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  Cougars at the Beach

  Cougars at the Beach

  A Mickke D Grand Strand

  Murder Mystery

  A work of fiction

  Steve McMillen

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2014 Steve McMillen

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN: 1499320329

  ISBN 13: 9781499320329

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2014910442

  CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform

  North Charleston, South Carolina

  “It’s always fun to read about places you know so everyone who lives in the Myrtle Beach area or who has vacationed here, should love Cougars at the Beach by Steve McMillen. From Little River to Pawleys Island, and even the Myrtle Beach Boardwalk, it’s all here. Combine it all with a little romance and a serial killer and you have yourself a great beach read. You may be so absorbed your feet may never hit the water.”

  Diane DeVaughn Stokes, Television and Radio Host and Producer

  “Steve McMillen’s second book Cougars at the Beach is the perfect, easy to read, fun, vacation beach read. The murder mystery includes quite a bit of local history and local features, which anyone who lives here or has ever visited the beach will recognize.”

  Jody MacKenzie, Publisher/Editor Grand Strand Magazine

  “A fast-paced follow-up to McMillen’s premiere book, Cougars at the Beach is a sexy and satisfying thriller.”

  T. Lynn Ocean, author of novels including Southern Poison and Southern Peril.

  Dedication

  This book is dedicated again to my lovely bride Beverly. I also want to thank my editor and I want to thank everyone in my writer’s group for the past five plus years. They kept me focused and got me through several writing trials and tribulations.

  CONTENTS

  PROLOGUE

  Chapter 1: The Hunter

  Chapter 2: Mickke D

  Chapter 3: Ellen

  Chapter 4: The Hunter Arrives

  Chapter 5: The Confrontation

  Chapter 6: The Condo

  Chapter 7: The Hunter and Jack

  Chapter 8: The Sky Wheel

  Chapter 9: The Swamp

  Chapter 10: The Office

  Chapter 11: The Senator’s Secretary

  Chapter 12: New Evidence

  Chapter 13: Friday Night

  Chapter 14: Hitting the Streets

  Chapter 15: Connie Smith at the Beach

  Chapter 16: Jim

  Chapter 17: Connie/Paula

  Chapter 18: Another Missing Person

  Chapter 19: Where’s Paula?

  Chapter 20: The Senator

  Chapter 21: Larry Meggart

  Chapter 22: The Call

  Chapter 23: Night Fever

  Chapter 24: Connie and Page

  Chapter 25: Sam and Mickke D

  Chapter 26: Sam and the Suspects

  Chapter 27: A New Plan

  Chapter 28: Jennifer

  Chapter 29: Sam and Mickke D

  Chapter 30: Thomas Alan Cadium

  Chapter 31: Stephanie

  Chapter 32: Mickke D & Bess

  Chapter 33: The Map

  Chapter 34: The Logbook

  Chapter 35: Bess and Susan

  Chapter 36: Jimmy Bruce

  Chapter 37: The Boat Ride

  Chapter 38: The Hunter

  Chapter 39: Senator Brazile

  Chapter 40: The Wine Festival

  Chapter 41: The Massage

  Chapter 42: The Office

  Chapter 43: Stephanie

  Chapter 44: The Dinner Party

  Chapter 45: The Cartel

  Chapter 46: The Break-In

  Chapter 47: The Hospital

  Chapter 48: Colonel Townsend

  Chapter 49: Change In Plans

  Chapter 50: The Trip

  Chapter 51: The Attack Plan

  Chapter 52: Boots on the Ground

  Chapter 53: Time to Leave

  Chapter 54: Liz and Stan

  Chapter 55: The Girls Are Gone

  Chapter 56: Beverly Is Missing

  Chapter 57: The Hit

  Chapter 58: Dead Suspect

  Chapter 59: Gone Fishing

  Chapter 60: First Big Break

  Chapter 61: Missing Persons No More

  Chapter 62: Witness Interview

  Chapter 63: The Hunter

  Chapter 64: The Hunter No More

  Chapter 65: The Condo Search

  Chapter 66: A Peaceful Evening

  Chapter 67: The End Is Near

  Chapter 68: Case Closed

  Final Chapter

  PROLOGUE

  Early evening is making its appearance in the jungle outside of Bogota, Colombia. Drug cartel kingpin Senior Pablo Valdez calls to order a meeting of ten of his most trusted allies. They have come to his villa by personal invitation. The two-story, 8,000-square-foot mansion sits on 300 acres among heavy jungle vegetation and is located nearly one mile off the main road. It has a soccer field, riding stables, a large pool area, and helicopter pad. A gated and guarded entrance is part of an eight-foot- high concrete wall around the cleared five acres where the estate is located. The entire front entrance of the wall has cameras facing out toward the only road leading into the villa. Unless you happen to be flying over, there is no way of knowing the estate is there. The entire perimeter of the estate is posted with large private property, no trespassing signs. Several guards patrol the perimeter of the 300 acres on 4X4s 24 hours a day. One-half mile back, the only road in is a fortified guarded gate. The guards stationed there have automatic weapons and full communication with the villa. Unbeknownst and not noticeable to most visitors, there is a back way in and out, which only the inhabitants know about. The route is a pedestrian trail through the jungle to a narrow dirt road one-half mile away. The road leads to a paved landing strip long enough for Senior Valdez’s Learjet.

  Senior Valdez holds up his hand and asks for quiet between puffs on his Cuban cigar. The room immediately becomes still and attentive. “I have asked you to come here this evening because I still have a problem. The man who burned my cocaine and killed fourteen of my people several years ago is still alive. I recently received word that the man I sent to the United States to kill my enemy is dead. I just want all of you to know that the $250,000 reward is still in effect. I don’t care if you kill him or you have someone else kill him as long as my name is not mentioned. All I want is proof that he is dead. A newspaper article will be more than adequate. As you leave, I have provided a file on him with his picture, description, name, and address in the U.S. If you decide to go, I will pay for your transportation to the U.S. and provide you with a passport. However, if you fail, if you do not provide proof of his death directly to me, do not return to Colombia. Thank you for coming.” There is a low murmur as the ten invited guests exit the room, pick up their files, and leave the estate.

  Miguel Sanchez opens his file and reads the first page:

  Wanted - Dead not Alive, Mickke MacCandlish, a aka Mickke D, Little River, South Carolina, age mid-forties, former Green Beret, 6’ 1’’, 185 pounds with sandy brown hair. You should consider him armed and dangerous. He killed the last man we sent to the U.S. to eliminate him, a former Colombian soldier who worked under First Lieutenant MacCandlish while he was stationed in Colombia posing as a training consultant with the Colombian Army. His real job was to try to stop cocaine shipments to the U.S. We put the bounty on his head and tried several times to elimina
te him while he was in Colombia, but all efforts failed. Page 2 is an 8 x 10 military photo of the intended target.

  Miguel rubs his hands together, grins, and thinks it is about time for him to take a vacation. Since Senior Valdez is willing to buy him a ticket and provide a passport, why not go to the U.S.? He will kill this gringo and live the life of luxury in Colombia with the reward.

  Chapter 1: The Hunter

  The sun propels its first shafts of sunlight, brightening the sky from violet, to salmon, to blue as early morning dawns in the mountains of Colorado. A deafening silence claims the cold, thin, clean air.

  A female cougar is stalking a snowshoe rabbit. She has been on the rabbit’s trail since the sky turned from dark to pale. She finally spots her prey about 100 yards away. She has been using her keen sense of smell up to this point and now finally she has her first meal in three days in sight. All of her senses go viral. Her taunt muscular body is ready to pounce, her pupils are wide open, and her ears are at attention. She flexes her razor sharp claws in the freshly fallen snow.

  However, she doesn’t want to rush to the kill. She needs to get closer before she lunges for the final assault. The cougar moves with quiet stealth to get nearer to her prey. She gets to within fifty yards of the rabbit when he turns and sees her crouching in the snow. He cowers with fear and anticipation. She freezes; the wind is motionless and there is not a hair moving on her beautiful coat of winter fur.

  The rabbit is upwind so he cannot smell the cougar but he senses danger. Should he run or maybe what he sees is just a boulder lying in the snow. The cougar can wait no longer; however, just as she is about to launch her attack a shot rings out and echoes through the narrow valley. The cougar does not move. She is dead, a shot through the heart. She should have been more concerned about being the prey rather than hunting her prey. The hunter has become the hunted.

  The rabbit’s ears go up at the sound of the rifle being fired, but he does not move. Fear overrides his sense of self-preservation. Another shot rings out and the rabbit collapses in the freshly fallen snow. Two pools of crimson red mar the pristine white snow covered landscape.

  The human hunter grins. This is just sport to him, just a game. He will let both animals lie in the snow to become food for other predators. He packs up his rifle and proceeds back to his warm log cabin in the deep Colorado woods.

  Once the hunter returns home, he sits down and enjoys a nice hot cup of coffee. He set the timer on the coffee maker before he left to coincide with his anticipated return. As he sips his hot coffee, he decides it is time to make some major decisions. He needs a change of scenery; it is time for him to move on with his life, which has become stale and rusty.

  The hunter lives on sixty acres of mostly wooded land twenty miles away from the nearest town. He is divorced from his wife of ten years and has been living alone for the last five years, after she got “cabin fever” living out in the woods with no one to talk to but her husband. Actually, he never really wanted to talk much, just have sex.

  That was fun for a while but she yearned for a more social type of life. She wanted friends, to go out to dinner occasionally, and maybe take in a movie. Also, her husband became more and more demanding. Over time she became overwhelmed by his need for sex. He turned into a person she did not enjoy being around and she became fearful of him so she gave him a choice: They move closer to town or she moves alone. He elected to stay so she left, but before she left, he told her she would regret her decision someday.

  Now all he does is hunt in the winter and fish in the summer. He has his retirement from his former career in the government and a $500.00-a-month lease payment from a cell phone company. They had approached him about locating a tower on his land to complete a grid and he agreed after asking for one concession. He wanted them to install a wireless satellite repeater on the top of the tower so he could get on the internet with his computer. He used it to keep up with what’s going on in the world and watch porn. Since his wife left, he has had very little female companionship. His occasional flings are usually just one-night stands; the women never seem to come back for a second date.

  As the years pass, he gets bored hunting animals, catching fish, and watching porn. He feels the urge to pursue bigger prey, women. He can hunt them, use them, and hurt them without killing them. However, part of him thinks that might be interesting also.

  He uses Google to find out where there is a large number of widows and available women in the U.S., in a warm climate. One of his searches brings up Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. The other locations were in or near large metropolitan areas. Myrtle Beach wins the lottery.

  He decides to cut all ties with his Colorado home. He sells the land, house, and all of the furnishings, but retains the monthly lease money from the cell phone company.

  Before leaving Colorado, he needs to do a couple of things. The first thing is to make changes in his appearance and take dancing lessons. He realizes the young and mature, rich, single, divorced, or widowed women like to dance and have sex, though not necessarily in that order. If any of them treat him like his ex-wife did, he will kill them and allow them to rot, just like the cougar and the rabbit.

  He is a very resourceful man with some very refined skills, so his second chore is to venture into town and cut his wife’s brake lines just enough so that there will be a gradual loss of brake fluid. He leaves town the next day and is on his way to Myrtle Beach when her car careens off a winding mountain road, bursts into flames, and she dies. The ensuing fire covers up the small nick in the brake lines.

  He moves to the beach where the weather is warm and prey abounds. He figures most of the women are rich and looking to have a good time. Instead of living off the land, he will now live off the bodies and wealth of rich women.

  Chapter 2: Mickke D

  It is Monday morning and the sun hangs low in a sky bruised with storm clouds. I am in my office on Sea Mountain Highway, not far from the beach, in the Cherry Grove section of North Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.

  My cell phone rings. “Mickke D Real Estate. How can I help you?”

  “Hey Mickke D, it’s Cathy Jay. How are you?”

  A voice from out of the past. “Well hey yourself Miss Cathy; long time no see, no talk. Are you calling to show one of my listings?”

  “I wish. No, this doesn’t have anything to do with real estate. One of my closest girlfriends is missing, and I was told you may be able to find her for me.”

  Cathy is around 60 years old and fifteen years my senior. We worked for the same real estate company when I first got my license. She has been in the business for a long time and helped me learn the ropes when I first started.

  “I think you need to call the police, Cathy. How long has she been missing?”

  “I figure at least a week. I have not seen or heard from her since a week ago last Saturday night, and I already called the police. They went over to her condo and looked around. Her car is gone and they think she just went on vacation and didn’t tell anyone.”

  “Well, you know that could be a possibility.”

  “I don’t think so. If she were going away, she would have called me and let me know.”

  I think for a minute. “Okay, give me her name and I’ll look into it for you. Who told you to call me about a missing person?”

  “I spoke with Detective Concile at the police station and she suggested I call you. She said you do investigative work on the side.”

  I do own a company called Grand Strand Investigations. I inherited the company from a guy who tried to kill me, oddly enough. My neighbor, Jim Bolin, who just like me is from Ohio and a die-hard Ohio State fan, runs the company for me. He does the brunt of the work and I only help him out when he gets in a bind. The business is located in the same building as my landscape business and real estate office.

  “Okay Cathy, let me see what I can find out and I’ll get back to you.”

  I walk down the hall toward Jim’s office. As I pass the reception d
esk, I smile at Beverly, my receptionist and part-time girlfriend. She returns my smile with eyebrows lifted in cold disdain. We have good months and bad months. She says I lack commitment. I say it’s because I have been married, divorced, and broke three times. And since I am financially well off at the present time, I don’t plan to share half or more of it with a fourth wife.

  Jim is in his office looking through some file folders. Jim is a retired FBI special staff agent. He is 55 years old, a big, strong, tough, good-looking guy who always has a smile on his face and loves to play golf. He spends about three days a week in the office, depending on the weather and if he is able to get a tee time.

  “Hey big guy, what do you have going on?” I say as I walk in.

  “Oh, I’m still trying to find Senator Brazile’s missing employee. I don’t understand why he is so concerned about a missing secretary.”

  “Maybe there’s more to it than the senator is telling you,” I offer.

  Jim looks over the top of his glasses. “I think you’re right and I’m going to keep searching.”

  “By the way Jim, do you have time to look into another missing person for me?”

  He shakes his head. “Not right now, maybe in a week or two. Who’s missing?”

  “Oh, just a friend of a friend of mine in real estate,” I answer.

  “Did they call the police?”

  “Yes, she did and Detective Concile referred her to us.”

  Jim answers with a mischievous grin, “Well, if I were you, I would call your friend Detective Concile and ask her why she did that.”

  “As a matter of fact Jim, I was just about to do that. Good luck with Senator Brazile’s missing secretary.”

  I was hoping to get Jim to look into this for me but I guess I’ll have to do this investigation myself, which should not be a problem. I spent two years as an investigative officer with Army JAG at Fort Bragg. I guess I’m just not real gung-ho about doing it because the last time I investigated something I ended up getting shot at and almost killed. But then again, how difficult can it be to find a missing person?