Heavenly Honeymoon (Zoe Donovan Mysteries Book 15) (13 page)

Zak didn’t need to actually steal the money. He simply planted information in Malik’s account that made it look like the money had been moved. He followed that up with a text to Della, informing her of the transfer.

Jensen intentionally left Della alone in the house, so she was free to move about and do whatever it was she was going to do. Zak cloned her phone and replaced it with one we could listen in on.

The stage was set; now all we had to do was wait. Waiting, I’d learned from past experience, was often the hardest thing to do. I chatted with Talin about other cases he had worked on, while Zak spoke with Jensen about anything and everything to take his mind off his broken heart. It really was an odd gathering of individuals who sat around the listening device Zak had set up, waiting for something to happen.

“She’s on the move,” Zak eventually informed us. He was tracking her phone with the GPS that was installed.

We watched as Della left the resort and headed east. As expected, she ended up at the marina on the far end of the island. Talin had informed us that Malik lived on a boat at the marina. If the weather had cooperated they could very well have been long gone by the time we figured everything out.

“What did you do with the money?” we heard Della say, followed by the sound of a palm meeting flesh.

“I didn’t do anything with it,” Malik answered. “Why did you slap me?”

We assumed the silence was the result of Della showing Malik the text she had received about the transfer.

“What the hell?” Malik yelled. “Who could have done this?”

“You’re the only person who comes to mind,” Della insisted.

“Why would I transfer money out of an account we already control?” Malik reasoned.

“I don’t know. Why would you?” Della confronted him. “Were you planning to take off without me?”

“Why would I do that? I love you.”

“You were never happy about the baby. Maybe you decided to start over fresh with someone else.”

“I wouldn’t do that. I love you. You know I do.”

There was silence, but it sounded like they were kissing.

“What are we going to do?” Della eventually asked.

Silence again.

“I don’t know,” Malik answered after a good long while.

“We could just wait until after the baby is born. It will give us time to come up with a new way to get some money,” Della suggested.

“We can’t wait. I killed a man. Eventually someone is going to put everything together. We need to figure out who stole our money and steal it back.”

“How are we going to do that, Malik? Ricardo Jimenez is dead and Jack was the only other person who knew about this kind of thing. What do we know about tracing money transfers? You never should have killed him.”

“Malik killed Jack?” I said aloud.

“That’s the way it sounds,” Talin answered. “When was the last time you saw him?” he asked Jensen.

“The night of the cruise.”

We all quieted down to listen.

“He knew I killed Ricardo and he threatened to come clean,” Malik stated. “He said he was on board with the swindle but he drew the line at murder. What was I supposed to do?”

“Maybe he was just using the fact that he knew you killed Jimenez to get a bigger cut of the pot. Did you ever think about that? If he was going to rat you out, why didn’t he do it when he was questioned in the first place?”

I heard a loud crash. I don’t know if something fell or Malik hit something like a wall.

“Damn,” Malik yelled.

“Stop it; you’re scaring me,” Della cried.

Talin picked up a two-way radio. “We have enough. Go in and get him.”

I knew that Toad and two other locals who had been deputized to help out when needed were waiting for Talin’s signal to arrest the pair.

“Look at that.” I turned to Zak. “I helped to catch the bad guy and I didn’t even have to put myself in any danger.”

Zak kissed me. “I hope this is the start of a trend.”

I kissed Zak back. “I guess we’ll see.”

On one hand, when Wednesday rolled around I was thrilled to be able to step onto Coop’s private jet free of any restraints. On the other, I found I was really going to miss some of the people I’d met on our honeymoon. I knew in my gut that I wouldn’t be back to the island. It turned out that ten days in paradise was more than I could take.

It looked like Toad and Candy had turned a corner. I might be premature, but I saw plump babies in their future. Talin and Jensen seemed to have come to some sort of an understanding, and I predicted a more relaxed relationship between Jensen and the locals. Jensen had even worked things out so that Della was put under some sort of house arrest until after the baby was born.

“So, was it everything you imagined a honeymoon would be?” Zak teased after we were underway.

“Totally.” I grinned as an exhausted Charlie snored in my lap.

Ellie was taking a nap and Alex and Scooter were watching a movie.

“It’s going to be hard to come up with something equally awesome for our one-year anniversary.”

I put my head on Zak’s shoulder. Once we’d gotten the case wound up on Sunday we’d spent Monday and Tuesday making up for lost time. Not only did we rent some horses for a once-in-a-lifetime ride on the beach but we surfed, hiked, swam, and made love on the beach. Ellie and the kids had tagged along for everything but that last part.

“Can you believe summer is almost over?” I asked. “Between wedding planning, wedding guests, honeymoons from hell, and planning the Academy, summer has slipped through our fingers. Still, I’m excited about our plans.”

“I spoke to Alex’s parents, and they’re fine with our plan to have her come live with us,” Zak informed me.

I smiled. “I’m glad. She was really excited about the idea. Is she still going to go for a visit with her parents?”

“Yeah. I’ve arranged for Coop to take her to the dig they’re working in South America next week. He’ll pick her up just before Labor Day and bring her back to Ashton Falls. I called the school she’d been attending and they’re going to transfer all her records.”

“And Scooter?” I asked.

“We’re going to drop him at his grandparents on the way home and then I’ll go pick him up at the end of the month. His grandparents have likewise agreed that it would be wonderful if he can live with us for the school year. I’m going to enroll him in Ashton Falls Elementary School. Now that he’s calmed down a bit, I think he’ll do best in that environment, and he’s excited about going to school with Tucker and some of the other kids he left behind when he moved from Ashton Falls.”

Zak turned and looked at me. “Mrs. Donovan-Zimmerman, it looks like you’re about to become a surrogate mother.”

I placed my hand on Zak’s cheek. “As long as you’re the surrogate father, I’m all in.”

“That’s good, because I finally got Pi to agree to our plan. It looks like we’re going to be a family of five this fall.”

I glanced toward the front of the plane, where Alex and Scooter were laughing at the movie. I will admit to having a few doubts about my ability to play surrogate mom to three children, especially when one of them was a streetwise teen who most likely outweighed me. But I loved Zak. And I loved Alex and Scooter. And I knew I would crawl to the ends of the earth for any of them.

“So if I’m hearing you right, we’ll have the next three weeks or so all to ourselves?”

“We will. Why? Do you want to go somewhere?”

“Actually,” I leaned close and whispered in Zak’s ear, “I thought we might go home, stock the pantry with three weeks’ worth of groceries, lock the door, and hang out a do-not-disturb sign.”

“I like the way you think, Mrs. Zimmerman.”

And They Lived Happily Ever After

Dear Reader:

Once I completed
Heavenly Honeymoon
I spent some time debating what to do next. The will-they, won’t-they question in the Zoe and Zak story has in many ways come to completion. Yes, they may still have challenges to face as they build a family and live out their lives, but I think I can say with confidence that insecure Jealous Zoe is gone forever. I believe in strong relationships and happily ever after, and that’s what I want for my favorite couple. Zak has more than proven his devotion to Zoe, and I think that after the many starts and stops, Zoe is finally fully confident in this love. I feel certain that from this point forward we’ll see a more mature and confident protagonist.

Which, I realized, presents a quandary. In many ways I feel that the hook in the Zoe Donovan story has been a combination of the yin and yang in Zak and Zoe’s relationship, as well as the quirky nature of Zoe’s actions, which have been based, in part, on her lack of emotional maturity. If we have a newly mature protagonist in a strong and committed relationship, how can the overall story continue to evolve?

I contemplated several options. Should I end the series? Have Zak and Zoe’s marriage turn out to be illegal after Zak finds out he was already married in a tribal ceremony in Tibet? Have Zoe get amnesia? After quite a bit of contemplation, I finally decided to go in another direction and step outside the box.

Beginning with the next book,
Hopscotch Homicide
, which will publish in August, there will be two or three chapters at the end of each Zoe Donovan mystery from a novel within a novel I am calling
The Zimmerman Academy
. This novel within a novel will be presented from the viewpoint of Phyllis King, a retired English professor.

If you’ve read
Soul Surrender
and
Heavenly Honeymoon
, you know Phyllis has been set up to take on a much more enhanced role than she has to this point. Personally, I think it will be fun to go along with this sixty-two-year-old woman as she experiences first love, raising teens, and finally breaking free of the cocoon in which she has wrapped herself for most of her life.

If you remember, Phyllis is a lifetime academic who turned her back on romance and family so she could focus fully on her academic career. We’ve seen, during the series, a hint of regret. The way she’s taken on the role of grandma to Jeremy’s daughter Morgan, as well as the way she seems to have taken Alex under her wing. She’s already committed to Zak that she’ll help with the Zimmerman Academy, and in
Heavenly Honeymoon
, it was revealed that she was willing to have a handful of teenage girls move in with her. If you ask me, Phyllis may be late to the gate, but it appears she’s about to toss off the sequestered life she had chosen and start living.

I’m planning to make the new books somewhat longer than the Zoe books have been in the past. Be assured that Zoe is still the star, and we’ll still be invited along on Zoe’s personal journey as she settles into marriage, family life, and, eventually, pregnancy. Yes, she’ll face personal challenges as she learns to be a mother to the stray children it appears she and Zak seem destined to collect, and, yes, Zak, Levi, and Ellie will be there to see her through it. However, we will see a new maturity in Zoe. She’ll be more confident and quite a bit less needy than the Zoe we’ve seen to this point.

I struggled with whether to insert the chapters that are written from Phyllis’s point of view into the Zoe Donovan mysteries chronologically, or to simply include them in the end as a separate short story.

I realized I would have fans who would prefer each of these approaches. Some of you won’t want the Zoe narration interrupted by Phyllis’s thoughts, and others will appreciate knowing what’s going on behind the scenes in Phyllis’s world in a chronological manner.

What I’ve decided to do is to include the chapters by Phyllis in the end but to insert hyperlinks that will take you to the side story and then return you to the point at which you veered away when you’re done with that chapter. Readers who prefer this approach can flip back and forth between the two points of view and experience the story in true chronological fashion.

If you prefer to read the extra chapters as a separate short story, simply ignore the hyperlinks and continue on with the Zoe story.

Finally, for any of you who aren’t interested in Phyllis’s life at the Academy, you can simply skip those chapters. There won’t be any clues pertaining to the murder in these chapters that aren’t provided elsewhere. I hope this approach works for everyone.

I’ve included a sample chapter from the Zimmerman Academy at the end of this book. This is the actual first chapter in the story entitled
Zimmerman Academy
and will be included in
Hopscotch Homicide
, along with chapters 2 and 3. Chapters 4–6 will be included at the back of
Ghostly Graveyard
, and so on. I really think the new approach is going to be awesome and hopefully you will agree.

The Zimmerman Academy

From the Diary of Phyllis King