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“You’re the forensic anthropologist?”
“I am.”
“And you are?” To Flores.
“Luna Flores.”
“The forensic engineer?”
“Yes.” Flores’s icy tone told me she wasn’t digging this guy.
Holding his cell phone in the prosthetic hand, Monck shifted back to me. “Describe what you saw, what you did. Succinctly. No speculation, just facts. I’m recording.”
I did as asked.Succinctly.The meeting. Musgrove’s unexplainedabsence. Flores and I performing a wellness check. The TV voices and the scream. The body on the rug.
A few beats. Then,
“You gals were working the dead boaters with Superintendent Musgrove?”
Gals?
“Among other things,” I said.
“The missing tourists.”
“Yes.”
“How’s that going?”
“Detective Monck,” I said, now frosty as Flores. “Ti Musgrove was murdered, probably strangled, probably sometime last night. Your most urgent task right now is to find her killer.”
Monck slipped his mobile into his pocket. Regarded me for a very long moment.
“Thank you for that.” Monck swallowed, then his jaw muscles bunched, relaxed. “But I know exactly who killed her.”
17
SATURDAY, JULY13,TOSUNDAY, JULY14
WTF?
Monck knew Musgrove’s killer?!
As much as I grilled him, the arrogant prick refused to elaborate. While leaving, he actually hit Flores and me with the classic: Don’t plan any trips.
Dead boaters I hadn’t signed up for. Bug bites up my ying-yang. A murdered colleague. An asshole detective treating me like I wasn’t quite bright.
And where the flip was Harvey Lindstrom? The elusive pathologist had yet to make an appearance. Not that Doyle and his passengers were my responsibility.
I’d had it.
Fearing a brain bleed if I stayed on the island much longer, I went directly from Musgrove’s townhome to the morgue. Iggie was there. And not thrilled to see me.
“You be workin’ today? In dis place?”
The craggy face went craggier when I responded in the affirmative.Ignoring the man’s displeasure, I asked that he collect the bones from the cooler.
Iggie showed me to the sole autopsy room, trudged off with the enthusiasm of a eunuch at an orgy.
