“Should have brought gloves,” she told Houdini. She reached for a large carton of partially thawed sausages, struggling to push it up against the remaining packages of meat. When she got it moved, she saw that there was another bulky, oddly shaped object behind the sausages.
Houdini rumbled a warning. She knew that growl. Hurriedly, she stepped back, her breath tightening and her senses spiking.
“What is it?” she asked, scanning the interior of the frozen food locker for threats.
Houdini growled again. Then she saw what had focused his attention. A man’s shoe extended out from behind one of the cartons of sausages. A terrible dread descended on her.
She made herself push the next carton aside. The eyes of a very dead, partially frozen man stared back at her. The face was horribly familiar.
Chapter 26
“HIS NAME IS SAMSON CRISP,” ALICE SAID. “HE WAS THE private investigator I told you about, the one I hired to look into Fulton’s death. No wonder he never got back to me or bothered to send me a bill. I feel absolutely terrible about this. All the time I was thinking he had scammed me he was in that freezer, dead. And it’s probably my fault.”
Drake watched her stalk past him as she made another circuit of the small space. He was seriously annoyed by the distress and the guilt that he saw in her eyes.
“Alice, pay attention. This is not your fault.”
“But I’m the reason he wound up on Rainshadow,” she said.
“He was a professional. You employed him to investigate the murder of a very wealthy man. He had to know that might be dangerous work.”
They were in their room at the Marina Inn. The location was the only place Drake could think of that guaranteed them some privacy. News of the discovery of the body had flashed through the tiny community like lightning. The rumors that Alice had been acquainted with the victim had riveted everyone’s attention. Kirk Willis and the town’s only doctor, Ed Forester, had taken charge of the rapidly thawing Crisp. Forester had made it clear up front that he was a family practitioner, not a forensic pathologist, but he had agreed to examine the body to see if he could determine the cause of death.
Drake was sprawled in one of the room’s two chairs, mostly because it was the only way he could stay out of Alice’s path. She had begun pacing the room almost as soon as he had gotten the door open. Every so often she started to fade a little around the edges, enough so that he had to use some energy to bring her back into focus.
Houdini was hunkered down on the window ledge watching Alice. Whenever she went past his perch, he made small, comforting noises.
“I had no idea that Crisp had come here,” Alice said. “He never told me that he planned to do that.” She came face-to-face with a wall, spun around, and started back toward the opposite wall. “He must have traveled here to see if he could verify my version of events.”
“That’s a possibility,” Drake said. Personally, he had his doubts.
“I must say, Crisp’s investigation was certainly a lot more thorough than I gave him credit for,” Alice continued. She locked her hands behind her back. “I expect that when he started asking questions, he alerted the killer, who followed him here and murdered him.”
“When confronting new facts, the first rule is, don’t jump to conclusions,” Drake said. “We don’t know for certain what Samson Crisp was doing here on the island.”
Alice stopped and turned to face him, startled. “It’s obvious why he was here.”
“No,” Drake said evenly. “Nothing is obvious, not yet. But we may know more when we read his notes.”
Alice looked at the leather-bound notebook on the table. She had notified Drake first after discovering Crisp in the freezer. Drake had done a quick search of the body before Kirk Willis and Myrna Reed had arrived. He had found the notebook inside a waterproof pocket of Crisp’s trench coat. Making an executive decision, he had quietly confiscated it before Willis and Reed got to the restaurant.
There was no telling what Samson Crisp had discovered in the course of the investigation, but whatever it was had most certainly gotten him killed. It was Crisp’s motive for being on Rainshadow that made Drake suspicious. It was a long and expensive trip for a low-rent PI to make without checking to be sure the client would pay for all costs.
“Maybe he found out who really killed Whitcomb,” Alice said. She watched the notebook with an expression of wary hope. “Maybe he also came up with some proof. But why would the killer stick him in Burt’s frozen food locker?”
“I can think of two possibilities,” Drake said.
Alice blinked. “Two?”
“The murder may have been an impulsive act that left the killer with a body to dispose of in a hurry. Evidently Burt’s freezer was the most convenient place to stash it.”
Alice gave that a moment’s thought. “What’s the other possibility?”
“The murder was premeditated but it did not go according to plan. Same outcome. The killer is stuck with a body.”
“And Burt’s freezer was the most convenient place to stash it,” Alice concluded.
“It wasn’t a great option because sooner or later someone was bound to discover the body. But it wasn’t a bad choice, all things considered.”
“How can you say that?” Alice widened her hands. “Who knows how long poor Mr. Crisp’s body has been lying there behind the breakfast sausages?”
“Long enough to give the killer plenty of time to get off the island undetected,” Drake said.
Alice winced. “I see what you mean.” She frowned, her brows scrunching. “I hired Crisp about two months after Whitcomb was murdered. That’s how long it took me to realize that the cops probably were not going to find the real killer. I’ll bet he came here immediately to start his own investigation.”
“Let’s see what Crisp has to say for himself,” Drake said.
He sat forward and picked up the notebook. The freezing process had done very little damage, but nevertheless he turned the pages cautiously.
Alice hurried across the room to look over his shoulder. “Oh, damn, it’s in code.”
“Not exactly.” Drake studied the somewhat cryptic entries that had been made in cramped handwriting. “Some sort of personal shorthand. Since we know the names of several of the people involved in this thing, as well as the locations where the events took place, the initials should be easy enough to identify.” He pointed to the letters
“Yes. Hang on, I’ll get a pen and take some notes while you read.”
Drake waited until she was settled at the table with a pen and a pad bearing the legend
“Crisp was looking for an angle, right from the start,” Drake said.
Alice frowned. “What do you mean?”
“He realized that the real money involved in the case was the Whitcomb fortune. He started hunting for a way to tap into that the minute you walked out of his office.”
“You mean he tried to sell his services to Ethel Whitcomb?”
“No, at least not yet.” Drake turned another page. “But he did what the cops should have done more thoroughly—what I plan to do as soon as we get the computers up and running again. He looked into the background of everyone who was closely associated with Fulton Whitcomb.”
“Well? Don’t keep me in suspense. Did he find anything that might point to the killer?”
“Do the initials
