Drowning Lessons

by Rachel Neuburger Reynolds

  I glanced down the dock and over to the restaurant. Max, Dave and Georgie sat at a lonely table, hunched into their coffees, whispering even though no one else was around to hear. I couldn’t think of anything worse than catching Max’s icy stare again. Chances were that I’d have another unpleasant run-in with her. The day was exceptionally humid, and my clothes were already damp. Hywel the surf guy had said to me that people on the island usually picked their outfit by what was least damp.

  I couldn’t stand the pressure of being seen by Max, so I walked to Becky’s and knocked on her door. Josh could join after I confronted her woman to woman.

  Once.

  Twice.

  Three times, clearly adding, “Becky.”

  Abiding by island custom, I walked in. It smelled dank and earthy, and it seemed darker than ostensibly possible. Crickets were chirping in surround sound.

  I opened the doors to the balcony, immediately experiencing the distinct feeling of something crawling over my foot. With my hand on the door I froze as something crunched under my feet.

  The light was let in and I saw the unspeakable horror. All around the room, hopping around, were tiny red poison frogs. Dozens of them. Frog clung clinging to the bottom of my feet.

  All I could think of was the repeated warning of, ‘Don’t lick them, don’t lick them, don’t lick them…’ Many of them were drawn to the light, but I backed up to the stairs, to the loft, two steps up, terrified of the chaos. Becky had gone mad indeed. I’d seen her loving those frogs on the first day.

  She extracted the poison. She was close to Walter. She knew about the needles.

  “Bloody hell,” I heard, as Josh entered the cabin.

  He hadn’t made it to the bottom of the stairs before I screamed again, another frog bouncing off my head. The palm thatch above me would be a perfect place for frogs to hide out.

  I moved to the top of the stairway, where the worst would be behind me, and I slowly turned to find Becky, already looking bluish and dead in the shadows. She laid, eyes glazed over, one arm over the bed, with that big old diamond affixed to her ring finger. Surrounding her body were ten red frogs, impaled with needles. Someone was sending a message.

  The last murder was meant to look like a heart attack. This one was us being played with.

  How could I have been so wrong?

  The frogs that still breathed wanted to get out of there as badly as I did. Josh ran up the stairs and exclaimed, in the same tone of terrified quiet that I had used, “Bloody, bloody hell.” It was the only phrase he had in him.

  “I don’t think I’m up for this,” I whispered, still frozen in shock.

  The EMT boat showed up first, including an excited Dr. Nolan who was trying to hide how pleased he was at being involved in the investigation. He regained his composure and tried to hide his animation with medical concern. He examined the bottom of my foot for any abrasions but found nothing.

  “Don’t walk around in bare feet. I think you must’ve stepped on a frog whose glands weren’t on the offensive. I think. Maybe. But seriously, you could get an infected splinter down here. It’s just not a good idea.”

  And with that he was done with us, the living, and went up to see Becky’s body, saying as an afterthought, “Your ankle isn’t looking great. Make sure you come by the hospital later.”

  I’ll take my chances.

  LaGuardia and McDonough showed up minutes after the good doctor. They evicted Josh from the room but let me stay. The detectives were very serious this time around. It wasn’t arrogance or laziness that had made them assume that Walter was their man; with any detachment, it had made sense. Now there were questions. Did they have the wrong man? Could there be two different killers? They’d been proud to congratulate themselves on a murder quickly solved, but as they say, the plot thickens….

  They questioned me on everything I had seen, heard, and experienced in the last day. They had monumentally messed up and the future of tourism on the island was in the balance.

  I had been in the water for a good deal of the night and up at the crack of dawn and had seen no one come and go. My light sleeping had not been interrupted by any echoing footsteps. Dr. Nolan could tell that the murder took place only hours before my two-hour jaunt to the Pickled Parrot.

  Though I hadn’t heard either Olivia or her boat when she was so wonderfully waiting for me in my room. But no chance it was Olivia. Absolutely no chance.

  McDonough started pacing the room, looking for anything out of place. After Migs had photographed the crime scene and the dead body for them, they bagged the dead frogs and needles. Most of the frogs had abandoned the scene of the crime, but one of the cops, borrowing gardening gloves and a broom from the staff, scooped up the rest of them with an occasional hello to his colleagues.

  LaGuardia called from above, “Was she here with her fiancé?”

  My answer was another disappointment. The EMTs removed the body quickly. I wondered who was footing the bill for her transportation to the hospital and if by this time we had a running tab somewhere.

  McDonough emptied the contents of her living room and bathroom trashcans onto the floor. Flozzie, had brought in some bright lights for us to see better, which made me wonder if they really were all that eco? She also brought some coffee.

  Island hospitality just doesn’t stop.

  There wasn’t a lot in Becky’s trash; tissues with blotted lipstick, two empty bottles of wine, old boarding passes. McDonough shook the garbage pail again and a pair of cheap vampire fangs dropped on the wooden floor.

  I gasped.

  Lloyd had been a vampire last night. He’d also escorted her back from the party before I returned.

  The Dissector was back.

  Granted, she wasn’t technically his type, with her red curly bob instead of long blonde locks. But, serial killers evolve. Don’t they? Yes, of course they do.

  Walter would be free.

  I had done my job.

  Chapter 27: What A Cliché

  News of Walter’s innocence and Lloyd’s impending arrest spread from resort to resort like wildfire. The overnight terror had been eradicated. It could never have been Walter, they all said. Never. As quickly as the good news about Walter spread, the insidious news about Lloyd followed suit, accompanied by the resurgence of rumors about the co-ed murders of yesteryear at the internationally renowned Washington University.

  Plus, everyone was now happy to go for surfing lessons.

  Wrong had been righted and vice-versa. I’d spilled on everything I knew about Lloyd. Everything Josh had told me on day one clicked in to place. He had been cold and emotionless while standing over his dear friend’s body. He’d taken Becky home, and he’d been in her bungalow. She knew Nico’s secrets. It was like being taunted – the first murder with red frog poison, and then mocked with a virtual infestation of the creatures. As if to say…you’ve got the wrong man.

  Had it been as much evidence as they’d had to arrest Walter? The groom had no motive. Technically, I suppose Lloyd had just as little motive, except that he was most likely a serial killer. That was all the motive he needed.

  Phones were returned, with Olivia’s personal groveling apologies. The party would commence - “honoring Nico’s hedonism.” Becky’s death was already merely an afterthought, but as relief spread, anger and moral indignation rose towards Lloyd. The villagers were out for his blood.

  Nico was now a bit of a convenient afterthought too, but the wedding was branded as his swan song. I took a breath and looked around as adrenaline flew through the roof. The terror was over. We’d actually cleared the good name of an innocent man.

  I waited in the boat outside the Koko resort, while LaGuardia went in to arrest the waiting Lloyd. The scene was remarkable. The guests had caught onto the news and surrounded the dock in water taxies, with a few folks teetering on the dock, blocking the walkway back to the police boat.

  “Everyone get back,” LaGuardia yelled. “Anyone not back on a boat in
two minutes is staying overnight down at the police resort.”

  Screaming at Lloyd as he was escorted to the boat, all that the crowd was missing were pitchforks and torches. The insults being hurled were astounding, but Lloyd was able to walk calmly and quietly, and this infuriated the crowd even more.

  Olivia, of course, the ringleader, stayed defiantly on the dock, confronting him. “I knew it. I knew it all along. A leopard can’t change its spots.”

  He smiled and said, “Thank you.”

  I sat cross-legged on a desk, watching LaGuardia question Lloyd in a cell. For a silent man who usually only spoke in creepy one-liners, he was certainly one chatty person that morning.

  He looked more amused than anything. “So, you are detaining me over a pair of fangs and a boat ride? I’ve already told you…Emma, that precocious little stalker, showed up in a water taxi outside Becky’s about an hour after I left the party. Becky had calmed down, so I left with Emma.

  “She’ll tell you. I was with her all night in my hotel room, not sleeping if you know what I mean. I’m not one to kiss and tell, unless I’m arrested of course. Am I being arrested or are you just detaining me, anyway? This is silly. You just need to talk to Emma. She’ll set this straight in a New York minute.”

  Maybe Emma is dead as well.

  “I’m a fan of the cliché,” Lloyd said, confidently. He gave me a sideways glance filled with amused condescension. He’d beat a murder wrap before. This was old hat to him. “So, get me a couple cigarettes and I’ll riddle you with fact over fiction.”

  A transaction in Spanish that I didn’t understand went down, and a box of Marlboros and some matches appeared.

  “You’re going to want to get this down on an official detective pad. I’ve always wondered if all cops are given those tiny flip books. I have some actual viable suspects for you,” he said to LaGuardia.

  Lloyd smoked half a cigarette, pointing at me before he went on a roll. “Though Encyclopedia Brown over there thinks she’s cracked the case again, there’s a lot I have to say.”

  LaGuardia asked, “Then why didn’t you try to contact us after your friend was arrested? You had knowledge of potential suspects in a homicide.”

  “Because it was really very entertaining to know that Walter was behind bars. I’ve never particularly liked him. And maybe you had the right guy,” Lloyd said. “Except, I suppose, that he was in jail while Becky got the jab. Curious.”

  McDonough asked the most pressing of questions, “And, who’s Encyclopedia Brown?”

  Lloyd continued, “Annoying storybook child detective of our youth. Solving life or death conundrums like ‘the case of the missing library book.’ I think that little annoying snot nose ended every short story with ‘Looks like Encyclopedia Brown has done it again.’ Have you done it again, Lexie?”

  Sociopaths are supposed to be charming. What’s happening here?

  After an embarrassing verbal struggle, I was coerced by LaGuardia into handing over the slam book. I would never get it back. LaGuardia had stood with his hand outstretched for minutes until I reluctantly and painfully handed it over for the final time. It was immediately handed over to the Prince of Darkness.

  “Brilliant,” he said, flicking through the well-worn pages, assessing the guests, licking the tip of his finger before he turned each page. “You girls are developmentally stunted, stuck in the time of your sweet sixteens. But—huh—Michael likes to swing? Who knew? Fascinating.” He put the book down in front of him, ready to perform.

  “It goes a little something like this,” Lloyd started, and no one could deny his style. “One. I’m sure you’ve heard about my previous arrest regarding an unsolved serial killing spree from my formative college years. But A, I was released and B, if you believe I’m guilty of the previously referred to killing spree, you would note that they were all blonde women under the age of twenty-three.

  “Two. I liked Nico. I’m probably the only one here that genuinely did. I made a lot of money for him, and him for me. I would even venture to say I loved him.

  “Three. I’m not an idiot. I’ve got an IQ of 157 and I am probably smarter than anyone at this shindig, probably double that of Encyclopedia Brown over there. The lovely ladies even wrote it in this book here! If I were going to murder someone, I’m not going to be stupid enough to A—leave a party with them and B—casually leave my pair of fangs from a costume party at the scene of the crime. This is 101 here.

  “All the same, Becky was very smart, though it doesn’t say that in your book here. She was in MENSA. Were you? She dropped out of a Ph.D. program to have some fun. No wonder Nico was in love with her. Engaged to her—also missing from your diary. Bored yet?” he looked at me.

  “By all means, no,” I forced a smile. I divided 157 by 2, and knew that Lloyd had kindly clocked my IQ just shy of the lowest number in the average intelligence scale.

  “Four. I repeat, number four. Talk to Emma. And speaking of Emma—just a little FYI to entertain you, I must tell you that Encyclopedia Brown watched my intimacy with the bride’s sister in the woods just yesterday, right? A little voyeuristic jaunt in the jungle.”

  They both turned to me, and I sheepishly nodded my head. It was so out of context. All of a sudden, I felt like the convicted pervert in the room.

  “Five, alphabetically going by this book, here’s a list of people who would have a reason to kill Nico, which is not insignificant.”

  Boy, did he have a list. I lost faith in everyone that day.

  I just kept learning. Becky had alluded to it in her rants that Nico was pushing Walter out of his business. Though he had been generous in his initial investment in the gym, Nico had wanted to buy Walter out. And not so generously.

  “Walter didn’t want this to happen, but there was a loophole in the contract that Nico was going to exploit. This had been going down for the three months prior to this trip. Olivia knew nothing about it, and Nico had enjoyed watching her excitement planning the wedding with his money, while Walter scrambled to find a way to save his business.

  And Lloyd went on.

  Max stood to inherit hundreds of millions of dollars, and wasn’t it a coincidence that she showed up here? No one else had heard about this mythical reconciliation. Max did actually know that Becky was engaged to the Greek shipping heir. Was the time of Max’s arrival airtight? Could she have glided in under the cover of night?

  Nico had also taped a sexual escapade between him and Amanda, Olivia’s business partner. She had a husband, and Nico simply liked having things to hold over people’s heads. The world was a game to him.

  Edgar’s bad business with Nico was not so far in the past, not so unlike Walter’s situation. Edgar had gathered a fair amount of venture capital interest around his high-tech start-up, which would manufacture energy-efficient supercomputers. Lloyd went on to explain that the company intended to build and market a family of clusters of between 12 and 972 compute nodes, connected in a Kautz graph.

  Lloyd is trying to make us feel stupid.

  At the last minute, and after much interest in the company, Nico swooped in and made a bid that covered all the venture capital and then some. Seeing Nico as a friend of sorts, he felt comfortable, but even I knew it was a bad idea to raise capital from one source. After they had signed the initial agreements, Nico had dragged his feet in delivering the funds, tying it up in miles of litigation.

  “Not my fault,” Nico had always said. “Standard practice, my friend,” was how he’d ended that the conversation.

  And then there was Josh. Lloyd pointed at me, “And Encyclopedia Brown missed this one right in her face. That Josh you’ve been skipping around with wrote a book about me, about what he thinks I did back at Washington. Speculation. No research. Nico knew that. His lawyer issued injunctions on my behalf. Pending libelous lawsuits. Potential bankruptcy. Bet your partner in crime didn’t lay that one out for you. Plus, are you a little smitten, Ms. Brown? I think you might be.

  Don’t be
ridiculous. I’d have more of a crush on Lloyd… I take that back.

  “So, keep me here as long as you want, but maybe take an afternoon and look into people who actually wanted to kill him. Becky’s death was not an afterthought. Talk to Emma. Use your brain. Go have another party, Encyclopedia Brown. Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.”

  Then he smiled again, picking up my binder, “Ceaselessly entertaining.”

  Chapter 28: Let’s Twist Again….

  Staggering from my time with Lloyd, I humbly followed the detectives onto their boat to help them locate Emma. I enjoyed the idea of Lloyd in prison, but he certainly made a convincing case on a half dozen other folks who should be in his place. Somewhere in the world, he had to be guilty of something. There had to be some karma in the world. He probably deserved to be locked up.

  We hit Emma’s dumpy hotel and she was nowhere to be found. Nor was she still at Lloyd’s, so we continued motoring around the island. Next stop: home sweet home, Mariposa del Mar, where I’d be retired from my brief life as a flat foot.

  Just like Nico had said on the day he arrived, it looked like a bad spring break in Cancun when we arrived at the lunch party on Red Frog Beach.

  The restaurant at Punta Caracol had been overtaken by a massive party of bathing suit-clad Walter worshippers dancing out a scene from Beach Blanket Bingo. Couples spilled out onto the walkway towards the cabins, laughing like they weren’t one-hundred feet from the morning’s crime scene. Phil’s husband had written on his white t-shirt, in red magic marker, “Free Walter”. He had missed the point, just a little.

  The attention was all on me as the detectives escorted me towards the festivities. Walter and Olivia, the latter clad in a 50’s style red bikini, danced on a table, doing the twist. She smiled widely when I came into her view. “Three cheers for Lexie! We are back on track!”

  Theresa, the perpetually drunk film producer, drunkenly stumbled up to me at an attempted high five, “Ding dong, the witch is dead, right?”