There was big business to take care of though. In the flurry of the “situation”, no one had stepped up to the plate to replace Nico as best man, so Olivia was begging the remaining groomsmen to come together and save the wedding. Dave and Edgar were giddy as schoolgirls with all kind of ideas; each was met with an exuberant “yes, yes, yes!” from Olivia.
“Josh is the writer. He should be the one to give the best man speech,” Dave suggested.
“Ha,” was Edgar’s response. “Do you want everyone to fall asleep? Have you heard him speak in public?” Everyone laughed, even Josh, and it was quickly decided that brother Dave would assume the responsibility, and he could be relied on to embarrass Walter just enough, as was every good groomsman’s duty.
Olivia ruffled my hair like a puppy, hugged me close and asked, as casually as if she’d run into me at a NYC coffee shop, “So, what are you doing today?”
The idea of choice was something that I had forgotten existed. I wanted to protect myself and go home.
“Work on my speech for tonight?” I asked, waiting for the other shoe to drop.
“Why don’t you go to that spa in town? Go for a few hours. Put it on my tab. Don’t worry about the speech. It will be brilliant. Just have a relaxing day.” She kissed me, lingering on the cheek and asked the guys, “What’s the woman version of ‘brother from another mother?’ Come on you strapping hunks of male, there’s work to do.”
Free will to write what I wanted?
She’d already rejected two different speeches I’d given her drafts of, as well as heartily rejecting my writing of her vows. I’d worked like a dog on them for hours, not understanding that it was an audition of sorts. It was too comedic, she had told me, and went with Phil’s heartfelt composition, riddled with sentimentality and a much more extensive vocabulary.
She led the guys towards her speedboat, bouncing along in her flirty way, letting them know exactly what they’d be doing and that they’d be reporting to Marianna in a bureaucratic fashion. She referred to a new, crisp thin notebook.
Josh shuffled away, looking over at me apologetically and confused. He gave a smile and a shrug before joining the fellas.
Back to our habit of uncomfortable partings.
Once in the boat, as Migs was helping the guys aboard, Olivia waved, yelling loudly over the motor, “See you at four!” I’m pretty sure she also winked and mouthed the word ‘floozy’ again.
Words did not come easily. The papers in front of me were stained with coffee and scribbled out paragraphs. I was in no mood to write a speech about true love. My scribblings came off like they were penned by a bitter and heartbroken spinster. Or a cat lady.
‘Cat’s really do kill mice and insects,’ my friend Deb had asserted as she tried to convince me to adopt a kitten. ‘You’re going to be living near the river. You’ll be happy with a feline friend, with the rats and the hobos around.’ Deb had become a full-on cat lady just that year; three kittens, one bedroom, and a 47” TV.
I’d fight it as long as I could. I was a dog person anyway. I put my head face down on the table and tapped, waiting for inspiration.
I’d missed yesterday afternoon’s pamper party. A massage and a facial sounded great. Time permitting, a mani/pedi to take care of the ripped claws I was sporting would be an absolute luxury.
I can clean up good twice. Just watch me.
It was a Saturday, and flocks of Panamanian tourists had arrived for a sunny weekend, so the water taxies were in hot demand and it would be an hour’s wait at the resort. The bartender offered me his means of travel, a very local boat to take on my own.
It had no glamour, consisting of a hollowed-out log with an outboard motor. After taking instruction, confirming, reconfirming and then confirming again, I had the skills to get to town. The motor puttered and turned over, and I lurched south towards Bocas Town.
Chapter 35: Reluctant Wolf. That Is, Alone.
I cut the motor two-hundred feet from the Bocas Town Marina, having failed to come up with a better plan of how I was going to make it to the dock without having an accident. Suddenly I felt like I was inside a watery pinball machine and I realized all too late that I was going way too fast.
I panicked and in trying to find a way to slow the log down, my primitive vessel capsized. No goggles, no ability to stand, and no Josh welcoming me to swim to him. I grabbed onto the exterior of the capsized log, with a serious sting in my eyes, spitting and coughing out seawater.
I wouldn’t say that my life flashed before my eyes, but there was one single thought that flashed through my head. If was going to die when I was thirty-five, then my midlife crisis happened when I was seventeen-and-a-half, which meant it probably was all to do with Ryan.
A group of men about to board a very elegant sailboat were entertained by my bad fortune, but all the same, rushed over to the edge of the dock. The tallest looked at me hugging the log boat, “You have no idea what you are doing, do you? Just bring over the rope and I’ll help tie you off?”
“Tie me off?” I asked in a state of dismay.
“Tie off the boat. Just swim over here.”
“I can’t,” I cried as the tears ran readily down my cheeks. I felt humiliated. The group of men was howling with laughter and my doggy paddling skills had escaped me.
“All right. Enough is enough,” one of them said, taking off his polo shirt and jumping into the water. He helped pull me over to the ladder up to the dock. I was drenched in my pretty dress and my shoes were nowhere to be seen. He tossed a used towel over to me and I dried my face and hair. Before the tall man had finished saving my boat, I thanked them and walked off, not wanting to endure another minute of mortification. I hoped the scorching sun would dry the rest of me off soon.
He called after me, “Hey, Tall Girl. You shouldn’t be twiddling around in a boat like that if you don’t know what you’re doing. You’ll drown.”
As I walked down the dirty streets, I discarded the life jacket onto the pavement. I walked into the only tourist store that was open and found a pair of flip-flops, which I could not buy because the vendor wanted money for them, of course, and all of my cash was floating off to a new Caribbean vacation. After a desperate discussion in his bad English and my terrible Spanish, he gave me the pair and waved me away.
I frowned at the state of myself in the reflection of the spa’s window. I looked like a refugee. I couldn’t take the potential looks of disgust I imagined I’d get from receptionist and clients alike, so I headed for my home away from home, the police station; the only place I felt remotely and somewhat consistently welcome. Plus, I needed to borrow money.
LaGuardia shut the door in my face as I tried to enter their office. “Give us a minute.”
So much for being welcome.
I couldn’t make out what they were saying but the conversation was heated and loud. A good half hour passed until the door was opened, as McDonough threatened Lloyd, “What I’d really like to do is release you and get you out of here. Let your friends throw you to the wolves. You are speaking stupidities.”
Yesterday’s comradery between the detectives and Lloyd was seemingly no longer. While LaGuardia was fuming, Lloyd looked only vaguely frustrated, jaw dropping when I walked in. “What happened to you? You look like the girl from that horror movie The Ring, with the hair and—”
LaGuardia interrupted, “Stop it. Remember what we said.”
“Okay, but Encyclopedia—”
“No.”
Lloyd looked at me uncomfortably, but with no disdain. “Did you know that with this golden frog poison, a bird would die immediately, but it would take up to fifteen minutes to kill a tiger?”
“That’s not what we talked about. Say it.” LaGuardia hit the back of his head.
Lloyd looked at me curiously, with an emotion I hoped was compassion. “Ok. I’m sorry. I’m really sorry for how I’ve treated you, Lexie. And not just because I was told to apologize. You’re not half bad.” He’d clearly been giv
en a talking to.
Hastily taped to the wall were over a dozen pieces of paper, listing the probability of each of the wedding guests. Everyone was a suspect. The slam book had been thoroughly gone through and lay discarded on the floor. There were percentages scored on post-it notes on each taped-up face.
I understood the detectives’ anger, as I commented while looking at the wall, “How could I be at 3%, Lloyd? I didn’t go in the water. Neither did Walter’s grandmother. And Max at 5%?” I started to grow confident of my font of knowledge. “It has been confirmed so many times that her plane didn’t arrive until a full day after Nico was killed.”
Lloyd had reverted to his casually entertained state. “Possible pay off. She has the means. She has the motive. And perhaps she had the opportunity. It’s a corrupt world.”
His logic was either sheer madness or utterly genius. Olivia was listed at 15% for the sheer drama, Josh was in the lead with 33% and Walter was unbelievably still listed at an 18% chance of being the guilty party.
LaGuardia explained, “This pendejo is insinuating that we took a pay-off and let Walter come and go as he pleased, through some secret tunnel that he’s dreamed up.”
Lloyd pleaded his case, “I cannot keep repeating myself when I state the fact that this is a very corrupt world and a very corrupt country, and it’s not outside the realm of possibility.” Lloyd had even listed himself at 12%, explaining that Emma might not be the most reliable alibi and that he may or may not have a history with homicide. “Everyone lies,” he finished. “I wouldn’t rule me out.”
“Becky at 6%?”
“I hear that Max made a silly but somewhat plausible case for the murder/suicide scenario.”
Now I’ve heard everything. Literally.
I no longer felt bad letting the investigation go. It was their job, and from what I could tell from hearing about the recent Landis case around town, they were good at their jobs. Lloyd was undoubtedly a better investigative asset than I’d ever been.
“I’ll also tell you,” Lloyd started to gossip when I was readying to leave, “that Walter cheated on Olivia with that movie lady, Theresa. He cheated on Olivia on more than one occasion as far as I am cognizant of. The relevance? The relevance being that everything is relevant. Right?”
I didn’t see that coming.
What was I to do with that information now?
Countdown to seven hours until the bride becomes the wife.
After I stopped reeling, I simply turned and left.
Lloyd followed me out the door and down the hall. He was allowed to walk out of his cell, as long as he stayed in plain sight.
Island courtesy.
“Hey, I am sorry. I really have a filter missing. It’s a problem. You might have noticed. I didn’t have the inclination to sleep last night and was thinking about you. I actually am sorry for treating you so terribly. Whether I’ve called you Encyclopedia Brown or Peeping Tom, both have a keen investigative eye of sorts. Encyclopedia Brown always solves his cases. Every one. All I wanted to say is that I read your book on LaGuardia’s iPad last night. He’d read it on Wednesday. I wanted to say that I don’t think you are Left Behind.”
“You don’t?” I asked. No one had said that for a long time and Lloyd was looking at me like some strange version of a friend.
“I’m comfortable in saying I don’t agree with your book in basic theory. I don’t agree with having a group of people lay out every minuscule thing that’s wrong with someone. I do appreciate the effort of your parable, but it all doesn’t matter.
“People are getting divorces and hating each other all the time. It’s not a metaphorical rapture. No matter what or who or why, everyone gets it wrong until they get it right. And right comes at all kinds of times.
“And, just to make things clear, this is not me hitting on you. It will never be the right time for you and me. Too tall, too sad, too smart. Yes, I did say smart. You’re pretty pretty, though. You really are, and you don’t even know it. But you’re not blond. You’ve heard how I like blondes.” He ended in his creepy tone and then added, “Nico was right, I need to get a filter.”
I accepted his apology and offered one last fact of my investigation. “I think you could take Josh down to 10% or so. He’s not your frontrunner. He said that the book litigation thing was an exaggeration. Was it?”
“He would say that, wouldn’t he?” He smirked and walked back to the pleasure of his cell. “Who’s your front-runner?”
It’s wrong until it’s right. I like that.
Chapter 36: A Rose By Any Other Name Would Still Smell…
Another boat ride was out of the question. I couldn’t think of anything worse than traveling, but I wanted to get up north to the empty Bocas del Drago beach to concentrate on the speech, my final responsibility.
Restaurant Yarisnori was my last pure and fond memory of Olivia; a four-hour dinner on Monday night with just the two of us, pleasantly nostalgic about the past and unabashedly optimistic about the future. We were friends totally devoted to one another. Blood Sisters. It was the one place to write my speech that made sense.
I hadn’t seen a taxi cab on wheels all day, but I’d seen plenty of scooters for rent, and some even included a helmet in the price. LaGuardia had lent me a wad of crumpled cash, so I was good to go. The proprietor was also selling fruit smoothies. He gave me a three-minute driving lesson before sending me on my way.
It was smooth sailing navigating through the small town, but a half-mile on the road toward Bocas Del Drago the surface quickly deteriorated, slowing me down to walking pace. I was running out of time. The covering of overhanging trees darkened the journey; the only noise came from my decrepit, puttering scooter and the dangerous creatures that lurked just off the road.
I pulled over at the sign for La Gruta, the bat cave. There were a number of cars pulled over on the side of the road. I made the short walk down the path, passing the Virgin Mary.
At the entrance to the cave, a small army of locals stood around talking to Amanda, who was crying.
“What is this scary place?” she sobbed, aghast. “It’s just weird here. I don’t like it. Not at all. It’s really weird. I screwed up again. It’s not my fault, though. It’s not my fault.”
Covering the muddy path right through to the cave was supposed to be rolls of AstroTurf to protect the guests’ feet from dirt and disease. It was nowhere to be seen.
“Look at this,” Amanda said. She put a pair of kitten heels back on, stood on the mud, and quickly sunk into the ground. “Everything is going wrong today. Please help us.”
I suggested layers of Hefty bags. I didn’t have the mental capacity to mess around at the bat cave and I had been relieved of duty until that night. Guilt overwhelmed me, but I rejected my natural urge to stay and try to fix things. I was quickly on my way, muttering “I have to go,” as I went.
When I finally reached the North Shore, my ramshackle appearance didn’t faze anyone. I suppose it was easy to assume I was just another surfer without access to a proper showering facility.
I had nothing to write. There were definitely good things about Olivia. I could still see that. She was funny, she could make everyone laugh, and her laugh was infectious. So, I started with that.
She had asked if I could speak for ten minutes, but I convinced her to decrease it to three. People lose interest, they fidget, and their minds wander and start daydreaming or, conversely, dreading what Monday’s return to work would bring. Short and sweet was the best plan. Leave them with an indelible impression.
What else to say? Vindictive. Undermining. Pathological with an increasing need for anger management. Bossy. Insensitive to homicides of friends and associates. Perhaps homicidal in her own right.
Or to use her colloquialism, she was a shitbird.
Maybe I just didn’t love her anymore.
Three plates of fried shrimp later, I was uncomfortably stuffed and no closer to writing a decent paragraph.
My wind
ow of opportunity closed.
The air had turned from hot and dry to tangibly electric by the time I got to Olivia’s door. The sea had been far too tranquil on the journey to be anything but a bad sign.
The sky was heavy and foreboding, dressed in dark, greyish tones. The humidity was stifling in the still air and I was drenched with sweat. The black clouds in the far distance were completely still. A violent thunderstorm was going to finish off the week, and I couldn’t think of anything more apt.
A control freak still can’t control the weather. Mother Nature cannot be manipulated.
I stood silently in the doorway to Olivia’s room. The tension mirrored that of the weather - so thick you could hold it in your hand.
She was frowning, sitting at the vanity, hair done up in an over the top steampunk fashion, crossed with a heavy helping of southern belle on the side. She had a terrible miniature derby hat pinned askew to the right side of her head.
Oh Olivia, what have you done?
She wistfully stared at herself in the mirror. “Tomorrow, this will be over. I’ve planned this for a year and a half and it will be gone as quick as Thanksgiving dinner.”
Thank god.
I caught her eye in the mirror. “You’ve got a whole new life to jump into. You can go back to throwing your amazing annual Halloween parties. Those are extraordinary and take up months of planning.”
She snorted. “If you like, I promise to aim the bouquet towards you, but be careful because you will be standing near a cliff top that overlooks a beach with a wicked riptide. How much do you really want it? Kidding. There’s no cliff.” She wasn’t having fun.
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