Клео Коул - Murder Most Frothy

He went to the galley fridge, pulled out two cold bottles of beer and opened them. He handed me one and went topside again, taking a seat on a padded bench near the stern. I stood against the rail. We both drank in silence for a fewminutes, the waves lapping the hull, the boat gently bobbing on the dark water.

“So why did you leave the SEALs?” I asked. “Age?”

“Injury. It happened during…a training exercise.”

“Oh, wow, that’s bad luck. I mean, it wasn’t even on a secret mission or anything.”

Jim laughed.

“What’s so funny?”

“Clare, no SEAL is ever allowed to say he’s injured on anything but a ‘training exercise.’”

“Oh?…Oh! I see. Sorry…so what exactly is your injury?”

“Decompression injury. In laymen’s terms, the bends. It messed up my inner ear, my joints. If I go any deeper than recreational diving—about one hundred feet—I’ll probably suffer severe bone damage.”

“And this work you’re doing. You don’t dive any lower than—”

“Twenty feet tops. In the Caribbean, during the winter, I’ll go deeper. Fifty…but no more.”

“I see…”

I moved to the padded bench and sat down next to him. His dark, shaggy hair was wet and slicked back, dampening the green collar of his button-down. The scent of soap and citrus was still there on his skin, along with the faint briny smell of the open ocean. I liked it. I didn’t want to like it, but I did.

Together we continued to drink our beers and watch the play of moonlight on the water. At least I thought that’s what he’d been watching. When I glanced up, however, I found his eyes on me.

A sudden gust of wind tossed my chestnut hair around my face. Jim’s brown eyes seemed to liquefy. For long, silent minutes, he didn’t move.

That’s when I realized that being this close to Jim Rand was like being too close to a lightning strike. I could practically feel his coiled energy, the burning below his surface. He wasn’t bothering to mask anything now. I could see what he wanted, and if he had touched me just then, it would have been over. I would have melted like chocolate in a five hundred degree oven. So I stood up before he got the chance—

“Jim, I need your help.”

“You need my help?”

“David’s in danger, and I need to find out who wants to hurt him.”

Jim looked away, took a long swig of beer. “You need my help?”

“That’s what I said.”

He turned back to me, met my eyes. “Will you be grateful?”

“Yes.”

An eyebrow arched. “How grateful?”

“Depends.”

“On what?”

“On whether we catch the killer.”

A smile spread slowly across Jim Rand’s face. “I’m game.”

With patient silence, Jim listened to all of my theories and suspicions. Then he suggested we go below and use his laptop again. He thought we might get somewhere examining the party photos on screen since he could zoom into any image. His idea was to locate David in every photo and analyze what was happening around him.

There were about seventy photos in the file. We didn’t see anything suspicious for the first twenty-two. On twenty-three, however, I saw something that put a chill through me. The main image was of a beautiful young movie star laughing. But in the background, something caught my eye.

“Can you zoom in on David back there, make the image bigger?”

“Sure.” Jim moved the cursor and clicked. “What do you see, Clare?”

“David is talking to his restaurant manager, Jacques Papas. And look what Jacques is doing.”

“Looks like he’s handing David his drink to taste.”

“Go to the next photo in order.”

There was another shot of the starlet a few seconds later. “Zoom in again on David.”

“Ohmigod. David is handing the drink back. Jacques had David sample his drink and hand it back.”

“So?”

“So someone slipped David a small dose of MSG at his own party. And I think we just witnessed it right here.”

“You think Papas tried to murder David?”

“I think Papas had a motive to have David murdered. And I think what we’re seeing here is David being set up with the headache that sent him to his bedroom—where the shooter was supposed to take him out.”

“I follow you. But what’s Papas’s motive?”

“Embezzlement. And I think I can prove it. Even if Detective O’Rourke won’t buy the MSG mickey, I know he’ll buy a book of accounts that shows a scheme to embezzle money from Cuppa J and David Mintzer. And I know Papas keeps that book locked up in his office desk.”

Jim Rand leaned back in his chair, eyeballed me. “And how are you going to get this book?”

I folded my arms, tapped my chin in thought. “When you were a SEAL, did you have to break into things quietly?”

“Yes, Clare.”

“So you know how to pick a lock?”

“Yes, Clare.”

“Then the question, Mr. Rand, isn’t how am I going to get the book. It’s how are we going to do it.”

“You’re determined to pull me into your outlaw ways, aren’t you, Cosi?”

“That’s rich. Coming from you.”

Jim laughed. “Just remember one thing.”

“What?”

“You promised if I helped you catch the killer, you’d be grateful.”

“First things first, Rand. First things first.”

I drove back to Cuppa J in my Honda, watching the lights on Jim’s Harley in my rearview mirror. By the time we arrived at the restaurant it was nearly three o’clock in the morning. The building was dark and deserted, the parking lot empty. As I climbed out of my car, Jim rolled up next to me and cut the motorcycle’s engine.

Together, we walked up the dark path to the restaurant. Through the glass of the front door, I saw the tiny red light on the alarm console, warning intruders that the system was activated.

Jim, hands shoved into his denims, leaned against the door jam. “So, do you want me to pick this lock?”

I shook my head. “I have the key. The lock I want you to pick is inside. Anyway, there’s an alarm system. Even if you got through the door, you’d have to deal with the keypad. You don’t know the code.”

“Alarms have never been a problem for me.”

“Okay, now you’re just bragging.”

I slipped the key into the lock and twisted it. After opening the door, I had ten seconds to punch in the security code or the alarm would go off, both here and at the police station. I tapped the code into the key pad. A single beep, and the tiny light switched from red to green.

“All clear,” I called over my shoulder.

As I stepped into the restaurant’s dining room, I knew at once that something was wrong. At first the air seemed heavy and close, then I detected a familiar odor. Jim came up behind me, gripped my shoulder. He smelled it, too.

“Gas,” we said together.

“The pilot lights must have gone out!” I cried. “We have to fix it—”

I hurried forward, but didn’t get more than two steps before Jim, his hand still digging into my shoulder, yanked me back.

“Clare, no. We have to get out of here.”

“No, wait.”

I struggled against him. But in a few seconds, I felt dizzy then woozy. I blinked, saw stars, felt my knees giving way. Jim snatched me up and carried me out of the restaurant. Choking, he stretched me out on the hood of my Honda, which felt warm against my back. I coughed and gasped for air.

“We can’t let the place blow up,” I cried between hacks. “We can’t.”

Jim pushed himself away from the hood, faced the building. I followed his eyes and noticed he’d left the front door open. Then, before I knew what was happening, he’d stripped off his button-down.