“They have,” I said. “Captain Gerard went to the spa while the rest of his crew went shopping in town, and Suzanne Palmer was one of them. She says she was with Jeanine Bishop the entire time, though of course they could be supplying each other with an alibi. They certainly had their reasons for murdering Robert, since the man had attacked Suzanne. And because of that, one of the other crew members could also have done the deed, figuring Robert didn’t deserve to live after the way he had treated them all, and especially Suzanne. Marcus, especially, may have had his own reasons.”

  “Why?” asked Brutus. “I thought he was Robert’s personal stooge?”

  “That’s what everyone thought, but Robert stabbed his so-called stooge in the back when he denied him the role of villain in his next James Fox movie. Marcus was so upset that he went and told the production company behind the movie franchise what kind of a man their star actor really was. He told them all about the parties, the drugs, and the rest of it, though he may have left out the Sebastian Poe incident, as that would have implicated himself as well.”

  “Okay, so Suzanne and Marcus,” said Brutus. “Who else?”

  “Captain Gerard wasn’t happy with the way things were going on the Aurora. He hadn’t signed up for the kind of trip Robert had taken him and his crew on. If word ever got out about what was going on, Gerard might be tainted by association and lose both his sterling reputation and his career.”

  “Gran seems to think that Eric Ross killed his brother,” said Dooley.

  “It’s possible,” I said, “but unlikely. Eric wasn’t in town when his brother died. He was in his office in Cincinnati, where his secretary has already confirmed his presence. So unless she’s lying, which is possible, of course, he probably isn’t our guy.”

  “Which only leaves Sebastian Poe,” said Brutus. “And I think he’s our man.”

  A whiff of a particularly bad odor tickled our nostrils and made us wrinkle our noses. When we looked up, we saw that the vagrant was sitting up and drinking from a bottle. Apparently, our yapping had interrupted his slumber, and he decided to have a drink. Though when I looked a little closer, I suddenly thought I recognized the man from the pictures I’d seen in Chase’s office. If I wasn’t mistaken, and I didn’t think I was, this was Sebastian Poe!

  CHAPTER 27

  Odelia had been discussing the Ross case with her husband in his office when word reached them that Chantal Jones’s car had been found. Apparently, the carjacker hadn’t gotten far and had crashed the car into a bridge abutment on his way out of town. The car was totaled, and there was no trace of the carjacker. However, they had found some cash under the seat of the car, along with a couple of small plastic baggies containing pills. The pills matched the ones found in Robert’s suite aboard the yacht, so it was highly likely that the carjacker was indeed the actor’s old friend, Poe, presumed dead but very much alive.

  Just as Chase got off the phone, Brutus suddenly popped in through the open window, out of breath, and said, “Poe is in the park! The others are keeping an eye out in case he escapes!”

  Brutus had been tasked by his friends to race to the police station and alert them of Poe’s presence in the park. Without wasting time, Odelia and Chase hurried out of the station, jumped into Chase’s squad car, and raced over to the park to apprehend the wayward former real estate broker.

  As Brutus had said, the man was sitting on a park bench, drinking from a liquor bottle, and appearing very much out of it. He didn’t seem injured, but then again, a man who can survive being hit over the head with a bottle and nearly drowning in the Atlantic is likely impervious to injury.

  He didn’t resist arrest and even seemed content to be taken into custody. As Chase led him into one of the interview rooms, he asked Odelia to join, and she gladly accepted. If they could establish that Poe had killed his friend, they could close the case and appease Eric Ross.

  By the time they sat down with the Miami native, he had sobered up a little, though he still appeared worse for wear.

  “So, what can you tell us about what happened this morning, Mr. Poe?” asked Chase.

  The man stared at them with vacant eyes, a slight smile on his face. “I don’t want to marry her, you know,” he said. “I mean, am I grateful that they saved my life? Sure. But I can’t marry the woman. I don’t love her. And besides, I already have a girl back home.” He burst into tears, and Odelia handed him a box of tissues. He gratefully took one from the dispenser and blew his nose noisily.

  “So, about this morning,” Chase tried again.

  “I mean, it’s not as if she’s ugly. She’s not. Tilla is actually very pretty, but I don’t love her. And besides, that baby isn’t mine. I’m pretty sure I never slept with her, so how can I be the father of her baby? Morton is crazy if he thinks I’m going to be coerced into a loveless marriage.” He sighed deeply. “Now if only Robert hadn’t knocked me off that boat, I wouldn’t have ended up on the island in the first place, and they wouldn’t have been able to frame me into marrying the woman.”

  “How can they force you to marry the woman when you’re here in Hampton Cove and she’s over there on her island?” asked Odelia.

  “Because they’re watching me,” said Poe darkly. “They’re watching me everywhere I go.”

  “You mean someone has followed you here?”

  “They don’t need to follow me in a physical sense. They’ve got eyes that can see everywhere. I can fly to the moon, and they will still be able to see me. And if I don’t do as they say—zap! That’s it. I’m dead.”

  “What do you mean, you’re dead?”

  “I’ve seen them do it. I once saw the chief kill a chicken on the other side of the island. I was with the chicken, and I saw it suddenly drop dead. And then moments later, he revived it, just like that. With the power of his mind!”

  “Who? This chief you mention?”

  “Chief Morton, yeah. So if he wanted to, he could do the same thing to me that he did to that chicken. One moment I’m fine, and the next, dead!”

  “Okay, Poe,” said Chase. “Let’s try to focus on the real world, shall we? What happened last night between you and Robert? And why did you take that car?”

  “I’m pretty sure he can see me now,” said Poe and glanced all around the room intently, looking for a sign of the tribal leader.

  Chase slapped the table with his fist. “Poe, focus!”

  The man jumped. “What? Who are you?”

  “Chase Kingsley. Detective in charge of the investigation into the murder of your friend, Robert Ross.”

  Poe’s face crumpled like a used tissue, and he burst into tears. “I liked Robert. I loved him like a brother. Why did he have to hit me with that bottle? If he hadn’t, I wouldn’t be under the spell of that madman!” Odelia shared a look with her husband. Clearly, Sebastian Poe was in no fit state of mind to be interviewed. They were just about to end the session when the man piped up, “I didn’t kill him, you know. I loved him, and he loved me. He said so himself last night. He said he was sorry for what he did to me, and he also said he would make sure Morton wouldn’t be able to touch me. And when I asked him how he thought he would accomplish that, he said he was James Fox and he slayed villains for a living. Funny guy.”

  “So what happened last night?” asked Chase. “Why did you take that car?”

  “Well, I needed one,” said Poe simply. “So I took it. And then, of course, that stupid car drove into a bridge, so I figured it was a sign from Chief Morton that my work here wasn’t finished yet and that I should stick around. So I decided to hang around until I got another sign that it was time to go. And now I’m here.”

  “Now you’re here,” Odelia confirmed. “And where were you this morning, Sebastian? More specifically, at ten o’clock?”

  “Um... probably asleep? I’ve been very tired lately. It’s my head, you see. My head isn’t okay.”

  Now, that was an understatement, Odelia thought. “So where were you asleep, Sebastian?”

  “The park. I slept there last night. Did you know that park is full of cats? You wouldn’t believe the noise they make. Screeching and caterwauling all night. It’s terrible. I didn’t sleep a wink. Terrible, terrible noise. You should do something about those cats. Get rid of them if I were you.”

  Odelia had taken pity on the man, but these words irked her to such an extent that she decided to become a little more forceful with him. “Did you kill your friend, Sebastian? Did you kill Robert?”

  The man stared at them with big eyes. “Kill Robert? But why? I loved the guy! And he—”

  “Loved you,” said Chase. “Yeah, you said that.” He sighed. “Look, I think you should get yourself checked out by a doctor, Sebastian. That hit on the head clearly hasn’t done you any favors. And your stay on the island hasn’t either. You have a girlfriend at home and a family who have been worried sick about you, so why don’t you give them a call? Tell them you were lost but now you’ve been found.”

  “But I can’t! Chief Morton will zap me—just like he did with that chicken.”

  “We’ll protect you,” Chase promised. “We also have secret powers here in Hampton Cove, you see. So we’ll protect you from this Chief Morton.”

  “Secret powers? How?”

  Chase turned to his wife. “Odelia here is a witch.”

  The man stared at Odelia in wide-eyed wonder. “A witch? Really?”

  Odelia smiled. “It’s true. I have witchy powers. I can talk to cats, for instance.”

  “Really?”

  She nodded. And on her instigation, Chase opened the door, and her four cats walked in. She proceeded to exchange a few words with them, much to Sebastian’s amazement.

  So she waved her hands in front of the man’s face, said a few incantations she made up on the spot, and finally said he was free from Morton’s curse and could go home a free man.

  “My God,” said Sebastian. “You’re right. I suddenly feel so light. You have freed me!” And to show his gratitude, he actually hugged her. Which wasn’t such a pleasant experience since he was very smelly.

  A police officer escorted the man out, after receiving instructions to take Sebastian to the nearest hospital and get him a phone so he could call his family in Miami.

  The moment he was gone, she asked, “Are you sure this won’t come back to bite us in the ass, babe?”

  “I’m pretty sure it won’t. The guy is completely out of it.”

  “Yeah, but still.”

  “So what if he tells people that you can talk to cats? Who’s going to believe him?”

  “Are you just going to let him walk?” asked Brutus. “He could be Robert’s killer.”

  “I very much doubt it,” said Odelia. “I think what Sebastian Poe needs right now is not a lengthy prison sentence but a prolonged stay at the hospital.”

  “At the very least, you should arrest him for carjacking,” said Harriet.

  “He’s not going anywhere,” said Odelia. “We’ll put an officer at the hospital to keep an eye on him. In due course, he’ll have to face the music for last night’s carjacking and for assaulting Chantal, but right now, we’ll make sure he sobers up and gets well again.”

  Which is when their next interviewee was brought in by Sarah Flunk, who had picked the man up at his hotel. Marcus O’Reilly sat down across from them and already looked a lot less cocky than he had before. And when they confronted him with the allegations, he grabbed a tissue and burst into tears.

  CHAPTER 28

  I have to say, I felt a little bit sorry for Marcus as he sat blubbering in the interview room. And it didn’t take long before he confessed to what he’d done. “It’s true,” he said as he sniffled freely. “I did it. I sent an anonymous email to the producers of the James Fox movies that Robert Ross was a terrible human being, an addict, and was abusive with women. I was angry and I lashed out, and I realize I shouldn’t have done it, but I did, and I’m so sorry!”

  “You thought you were going to be the next James Fox villain,” said Chase, “and when you found out that Robert had lied to you, you decided to get even.”

  Marcus nodded. “He had built my hopes up, and then he just squashed them again, just because he could. I had already told all of my friends, my parents. My dad was so proud of me. He said he’d buy tickets for the whole family, and they’d all go and see the movie together. And now I had to tell them it wasn’t going to happen. It was so humiliating.”

  “And so you decided to get even.”

  “I did! Oh, I so did!”

  “So you killed him.”

  There was a beat, then Marcus gaped at the cop. “Wait, what?”

  “You were so angry with Robert for lying to you that you killed him. You poisoned his can of soda and fed it to him, and then you watched him die.”

  “Like a true Fox villain would,” Dooley added for good measure.

  “No!” said Marcus. “I sent that email, but I didn’t kill the guy.”

  “Do you really want us to believe that, Marcus? After you lied to us before?”

  “Okay, so I lied, but that’s just because... because...”

  Chase was leaning forward, his eyes boring into Marcus’s. Then he pounded the table with his fist, causing us all to jump. “Because you killed him! Admit it!”

  “No, I didn’t! I just didn’t want my bosses to know what I’d done. I could get in some serious trouble if they knew I’d been emailing people about a client. They could terminate my contract, and then I’d never work in the industry again. So of course I didn’t tell anyone about what I did. I’d be crazy if I did.”

  “So where were you this morning at ten, Marcus?”

  “Like I already told you, I went shopping. Look, if you want to find out who killed Robert, ask Gerard. He’s the one who kept having to cover up for Robert. If the company found out about what was going on the Aurora, it was his career on the line. I could always find a different job in a different line of work. But Gerard? He only had a couple of years more to go, and then he’d get a nice fat pension. But if he got canned now? No career but also no pension. That man had a lot more to lose than I did if Robert kept behaving the way he did.”

  Which was very convenient since our next interviewee was Captain Jean-Luc Gerard himself. He, too, looked a lot less self-assured than he had been that morning. When confronted with the allegations Marcus had leveled against him, he folded like a cheap suit. “Okay, I admit it, being in charge of the Aurora with Robert Ross as our client was a major headache for all of us, but mostly for me. If the yacht company found out there was drug abuse, women being assaulted, and a man being murdered and chucked overboard, I would have lost the pension that I’d worked thirty years to build up, it’s true. But that doesn’t mean I killed him. I mean, if I had, and I was seen, that would have been the end of my life, not just my career. So I didn’t touch the guy. All I could hope for was that our trip would end soon.”

  “So why didn’t you ask that someone else take over from you?” asked Chase.

  “It’s not that easy. I would have had to give a good reason.”

  “Health reasons.”

  “That would have ended my career. If I was too sick to captain the Aurora, I was too sick to captain any ship, and they would have let me go. No, I couldn’t do that. And also, if a different captain was put in charge, how long do you think it would have been before they realized what kind of a guy Robert Ross was? My replacement may have even heard rumors about what happened to Poe. And then it would all come back to me.”

  “So you decided to stay and ride out the storm.”

  “Something like that.”

  “But you have to admit that Robert being murdered suits you very well, Captain Gerard,” said Odelia.

  “Oh, I’m not denying that his death came at an opportune time for all of us. Though now with everything coming out in the open, I’m not sure how much good it will do us. I already got an official missive from the yacht company that their lawyers want to talk to us. It doesn’t bode well for our future.”

  I couldn’t imagine it would. If word got out about the things that had taken place on the yacht, it was the company’s reputation on the line, and so they’d probably try to use the captain and his crew as scapegoats and throw them to the wolves. However way you looked at it, things didn’t look so good for Captain Gerard. And the man knew it, for he looked decidedly unhappy.

  “Look, I had nothing to do with the man’s death. Like I said, I spent all morning at the spa. I figured I deserved a treat. Ask anyone. They’ll confirm I was there.”

  “We checked,” said Chase. “And while they confirm that you booked the spa and arrived there, they can’t confirm you were there all the time.”

  “Oh, for crying out loud. I didn’t like the guy, but I didn’t kill him!”

  “That’s what they all say,” Brutus grunted. And wasn’t that the truth?

  The next person to take the hot seat was Oliver Grant, who was none other than the late Robert Ross’s agent. He was in town to assist Robert’s brother in handling the actor’s funeral and going through his personal belongings. I had a feeling he had also been tasked to make sure that the actor’s legacy wasn’t tainted by these allegations of the man’s bad behavior. After all, if word got out about what kind of a man Robert really was, it would affect the movie franchise he had been the face of for the past fifteen years, to detrimental effect.

  Mr. Grant was a clean-cut young man with a baby face and the aspect of a lawyer. The moment he sat down, he shot his cuffs and then patiently waited for the first question.

  “He looks like a shark,” Dooley commented.

  “A baby-faced shark,” said Brutus. “The most dangerous kind.”

  “Why is that, Brutus?” asked Dooley.

  “Because you never see them coming, Dooley.”

  “So, is it true that your client was being fired as James Fox, Mr. Grant?” asked Chase.