Cassie P Caribbean PI by Cecil Browne

Author:Cecil Browne
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Troubador Publishing Ltd
Published: 2019-10-08T00:00:00+00:00

cassie and the mason murder

My service in the police force had me all over SVG. Tiny dots on the blue maps in every station wall turned into dusty villages or rowdy towns, no Geography lesson could touch mixing and mingling. The Grenadine islands my father took me to at Easter and Christmas as a child sprinkled their magic over me once more when on patrol.

Sometime in my early teens, I used to dream about a female giant as tall as the coconut tree in our yard which bombed the house during hurricane season. The coconut heart was her head, the green or dry branches her straggling locks. The giant would set out from Grenada and stomp! Carriacou, stomp! Mayreau, stomp! Mustique. One Grenadine island then another, thirteen huge strides, and she was on mainland SVG. What could I do but laugh at my childishness when on duty in Union Island or Canouan?

Corporal or constable, I can’t remember a single day when I cursed the job. No matter how late I staggered home, or how battered, by morning I was ready to go again. Police work was my vocation, no earthly currency could measure it. All hell broke loose one morning when Sylvia Peppy from Largo Heights broke three fingernails apprehending a thief, a crease in her blouse and you would think the end was nigh. Simmer, Sylvia, I used to beg her, let the uniform do the work, keep dressing up for the weekend shows.

The Mulraines are not big-grain people, but after seven months of combat training, I could hold off any man who wasn’t a giant. Those women who called me ‘sister’ then lashed out to scrawl my face, same block-then-tackle for them. Promotion to corporal and a taste of detective work in Kingstown only increased my liking for policing. Before I met my husband I gambled and spent my wages on myself, the force met the rest of my needs.

Once I slipped on the navy-blue trousers and crisp grey blouse, I didn’t want to hear that blood was thicker than water. Money? Liquor? Wrong woman. Junior officers did most of the ‘domestic’ work at the station, but every now and again there would be a murder, and the police station would spring into life. Proper detective stuff at last!

I remember my first murder, a sudden death in Paul’s Avenue. A shopkeeper, face down, the muscles of his back melting under the early-morning sun one Saturday. No injuries, no medical conditions, no witnesses. How could a six-footer collapse just like that? And when he was in the ground before his soul could depart his body, who wouldn’t feel sorry for his tearful wife?

Detectives interviewed the dead man’s widow, his family, friends and neighbours. Shopkeepers too, and vendors from the nearby market. But their notebooks came back near empty. If they got two pages between them that was plenty. Resting our feet at the station after another day knocking at doors, we would laugh like the lunatics who pepper Bay

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