White Orchid Found (Charlotte Diamond Mysteries 6) by Olivia Stowe

Author:Olivia Stowe
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: suspense, murder, espionage, lesbian, florida, movies, rubenesque, series, mature, movie, mystery series, everglades, lady detective, lesbian detective
Publisher: Cyberworld Publishing

Chapter Six: Into the Everglades

“It’s just a short hop from here to Colombia in a small plane. Even shorter to Cuba. Not far at all to Cuba. And we’ve never been able to do much about interdicting the small-plane traffic in Florida from the Caribbean and South America.”

Ed Winslow had been giving Charlotte what she took to be a meaningful look when he said that, maybe more meaningful than the obvious. The two of them, along with Sheriff Roy Reynolds of DeSoto County, were gathered around a sheet-covered body on the tarmac at Carlstrom Field. A deputy sheriff had just walked up to them to report on what had been found in Stephen Taylor’s room in the men’s building.

“A whole lot of cash and a whole lot of packaged white powder in that room, Sheriff,” he’d said. “We sent both back to the lab.”

“Not surprised,” the sheriff answered tersely. “Have Sadie put in a call to the DEA office. After that track down that guy I wanted to interview further and have them empty a conference room where I can talk to him.”

“Well, that complicates matters more,” Sheriff Reynolds said when the deputy had walked briskly back toward the main building. Then he sighed. “Guess I won’t be going down to the Everglades with you folks this afternoon. I’ll try to spring loose a couple of deputies to go with you. We’ll, make sure the lab gets fingerprints off the body and that empty satchel under the body there. We ran a blank going not too far back on investigating this dude. So, it doesn’t surprise me that he had some reason to be here other than the film.”

He then turned to Charlotte and Ed. “Who found the body? And what’s this about one of the women being assaulted here last night?”

“I found the body,” Winslow said. “We were going to search for Taylor—or whoever he really is—this morning because he was the only one not accounted for when we checked after Ms. Yance was attacked last night. But I’m an early riser and like to walk before breakfast. So, I was out before the others. The body wasn’t hard to see; it was right out here on the runway.”

“It does look like the body’s been here for a while, but I’ll wait on that until the medical examiner has his say.” The sheriff said that in his “don’t leave town without telling me” voice while he was staring pretty hard at Ed.

“But I’m afraid there’s no connection between what happened here—and Stephen Taylor—and the attack on DeeDee,” Charlotte said.

“How do you figure that?” the sheriff asked. “Winslow here says you were looking for Taylor in connection with the attack.”

“We heard the gunshots that killed Taylor last night—or at least Brenda Brandon and I did—and that was just seconds before DeeDee managed to foil her attacker by screaming. Taylor couldn’t have been attacking her while he was being killed out here. And it won’t take a medical examiner to determine that he died from gunshot wounds.

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