Rebel Island (Tres Navarre #7)(36)

But he just kept promising things would be better. And she kept believing.

More noises came from the kitchen—distressed voices, the sounds of an argument.

“We should go down,” she said.

“No,” he told her. “Let them do what they will. They are like the storm, mi amor. Their sounds mean nothing.”

And they stayed in the linen room, holding hands, Jose kneeling before her as he had under the orange trees, telling her stories she chose to believe.

21

Never underestimate the resourcefulness of a college guy searching for booze.

After ransacking the refrigerator looking for ice for Ty’s head (and, more important, beer), Chase and Markie found a storage room in the back of the kitchen with an industrial freezer. They decided to open the freezer on the theory that any self-respecting hotel would have vodka on ice.

They were right. The vodka was wedged right between the corpse’s feet.

Chris Stowall lay curled in the fetal position, frost on his eyebrows. His skin was the same color as the ice-crusted sides of the freezer.

Next to me, Benjamin Lindy muttered a curse that was probably shocking back in the 1940s. Apparently the old lawyer had gotten some sleep since I last saw him. His shirt was wrinkled and his gray hair was mussed, but he still managed to look like the most dignified person present.

He turned to Chase. “Son, did you touch the body?”

“N-no, sir.” But when Chase looked at me, I got the distinct impression he wanted to say something more. The bad boy attitude had drained out of his eyes. He looked like a kid who’d just been chased by the neighborhood pit bull. I noticed for the first time how he and Markie were dressed. The cutoffs and T-shirts and flip-flops were gone. Now they both wore jeans, hiking boots, dark long-sleeve shirts. Markie had a flashlight clipped to his belt. At Chase’s feet, as if it had dropped there in a moment of panic, was a little hand shovel like a gardening trowel.

“Where were you two going?” I asked him.

Markie stepped between us. “You’ve got a freaking dead man in the cooler, and you’re asking stupid questions? Ty’s already going nuts upstairs. If he hears about this—”

“I’m not upstairs.” Ty was leaning against the cutting board, his hand a little too close to the butcher knives for comfort. His face was seasick green.

“Happy now, Navarre?” he demanded. His words were slurred. “We’re stuck here and this…this Calavera guy’s gonna kill us all.”

“C’mon, man,” Markie said. “That ain’t gonna—”

“Shut up! Try to knock me out with those…those pills.”

“Sedatives,” Chase said defensively.

Ty snorted. “Told you we shouldn’t have come. Told you something would go wrong. Couldn’t get out, could you?”

“You gotta rest the head, dude.” Markie’s voice was cold. “Let me get you upstairs.”

“Screw that.” Ty grabbed a knife, but he was too messed up to be dangerous to anyone but himself. Chase and Markie wrestled the cleaver away from him. They dragged him out of the kitchen, Ty still yelling that we were all going to die.

I looked at Benjamin Lindy, who sighed.

“I believe those boys had one good idea.” Mr. Lindy pulled the chilled vodka out from between Chris Stowall’s feet. “May I buy you a drink?”

Lindy leaned into the freezer, putting his face nearer to Chris Stowall’s than I would’ve done. The old man’s breath turned to mist.

“Contusion on the back of the head,” he decided. “That slick of blood you found earlier on the kitchen floor.”

“I didn’t find it.” This seemed a trivial point to argue, but I was running out of ways to distance myself.

Lindy straightened. “What would you say happened here?”

“He was killed in the kitchen, not long after Longoria was shot. Hit from behind. No struggle. Either someone sneaked up on him, or the killer was someone Chris knew. Someone he didn’t fear turning his back to.”

“Someone reasonably strong,” Lindy added. “Strong enough to drag a grown man into this freezer.”

“Why go to the trouble of hiding the body and not clean the blood splatter on the kitchen floor?”

“No time. Perhaps the killer was interrupted. Or perhaps he simply overlooked the blood.”

I thought about that. A bloodstain in the middle of a white floor seemed impossible to overlook, but I’d heard of crazier things. Convicted murderers will tell you that killing someone puts you in a daze. You might cover your tracks perfectly except for something obvious…your wallet on the kitchen counter, your coat across the arm of the victim’s couch.

“The kitchen is a staff area,” I said. “The only people in here would be Chris, Alex, Jose and Imelda.”

“And thirsty college students, apparently.”

I nodded. I didn’t like the way Chase and Markie had been dressed, or the fact that they’d tried to drug their friend. “The service entrance is right down the hall,” I said. “They were planning on sneaking out the back door.”

“That would be insane,” Lindy said, “unless they had a very compelling reason. Like moving a dead body.”

I shook my head. “If that was the plan, why would Chase run up and get me?”