Case of the Victoria Cove Murders (eBook)

Chapter One
Time to Make a Clean Break

Quince McCool’s blue Robby Redfords were only half open. The circus continued. The clowns of consciousness were in full makeup. The elephants of fear were bellowing, calling the world to attention. That old devil ringmaster was laughing, cursing, and cracking a whip over the sunken backs of two gray ponies, once the toys of Prince William and Prince Harry. Or so it was said.

As though by magic, the circus melted into a giant fishbowl of humanity pushing, shoving, and clawing to escape from some imaginary city that looked a lot like Los Angeles. The elephants conspired to be poodles, and the gray ponies raced toward the Hollywood Hills in search of drug-laced oats served in a stall under the Starbucks on Wilshire Boulevard.

It was the old dream—the dream that would not die. No matter where Quince rested his head or who lay beside him, it was always the same demanding and expectant loud voice in his ear: Do something! Pull out of the fire and set yourself free!

But freedom came at a cost. Too many memories—the memories of a cop who had seen too much and felt too much. Quince came from a long line of cops in Brooklyn. Some retired peacefully and took up a hobby. His great-uncle Seamus, the transit cop, took up organic farming outside Albany. People laughed. He said he preferred tomatoes to turnstiles—an inside joke. Some cops had to retire when the black dog of depression chased them into the bottom of the whiskey bottle. Others became security guards, keeping watch on shoplifters at Walmart.

Standing in the home goods aisle at Walmart watching shoppers spend money they didn’t have, memories flooded back like a pack of wild dogs barking and snapping at the leftovers from a life that once served a careless and forgetful humanity. Police doctors called it post-traumatic stress syndrome; cops called it the shits. Quince’s moment of truth came wrapped in a pretty package that got away with murder.

•••

Following in his dad’s footsteps, he joined the New York Police Department after graduating from Manhattan College in the Bronx. Working his way from beat cop to detective first class in the Homicide Division, he had nowhere to go but up, but he rejected the pitch for a desk job. When he was recruited by the Los Angeles Police Department at twice his New York pay, he packed up and moved to Tensile Town.

Working out of the North Hollywood Police Station was no walk down Rodeo Drive. Money talks everywhere, but in Hollywood, it screams. It looked a lot different than the dirty and dangerous streets of New York—a lot cleaner, shinier, and a lot more deadly. But murder is murder, no matter who pulls the trigger. And it was the case of Delores Brentwood, a young and beautiful starlet who got away with the cold-blooded murder of her Fortune 500 husband, Harry, that made Quince rethink his life.

Two weeks after Harry filed for divorce after finding Delores in the pool house, locked in the arms of the pool guy from Cool Waves Pool Service, he was discovered in his study, an axe sticking out of his back. It was an open-and-shut case; Dolores’ fingerprints were all over the axe, but she walked because her lawyer knew all the right strings to pull. She went viral on Tik Tok with a rambling tale of victimization, which landed her a guest appearance on Gossip with Roy Riggles, paving the way to a bushel of product endorsements. Delores Brentwood walked away a very rich murderer.

After the trial, Quince called his dad, Patrick “Paddy” McCool, in Brooklyn and spilled his guts, confessing he’d been worn down and fighting burnout for some time. It started back home in Brooklyn, and the move to LA didn’t help. Bad thoughts crept up behind him constantly: on his drive back to his barren studio apartment in the Valley, at a bar when he was having a beer with colleagues, at his desk at the precinct, and in bed, afraid to sleep and dream bad dreams. Memories of fallen comrades weren’t lost—he battled panic that he too might end his career in the home goods isle at Walmart.

His dad was about to retire after thirty-five years as chief of the Homicide Division of the NYPD. Two years before, he found the love of his life and Quince’s mother, Bridgett, on the kitchen floor, dead from a massive heart attack. A shepherd’s pie sat on the stove, a piece of aluminum foil keeping it warm for their dinner. As the ambulance carried her away, a primal scream burst from inside Paddy’s soul. He was sixty-five and alone in the world.

When he turned sixty, Bridgett sat him down and said, “Paddy McCool, if the good Lord should take me before you, promise you’ll never retire to Florida and play shuffleboard. You were put on this good earth to be useful. This world doesn’t need another retiree waiting around for Saint Peter to welcome them to Heaven.”

Had she known she was about to die? Were there warnings he missed and secrets she buried? What advice would she be giving their only son? Bridgette understood Quince. “He’s a bit wild, a bit poetic, and all Irish,” she told Paddy. “He needs his space. He needs you to love him, Paddy McCool. Be sure to make him happy and let him be who he’s meant to be.”

Bridgett’s words rang in Paddy’s ears: Let him be who he was meant to be. He gave his son the best advice to fight burnout: go fishing, but not anywhere; go fishing in Jamaica.

“Dad, fishing has always been enough for you, and I appreciate our moments together over a lobster and a Red Stripe each year in Port Antonio, at the Blue Marlin Tournament. But this time, it’s not enough. I’ve got true blood and gut burnout. I know I’d return home from any holiday, back to the mean streets of New York or Los Angeles, and pick up where I left off. As the holiday disappeared into the LA smog, the same old nightmares would return to haunt me. I need an absolute and enduring change—a new way of being in the world. And I’d like to do it with you—try and make a permanent home for ourselves in Port Antonio, a place where we both feel at peace and enthusiastic about possibilities.”

Quince was signaling to his father that the time had come, as Bridgette predicted, to clear the decks—time to recharge. Paddy would have to let Quince lead the way. He’d follow and do his best to be as supportive as Bridgette asked.

•••

Two days after talking with Paddy, Quince submitted his resignation from the LAPD. Leaving Los Angeles felt natural—the Port was calling. His windowless condo in the Valley was claustrophobic; his job was soul-deadening; and he was done with romance among the young and restless, Hollywood style. With his cop’s pension and the sale of his vintage 1968 Chevy Camaro, he was ready to breathe new life into his unhappy soul.

He needed a beach and a slice of paradise where his soul could mend and his heart could beat in rhythm with the sounds of reggae. Errol Flynn, the heartthrob from the Golden Age of Hollywood, described Port Antonio as more beautiful than any woman he had ever known. Sunlit days, sultry nights, the soil pulsed with life and the people burned with a passion for all things human. Clear blue water from the Blue Mountains races to join the warm, salty, turquoise Caribbean Sea, washing up on beaches of golden sand. The port seduces even the jaded into believing life can be beautiful.

•••

Quince jumped on a plane to Jamaica. Maybe he could find peace off the beaten track and the demons that kept him up at night would stay in Hollywood. Maybe that’s why when the bus from Kingston to Port Antonio pulled to a stop in front of the Golden Eye Hotel next to the Court House on Harbour Street, he felt like he was coming home. Maybe that was why he bought a broken-down houseboat from an ancient storyteller who retreated to the Blue Mountains to die in the arms of a loving God.

The houseboat was a wreck, but Quince felt a deep connection to the old tub. He named her Freedom in honor of his new life. He and Freedom were both in need of repair, barely afloat, holding on and hoping for better days. Quince wondered how such a long wood boat came to be in the port; it resembled one of the barges that lined the canals in the Amsterdam Flower Market. How fitting that both he and Freedom were eager transplants far from their motherlands!

He would take up gardening, fill the boat’s flat roof with pots and raised beds, and grow fresh vegetables, spices, and flowers. Quince never looked back. He put his Glock in a bucket under the sink and covered it with a dirty dish towel. He was done with guns. He called Paddy.

When he told his dad he was planning to open a detective agency specializing in tracking down the lost, the misplaced, and the simply adrift, Paddy couldn’t hide his enthusiasm.

“Quincy, please save me from becoming a senior citizen. God and your mother want me to die with my boots on and with a beer in one hand and a fishing reel in the other.”

A few months later, he put the family home on the market, cashed in his savings, and soon was on a plane bound for Kingston, rolling into Port Antonio with a suitcase and two fishing poles.

•••

Paddy loved the element of surprise and didn’t tell Quince his plans. It wasn’t until Quince felt the Freedom bounce and shudder from his dad’s heavy footsteps and heard Paddy’s loud and friendly laugh that he looked up to see his father, a mountain of a man, wearing his captain’s cap and a huge smile; he...