Pineapple
HURRICANE
A Pineapple Port Mystery: Book Eleven
Amy Vansant
©2020 by Amy Vansant. All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by any means, without the permission of the author. All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Vansant Creations, LLC / Amy Vansant
Annapolis, MD
http://www.AmyVansant.com
http://www.PineapplePort.com
Copyediting by Carolyn Steele.
Proofreading by Effrosyni Moschoudi & Connie Leap
Cover by Steven Novak
CONTENTS
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Other Books by Amy Vansant
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
