In a Heartbeat - Elizabeth Adler [70]
Finally, the diver surfaced, struggling with a couple of lengths of heavy, rusted chain. The burly officers leaned over, grabbed them from him, and then with the grappling irons maneuvered the box to the surface.
Camelia was on his knees, getting his immaculate dark-gray pants wet even though he knew the seawater would ruin them, helping to manhandle the still-weighty box over the bow and onto the deck.
The men stood looking at it. A blue plastic cooler, stained with rust and sealed with waterproof yellow electrical tape.
They ripped off the tape and eased off the lid. “God,” Mel heard Camelia gasp, and they all took a quick step back, hands over their noses.
“For Chrissakes, put the lid back on,” the sheriff choked, getting on the phone and immediately summoning the coroner’s wagon.
“Yeah, it’s a body all right,” Mel heard him say. “But whose, or even what, is hard to say. At this stage, it could be a dead dog for all we can tell.”
Camelia made his way back up the wooden steps toward Mel. She reached out for him. “This isn’t real,” she whispered, horrified. “This doesn’t happen to nice women like me. This is a nightmare and it’s getting worse.”
Camelia slid his arms around her. He could feel the softness of her against his chest, feel the tremors that shook her body, smell her faint floral perfume. “There’ll be an autopsy,” he said. “It’s impossible to know, at this moment, who it is, but I’ll bet it was the body in the library.”
“Hooray for Agatha Christie,” she muttered in his ear. “Now all we have to do is find that darned butler.”
He let go of her, reluctantly. “Let’s get out of here,” he said, handing her her leather jacket. “I’m a man in need of fresher air than this, as well as a stiff drink.”
She linked her arm through his as they hurried back to the car. This time he drove. At the single-lane bridge they encountered the arriving coroner’s wagon as well as a squad car with the police photographer, and they waited for them to cross before continuing.
“They’ll need to talk to you later,” Camelia told her, and she nodded.
“Just as long as they don’t think I did it,” she added wearily.
Unlike Hainsville, there was a reality to Charleston. It was a piece of history: gracious, elegant, genteel. And the Omni at Charleston Place was a rather grand hotel, lording it over historic downtown, with marble floors and glittering chandeliers. It had a pretty good bar, too, which was, Camelia thought, where they seemed to spend a lot of time together these days.
“You gonna end up like Mamzelle Dorothea?” he asked with a grin, as Mel hooked herself onto a stool and ordered a cosmopolitan—with Grey Goose vodka from France, please, if they had it. And of course they did.
“I doubt Mamzelle Dorothea ever had an afternoon like this to drive her to drink. My guess is she got there all by her tiny little self.” Mel swirled the sliver of lime into the pretty pink cocktail. “She’s obviously a lady. She lived in one of these grand mansions, before she blew all the money on booze.”
“Happens to the best,” he said, sipping the single malt that was almost exactly the color of her eyes. And why the hell couldn’t he forget that? He took a gulp and ordered another, promising himself to switch to clear, colorless vodka tomorrow. Today, though, he had seen enough to turn any strong man’s stomach, and the whiskey warmed his vitals in a very positive way. He stole a glance at Mel out of the corner of his eye.
“You doin’ anything special tonight, lady?”
She turned to him, thinking about it. He held his breath. Looking into her eyes was like watching a slot machine in Vegas, waiting for those matching cherries.
“Well,” she said slowly, “I was thinking of just soaking in a tub, then maybe a bowl of grits. . . .”
His face dropped and she laughed. “Just kidding. Nope, I am a woman alone tonight. Whaddya have in mind?”
“Dinner? No greasy spoon, though. Somewhere nice, suitable for a southern lady.”
She laughed again, that pleasing tinkling sound