A coffin full of pineapp.., p.1
A Coffin Full of Pineapples, page 1
A Coffin Full of Pineapples
A Caribbean Island Murder Mystery
© 2025, Hilary U. Cohen
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Print ISBN: 979-8-31782-523-2
eBook ISBN: 979-8-31782-524-9
Contents
Cast of Characters
1. Monday, Day 1, Late Evening
2. Tuesday, Day 2, Very Early Morning
3. Tuesday, Day 2, Dawn Is Breaking
4. Tuesday, Day 2, Morning, St. Vincent
5. Tuesday, Day 2, Late Morning
6. Tuesday, Day 2, Sunset at Clifton Harbor
7. Tuesday, Day 2, Sunset in Kingstown
8. Tuesday, Day 2, Evening Fades in Clifton Harbor
9. Tuesday, Day 2, Night Falls in Clifton Harbor
10. Tuesday, Day 2, Night Falls in the Mesopotamia Valley
11. Wednesday, Day 3, Early Morning, Clifton Harbor
12. Wednesday, Day 3, Late Morning on Shore in Clifton Harbor
13. Wednesday, Day 3, Afternoon on Union Island
14. Thursday, Day 4, Morning in the Mesopotamia Valley
15. Thursday, Day 4, Morning in Clifton Harbor
16. Thursday, Day 4, Afternoon in Clifton Harbor
17. Thursday, Day 4, Late Afternoon, Tyrrel Bay
18. Thursday, Day 4, Late Evening
19. Friday, Day 5, Early Morning on Bequia
20. Friday, Day 5, Kingstown
21. Saturday, Day 6, Maggie and Jake in Kingstown
22. Monday, Day 8, Morning in Clifton Harbor
23. Monday, Day 8, Bequia
24. Monday, Day 8, Evening at Audine’s on the Docks of Kingstown
25. Tuesday, Day 9, Clifton, Union Island
26. Tuesday, Day 9, Tantie Pearl
27. Wednesday, Day 10, Kingstown
28. Friday, Day 12, Police Station in Clifton
29. Friday, Day 12, AFC Headquarters
30. Saturday, Day 13, Morning in Clifton Harbor
31. Tuesday, Day 16, Afternoon in Kingstown
32. Wednesday, Day 17, Afternoon at the AFC Plantation
33. Wednesday, Day 17, Police Meeting in Kingstown
34. Wednesday, Day 17, Evening in Kingstown
35. Wednesday, Day 17, Very Late, Kingstown
36. Thursday, Day 18, Police Meet, Morning in Kingstown
37. Thursday, Day 18, Morning in Kingstown
38. Thursday, Day 18, AFC Plantation
39. Friday, Day 19, Midday, True Blue Bay, Grenada
40. Saturday, Day 20, Morning in Bequia
41. Saturday, Day 20, Late Afternoon on Bequia
42. Sunday, Day 21, AFC Headquarters
Sunday, Day 21, Late Evening On Board 43. Andiamo
44. Monday, Day 22, Kingstown Police Station
45. Monday, Day 22, Scanlan’s Office
46. Tuesday, Day 23, Evening in Kingstown
47. Wednesday, Day 24, Morning at Ottley Hall Marina
48. Tuesday, Day 23, Kingstown Police Station
49. Thursday, Day 25, Morning in Kingstown
50. Thursday, Day 25, Early Evening at the Photo Shop, Admiralty Bay
Thursday, Day 25, Evening On Board 51. Andiamo
52. Friday, Day 26, Admiralty Bay in Bequia
53. Friday, Day 26, Early Morning Crossing the Bequia Channel
54. Friday, Day 26, Police Station in Kingstown
55. Friday, Day 26, Ferry to Kingstown
56. Friday, Day 26, Afternoon at Police Headquarters, Kingstown
57. Saturday, Day 27, Morning, Kingstown
58. Saturday, Day 27, Late Night, Campden Park
59. Sunday, Day 28, Early Morning
60. Sunday, Day 28, Morning
61. Monday, Day 36, Kingstown
62. Tuesday, Day 37, Early Morning, Princess Margaret Beach
63. A Few Weeks Later
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
AUTHOR’S NOTE
To Rachel and Amy
who inspire me every day
Cast of Characters
Charter boat sailors
Maggie Mullaley
Andiamo’s cook and first mate, former Chicago lawyer
Jake Phelps
Captain of Andiamo, from Australia
Residents living on the island of Bequia
Catherine Ollivierre
Owns the Bequia Island Bookstore and its Garden Café
Nelson Hardwick
Owns a photography shop on Bequia, takes photos of charter sailboats in Admiralty Bay
Farmers and town residents,
Mesopotamia Valley and Kingstown, St. Vincent
Solange Leverte
Pineapple farmer in the Mesopotamia Valley
Audine
Café owner on wharf in Kingstown Harbor
Tantie Pearl
Holistic healer in the Mesopotamia Valley
Collin Franklin
Doctor in general practice serving Kingstown and the outlying islands
Norma
Taxi driver
The Amalgamated Fruit Company
Enrique Morales
Field-worker
Paco Diaz
Field-worker
Armando Cruz
Vice President of AFC International for South America and the Caribbean
Hank Scanlan
CEO of St. Vincent campus
Buck Larson
Head of Security
Barbara Crandall
Head of Legal Affairs for AFC, St. Vincent
Frank Pendleton
Plantation Manager
Police based in Kingstown
James Edwards
Chief Detective Inspector—Major Crimes Unit
Sandi Snagg
Detective Inspector
George Smith
Detective Inspector
Dr. Harold Avery
Forensic specialist and Coroner
Narissa Benn
Sergeant, former Bequia corporal
Eldon Jeremiah
Sergeant, former Bequia Station Sergeant
Union Island
Juley
Owner of bar on Newlands Reef called Reef Island
Aldric Mitchell
Station Sergeant
Ottley Hall Marina and Campden Park
Jurgen
Swedish boat mechanic who manages Ottley Hall Marina, close friend of Jake’s
Winston
Brewery manager at Campden Park
Law firms, lawyers, and judges
Ambrose and Ambrose Chambers
Kingstown law firm
Cyril Ambrose
Eighty-year-old founder of the firm
Justin Ambrose
Son and partner of Cyril
Stein, Levin, Bloomberg, and Gold
Chicago law firm founded by Molly Stein, mother of Maggie
Jen
Lawyer at Stein Levin and friend of Maggie
David Solomon
Lawyer at Stein Levin and former husband of Maggie
US academic
Prof. Andy Harrison
PhD in environmental toxicology
CHAPTER ONE
Monday, Day 1, Late Evening
Solange surveyed the crates lined up on the trestles in front of her barn, their contents barely visible in the eerie glow cast by the lightbulbs strung across her yard. They swung in the strong breeze, throwing strange shadows across the rows of pineapples packed into the weathered wooden boxes. One more hour, she thought, and they would be finished. What a bloody long night. She had hoped to be done hours ago while she could still see to get the damned cardboard collars properly fixed around each piece of fruit. But there was another cock-up with her hired hands and only one had turned up. How she would load the last crate onto the truck in the dark with just the two of them she didn’t know. It was just one fuckup after another.
She made an impatient swipe of the sweat and grime streaking her face with the sleeve of her heavy work shirt. Then pushed her thick fingers through the spiky hair falling onto her forehead. She started to reach for the flask in her hip pocket, decided against it, and gave the truck tire a violent kick instead.
“Señora, should we start on the last crate?”
Startled out of her preoccupations, she replied, “Yeah, sure, Paco.” At least she was glad if she was down to a single helper, it was him. Paco was one of the Central American workers who had come to St. Vincent to help get Amalgamated’s new plantation under way. But he had been let go. Odd, given his skills. Enrique was the one who had asked her if she had any work for him. Compared to her local field-workers who came and went, Paco turned out to be reliable as well as to really know pineapples.
Though small, he was strong and deft, managing the sharp knives required for the pruning and picking with astonishing speed. He was polite with her but not at ease. Only with Enrique did he let down his guard. With everyone else, he was wary.
She and Paco were halfway through the last crate when they heard the sound of a pickup truck making the turn up her long, rutted drive from the main road a quarter of a mile away. They paused mid-task and looked at each other. “Maybe one of the other hands is finally turning up.”
“Could be, Señora.”
They both knew how unlikely that was. Too late for someone to com e to work. And anyway, the field hands usually walked.
Solange strode to the door of the barn where she kept her rifle, loaded and close at hand. “Yeah, well, let’s hope they’re coming back from a rum shack with friends and they’re not too drunk to help load the crates on the truck.” She picked up her other weapon, a shotgun, and offered it to Paco. “You can take off if you’d rather. Go across the fields in the other direction.”
He just shook his head as he took the gun and stepped back into the shadows.
Within seconds, the pickup came hurtling into the yard. There was no time to take cover before the doors swung open and three men flew out, dragging a fourth with them. She caught a glimpse of the first three in the headlights of the pickup but not the fourth before the lamps went out. They had the thick-necked, bulked-up build of some of Amalgamated’s henchmen, the ones hired to keep the workers in line. But there were others on the island who had the same paramilitary swagger—foot soldiers for private antidrug companies as well as Trinidadian and Jamaican drug lords—so she couldn’t be sure.
“Get off of my property, you bastards.”
“I don’t think we’ll be going anywhere. Let’s just get this over with.”
Solange told herself to ignore the speaker’s smugness. In the dim light cast by the string of bulbs, she struggled to make out who they were. “I’m giving you warning. Take another step toward me and I’ll start shooting.”
She heard the smirk in his voice. “Wasn’t too smart to tell the world you were going to start shooting pineapple thieves.”
Solange hated that they could feel her fear. “I said fuck off!”
“We’ve brought a friend of yours with us. I think you know Enrique.” One of the others shoved Enrique forward and shone a flashlight on him as the spokesman pulled the bandana away from his face. Enrique’s hands were bound behind his back. The third man seized him from behind and held a machete to his throat.
She gasped in spite of herself.
“You don’t have a chance, so why don’t you just give us that gun like a good little girl?” he said pointing at her rifle.
Rage flooded her. She knew they were baiting her, provoking her, but she was too angry to care.
She felt more than saw one of the men circling in from the side. She stood her ground, trying to figure out how many shots she could get off on her way down.
Then all hell broke loose. A gunshot from the shadows took everyone by surprise. The lights that were strung across the yard came loose and careened wildly into the group. The first crack was followed by several more before the men could adjust their eyes to the loss of light. Solange heard several cries, men being hit but who she couldn’t tell. She got off a clutch of shots before an immense blow to her head jolted down her spine and sent her sprawling. For an instant, she felt searing pain, then darkness.
When she came to, all was silent, still. Her head throbbed. She lay on the dirt disoriented, trying to remember the last minutes before she had been struck. Eventually, taking a chance the assailants were gone, she dragged herself to a sitting position. The worst of her pain was coming from her head. Her left arm seemed to be working better than her right. She reached up with it and felt her head—not wet; either the blood had dried or there wasn’t any. Gingerly, she searched her pockets with her functioning hand until her fingers miraculously wrapped around her torch. Shining it around her, she saw some droplets of red glistening in the dirt. Maybe too far from where she was sitting to be hers. Was it possible she hadn’t been shot, just bashed in the head? Staggering to her feet, she set about to discover what had happened in her yard while she had been unconscious and whose blood was now seeping into the dusty dryness of her yard.
CHAPTER TWO
Tuesday, Day 2, Very Early Morning
After the mayhem that had erupted only a short time before, the silence was unnerving, only the wind through the palms and the trill of the tree frogs. Solange lurched unsteadily around her yard, stunned. Her own footfalls sounded like drumbeats in her ear, as if calling the thugs to find her. But nothing. She shone her torch around the yard. No one. She approached the scatting of red drops in the dirt. Someone’s blood, but whose? Tried to quiet her feet as she went to her house for the dog. What would have happened if she hadn’t closed Jamba in for the evening? Would he be lying dead in her yard now?
She put him on the leash, picked up her gun from where it had fallen during the melee, and let him lead the way. Within minutes, he had made a grisly discovery. A body. Paco. Covered with blood. Solange knelt down and felt for a pulse. Nothing. His body was already turning cold. What a bloody, useless end. Dying to help her. Think about it later, she told herself.
She and Jamba continued their search, following a trail of blood away from him. It dissipated among the roots and the undergrowth. Whose was it? Enrique’s or one of the others? Where was Enrique? Dead or alive? Kidnapped or escaped? She wanted desperately to call his cell, but they agreed she must never.
Perhaps Enrique had survived. Maybe hiding in the barn or out on the road somewhere. She and Jamba began with the barn, Solange trying to stem her growing dread that they weren’t going to stumble over another body.
Why had those thick-necked bastards made such a point of mocking her threat to shoot pineapple thieves? Was the whole thing a setup to frame her? The question rang in her ears as she stumbled after Jamba among the piles of crates and old tools. A hand brushed her face. Solange shrieked. Then she realized it was the wing of one of the chickens, disturbed by the light and noise. She shooed it back to the roost and went back outside.
Within seconds, she found Enrique, not moving, half-lying, half-sitting against the barn, his hands still tied behind his back. Dead or badly injured? She crept closer and jumped as a rasping voice came from the body. “Well, it’s about time, woman. I thought you were going to let me bleed to death.”
Twenty minutes later, she had managed to staunch the bleeding and make a first pass at cleaning his shoulder where a bullet was lodged. She brought them each a large paper cup of whiskey and shared the news that Paco was dead.
“Oh, Jesus, Jesus.” He leaned his head back against the side of the barn, squeezing his eyes shut. “Those fucking bastards. Those sons of whores.”
“What in hell is going on, Enrique?”
Solange watched him gather himself against the pain. In a few words, he told her of a meeting earlier in the day when he had been stripped of his responsibilities. Later, returning to his room, he discovered it had been ransacked.
“Do they know everything? Who you are? What you’ve learned?”
“I don’t know if they’ve got everything.”
“We’ve got to get you away from here—get you to a doctor.”
“It’s too dangerous.”
“You’ll bleed to death or get an infection if we don’t do something. If we can get you to Tantie Pearl, maybe she can help. I know we can trust her.”
Enrique was far away, lost in thought. “I’m safest, you’re safest, if they think I’m dead. Their plan was to kill me on your property and frame you for it. Kill you too,” he finished softly. “Stage it to look like we killed each other.”
“So, won’t they come back? To finish the job?”
“You and Paco shot them up pretty good.”
“Glad to hear it. Did we kill anyone?”
“I don’t know.”
“Look, Solange,” he said, a plan forming. “There’s nothing we can do for Paco. Maybe we can ask his help one more time. He and I are not so different in build, coloring. What if we put my papers on him? Carry out Amalgamated’s plan for them. Let’s drag his body somewhere on the edge of your property like your shots were scaring him off. Then you call Maggie, tell her you heard an intruder and fired some shots. You don’t know if you hit someone or not. Ask Maggie to call the police, then Amalgamated. Let’s make sure someone in authority knows you were alive when you called to report the shooting. That should protect you against Amalgamated coming back to kill you and claim we killed each other.”
