down, Charlotte had the corpse’s head in her gloved hands, lifting it to peek underneath it.
“Hey, put that down. I’ve officially declared this a suspicious death.”
“Sorry.” Charlotte set the dead man’s head back down and stood. “It’s definitely suspicious.”
“Man’s got a Boy Scout patch in his mouth. Of course it’s suspicious.”
“And that other thing…”
Frank sighed. “Fine. You already cost me a ton of paperwork finding that patch. What other thing is going to complicate my life?”
Charlotte’s eyes lit with excitement. “I thought you’d never ask.”
Frank tried not to laugh. If he ever revealed how much her quests for the truth amused and impressed him, she might end up twice as tenacious.
Charlotte pointed at the man’s head. “It looks like he has a massive cut on his skull.”
“That’s your big reveal? He fell off a roof.”
“But look.” Charlotte jumped up and down as if she were on a trampoline, stopping to look exasperated by his befuddled silence.
“Look at how springy the grass is,” she said.
Frank found himself distracted by a different oddity.
All that jumping and she doesn’t sound winded.
Frank couldn’t remember the last time he did something that active without collapsing into a chair afterwards.
“So?” he asked.
“So, it’s too soft for him to have the deep smashy mess he has there.”
“Smashy? Is that an official detective word?”
“It is now. It looks like there’s bits of masonry in there. Red like brick...”
She drifted off, and Frank felt certain she was accessing some sort of gravel database in her brain, trying to find a match.
“I’m sure there are bits of rock down there under the grass,” he said, pointing at the ground.
“Yes, but it isn’t that kind. It’s more like—” She looked around before wandering toward the back of the house.
When she didn’t immediately return, Frank sniffed.
Okay. Nice talk.
Hearing footsteps behind him, he turned to find Daniel returning.
“Where’d Charlotte go?” he asked.
“Who knows.” Frank turned to the housekeeper, who was still standing at the corner of the house, wide-eyed and watching.
“You know a little Spanish, don’t you, Dan?”
Daniel grinned as if he had a secret no one else knew. “Un poco.”
“Okay. Could you un poco her statement from her?”
“Sure.” Daniel pulled his notepad out of his belt as if every page said Deputy Dan is Super Cool! and swaggered over to the woman.
That’ll keep them busy until FDLE gets here. Now I just have to get Charlotte out of here before—
“Brick!” called a voice from the back yard.
Frank took a cleansing breath and strolled around the house to find Charlotte pointing triumphantly at a brick lying in a muddy corner of the yard.
He licked his lips and stared down at the brick. “Dare I ask?”
“Blood.” She leaned down to point at a brown stain marring the edge of the brick.
Frank pulled his glasses from his head and lowered himself to a squat to inspect the stain.
“Could be dirt,” he said.
“Could be blood.”
It does look like blood. Still…
“So you think he fell on the brick and then made it as far as the ladder before he collapsed?”
Frank knew the chances of his fanciful scenario being what Charlotte suspected were about as likely as him standing back up without his knees cracking like Chinese New Year.
“No. I think someone hit him with the brick and tried to make it look like he fell off the roof.”
He sighed. “Anyone ever tell you you’re a pain in the neck?”
She smiled and Frank held up a hand.
“My knees locked up.”
Charlotte helped him to stand straight, and they headed toward the front of the house.
“Why couldn’t you take up mahjong like the other ladies? Why do you always have to make my life so difficult?”
“Sorry. I’m afraid you were always my hero. Not Mrs. Terry.”
I’m her hero?
Frank felt his throat tighten. “Who’s Mrs. Terry?” he asked, trying to change the subject before his eyes teared.
“She’s the best mahjong player in Pineapple Port.”
“Right.” He swallowed hard. “Just my luck.”
Chapter Two
“Sounds like we’re going to get a direct hit,” said Darla as she and Mariska selected Publix shopping carts. They jostled hips, each trying to avoid the cart with the wonky leg, its wheel hovering three inches off the ground like a levitating magician.
With a grunt, Mariska jerked her cart clear of its nested mates. “Stupid hurricane. The thing is crazy. It’s headed for Texas, then Louisiana, then back at Texas, and now here.”
“Staggering like a drunk,” agreed Darla. “They should have named it after my ex-husband.”
“Which one?”
Darla shrugged. “Take your pick.”
They pushed their way towards the first aisle. Mariska stopped to check a display for BOGO wine, tucking tight to the bottles to avoid other shoppers. She didn’t drink wine, but how could she avoid a buy one get one free? To not buy a bottle would be losing money.
“It’s busy for this time of day,” she mumbled.
Darla agreed.
Plucking a bottle from the shelf to read its description, Mariska’s elbow grazed the shirt of a man rustling through plastic boxes of strawberries. He’d stood so close to her she could feel the heat radiating off of him.
Anger bubbled in her chest.
Who are all these people? This is my store.
Agitated, she wheeled away from the display and found Darla parked in front of the shredded cheeses. She clucked her tongue, staring daggers at a woman whose cart caromed towards her own.
“Why are so many people here?”
Darla shrugged. “I don’t know. I thought all the snowbirds left.”
“Idiots. We should have come earlier.” Darla tossed two packages of BOGO bacon into her cart. Publix offered one brand or another buy-one-get-one-free every week, so between the two of them, Darla and Mariska had close to twenty packages of bacon in their freezers. Trapped by a hurricane, they’d die of high blood pressure and salt intake long before they ever died of starvation.
Darla cocked her head like a curious beagle. “Hey...”
“Hm?” Mariska read the back of a package of fat-free cream cheese knowing she had every intention of buying the full-fat package.
“The eggs are all gone.”
“What?” Mariska turned to see a system of shelves she’d never realized existed. They’d always been covered with cartons of eggs.
“What happened?” she asked.
“I don’t know…”
Mariska watched a woman roll by with a child in her cart, the boy barely visible over multiple packages of toilet paper and paper towels.
“She’s going to lose that kid in there.”
“These empty shelves remind me of the last time a hurricane...” Darla’s voice trailed off as another woman stormed by with at least a dozen packages of ground beef.
“Oh no,” she said.
“What?” Marla followed her friend’s gaze to the passing cart. “Why is she—oh no.”
Mariska and Darla’s gazes met.
“Panic-buying,” they said in unison.
Darla set her jaw. “Snowbirds. First they clog up our highway, then they swarm our beaches like nasty little ants, and then they steal all our food.”
Mariska shook a fist. “Usually we only have to deal with snowbirds or hurricanes, not both. This early storm is for the birds.”
“Snowbirds.”
They giggled.
Darla sobered. “Okay. We’re going to have to do this like a military operation. I’ll hit the paper products, you hit the milk.”
Mariska craned her neck to see around the growing crowd. The refrigerated bins, once overflowing with chicken, beef and pork, glowed naked and white like empty rib cages.
“It’s all gone,” she whispered, her tone implying she’d lost a friend.
Darla’s shoulders slumped. “We’re too late.”
“But the hurricane only turned track towards us this morning. It probably won’t even hit us.”
Darla gritted her teeth so hard Mariska worried she’d crack a tooth.
“What is wrong with these people?”
“It’s like they lose their minds. You’d better get a move on to the paper products. I’ll meet you there.”
Darla saluted Mariska and took off, shamelessly sprinting her cart in the direction of aisle eight.
“Water!” Mariska called after her.
Mariska hustled to the meat, barely slowing to snatch the last bottle of her favorite coffee creamer from the shelf as if she’d been training for a Coffemate emergency all her life.
She stared with dismay at the empty meat shelves. Nothing remained except hot Italian sausage and corned beef set out for St. Patrick’s day—the one day a year people choked down corned beef in order to get back to drinking.
She grabbed the sausage, thinking lasagna, and pushed toward the paper product aisle. There, she found Darla standing with several other women, all of them gaping at empty shelves, seemingly shellshocked.
“All gone,” said Darla as Mariska approached.
The four of them stood there a moment longer recognizing a moment of silence, until one of the women spoke aloud.
“Potatoes.”
She slapped her hand over her mouth, realizing her mistake.
The women looked at each other, eyes wide with panicked determination. Leaping to action, three carts collided. Darla dodged them at the last second and skated by.
“I’ll get you a bag!” she called behind her as she torqued the cart around the corner headed for more produce.
“Get lettuce!” screamed Mariska.
Chapter Three
“Hey, do you need me for anything?”
Charlotte and Frank’s heads swiveled toward a salt-and-pepper-haired man crossing the lawn of the house next door. He wore khaki shorts, a bright pink polo and white sports socks pulled to mid-calf. A lime-green canvas belt circled his waist with tiny, embroidered martini glasses. He held a golf club, for no apparent reason, in his left hand.
Frank sniffed. “Depends. Who are you?”
The man thrust out his chin. “I found the body and called it in. Name’s Jack Canton.”
“You found the body?” Frank jerked a thumb in the direction of the woman being interviewed by Deputy Dan. “I thought she found it.”
Jack shrugged. “You could say we found it together. I heard her scream and offered to call it in because she doesn’t speak English so good.” He rolled his eyes to show how ridiculous he found that fact.
“So she found the body,” murmured Charlotte, suspecting for the rest of Jack’s life, his new favorite cocktail story would be, The Day I Found a Body.
Frank nodded his cheek in her direction without actually looking at her and she frowned.
I know. Shut up.
Frank fished his notepad from a leather case on his Batman-like utility belt. “We’d like to take a statement from you. You want to do it here or down at the station?”
The man looked at his watch, unable to hide his annoyance. He’d wanted to claim responsibility for finding the body, but apparently hadn’t counted on being dragged into the paperwork portion of the equation. Charlotte guessed him to be about sixty-five years old. Odds were good he didn’t have a nine-to-five job.
Jack crossed his arms against his chest. “I was about to put up my own hurricane shutters but I can take a minute.”
Really? Charlotte eyed the golf club in his hand. Apparently, he carried it around all the time, like a security blanket.
Frank licked the tip of his tiny pencil. Charlotte didn’t know how licking it helped, but pencils were about as common as VCRs. She kept one in her utility drawer for marking walls when hanging pictures.
“So tell me exactly what you saw,” said Frank.
Jack rubbed his nose and stared at the body as if trying to recreate the scene in his head. “Nothing really. I came out to get my paper and that little Mexican lady screamed. I thought Ted fell—”
“Ted? You know his last name?”
“No. He’s pretty new.”
“So you didn’t know him well?”
Jack shook his head. “No, no. We introduced ourselves when he first moved in, but we didn’t become fast friends. Not really my type.”
“How so?”
“No reason really. He’s just old.”
Charlotte snorted a laugh and then cleared her throat to disguise it.
Jack, the spring chicken.
Frank glowered at her. “You need a tissue?” he asked.
She sniffed. “No. Sorry. Allergies.”
Frank grunted and refocused on Jack. “Okay. Go on. You saw Ted there, dead?”
Jack stabbed his club into the ground and leaned on it. “I didn’t know he was dead right away. I saw the ladder and figured he fell. I asked her what happened, but you know...I figured she was illegal and too afraid to call the cops.”
“Why would you assume she’s illegal?” asked Charlotte.
Frank took a half step in front of her. “Do you know her?”
Jack cast a condescending glance in Charlotte direction. “She’s dressed like a housekeeper and she’s Mexican. I did the math.”
“So you know her well enough to know she’s Mexican?” asked Charlotte.
Jack rolled his eyes. “No, I mean Hispanic. Whatever.”
“Did you touch the body?” asked Frank, leaning to further block her from Jack. She took a step back.
“I checked his pulse,” said Jack.
“How?”
“The usual way, I guess.”
Frank shook his head. “How exactly. We have to account for fingerprints on the body.”
“Oh. His neck. With two fingers, like they do on TV.”
“And you didn’t feel anything?”
“I didn’t have to. He was cold as a stone.”
Charlotte elbowed Frank. “Ten bucks says he died last night.”
Frank scowled. “Why would he be on a ladder at night?”
“Exactly.”
They turned back to Jack, who stood glaring at them.
Frank cleared his throat. “Figure of speech. We’re not really betting on the investigation.” He glanced back at Charlotte. “Isn’t there somewhere you need to be?”
“No.”
“I think Dan could use your help.”
Charlotte sighed. “Fine.”
She made her way to Deputy Daniel. He’d finished interviewing the housekeeper, who’d taken a seat on the front step.
“Anything good?” she asked.
Daniel looked up from his notes and grinned. “Hey, Charlotte.”
“Hey, Daniel. Did she know anything helpful?”
“Nah. She found the body and that dude over there called it in for her. Name’s Corentine Flores. She’s from El Salvador.”
Charlotte glanced back at Jack. “I knew it. Not Mexican.”
“What?”
“Nothing. How long has she been working for Ted?”
Dan’s eyes grew wide, pupils bouncing in the direction of Corentine. “I don’t know. Should I have asked her that?”
The quick whoop whoop! of a police cruiser made them jump as the FDLE officers pulled to the scene.
Charlotte frowned. She needed to leave so Frank didn’t get in trouble for letting her poke around. Technically, her training was over and while Frank did deputize her from time to time for particular cases, she hadn’t been officially assigned to this one. Though after the discovery of the brick, she hoped she’d earned a spot on the team should FDLE ask them for additional help.
Two officers approached Daniel. One ignored her completely, the other gave her a head-to-toe eye washing and grinned.
“Where’s the body?” asked the other.
“Are you a witness?” asked the one with eyes on her.
“Nah, she’s Charlotte,” said Daniel. “She’s the witness.” He pointed to Corentine on the step.
“I’m just a neighbor. I’ll get out of your way,” said Charlotte. “You’re going to want to look at the brick in the back west corner of his back yard though. Sheriff thinks maybe someone hit him with it.”
Both men seemed to refocus on the task at hand and headed toward Frank with a touch of their hat brims as goodbye. The all-business officer slapped his partner on the arm and pointed him toward Corentine.
The other clucked his tongue, but headed in her direction.
Daniel leaned toward Charlotte. “Is that true?”
“What?”
“You think someone hit him with a brick?”
Charlotte nodded. “Looks like it to me.”
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