Marty Ambrose - Mango Bay 03 - Murder in the Mangroves (19 page)

“It’s all a matter of perspective.” She flipped open a cola
and unwrapped a lollipop. “Sure, murder is a terrible thing,
and I sympathize with the family, but I’ve also got newspapers
to sell. The business of life goes on.” She slid the lollipop into
her mouth.

I had no response to that. Was Bernice a heartless old bag
or just a realist?

“Get to work. We’ve got a deadline to meet tomorrow. Both
stories have to be done by then. Chop-chop” She pushed herself upright again and threw a T-shirt at me. “Here, this is from
our newest advertiser.”

I held it up and rolled my eyes. Get a Grease Job at Charley’s
Garage. Simple and tackyjust like Bernice. “Don’t tell me.
Charley was your drinking buddy last night.”

“Of course” She grinned. “Most business deals are done
over meals and, more important, beer.”

Just at that moment, Sandy strolled in with her fiance,
Jimmy, and his mother, Madame Geri, the island’s freelance
psychic. Now it was my turn to grin, especially when I spied
Madame Geri’s turquoise parrot, Marley, on her shoulder. I
could hardly wait for the clash of crazies that was about to
take place, so I sat down and tipped my chair forward in anticipation.

“Bernice, I’d like to introduce Madame Geri,” Sandy began
in a chipper voice. “She writes our astrology column for the
paper.”

“Are you joking?” Bernice blinked a couple of times as she
beheld Madame Geri’s appearance: blond dreadlocks, Betty
Crocker-style dress, and small cigar-box-style purse. A retro
Rastafarian.

“Nope, she’s the real deal,” I cut in with a jaunty bob of my
head. “And she helped me solve a murder last year,” I added
with a second jaunty bob of my head.

Marley let out a piercing squawk, and Bernice howled and
winced as if given an electroshock. She held out her lollipop
as if to ward off an evil goblin. “Keep that damn bird quietand away from me”

“Marley is not a bird. He’s my link to the spirit world,”
Madame Geri clarified in a calm voice. She then halted about
three feet in front of Bernice. They stared each other down. It
was quite a sight: a hungover hag facing a New Age nut. But
neither backed down.

“This office is sacred space and shouldn’t house this kind
of junk” Madame Geri pointed at the grease-soaked engine
part on the floor. “It’s bad karma”

“Says you” Bernice included a rude hand gesture.

Madame Geri ignored both responses. “There are bigger
things going on than you realize.”

“Okay, I’ll bite. Like what?”

Madame Geri raised her chin, keeping Marley close. “The
mango balance is off. The island is in mourning for its dead
queen”

“Huh?” Bernice’s mouth pursed, causing her wrinkles to
deepen.

“The island chose its queen,” Madame Geri explained, glancing at me with a solemn expression, then back at Bernice. “Now
that she’s dead, all the mangos are shriveling on the trees, as I
told Mallie. Our Mango Festival will have no mangos if the
balance isn’t restored.”

.,So?”

“The island’s economy depends on the mangos. People will
suffer. Your paper will go down because no one will have the
money to buy advertisements.”

Bernice started. That hit a nerve. Bravo, Madame Geri.

“Oh, my, yes. The mango balance must be restored”
Madame Geri closed her eyes briefly as if to confirm her pronouncement with the spirit world. I guess it was like tuning into
a radio station for the top-forty hits. Once you had the frequency,
you got all the tunes.

“What am I supposed to do about it?” Bernice said, keeping
a wary eye on Marley.

“Let Mallie do her job-unobstructed. She’ll find the murderer.”

Every eye in the room fastened on me, pinning me to the
wall like J. Alfred Prufrock in the Eliot poem. I squirmed just
as he did in his mind when “fixed in a formulated phrase” What
had gotten into Madame Geri?

“Who said it was murder?” my temporary editor asked.

“I did.” Madame Geri stroked Marley. “I was told the day it
happened”

“By the killer?” Bernice’s face kindled in excitement.

“The spirit world.”

“Jeez, spare me,” Bernice muttered, throwing her hands up.
“This kind of hokum might work with the dimwits who live
on this godforsaken island, but I’m not one of them. Mango
balance? Don’t be ridiculous. It’s fruit, you idiot. As for Gina’s
possible murder, we’ll investigate it like any other story.”

Madame Geri turned deadly quiet.

“You stick to what you know best: phony astrology predictions. And I’ll do what I do best: dig up advertising dollars for
this rag of a newspaper.” Bernice waved her lollipop in Madame
Geri’s face.

Marley lifted his wings and let out another loud squawk.

Bernice covered her ears and shrieked: “Keep that thing
quiet!”

“Shh. It’s okay, my darling.” Madame Geri soothed her
bird, then handed him to Jimmy, all the while watching Bernice. Then she opened her cigar-box-style purse and pulled
out a dainty crystal on a silver chain. She began murmuring in
a low voice.

“What the heck are you doing?” Bernice asked, when she
finally dropped her hands.

Madame Geri kept up the singsong little chant.

“Uh-oh,” Jimmy said. “You’re in trouble now.”

Bernice transferred her gaze from mother to son. “Get her
outta here, will ya?”

“Sorry.” He shifted Marley to perch on his arm. “I can’t till
she’s finished with her curse”

“What?”

“Her curse” A touch of awe entered Jimmy’s voice. “My
mother is putting curse on you.”

Sandy and I gasped. Even I wouldn’t brave that, and I was a
nonbeliever in Madame Geri’s mystic twaddle.

Madame Geri’s curses were well known around the island.
When her neighbor, Emmie Samwick, refused to keep her
crazy Doberman, Bubba, away from Marley, Madame Geri put
a curse on her. Within six weeks, Emmie’s roof began to leak,
her car broke down repeatedly, and her hair began to fall out in
clumps (to be honest, that last one might have been the cheap
hair dye). After three months of a leaky roof, nonfunctioning
car, and increasingly bald head, Emmie finally relented and
chained up Bubba when she was at work.

Presumably, Madame Geri then removed the curse, and all
was well. But it was still another month before Emmie’s hair
was restored to its former glory.

I rolled my chair backwardjust to make certain none of
the curse wafted in my direction.

Finally, Madame Geri stopped and put away the crystal.
“It’s done. You’ll never know another moment’s peace till you
set things right again,” she warned Bernice.

My foolhardy boss snorted, but I could tell she was secretly
a bit shaken. It’s not every day you wake up to a hangover and
a curse-all in the space of twenty-four hours.

Bernice chomped down on her lollipop. “Ow!” She pulled
out the empty stick and then poked at her cheek. “I can’t believe it-I think I cracked a crown”

Madame Geri’s mouth curved upward.

Leaving Bernice swearing and holding the side of her face,
Madame Geri pivoted and sailed out of the office, Jimmy in
her wake with Marley.

He blew Sandy a kiss. “See ya later, sweetie.”

But Madame Geri had one parting salvo for me before she
left: “Mallie, the secret lies in the mangos. That’s where it all
began, and that’s where it will end.”

“Secret?” I inquired.

She nodded. “You have to find out what happened to Gina,
or the mangos will never ripen again.”

“But-” Too late. The island’s Oracle of Delphi was gone.

“What a loon,” Bernice muttered, flexing her jaw back and
forth.

“She is not,” Sandy retorted as she skirted the greasy engine and took her place at the desk near mine. “Madame Geri
is well respected on this island, and her curses are not to be
taken lightly.”

“I’m shaking in my shoes” Bernice made her legs quiver in
faux fear.

“You will be. The broken crown is just the beginning of the
curse” Sandy grabbed a chocolate bar from her drawer and
wagged it for emphasis. She started to rip off the wrapper,
paused, then thought better of it. Tossing the chocolate back into her desk drawer, she took in a deep breath of selfsatisfaction.

“Good for you, Sandy.” I gave her a thumbs-up. Madame
Geri’s curse and Jimmy’s support had given her the courage
she needed. “You don’t need food as a crutch anymore”

“I sure don’t-even if I have to smell engine oil and wear
crummy clothing promoting `grease jobs.”’ She held up her
Charley’s Garage T-shirt. “I refuse to take refuge in candy
therapy.”

“Nothing wrong with a little motor grime,” Bernice quipped.

“You have no idea how `grimy’ it’s going to get,” Sandy
promised.

Bernice blurted out an expletive and flung her cracked crown
into the trash. “That was just a coincidence.” She stomped into
her office and slammed the door, but it didn’t shut. The hinges
popped off, and the whole thing crashed to the floor with a
thunderous clatter.

“Holy hell!” Bernice screamed. “My head is splitting!”

Sandy sighed in contentment.

Talk about Madame Geri magic!

Humming to myself, I went back to work. Two hours later,
I’d placed the final touches on the “Terror on the Trail” story
and finished my obituary on Gina Fernandez. Maybe the engineoil odor had actually inspired me, but I’d never written articles
that quickly. Or maybe it was the continual cursing coming out
of Bernice’s office as her stapler broke, her chair leg cracked,
and her computer went down. You go, Madame Geri.

I set the hard copies on Bernice’s desk, chitchatted for a
few minutes, and wished her a good evening, knowing her hell
had just begun.

Doing a joyful little dance all the way back to my desk, I
began to pack up, noting that Sandy had just finished printing
out several pages on the creaky laser-jet printer.

“After what Madame Geri said, I decided to research the
Observer archives for any information relating to mangos on
Coral Island.” She handed me a small stack of articles. “The
last reporter who was here did a series on the history of growing mangos on the island.”

“The one who went berserk in the Dairy Queen drivethrough?”

Sandy nodded. “She wasn’t a bad writer.”

“I’ll bet” I shoved my notepad into my bag. “I’m going to
swing by Island Decor and see what Isabel wanted”

“Wait” She shuffled through the afternoon mail. “With all
the upheaval going on, I forgot that this letter came for you”

She handed me a legal-sized manila envelope. I opened it and
shook out the contents on her desk. “What’s this?” It looked
as if someone had taken a photo and cut it into pieces.

Sandy shuffled the fragments into a semblance of the original picture. Her hand went to her mouth. “Cripes! This is the
picture of you that ran in the Observer when Anita hired you.”

A cold chill snaked through me.

Someone had sliced up my picture-and made sure I
saw it.

On the short drive to Island Decor, I tried to rationalize a
motivation for the cut-up photograph.

People got ticked off with reporters all the time. This was a
small island, and I was the main reporter for the Observer, so
I took most of the flak.

Right from the beginning of my employment at the newspaper, readers had called and complained about my storieslike the one on the bike path. One reader felt I was too “pro
bike,” and another one felt I was too “anti bike.” Then there
were the usual gripes about media bias-blah, blah, blah.

This was probably nothing more than a disgruntled Ob server subscriber who posed no more of a threat than Everett
Jacobs the Curmudgeon.

What about the hang-up phone calls?

My sweaty hands clenched the wheel. So much had happened today, I’d forgotten about the calls. Was is possible that
whoever was calling me and hanging up had decided to kick it
up a notch and send me a perverse, Picasso-like version of my
picture?

But who?

The only stories I was working on right now were those
connected with Gina Fernandez’s death-or, rather, murder.

My nerves tensed tighter than a guitar string tweaked for an
evening’s performance. Someone didn’t like my sniffing around
for information about Gina. And that someone could be her
killer-maybe even a person I’d already questioned in regard
to her death.

I ran through a list of whom I’d talked to in the last two
days.

Rivas-the angry brother. He certainly had the temperament to kill but a doubtful motive.

Brandi-the rival for Mango Queen. She had motive, that’s
for sure. But was she a killer?

Trish and Bryan Palmer-the snobby potential in-laws.
They seemed to hate Gina for having the audacity to become
engaged to their son, Brett. But was that a motive for murder?

Isabel Morales-the business partner who owed Gina money.
Could she have been so desperate that she wanted to wipe clean
the debt by eliminating having to pay it back?

My thoughts raced from one suspect to another like a frenzied hamster on a wheel, spinning around and around and
around. But the constant mental motion produced no answers.
I took in a deep breath and exhaled, trying to settle my mind.
That cut-up picture had shaken me, that’s for sure.

Keep it together. Isabel was waiting for me.

I pulled into the parking lot of Island Decor and did my “mugatoni” chant for a few minutes. I wasn’t sure if it helped or
not, except that it sparked a sudden hunger for spaghetti.

As I entered, the door chime tinkled, and the vanilla scent
wafted toward me. It was certainly better than the smell of
dead fish or engine oil at the newspaper office. Maybe I could
persuade Isabel to advertise with the Observer, so we could
finally have a pleasant odor to counteract Bernice’s stinky
clients.

“Thank goodness you came” Isabel came rushing toward
me, her dark hair flying behind her. I spied the wildness in her
eyes and heard the panic in her voice. Something was obviously very wrong.