“I didn’t say it,” she said. “You know how grandmother is. She speaks her mind. I’m all finished up here.” She turned to Jack and me. “The internet connection isn’t great, but it’s as good as you’re going to get. Unless a storm rolls in. Then you’re shit out of luck, as my grandmother likes to say. Now if you all will excuse me, it’s long past the end of the work day and I can catch a couple of hours of beach time if I’m lucky.”

“Thanks for getting us set up,” Jack said. “You’ve saved us a lot of time and hassle.”

“Tell me that when you’re waiting for dial up. I went to college in the states and got my degree in computer science. I was used to the best of the best when it came to technology. Then I moved back here when my mama got sick, and it was like being thrown into the stone ages. I thought I’d die from the boredom of how long it took to get connected to the outside world. Fortunately, I’ve found other things to keep my interest. At least until I can get back to the states.”

I felt a little sorry for Joe. His expression turned to one of disappointment as she mentioned leaving, but he perked up again when she brushed her breast against his arm and batted long eyelashes at him.

“Why don’t you come buy me a hamburger before you get bogged down in all your police work. I watch TV. It could be days before you get to see me again. All this talk of memory lane has made me…curious.” She pouted prettily, and I knew we wouldn’t be seeing any of Joe for the rest of the night.

Joe cleared his throat again and put on his straw hat. “Sure, I guess I could buy you a burger. It’s been a long day. Unless you need me for something?” he asked, remembering we were there and doing his job for him.

“No, we’re going to be here a while,” Jack said. “Though if you’ve got copies of all the statements you took this afternoon that would be helpful. I can start going through them with fresh eyes. We can follow up with whomever we need to tomorrow.”

“Sure,” Joe said, nodding. “Though you’d best make it an early day tomorrow. Rain will be coming in by mid-afternoon. You’re going to want to be holed up in your cabana by then.”

Joe gave one more look at Leon laid out on the table, shrugged his shoulders at us with a sheepish smile, and then followed the sway of Camille’s hips right out the door.

“Twenty bucks says they do it in the car before they make it to memory lane,” Jack said.

“That’s a sucker’s bet. We could be doing that if we weren’t stuck here with this body.”

Jack sighed and looked down at Leon Stein. “Then lets get it done. My patience for being helpful is about at its end. We didn’t come here to do all their work for them. And they don’t seem too in a hurry to find out who did it.”

“Maybe no one liked Leon as much as Father Fernando said. Though it seems like someone would’ve killed him a long time ago instead of waiting until the week before he turned a hundred.”

“So we’ll keep looking for answers. At least for a little while. But twenty-four hours is probably going to be our limit on this. If we don’t find the killer by then we’re going to enjoy the rest of our honeymoon and say to hell with it. I want to visit memory lane too.”

Chapter Six

“Victim is identified as Leon Stein. Male. Age 99. Height is five feet, eleven inches. Weight is one hundred and sixty-two pounds. No birthmarks or tattoos. There’s a large incision scar down the sternum, indicative of open-heart surgery. And more incision marks near the pelvis, indicative of hip double hip replacement surgery.”

I turned off the recorder and looked at Jack. “See, that’s what sucks about getting old. You start to fall apart and end up like a patchwork quilt of other people’s organs and body parts.”

“Maybe by the time we’re that old everything will be robotic and we’ll be like the Bionic Man.”

“I’m telling you, the minute things start falling apart on me you should just put me down like a dog.”

“Technically I could do that now. You know how your knees creak every time you walk up the stairs.”

“It’s not nice to bring that up. I saw you squinting at your computer screen the other day. Don’t worry. I don’t mind putting you out of your misery too. I wouldn’t want you to be old and falling apart all by yourself.”

“That’s very thoughtful of you.”

“I’m a giver,” I agreed.

I took Leon’s fingerprints and transferred them to the cards so Jack could scan them into the computer to see if we could get a hit on prints. A man that had lived to be almost a hundred had to have an interesting past. I was curious to know where he’d come from and what had brought him here.

“I’m going to give Ben a call and see if he can run things on that end so we can get some answers before our flight leaves next week. Camille wasn’t kidding. This connection is slow.”

I’d already documented all the marks on the body and checked for head wounds or any other injuries that might have been related to time of death. But Leon was clean except for the stab wound to the heart and the scrapes he’d received when he’d fallen to the ground.

Though seeing the lateral incision on his chest made it clear as to why the dagger had entered through the breastplate so easily. Between the brittle bones of age and the fact that he’d already been opened up before, the killing blow wouldn’t have needed near as much strength behind it as we’d originally thought.

“You think the killer knew he’d had the surgery?” I asked.

“Probably. Joe said everyone knows everyone else’s business, though Leon would’ve had to go to the mainland for surgery. Someone who knew him killed him for a reason. And it was up close and personal. They were pissed. So digging into Leon Stein’s life is our best hope for finding out who did this to him.

Jack dialed Ben Carver and then put the phone on speaker. Ben was a good friend of Jack’s and had worked for the FBI for a number of years. No one was really sure what Ben did for the FBI, but we’d learned over the course of a few investigations that he had top level security clearance and pretty much had autonomy when it came to investigations. He was also a genius with computers and had an unnatural relationship with a laptop he’d named Miranda.

A couple of weeks back Carver had been in a car accident with Jack and I when a killer had tried to run us off the road. Carver had been knocked unconscious and Miranda hadn’t survived the crash. But the first thing Carver had done once he’d been released from the hospital was buy Miranda a new body and get her up and running again.

“Agent Carver,” Ben said when he answered the phone.

“That’s very formal of you, Agent Carver.”

“That’s because I’m still mad at you. You and Doctor Death are nothing but trouble. And I also think my wife might be pregnant again. I’m thirty-six years old. I don’t remember condoms being so difficult to use when I was younger.”

“TMI, Carver,” I called out. “You do know what causes pregnancy, don’t you?”

His sigh was audible and pitiful and I stifled a laugh. “I thought I did, but now I’m not so sure. All I know is that my wife is making me sleep on the couch until I figure it out. I’m cool with that though. We have a toddler and an infant. There’s no room for me in the bed anyway. See what you guys have to look forward too?”

“Yes. Except we know how babies are made. Jaye is a doctor after all.”

“I’m assuming there’s a reason why you’re calling me on your honeymoon instead of doing baby-making test runs?”

“We’ve got a crime scene we need your help with. We don’t have a useable lab down here and our connection to the outside world is precarious at best. We need somebody who can do things quickly and efficiently while we feed the information.”

There was a long moment of silence and I wondered if we’d lost the connection. “Do I want to know why you’re working a crime scene on your honeymoon?”