Chapter Four
“Come on, you old dinosaur” Julia grumbled at the computer as she waited for the program to boot-up. She was feeling pressured and harried as it wastefully chipped away at her precious time.
“How in the hell does he get any work done?” she wondered out loud.
She was unfamiliar with this accounting program and was confused by the outdated banking software, but eventually found the correct page. She pulled the yellow slip of paper from her pocket and carefully entered the account numbers that were written on it. Once she had decided, it had taken her nearly a decade to get these numbers; and an arranged trip to Hawaii to gain access to the accounts. But she’d finally done it.
She heard the downstairs door open as he entered the house.
She typed the necessary passwords and pressed the icon marked, “Merge All Accounts” and again she waited.
She was growing impatient and could hear his heavy footsteps as he made his way upstairs. When she looked up, his face was in the doorway.
She quickly glanced back down at the computer screen:
“New Account Balance = $136,622,051.00” she read silently and exhaled with relief.
“Is everything okay?” He asked.
“Hey you, yeah, just finishing up our business here . . .” she let her voice drift off as she closed the program and logged off.
She stood up and smiled at him.
“Ready for a cup of coffee, or how about a drink?” she asked as she scooped up the bottle of wine from the desktop.
He looked at her and raised his eyebrows in surprise.
“Really, Julia, you’re just too funny; pour me a brandy please, would you?” he asked.
Julia walked over to the bar and picked up the expensive bottle of Cognac Frapin Cuvee 1888 that had been opened earlier. She turned her back to him and smiled slightly as she poured the remainder of the caramel colored liquid into the brandy snifter.
He approached her from behind and she felt his warm breath as he began to kiss her neck. He pressed up against her back and buried his face in her hair. His hands reached around and fondled her small breasts, then wandered down to her stomach, and then even further down still.
She held the snifter and leaned her head back and rested it on his shoulder. She stood there with him wrapped around her for several minutes.
“Mmm . . .” she moaned as he caressed her. She felt his manhood pushed up against her.
“You’re all done?” she whispered and moaned again, “You took care of everything?”
“Yes, yes. I told you” he said and continued kissing her neck.
Julia gently pulled away enough to turn and face him. She handed him the snifter and he drank from it slowly. He savored every spicy swallow and relished in its warmth as it travelled from his mouth, down his throat, and into his stomach.
“Come on, Julia,” he pleaded, “I want you so bad”.
“Joe” she whined “we can’t. Later baby, I promise.”
She nuzzled, kitten-like, against his shoulder and then kissed him wetly on the mouth.
“Hold that thought okay?” She said playfully and pulled away.
“Cute” he moaned.
She went into the kitchen and rinsed and towel-dried their glasses and the empty wine bottle and put them on the counter. She wrapped the expensive Cognac bottle in a clean white towel and placed it in her bag.
“Keepsake”, she said smiling, “come on let’s go, you ready?”
Lindy crashed violently onto the large, flat rock below.
“UGH!” She screamed out in agony.
She tried to catch her breath as she lay in a crumpled, broken heap on the ledge. She turned her head hesitantly and looked around. She saw the golf cart smashed and scattered in pieces on the beach far below and smirked slightly, as she considered the absurdity of it all.
She tried to move her legs but felt a painful mangled mass beneath her.
“Oh God!” she cried out loudly.
The dark, Italian man peered over the cliff’s edge.
“Are you okay, Miss?” he yelled down to her.
“No, I’m not okay you chucklehead; do I look okay?” She shrieked hysterically at him.
“I think my legs are broken!” She began to whimper.
“Don’t worry, I’ll go get help! He yelled.
“Get an ambulance fast! And call Jason Mackey, he lives down there on the beach” she pointed, “I’m staying with him!”
“Okay, Miss, I will!” he said. “Don’t go away, I’ll be back really fast!”
“Yeah, right” she mumbled, “I’ll wait right here; not going anywhere . . . “.
Lindy’s abdomen tightened and began to spasm in sharp, piercing contractions. She feared she had internal injuries.
“Oh Geez . . . I am so screwed . . .” she moaned.
As the darkness settled in, she began to peacefully float away, outside of her body.
Chapter Five
Jerry was the senior in charge with the U.S. Coast Guard’s Hawaiian post. He was a striking man at 6’1”, had short black hair, and was a darkly suntanned chocolate brown. He was physically fit and usually ran seven to ten miles every morning; but not this morning.
At approximately 2:00 a.m. Jerry was awakened by a ringing telephone. It was one of the local fishermen who wanted to report an unanchored yacht dangerously drifting about twenty miles offshore. The man thought it looked abandoned or feared it had been pirated and had phoned him.
Before he even boarded the vessel, Jerry knew that something was amiss. The ship rocked gently in the calm waters and each time she did, a large, black bottle rolled from one side of her rails to the other. It was deafening in the creepy silence. After his gruesome findings, he had bagged it with gloved hands and turned it over to the boys down at the lab.
And then he called Sergeant Coz to report his subsequent discovery of the two DOA’s aboard; one, a local native Hawaiian, Miguel something; and the other, an unknown Caucasian female. Both were found below deck in the ship’s sleeping quarters.
Sergeant Cozmentian, or just “Coz”, as his friends called him, had never seen anything like this in all of his twenty-seven years on the police force.
His day had also begun with a ringing telephone, a call from Jerry at 3:00 a.m., and he’d been going non-stop ever since. It was now five hours later and he was just returning to the station.
He rubbed his fatigued eyes and ran his fingers through his short, but full, silver hair. Coz was in his late fifties and was a large, handsome man who wore his extra thirty pounds mostly in his upper arms and around his middle. But no one considered him old or less fit than his younger subordinates; people had seen his sharp intelligence, surprising swiftness, and superior strength. He was well respected around these Islands.
He finished another cup of strong bitter coffee. He couldn’t consume it fast enough.
“Now what’s up with this guy?” He wondered.
With tired, but kind eyes he gazed at the man, an obviously shaken tourist, who stood in front of his small cluttered desk. He had been waiting there most of the night for Coz to return and now the man began to speak rapidly about a woman falling down some cliffs and urgently needing help. He kept shifting his weight impatiently from one foot to the other as he chattered partially in hurried Italian and partially in hysterical English.
Coz immediately contacted his men via radio and alerted all of the other necessary people by phone.
“Yes . . . okay . . . no” Coz continued on the phone, “No one answered when I called Mackey’s place. I sent Jeffreys out there. He hasn’t reported back yet. Yeah, he’s going to bring him back here. Hey, Pete, when you reach her, don’t let anyone else touch anything; not even my guys. We still don’t know what’s going on around here. Yeah, my ETA is 10.” He said and hung up.
He turned to Martha, his long-time secretary and right-hand man. She heard the alarm in his voice and had been watching his face as he spoke on the phone.
“Martha, I’ve gotta go out to the cliffs. Do me a favor and find Jones. He called in earlier; something about a hysterical waitress . . . get his ass down here. And Porter too, he’s been MIA all morning!” He said as he was walked out the door.
“If anyone calls, patch ‘em through to the car.” She heard him holler from outside.
Minutes later, the Italian tourist grabbed Coz excitedly by the arm and pulled him towards the edge. They both looked down and over the cliff and saw Lindy lying motionless on the ledge below.
“We are here, just like I said!” the Italian man screamed down to her, “I’m sorry that we took so long!”
The ocean crashed up against the rocks below and the seagulls squawked boisterously in reply; but everything else remained eerily quiet.
“Miss, I’m Sergeant Cozmentian, with the police, do you hear me? We’re going to help you!” He yelled and waited.
Still there was nothing.
“She was fine when I left her; of course that was last night!” the Italian man yelled.
Just then, Pete, a seasoned member of the EMS Rescue Team, arrived. He was a short, stocky kind of guy whose body was as hard as steel and whose strong hands felt like they could easily crush you when you shook them. In his mid forties, he was tough and rugged and had once carried a full grown man on his back down miles of steep, treacherous mountains; ironically, he was affectionately known as a Gentle Ben of sorts by the many people he’d rescued and who adored him.
He raced over from his emergency post but could see that Coz had somehow still arrived first at the scene. He swept his shaggy yellow hair from his clear blue eyes and ran from his vehicle to join them.
He quickly secured a line around a nearby boulder and threw the rope down over the cliff. It landed right next to Lindy and Pete efficiently and expertly climbed down to examine her.
Coz saw another car pull up and watched Officer Jones as he approached.
“Where in the hell have you been Jones?” Coz screamed.
“I don’t know what’s going on around here, boss, but bodies are popping up everywhere” Officer Jones said casually as he looked over the cliff’s edge.
“What are you talking about?” Coz shouted at him, “Jones, look at me! Answer me! What in the hell are you talking about? What other bodies?”
“Oh yeah, boss, sorry, almost forgot in all the excitement” he said, “Down at the lagoon, there’s two more; a local guy and an unknown woman.”
“Two more what?” Coz screamed.
“DOA’s; TOD is probably sometime last night.” Jones said.
“What are you talking about?” Coz yelled.
“You know Carol, the waitress who works over at The Grill? She went down to the lagoon this morning to catch a swim before her shift and found ‘em lying on a blanket. She’s pretty shook up.” He said.
“What’s COD; any personal effects?” Coz questioned.
The young new recruit looked down at his pad and up at his superior.
“No obvious cause; effects . . . just their vehicle, clothes and shoes, a couple of plastic cups, and an empty bottle of wine; bagged and dropped it all at the lab.” He answered.
“So that makes . . . four dead?” Coz asked himself.
Just then his hand-held radio blasted static at him.
“Come in Coz. You there boss?” He heard Officer Jeffreys’ voice on the other end.
“Speak to me Jeffreys” he replied.
“Boss, Mackey’s . . . well, Mackey’s expired; him and his girlfriend; Jeffreys radioed back, “no one answered the door so I went around back and found them both on the beach lying in the sand; DOA.”
“Oh Geez, are you kidding me?” Coz sighed in disbelief but not into the radio.
He paused and briefly stared off into the distance.
“Jeffreys” he finally asked, “was there a wine bottle present?”
“No boss”, he answered, “just . . .” the radio went fuzzy and loud with static.
“Jeffreys, say again!” Coz screamed into the radio.
“No boss”, Jeffreys said again, this time clearly, “just one of those insulated pitchers, you know, for coffee.”
Coz turned to Officer Jones.
“That makes what? Six?” Coz asked.
“Hey Coz,” Pete yelled up to him from the ledge below, “we have another one here; she’s DOA.”
Pete stood up and lightly brushed against Lindy’s leg. The empty thermos that had been lodged between her body and the ledge now let loose and rolled loudly off the cliff and crashed into the rocks below.
Coz watched, trying to determine something in his mind.
He quickly radioed in to Martha, but before he could say anything she began nervously rambling.
“Boss, you’re not going to believe this!” she said. She was frantic and he couldn’t understand her.
“Slow down Martha, slow down. What is it?” he asked.
“Porter just found Mr. Mackey’s chauffeur down at the airport.” She said excitedly.
“So, what’s he got to say about all of this?” Coz asked.
“Not too much boss, he’s dead” she said solemnly, “found him in the limo”.
“Did Porter say anything else?” he asked.
“Just said he was taking some stuff down to the lab boys; a wallet and a liquor bottle was all, I think.” Martha answered.
Coz was exasperated and his mind now raced. He turned to Officer Jones.
“Okay, that makes what, eight?” He exclaimed. “You know, I’d heard Mackey was having some girlfriends stay with him, but who’d want to kill them, and him and Joe? We’d better call in the Feds. We’re going to need some help with this.”
Chapter Six
The airplane slowly taxied in and stopped. The stairs were lowered and its passenger boarded swiftly and wordlessly.
The door was closed once again and secured.
Within moments, the airplane picked up speed, lightly lifted off, and was airborne.
“You okay back there?” the pilot yelled over the noise of the aircraft.
She snapped the closure on her briefcase, stored it beneath her seat, and poured herself a glass of Amoretto.
“I’m fine, gorgeous, just getting a drink” Julia said as she smiled sexily and held up the bottle, “Can I get you one?”
The End
