Ball & Chain (Cut & Run 8)
Finally, Nick pointed out that word would get around despite their attempts to keep it quiet because most of the island’s staff had seen the body. “Rumors are always worse than truth, and once they start, we won’t be able to get people to trust us when we try to start sharing truth with them.”
Ty and the Snake Eaters all grunted in unison, but none of them could come up with a counterargument to that.
Someone knocked on the door to the study, and a moment later they opened the door to see Kelly standing there. The bodyguards let him in and locked the door behind him.
“Is it true someone got stabbed in the ear with a broken seashell?” Kelly asked incredulously.
Nick held his hand out to Kelly, eyes on Ty. “See?”
Ty was massaging his temples, nodding. “Okay, you were right.”
“We make an announcement,” Zane said, smiling fondly at Ty.
Stanton didn’t look amused, though. “Agreed. I’ll make a call for all the guests and employees to assemble in the great hall. We can address the situation there. Who is with Amelia?”
“Korean dude who doesn’t talk,” Kelly answered.
“We need to set an investigation in motion in the absence of proper authorities,” one of the Snake Eaters told Stanton. It was the large leader of the private security force, a man named John English. He struck Zane as a little too cocky, but he seemed efficient and mostly sensible.
“How are you going to do that?” Zane asked him. “We have no authority to question these people, or detain them, or search for evidence.”
English shrugged his huge shoulders. “They don’t know that.”
“Which will be handy later on,” Ty added.
Zane grunted, beginning to grow annoyed with the attitude of the Snake Eater crew. It was disturbing to him on several levels how easily Ty fit in with them. He often wondered how close Ty had been to taking the mercenary road. He definitely set foot on it here and there.
Stanton started to pace, chewing on a cigar. “We’ll make it clear it’s an informal inquiry, being performed merely to keep everyone safe. There is a murderer roaming the island, after all, people deserve protection. Anyone who wishes not to participate will be . . . locked in their room for the safety of others.”
“Still not really legal,” Zane advised.
“Neither is murder,” Theo Stanton snapped. They were the first words Livi’s brother had uttered since the meeting had started.
“These are extraordinary circumstances, I’m afraid.” Stanton turned to Nick, cheeks pale and eyes drawn. “Rick, isn’t it? You’re a police detective? You’ll do the investigation.”
“Excuse me?” Nick said, not even bothering to correct his name.
“You have no blood connection to either family, nor to the business. You’re as neutral a party as we’ll find and you’re trained to do the job.”
Nick glanced around at all of them, looking like he wanted to argue, but the logic was sound. Zane nodded encouragingly when Nick met his eyes. Nick sighed and jerked his head to the side. “If I can have the doc assisting me, then I guess I don’t have any objection.”
“Whatever you need,” Stanton agreed. He shook Nick’s hand distractedly. “What do you need?”
Nick hesitated before shrugging one shoulder. “Well, it’s an unusual situation in that our pool of suspects is static, so gathering alibis would be the first step. But that’s something we’d need to organize everyone for. If I tried to do it quietly, word would get around and people would be able to coordinate their stories. It would make it pointless. So we tell people we’re trying to discern a timeline, to see if anyone out of place was on the island.”
Stanton nodded and absently handed his cigar to Nick, who took it and looked at it like he’d just been handed a unicorn as Stanton walked away. Nick glanced at Kelly, who was biting his lip and trying not to smile.
“We don’t have any way of telling time of death, though,” Theo argued.
“Without definitive evidence, we’ll have to go by his broken watch,” Zane provided.
Nick shook his head, turning to Kelly. “I need you to confirm it for me.”
“Confirm it . . . how?” Kelly asked.
Nick winced. “With a turkey thermometer probably.”
“Oh gross, Nick.”
“I’m serious.”
“I know, that’s why it’s gross!”
Even Zane was a little disgusted at the thought, but Nick was probably right. It was much more accurate to check the body’s temperature by measuring the liver temp than assuming the watch had been broken in the fight that ultimately killed him.
Nick handed the cigar to Kelly and began writing down the information he would need to estimate the time of death from the body’s temperature, indicating that roughly every two and a half degrees it had dropped meant he’d been dead an hour. “Give or take a little because of the cold. I don’t trust the watch as time of death.” He ripped the page off the notebook and handed it to Kelly. “You have to hurry before he hits ambient temp, okay? And I need you to do it before we put the body in cold storage. Like, right now, as soon as we’re done here.”
Kelly nodded and took the slip of paper, nose curled in distaste. Stanton was still pacing, and Kelly held the cigar out for him to take as he walked by. Stanton plucked it from Kelly’s fingers and put it in his mouth without even seeming to realize he’d ever given it up. Zane found himself fighting back a laugh.
“If the temp puts time of death in range, we’ll assume the watch is correct,” Nick told them. There wasn’t much point in arguing with what little they had to go on.
“If the body and the watch are saying different things, is it possible he was killed elsewhere?” Zane asked Nick. He was the only one who’d been close enough to the body to see.
Nick was shaking his head before Zane could finish. “No. There were no signs on the body that it’d been moved.”
“You sure?” Zane asked.
Nick gave him a brief glare, then nodded. “Been doing this a long time, Garrett, I don’t need my hand held.”
Zane held up both hands and shrugged. He didn’t want problems with Nick, not now.
“If this is the first step in an escalation against the company, then we have motive,” Ty added. “That could narrow down the first wave of interviews, at least.”