Corpse Suzette

bed. “Norma Jean Baker, huh? Didn’t it occur to you that one
might be a bit on the nose for an alias? I mean, you can only take this Marilyn
thing so far.”
    Savannah looked at the
sprigs of blood-matted platinum blonde hair that poked from between the
bandages here and there. “What did you do?” she asked, “get more surgery here
on the island to make the transformation complete? I’ve heard of that sort of
thing, but wow, talk about a groupie!”
    Dirk sat down on the bed
beside the woman and showed her his badge. “By the way, allow us to introduce
ourselves. This is my friend and fellow investigator, Savannah Reid. And I’m
Detective Sergeant Dirk Coulter with the San Carmelita Police Department. And
you, Ms. Suzette Du Bois, are under arrest for the murder of your former
lover.”

Chapter

23
     
     
     
    “N o, no... I didn’t hurt
anyone,” the mummy on the bed protested as Dirk took a pair of handcuffs from
his pocket and attached one cuff to her right arm.
    Savannah could see the
puncture mark and some bruising from an IV in the crook of her elbow. “Be
careful with her, Dirk,” she warned. “She’s just had surgery. We may have to
arrange for a Medevac to get her back home. She doesn’t look like she’s
ferryworthy to me.”
    “Don’t worry,” he said.
“We’ll treat her a lot better than she treated old Sergio, rat that he was.”
    Savannah shook her head as
she studied what she could see of the woman’s face. Her eyes were black and
blue and swollen nearly to slits. Apparently she had just undergone some major
work. “I guess you were hoping to have your face changed so much that no one would
ever recognize you, huh, Suzette?”
    She just groaned in
response.
    “And,” Savannah continued,
“did you even consider your sister, Clare? She told me you weren’t dead, but
just hiding out somewhere.”
    Glancing over at the
window, Savannah saw that there was a magnificent view of the lighthouse from
the master suite. “She also told me you love the lighthouse. I guess you
thought you had it set up pretty nice here, with your view and your new face.
Too bad it had to cost someone else his whole life for you to have it.”
    A buzzing sound made all
four of them jump a bit, until Dirk took out his cell phone and answered it.
“Yeah, Coulter here.”
    He looked a bit surprised.
“Yes, hi there. I didn’t think I’d hear from you.”
    He mouthed the word,
“Elizabeth,” to Savannah, then continued. “Actually, we found the house after
all. Yes, we’re good. And I’m in the process of arresting Ms. Baker even as we
speak.”
    He listened intently for a
long time, then said, “Oh, really? That’s very interesting. Yes, I understand
now why you were reluctant to say anything last night, but thank you for
reconsidering and calling. Sure. No problem. I’ll check it out and call you
back later.”
    When he snapped his phone
closed, Savannah could tell something was up, just from the look on his face.
    “What is it?” she asked.
“What did she want?”
    Dirk reached over and
locked the other cuff around the bedpost. Then he said to his prisoner, “Ms.
Elizabeth Fortunato just told me something very interesting about you. She says
I should check your pool house. Do you think I should do that, Suzette? Should
I see what I can find in your pool house?”
    Savannah was confused, but
all ears. “What’s in the pool house?”
    Dirk gave her a strange
look. He, too, looked confused, but excited.
    “Elizabeth says that she
and that kid who takes care of her office helped Suzette here move a
particularly heavy box into the pool house. She says it had a weird, bad smell
to it. That Suzette here told her it was books that had suffered some water
damage. But Elizabeth says she opened the trunk of her car today and it still
stinks.”
    “Oh, really?” Savannah’s
own brain gears were spinning. “The smell was that bad, huh?”
    “Yeah, and in light of what
we told her at the bar last night, she was thinking that maybe she might get in
trouble if she admitted she’d helped move such a... stinky, heavy box. So she
slept on it and this morning, she decided she’d better tell us about it.”
    “Well, there’s only one
thing to do,” Savannah said, her heart pounding in her throat. “Let’s go check
out that box of smelly books.”
     
    They were still at least
fifty feet from the pool house when Savannah got her first whiff and nearly
gagged.
    “Oh, Lord,” she