Extra Dirty (A Ruby Steele Cozy Mystery—Book 2) E-Book

Mia Gold

• Herausgeber: Lukeman Literary Management
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Serie: A Ruby Steele Cozy Mystery
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 352

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

This is book #2 in the Ruby Steele Cozy Mystery. Ruby Steele, 30, beautiful, fit, seems just like any other ex-pat hiding out in the Bahamas and playing local bartender. But unruly patrons find out the hard way: Ruby is a mixed-martial-arts pro, and not one you'd want to cross. A 40-something female tourist seeks out Ruby, desperate for her help. She was out partying all night with her friend, both of them drinking way too much and doing things they don't want their husbands to know about. The problem is, as of 12 hours ago, her friend is missing. Their husbands can't know. The cops can't know. She needs Ruby's help. And she's running out of time. Ruby, though, has enough problems of her own. Shadowy figures from her old life are getting close. Way too close. Can Ruby really pay detective and take on someone else's problems? Who is this woman, anyway? And what isn't she telling her? Ruby can't keep away from a bad decision. And this time, it looks like, there won't be any exception…. Welcome to the Bahamian world of Ruby Steele, replete with her local dive bar, her wily pet monkey, her major drinking problem, her (way) too many fights, her inability to get herself out of trouble, and her fists made of stone. Ruby's life is a complete wreck. But there's one thing she's good at: capturing your heart. This is book #2 in a page-turning series, one that will linger with you long after the last page is read.

Leseprobe

EXTRA DIRTY

Mia Gold

Debut author Mia Gold is author of the HOLLY HANDS COZY MYSTERY, comprising three books (and counting); and of the RUBY STEELE COZY MYSTERY series, comprising three books (and counting).

Mia would love to hear from you, so please visit www.miagoldauthor.com to receive free ebooks, hear the latest news, and stay in touch.

BOOKS BY MIA GOLD

HOLLY HANDS COZY MYSTERY

KNOCKOUT (Book #1)

SUCKER PUNCH (Book #2)

BELOW THE BELT (Book #3)

RUBY STEELE COZY MYSTERY

ON THE ROCKS (Book #1)

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY SIX

CHAPTER ONE

“Are you sure this is safe?”

Ruby Steele certainly didn’t feel safe. It was amazing that an innocuous thumb drive could strike so much fear in an ex-MMA fighter.

But she knew that whatever it contained had the power to change her world.

“Safe as can be,” the computer hacker said.

They sat at his dining room table in a respectable neighborhood in Nassau. The hacker was dressed surprisingly well for a computer geek. He obviously got paid handsomely for his work and had picked up some fashion sense along with his skills at cracking into virtual spaces where he wasn’t supposed to be. He looked about thirty, not bad looking except for a pair of thick glasses and a hunch from sitting in front of the computer all day. Ruby guessed he was the only local in the Bahamas who didn’t go to the beach regularly.

His laptop sat on the table in front of them. Ruby looked at it like it might leap up and bite her.

“You sure this is secure? This thumb drive might have some seriously sensitive information. It might have spyware too.”

“Relax,” the hacker said. Ruby wished she could. He was one of Javon’s friends, which put him in the untrustworthy-but-probably-capable category. That didn’t mean he couldn’t get zapped by whatever was on this thumb drive, though. Javon had assured her that he was the best hacker in the Bahamas. But how could a small-time pot dealer know that?

“Look,” the hacker said. “I had a friend buy this computer with cash. No trace. No image of me in the store. I’ve never downloaded any software that requires registration. In fact, I’ve never downloaded anything at all. I removed the WiFi port. Nothing can get in or out of this computer unless we use a USB port. Also, I have top-shelf antivirus software in here. Not the stuff that regular people buy. Government quality.”

“Well, all right,” Ruby said reluctantly.

Still she hesitated. Her old boss, Senator Wishbourne, had left this for her in a safety deposit box before she got assassinated on Ruby’s watch. Ruby had been in hiding ever since and didn’t know who had killed the senator, or why. Maybe it had something to do with arms deals arranged by Carl Wishbourne, the senator’s husband. Or maybe it had something to do with one of the countless other corrupt affairs the senator had her fingers in. For some reason, she had wanted Ruby to know.

This little electronic device could answer all her questions.

Or open up a whole new can of worms.

“You want to do this or not?” the hacker asked, giving her a sympathetic look. Ruby got the impression that he asked that question a lot.

“I do and I don’t,” Ruby admitted.

The hacker gave an understanding nod.

If I don’t, I’ll live my life wondering.

But if I do …

“Damn it,” Ruby grumbled.

She slid the thumb drive into the USB port.

“All right. Let me scan first,” the hacker’s voice turned businesslike. He hunched further over the keyboard. “I’m doing a deep scan so it will take a sec. Nope, no viruses of any kind. Let’s open this thing.”

A password prompt appeared on the screen.

“Damn,” Ruby muttered. She couldn’t decide whether she felt stymied or relieved.

“Don’t worry, I have a program for that.”

He tapped on a few keys and a flurry of words and numbers appeared and disappeared in a dialog box, too quick to read.

“The ten thousand most common passwords,” he explained, adjusting his glasses. “Along with variations in capitalization. It’s amazing how many people still use ‘12345’ or ‘password’ for their password. Beyond stupid.”

“The person who owned this was a lot of things, but they weren’t stupid.”

“You’d be surprised.”

They watched the passwords flick on and off the screen for another couple of minutes. Suddenly it stopped.

“Huh. Looks like this guy was smart after all.”

Not a guy, a woman, and a United States senator. Not that I’m going to tell you that.

“Now what?” she asked.

He got up, moved to the opposite side of the table so he couldn’t see the screen, and sat down.

“Try out anything you can think of. The guy’s name. His dog’s name. Your name. Whatever. Fiddle with the capitalization, and don’t forget numbers. What dates or ages were important to him? The number of his house. His locker at the gym. Anything.”

“This could take ages.”

The hacker shrugged.

Ruby stared at the screen. Knowing Senator Wishbourne, she had memorized some complex string of letters and numbers, something no one could guess.

On the other hand, the senator had wanted her to find this with the intention that Ruby crack it, so maybe she really could guess the password.

Ruby got to work. She tried out her real name and every name she could think of from Senator Wishbourne’s circle. Nothing. She tried out place names from the Bahamas, names of companies the senator’s husband had done business with, anything that popped into her head. She even tried the name of a childhood cat the senator had mentioned once, and the name of her favorite coffee at Starbucks.

Ruby took care to try every variation, try every pattern of capitalization, even combined potential passwords. No luck.

Finally she sat back with a sigh. Her fingers felt sore. She must have typed in hundreds of passwords. She glanced at the clock on the computer and noticed she had been going for an hour.

“I have a more robust program I can try,” the hacker said.

“Why the hell didn’t you tell me that in the first place?”

“Because it goes through tens of millions of alphanumeric sequences. It can take days.”

Ruby stared at the screen. Now that she had made her decision to let the genie out of the bottle, all hesitation had vanished. She really needed to see what was on this thumb drive. Senator Wishbourne had hinted to Ruby where to find it just as they got attacked by the assassins who ended up killing her. It was obviously important. But she hadn’t had time to give her the password, or had assumed she’d guess it.

Had that been what she had tried to gasp out in her last choked breath as she suffocated with a collapsed windpipe?

And were the contents of this thumb drive what the assassins had been after in the first place? They had stolen the senator’s briefcase full of sensitive documents. While everyone had assumed that’s what they wanted, had they really been after this thumb drive?

So many questions, and none of them could be answered because of a damn password prompt.

“The program works most of the time. No guarantees, of course, but if it doesn’t work I only charge a hundred instead of a thousand.” Ruby looked at him. “I have to have some compensation for my time,” he added apologetically.

It’s not the money, it’s that I don’t want to leave it with you.

“Can I run this program myself?” Ruby asked.

The hacker frowned and crossed his scrawny arms over his unimpressive chest. “Not without training, and I’m not going to give that to you. This is my livelihood.”

Ruby grunted and gave him the two hundred she owed for his “initial consultation.” She took the thumb drive and stood.

Then she hesitated. What chance did she have of unlocking it herself? She needed this guy.

But she couldn’t leave the thumb drive with him. Too dangerous.

She decided she’d take a page from his book andhave one of her friends buy her a laptop with cash and she’d try to crack it in her spare moments.

But first she had something else to do. An old friend, and an old flame, was flying back to the States in a few hours. She had to see him before he left.

This part of her past wouldn’t wait.

* * *

An hour later, she stood on the balcony of Tim Harris’s hotel room. It was a second-rate place and didn’t have a view of the ocean. Still, the azure sky and waving palm trees were pleasant enough, and it was Tim’s last day. He wanted to get as much sun as possible before returning to the States the following morning. They stood side by side, almost touching, looking out at the scene.

“Wish I could stay here longer,” Tim said. “This is a hell of a place you’ve found to hide.”

“It was nice having you here,” she said, and meant it. He had brought up a lot of old memories. Not all of them good, but some of them sure were. And it felt nice to know someone from her old life cared. Besides Axel, her most trusted MMA buddy, no one else knew she was here.

Tim gave her a wry smile. “You didn’t think it was nice when you thought I was jumping you in the alley.”

Ruby laughed. “I don’t mind a bit of bare-knuckle sparring.”

Tim touched the red lines on his face and chuckled. “I mind getting attacked by a monkey.”

“You made friends in the end.”

“He’s a sweet little guy when he isn’t sinking his claws into you.” Tim’s expression grew serious. “So … how did it go?”

Ruby shook her head. “Password protected. He couldn’t crack it. He tried a simple program, and I tried any words I could think of. Nothing worked. He has a more robust program, but it takes days and I don’t know him well enough to trust him with the thumb drive.”

“I know people in the States,” Tim said. “People I can trust.”

“I can’t let you take this on. The senator wanted me to deal with it. I just wish I knew why.”

“You were always her favorite.”

Did Ruby note a hint of jealousy in his voice?

“She always wanted a daughter,” Ruby explained.

Tim snorted. “Yeah, and instead she got Tucker.”

Tucker was her spoiled son. Connections had gotten him into Princeton, but nothing the senator or her husband could do kept him off the coke and the sorority girls.

“Are you seeing Sanyjah today?” Ruby asked. Tim and one of her Bahamian friends had hit it off.

Tim made a face. “Nah. She friend zoned me.”

“Awww.” Ruby patted him on the head. “I thought you guys were getting along great.”

“So did I. I tried to kiss her and she said, ‘I really like you, and if you lived here I would tear your clothes off right now, but I’m not looking for a one-night stand.’”

“Ouch. Friend zoning with a ‘what if.’ That’s gotta burn.”

Tim grunted. “Thanks.”

Ruby chuckled and elbowed him in the ribs. The news made her feel happy in a selfish sort of way. She and Tim had a fling once, many years ago. They had decided not to do it again since they worked together.

But they weren’t working together now …

“So what do you want to do today?” she asked.

Tim shrugged. “I don’t know. Show me around.”

“Sure, it’s a small island. I’ll show you everything.”

Tim cocked an eyebrow. “Everything?”

Their eyes locked. Ruby felt her heart do a little flip-flop. Tim moved in closer. Ruby lifted up her face. Tim bent closer …

… and Ruby stepped back.

“No.”

Tim slumped. “Sorry.”

“It’s all right.”

“No, I was out of line. I was just thinking about, you know.”

“Yeah, I know, and it was amazing. But that was a long time ago and—”

“You really like me, and if I lived here you would tear my clothes off right now, but you’re not looking for a one-night stand.”

Ruby giggled, then felt bad. “Sorry.”

Tim shook his head. “Friend zoned twice in one day. And they call this place paradise.”

She took his hand. His eyes sparked with a wary hope.

Ruby felt bad about extinguishing it. “Well, let me show you some of paradise. As a friend.”

They went to the beach together, and it wasn’t long before the warm breeze eased their mutual tension and replaced it with happy companionship. Soon they were chatting and laughing like old times. They had a big seafood meal at a special place Ruby knew on the beach, and then another long walk before the time sadly came for Tim to check out of his hotel and take the airport shuttle.

They embraced just as it pulled up in front of the hotel.

“I’ll keep my ear to the ground,” Tim said. “Would you mind if I came down again? Like in a few months so it doesn’t look suspicious? No expectations. It’s just nice to see you.”

Ruby nodded, not sure what to say or feel. “All right. Take care of yourself.”

“You’re the one who needs to do that.”

“Big time,” she snorted. “And take care of that scrawny assed supermodel you’re guarding.”

Tim laughed. “I will.”

They hugged again, tighter this time. Pain jabbed Ruby’s side from the cracked rib she’d gotten in an illegal brass knuckle fight earlier that week. Ruby winced at the memory. She sure as hell didn’t want to ever see that place again.

The King says you still owe him two fights.

Why do I get so much drama in my life?

“Bye,” Tim said.

“Bye.”

Ruby bit her lip as he got in the airport shuttle and it pulled away. Then she let out a sigh and headed for the bus stop.

She shoved her hands into her pockets, and her heart suddenly turned to ice.

The pocket where she had put the thumb drive was empty.

CHAPTER TWO

Ruby checked her front pockets, a cold sweat breaking out on her skin. Nothing.

Damn it! I knew it! I knew he couldn’t be trusted.

She turned the pockets inside out. Wallet. Keys. Phone. No thumb drive.

Damn it!

She checked her back pockets, where she never put anything, and found it.

And then she remembered. When she had paid for lunch, she had felt the thumb drive almost slip out as she pulled out her wallet, so she had shifted it to her back pocket to be safe.

Ruby groaned.

I really need to more trusting, or at least less paranoid.

But the way my life has been going, who can blame me?

She put the thumb drive back in her pocket, her hands trembling with the aftershock.

I need to relax.

Ruby turned back toward the hotel, heading for the bar.

She got two steps from the door when she froze.

“What the hell am I doing?” she asked herself out loud.

She had promised herself that she wouldn’t drink any more, and at the first sign of stress she had run for the nearest bottle.

Shaking her head, she headed home.

As she sat in the back of a taxi, berating herself for her weakness and feeling guilty for mistrusting Tim, she stared out the window. The coastal resort area with its hotels and golf courses, its rental homes and fine restaurants, soon were left behind. They passed through a business area of Nassau that few visitors ever saw, then into a residential neighborhood for Bahamians.

And that neighborhood grew increasingly shoddy. The taxi passed decent, freshly painted bungalows with well-tended yards that gradually gave way to smaller houses and smaller yards. At this time of day many of the yards were full of Bahamian families, the children playing, the adults sitting on rickety chairs, everyone getting out of their overcrowded homes, often shared by two or more families, in order to catch the tropical breeze. No one had air conditioning here.

What did not change was the tidiness of the homes. Unlike poor areas back in the States, there were no cars up on cinderblocks, no broken bits of furniture or discarded plastic toys. The Bahamians, no matter what their income level, kept their homes and yards clean. Only the crowding, the faded paint, and the depressed look on people’s faces hinted that all was not well.

This was Ruby’s neighborhood. She had fled to the island with virtually no money and a questionable legal status. Moving to this neighborhood not only proved affordable, it was anonymous. Her landlord took payment in cash and her name did not appear on any utilities.

She was the only outsider in the neighborhood except for a Dutch hippie couple, who had been in the Bahamas for so long they had practically become locals, and an American drug addict who everyone ignored.

They ignored Ruby too. She did not make friends with her neighbors and had smacked down a couple of the guys who had tried to rob her when she first moved in.

Now everyone left her alone. She had become part of the scenery, as anonymous and uninteresting as the palm tree in her back yard.

She preferred it that way.

As she got out of the cab, her neighbor’s curtain twitched. Mrs. Strapp, the local gossip, was the only one on Ruby’s street who still kept an eye on her. And she never stopped keeping an eye on her.

Ruby could see her fixed stare from behind the razor-thin gap between the edge of the curtain and the side of the window pane. Mrs. Strapp thought she was being subtle, but her hands shook a bit from age and that always created a telltale rustle of the curtain.

Blowing her a kiss, Ruby entered her house, keeping her own curtains drawn. She liked her privacy and wished Mrs. Strapp would move somewhere else. Pluto maybe, even though it was no longer a planet. At least everyone else on the block hated her too. Ruby doubted they listened when Mrs. Strapp gave them an hour-by-hour account of Ruby’s movements.

As soon as she closed the front door behind her, something leapt out of the shadows of her living room and landed on her shoulders. Furry arms wrapped around her neck.

“Hey Zoomer!” Ruby said, scratching the Capuchin monkey on his back. Technically owned by her boss, Zoomer was virtually the communal property of the entire bar, going home with various staff members and regulars. Being less than two feet tall and only weighing about six pounds, he made an excellent accessory for a girl on the run, especially since Ruby didn’t wear jewelry. That would only attract unwanted attention in this neighborhood. Zoomer’s body and limbs were black, but his chest and round little face were tawny, almost white by comparison. His circular face, fringed with fur, spread wide in an exaggerated imitation of a human smile.

“Hey, buddy, did you miss me?”

Switching on a light, Ruby carried Zoomer to the kitchen, where she set down a bowl with nuts and a couple of bits of sugarcane. Zoomer hooted and stood on the floor, looking up at her expectedly.

“What?”

Zoomer clapped.

“Oh, you want some rum.”

Zoomer hooted and did a back flip.

“Sorry, buddy, but this is becoming a dry house. Speaking of …”

Ruby moved to a cabinet fastened with a combination lock. Regular child locks afforded no barrier against Zoomer’s primate determination. She unlocked it and pulled out a bottle of Bahamian Gold, the best rum on the island, and that was saying something.

Zoomer, misreading her intentions, clapped and hooted, standing as tall as he could and staring up at the bottle with an expression approaching religious transcendence. Ruby looked down at him with sympathy.

“This is going to hurt me as much as it’s going to hurt you.”

She moved over to the sink, unscrewed the bottle, and tensed as that beautiful aroma filtered into her nostrils.

Maybe just one, just as a sendoff.

NO.

She started pouring the contents down the drain.

Zoomer screeched and leapt onto the counter. His little hands grasped the bottle and, with a strength born from life in the jungle, tried to yank it away.

But not even a grown man could have moved Ruby’s arms, not after all the training she’d been through. The stream of caramel-colored liquid poured relentlessly down the sink.

So Zoomer tried a new tactic—he got in the sink and put his face in the stream, opening his mouth to take all the booze like some frat boy at Mardi Gras.

“Stop!”

Ruby turned the bottle right-side up, holding it above her head to keep it out of Zoomer’s leaping reach like some odd imitation of the Statue of Liberty.

Zoomer jumped onto her shoulders and tried climbing up her arm.

“Don’t be a pain in the ass!”

Ruby opened the window and started pouring the rum onto the grass below. Zoomer screeched again and leapt out the window, trying his frat boy move once more.

The kitchen window faced Mrs. Strapp’s kitchen window, and those curtains started twitching big time. Ruby hoped her neighbor was old enough not to figure out how to use the camera on her phone. This would not look good on YouTube.

Trying to keep the monkey from drinking itself to death, she flicked the bottle, making the stream of rum fly far out into the yard. Zoomer leapt right after it. Ruby flicked it another direction, but Zoomer was too fast for her and once again managed to catch some in his mouth.

And then the last lovely droplet fell, wasted, to the ground. Zoomer let out a Kafkaesque cry of existential despair.

Ruby wasn’t finished yet. Her liquor cabinet had a second bottle of rum, a bottle of whiskey, and a half-full bottle of vodka that had been a gift from a Russian sailor, a particularly unimpressive one-night stand she had dubbed Ivan the Terrible.

To save Zoomer from the sight, she closed the window on him.

Zoomer leapt onto the windowsill, his humanlike hands pressed against the glass, his panting breath fogging the area in front of his panicky face, as one by one the contents of those bottles went down the drain. Beyond him, Ruby could see Mrs. Strapp openly staring from her window, her curtain thrust aside, all attempt at subtlety gone.

Ruby threw the bottles in the trash and opened the window. Zoomer flew in, a meteor of fur, and began scampering around the kitchen, looking for any trace of booze.

“What the hell is going on over there!” Mrs. Strapp demanded.

“Spring cleaning.”

“It’s autumn.”

“Really? It’s hard to tell in the tropics.”

Ruby slammed the window shut.

Ruby turned to find Zoomer sitting on the counter, arms crossed over his chest, glowering at her.

“Sorry, my little friend. I’m sure you’ll get some at the bar tonight.” Ruby paused, wondering how she was going to sling drinks through an eight-hour shift and not sneak her usual sips. “And I don’t get any.”

This was going to be harder than a prize fight.

* * *

A lot of people said that The Pirate’s Cove had seen better times, but Ruby was not convinced there had ever really been any better times. Maybe the paint had been fresh once. Maybe the plaster coral on the walls hadn’t been chipped. Maybe the rigging hanging from the ceiling hadn’t been garlanded with dust so heavy it resembled Spanish moss. Maybe the lights had all worked. Maybe, just maybe, the oversized treasure chest and pile of gold doubloons taking up the center of the room had once looked flashy instead of just sad.

But that’s not how any of it looked these days. The Pirate’s Cove was now a dark, grimy little bar for professional drinkers on the bad side of town, a few doors down from a strip club that doubled as a whorehouse. A mixture of expats and locals, and the occasional lost tourist, came here for the cheap drinks and the surprisingly friendly crowd.

The people were The Pirate’s Cove’s saving grace. Sure, they were drunks, but they were nice drunks. They were Ruby’s drunks, and the closest thing she had to a family.

And like a family, they were equal parts loving and annoying. Desaray was slugging beer and complaining about the tourists at the resort where she worked, Perry and Reece were getting hammered as usual, and the Ufologist was lecturing about cattle mutilations to anyone who would listen, which meant no one. At least no human. Zoomer squatted on the counter eating nuts soaked in rum while staring at him with wonder.

Ruby stood behind the counter with Kristiano Rolle, a musclebound local who worked as the bar’s other bartender. If the ancient Greeks had made their statues out of obsidian, they would have looked like Kristiano. He had an open, perpetually smiling face that showed his true teddy bear nature.

The Pirate’s Cove wasn’t a particularly large bar, but it needed two bartenders per shift because its clientele liked to keep the drinks coming.

In between serves, Ruby jotted down possible passwords, anything that occurred to her. Senator Wishbourne’s husband’s favorite teams, places in the Caribbean that might have interested her, the color of her car, anything. The list grew and grew, filled with improbable keys to unlock the mystery held inside that thumb drive.

Kristiano glanced at her once or twice, but didn’t ask. Like everybody else, he had grown accustomed to her occasional strange behavior.

“Another over here, please!” Reece called. A retired insurance salesman from New Jersey, he hung out with Perry, a local scuba and surf instructor  one-third his age, although with a liver just as old.

“Coming right up,” Ruby said, jamming the paper in her back pocket. She poured them both a glass of Bahamian rum, the smell making her mouth water. Her mouth had been watering all night. She kept eating nuts in an attempt to give her tastebuds something else to do.

Reece and Perry raised their glass to one another.

“What shall we toast?” Perry asked.

“The Bahamas!” Reece shouted, too loudly.

“We already toasted that.”

“Um, palm trees?”

“Palm trees? You’re drunk.”

“So are you. How about we toast Ruby?”

“Yeah, Ruby! Bartender, kick ass fighter, and amateur detective.”

Ruby winced. She didn’t like being reminded of the body she had found in the dumpster a couple of weeks before. She ended up solving that murder so she didn’t get pegged with the crime. That didn’t make her an amateur detective, it made her a frightened woman on the run, fighting to keep out of jail.

“Wait,” Perry said. “Ruby should have a drink too.”

“You’re right,” Reece replied.

Ruby’s mouth watered again. She grabbed a handful of nuts.

“No thanks, guys,” she said.

They stared at her.

“What? No drink?” Perry asked.

“We’re paying,” Reece said.

“Yeah, um, my stomach isn’t feeling too good tonight.”

“Oh, for a second I thought you’d gotten boring on us,” Perry said.

“That’ll be the day,” Reece guffawed.

Ruby blushed.

Reece raised his glass. “To Ruby!”

“To Ruby!” several of the regulars said in unison.

Reece downed his drink and made a little choking sound.

Uh-oh.

Ruby took a step back.

“Here we go again!” Perry said, vaulting off his bar stool (actually a barrel painted with the words “Yo Ho Ho Rum”) and moving out of range. Ruby stepped back.

“Bathroom, Reece!” she ordered.

Clutching his mouth, the retired insurance salesman staggered to the men’s room.

The regulars cheered and applauded as terrible retching sounds came from beyond the door.

“You’d think someone who can’t hold his liquor wouldn’t be such a heavy drinker,” Kristiano said.

“Better get the mop,” Ruby replied.

“Rock paper scissors?”

“It’s the men’s room.”

“So?”

Ruby groaned. They did rock paper scissors. Ruby lost.

Grumbling, she headed to the back room to grab the mop. She let out a yelp as Neville, her boss and the bar’s owner, leapt around the corner, complete with eye patch, pirate hat, and plastic cutlass.

“Avast, me hearties! Did I hear the sounds of sea sickness?”

“Reece again.”

“A fine sailor, that lad, but he cannot hold his grog,” the pot-bellied Brit said, swishing his cutlass.

“No, he can’t.”

Neville poked her with his plastic sword. While Ruby didn’t know much about history, she was pretty sure pirates had metal swords, and did not have pot bellies.

“Go swab the decks,” Neville ordered, “or I will send ye to Davy Jones’s Locker!”

“If the smell doesn’t send me there first.”

Just as Ruby came out from the back, Reece staggered out of the men’s room, a big grin on his face.

“It’s a construction site in there. Looks like my stomach feels.”

Neville swung his cutlass over his head. “The harbormaster be telling us to clean out the bilges or they will scupper us. The work will be done in a week’s time. Then you can get seasick in the cleanest bilges on the Seven Seas.”

Reece managed to get back to his seat without any more mishaps as Ruby kicked open the door to the men’s room.

She didn’t bother to ask if anyone was in there. She had become pretty much unshockable at this point.

Turned out her only company was a big puddle of vomit right in the center of the floor. At least Reece had hit the remaining tile and not the exposed concrete the workmen had left today. That would have been harder to clean.

She did not remain alone for long. The Professor, an older Southern gentleman with a white suit, white hair, and a red nose, hurried in and pushed by her.

“Hey, I’m working here!”

“Apologies, young lady, but time, and an enlarged prostate, waits for no man,” he said in his Southern drawl.

“Too much information,” she muttered as he sidled on up to a urinal.

A thunderous sound came from the urinal. Whatever the condition of the Professor’s prostate, it certainly didn’t stop him from the business at hand. “Aaaah! Much better. Reminds me of a poem by the famous Chinese poet of the 8th century, Li Bo. ‘Sunbeams stream on the river stones. From high above, the river steadily falls—three thousand feet of sparkling water—the Milky Way pouring down from heaven.’”

“Thanks for the literature lecture.”

“You would have been a wonderful student, Ruby. You are far more intelligent than you let on, and I would have enjoyed seeing you outwit and outfight all the spoiled daddy’s boys who tried to cheat their way through my class.”

“Pee on the floor and I’ll kick your ass.”

“I am still early enough into the evening’s drinking to have good aim, my dear.”

The Professor finished up and left, singing, “One More Summer in Virginia.”

She had barely returned to the bar after having rinsed out the bucket and put back the mop when she saw trouble come through the front door.

It was some American tourist woman who had been in here the previous night. Aged about thirty, with trendy clothes and carefully tended long brown hair, she had come with a female friend of about the same age. Now she was alone, and had a haunted, sleepless look about her. She made a beeline for Ruby.

Ruby turned to rearrange the bottles behind the bar. Once she was done with that, she glanced over her shoulder. The woman was sitting on one of the barrels, between Desaray and another hotel worker who was being lectured to by the Ufologist.

“So when the alien grays mutilate cattle, it’s really just a cover-up for—”

“Excuse me!” the woman said, raising her hand and trying to get Ruby’s attention.

Ruby pretended not to see and went down to the other end of the bar to pour the Professor another mint julep. She took care not to turn in the woman’s direction. Maybe if she ignored her, she would go away.

And Ruby really, really wanted her to go away. She had a bad feeling about her. The woman stared at Ruby like she was her only hope of salvation.

Go home. Problem solved.

So many tourists landed themselves in trouble down in the Bahamas. They thought just because they were on vacation and had money to burn that they could do anything. Ruby had seen it a million times before.

This woman and her friend were a prime example. Drunk when they came in, they had spent most of their three or four rounds bragging to each other about how daring they were to go slumming in the bad part of town. The regulars didn’t exactly like that kind of talk and proceeded to ignore them. What could have been a fun evening where they met some interesting and friendly Bahamians instead turned out to be a drunken night out in their own personal tourist bubble. The last Ruby remembered of them, the one who was here right now had been urging her friend to go down the street to The Tropical Twerker.

“I’m telling you,” she had said, “back home the strip clubs love having amateurs get on stage. It’s a blast!”

“Oh my God, Aaron would kill me!”

“Who cares what Aaron would do? He’ll never know.”

Ruby had moved off to help someone at that point and didn’t see them leave.

So they had gone to the strip club down the street, got harassed and probably robbed, and now this idiot wanted help from the one white person she had spoken to that night. The middle-aged Englishman in the pirate costume did not count.

No thanks, can’t help you. I have more vomit to clean up pretty soon. Much more satisfying.

“Ruby!” Kristiano called.

She turned. Damn. Her coworker stood with the tourist. Both were looking at her.

“This lady would like to speak with you.”

Ugh. No getting out of it now.

CHAPTER THREE

“You have to help me.”

I knew it.

“What are you having?” Ruby asked in her Aloof Bartender Voice.

“Nothing. I didn’t come here to drink. I did too damn much of that last night.”

I remember. Ruby said nothing.

The woman leaned forward, speaking so low that the babble around her nearly drowned out her words.

“Can you meet me outside, just around the corner? I noticed a coffeeshop there.”

Ruby sized her up. Not a threat. Not only was she not a fighter—no muscle tone that you couldn’t get from an aerobics class three times a week—but her eyes didn’t carry that glint of intended violence.

Instead, they held desperation.

“I’m working,” Ruby said.

The woman slumped and leaned forward, looking up at Ruby with desperate eyes.

“Please.”

Ruby paused, then relented.

“I got a break coming up,” she said, more to calm her down than because she wanted to talk with her. This woman didn’t look like she’d budge, though.

A pathetic amount of relief spread across the woman’s face. “Great. I’ll see you there.”

Yeah. Great.

After the woman left, Ruby busied herself with a couple of orders. Kristiano came up to her as she filled another beer mug at the tap.

“What was all that about?” he asked.

“No idea. Can you give me a few minutes? She wants to talk to me at the café.”

“No problem.”

No problem? I wish.

Five minutes later, Ruby sat across from her in a grimy coffeeshop. The chipped Formica table didn’t look like it had been cleaned in years. Neither did the floor. The bright fluorescent lights didn’t help the café’s overall appearance.

Not that it mattered. People didn’t come here for the coffee, but to make drug deals. Javon, a local pot dealer, sat at the next table, texting. Even though he came to The Pirate’s Cove almost every night, he didn’t acknowledge Ruby’s presence or make any sign that he recognized her.

Ruby appreciated that.

The woman sat, fidgeting with her coffee. Ruby sipped an orange juice. She’d been craving sugar all night. Rum had a lot of sugar and she wasn’t getting any in her usual way.

“My name is Helen Pierce,” the weary-looking woman began. “I was in your bar last night with my friend, Bridget Hansen.”

Ruby didn’t let on that she remembered. She wanted to see where this was going. Helen went on.

“We’re here on vacation with our husbands. For the first few days we did the typical stuff, beach and nightclub, but Bob and Aaron are really into golf. Apparently, there are some really good greens here. I wouldn’t know. Bores the hell out of me. So we made a compromise. They’d spent the weekend golfing while we went off and did our own thing. The greens they wanted are on the other side of the island, so they got a hotel room over there so they could be the first on the green in the morning. We stayed here.”

Helen stared into her coffee cup, unable to continue for the moment.

So “doing your own thing” meant getting drunk and starting an amateur night at The Tropical Twerker? I can see this ended badly.

Why am I wasting my time on this? I have to figure out that damn password.

Tourist. Vacation. Palm trees. I should try all the words associated with the Bahamas.

“We … um … got a little crazy. Well, a lot crazy.” She gave a nervous little laugh and grinned, as if seeking approval. “Nightclubs, bars, then we decided to hit the fun side of town.”

Nassau. I should try that.

“You mean the crappy side of town.”

Helen shrugged and grinned again. Ruby found her sympathy for this woman sinking even lower.

“We had a cab driver take us around and we went to a bunch of places, ending up at your bar. Woo! What a crowd! Anyway, after a few more drinks we decided to head down the street to that strip bar.”

Helen looked uncomfortable. She set her shoulders, looked like she came to a decision, and went on.

“So we went down there. But somebody must have drugged us because I passed out and woke up in an alley in another part of town.”

Ruby’s stomach clenched and she felt cold all over. She must have gone pale too, because Helen raised a hand.

“No, I wasn’t raped. I was robbed, though. All my money and jewelry. That’s not the worst part. Bridget is gone! I haven’t seen her since midnight last night, and now it’s what? Ten? She’s been gone almost twenty-four hours. Our hotel says she hasn’t been back. I’ve called a million times, but her phone is switched off.”

“What did the police say?”

Helen looked away. “I-I didn’t call the police. We kinda got crazy. Coke, you know, nothing bad.”

Ruby rolled her eyes. So a tourist goes slumming, gets high, and gets rolled. Oldest story in the book. She drained her orange juice and stood.

“I’m sorry, but this is something the police should handle. You should have called them as soon as you woke up. I’m not sure why you’re asking me to help in the first place.”

Helen’s eyes lit up and she reached for Ruby’s hand. “Because they were all talking about you last night! About how you found a body in the dumpster and you tracked down the murderer all by yourself. You’re like a private detective.”

“I’m not a private detective. I’m a bartender, and my break is over.”

Ruby left. Her side was still sore from the cracked ribs she got on her last investigation, and the only reason she had done that one was because the cops had labeled her a suspect.

She had no skin in this fool’s game.

Ruby went back to the comfortable chaos of the bar, wanting a drink more than ever.

A minute later, Helen Pierce walked back in and sat down in front of her.

“The answer is still no,” Ruby told her.

“A shot of rum, please.”

Well, I can’t say no to a customer. Not with all the expenses of fixing the bathrooms. This place has thin enough margins as it is.

Ruby gave her a rum, and some advice.

“Go to the police.”

“Please. I don’t know what to tell Aaron, Bridget’s husband. He’s getting worried and I’m running out of excuses. At least he’s too preoccupied with golf at the moment to try calling her much, but he’s asking questions. I’ve got to find her.”