Corpse Suzette

again.
    And not when she was
looking for a killer.
    “So, where do you want to start?”
she asked Dirk. “The bank?”
    He raised his arm to hail
one of the taxis that was slowly driving by, looking for fares. “Lighthouse
Security, here we come.”
     
    Lighthouse Security Bank
was quaint and picturesque. When they entered the building, Savannah felt like
she was attending some sort of Hawaiian luau rather than stepping into a bank.
She half-expected the clerks to be wearing hula skirts.
    But the architecture was
where the island friendliness stopped.
    The woman behind the
manager’s desk was anything but welcoming.
    “We do not release
information about our customers to anyone from the States,” she told Dirk, her
hands on her ample hips, her eyes flashing behind her tortoiseshell glasses.
    He held his badge closer to
her nose, but she brushed it away with one hand and reiterated, “No
information. None. Your authority is not recognized inside this establishment.”
    Dirk’s face darkened, and
Savannah cringed. Sergeant Detective Dirk Coulter had worked damned hard for
that gold shield, and the last person who had slapped it away had wound up flat
on his face on the floor in one and a half seconds.
    “Look here, lady,” he said.
“I’m investigating a homicide, and even out here in international waters,
murder is murder, and can land you in some sort of prison somewhere. Now you
better reconsider what you just said to me.”
    “I haven’t murdered anyone,
and I couldn’t release information to you about a customer here even if I
wanted to. All of our banking is done with anonymous numbers and customer
passwords. We, ourselves, don’t know their identities.”
    Savannah stepped between
them and adopted her most solicitous tone and expression. “Of course, you
can’t,” she said. “I understand your position completely. But we’re not asking
you for their identity. We need a record of their recent transactions. I
already have the account number, even the password. Perhaps you could be so
kind as to let us know what’s been going on with the account.”
    “No.”
    Savannah was a bit taken
aback. Her down-homey routine almost always worked... at least a little. “No?”
she asked. “That’s it? Just ‘no’?”
    “No. And that’s not all. If
you don’t leave right now, I’ll have security remove you.”
    Suddenly, a couple of
enormous guards materialized behind them. Savannah turned to look at them and
was astonished that people even came that big! They were at least a foot taller
than Dirk’s six feet, two inches, and their uniforms—khaki shirts and shorts
with breast pocket insignia badges—showed off their muscular physiques with
intimidating clarity.
    “Let’s go,” she told Dirk.
“If these folks aren’t interested in helping us, they deserve to have a
murderer here on their little island, rubbing elbows with them on a daily
basis.”
    She grabbed Dirk’s arm and
propelled him toward the front door before he could cause any trouble with
Goliath and King Kong.
    “But, but... he sputtered.
    “Keep walkin,”’ she told
him. “Make tracks, buddy.”
    “I ain’t afraid of those
guys,” he said, looking back over his shoulder.
    “Well, I am, and you would
be too, if you had the sense God gave a goose.” She shoved him through the
front door and out onto the street. “We’ll find out what we need to know some
other way.”
    “How?”
    “I don’t know, but—”
    Her cell phone was buzzing
inside her purse. She reached for it and looked at the caller ID. “It’s the
kid. Hi, Tam. What’s shakin’, sugar?” She listened for a long time, a smile
spreading across her face. Finally, she said, “Darlin’, you are worth your
weight in gold. You have no idea how timely this little bit of info is.
Consider yourself kissed and hugged.”
    She flipped the phone
closed, turned to Dirk and chuckled. “Turns out you didn’t need to go fifteen
rounds with those heavyweights in there after all. Tammy’s better than Miss Grumpy
could ever be.”
    “Why? I thought she was
having a hard time trying to access that account info. The password ‘ rosarita ’
wouldn’t work or somethin’ like that.”
    “True, but she kept trying
other passwords, and she found one that worked. She opened the account info
online and discovered that three-hundred and twenty five thousand dollars was
withdrawn, in cash, five days ago.”
    “Five days ago? That’s two
days after Suzette Du