Evil in All Its Disguises

by Hilary Davidson

  “It’s good to see you, too, Roberta. Denny, I’m sorry to interrupt, but I need to speak with you.”

  “Aren’t you supposed to be having a massage right now?” Denny’s voice was almost chiding me.

  “Maybe that’s why Lily’s got spa shoes on!” Roberta added.

  I looked at my feet. Holy hell, as Jesse would say. Roberta might have been pickled in booze, but she wasn’t blind. I was still wearing the plastic flip-flops from the spa. “Damn,” I muttered. “I was just at the spa, but I realized something about Skye.”

  “I don’t think there’s going to be much we can do for her,” Denny said, looking away.

  “What do you mean?” I asked, but at that moment, another woman walked into the lobby. She was petite, with iron gray hair roped into some kind of crazy corkscrew perm. She was in her early sixties, and she walked with a slow, deliberate pace that was intended to be graceful but actually resembled a crab walk. Her name was Ruby Lazarus, and whenever I encountered her, she was invariably cranky. I’d first crossed paths with her years earlier in Barbados, when I started writing about travel; she’d called me “newbie” and had told me horror stories about the industry. She was on the warpath now.

  “That was the crappiest flight I’ve ever had!” she shouted, making heads swivel in her direction. “If I’m crippled from it, I’m going to sue your keisters off.”

  “I’m so sorry.” Denny tried to soothe her.

  “I thought it was a good flight,” Roberta said.

  “Yeah, because you spent the whole time getting liquored up.”

  “You guys are picking up the bar tab, right?” There was a slight hint of panic in Roberta’s face as she looked at Denny.

  “Sure. Of course, we will.”

  “You know what? You could take the money from her bar bill and get us some airplane seats that aren’t totally crap-tastic,” Ruby said. “Whaddya think of that plan?”

  I made for the reception desk, hoping to get what I needed before Ruby and Roberta started to check in. “Excuse me. I need to speak with Gavin Stroud.”

  “Mr. Stroud is at a meeting. I could take a message, if you like?”

  “No, I need to speak with him right now. It’s urgent.”

  “I’m sorry. Mr. Stroud left the hotel.”

  “When will he be back?” I asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  I sighed and turned back to the knot of people in the middle of the lobby.

  “Acapulco’s kind of a dump these days,” said Ruby. “It’s not like the glory days when movie stars came down. John Wayne had a place around here. I’d sure like to see that.”

  “Of course,” Denny said. “We’ll make the itinerary fit whatever you want to see.”

  “While you’re at it, look up the hotel Johnny Weissmuller owned. Co-owned, I should say. Bunch of movie stars went in together and bought it. Duke did, too, I think.”

  “Duke?” Denny asked.

  “That’s what John Wayne’s friends called him,” I explained.

  “That’s right.” Ruby gave me an approving nod. “Finest man who ever walked this earth.” Ruby’s voice got dreamy whenever she mentioned John Wayne. When the moment passed, it went back to shattering glass. “It’s not like there’s anything else to see here.”

  “Don’t be silly, there’s plenty to see,” Denny said.

  “Like what?” Ruby shot back.

  “Well, the bay has been cleaned up in the past few years. It’s much better now,” Denny countered.

  “Better than what? It’s still a dump,” Ruby said.

  People who didn’t know better often assumed that all travel journalists loved travel. In my experience, the opposite was often true. Travel writers carried their prejudices wherever they went, and many of them managed to be dissatisfied even when they were being spoiled. It was a bit like traveling with a pack of fussy babies.

  “Denny, I need to talk with you right now,” I said.

  She gave me an exasperated look, but she said, “Excuse me for a minute, ladies.” She stepped over to me and whispered, “What’s wrong, Lily?”

  “Have you heard anything about Skye?”

  “Nothing. Gavin made it completely clear that he doesn’t want to go there.”

  “Then we’re going to have to find her without his help.”

  She let out a long breath that was tinged with frustration. “He reminded me of Skye’s history, I don’t think we’ll hear from her for a few days. But she’s an adult, so she can make her own decisions.”

  “Skye’s history? What does that mean?”

  Denny shook her head. “Look, I’m still her friend. I can’t tell you things Skye told me in confidence.”

  “Denny, I’m starting to think that you care as little about finding Skye as Gavin does.”

  “That’s not fair.”

  “The fact that Skye has lousy relationships with men is not a reason to think her disappearing like this is just some trick she’s pulling. She wouldn’t do that!”

  “How the hell do you know?” Denny hissed. “She got into a car accident out on Long Island back in the spring, and she was arrested for driving under the influence. She didn’t go to jail, because it was her first offence, but she had to go to rehab.” She glanced around the lobby. “I don’t want anyone else to know about this, Lily. Promise me you won’t tell.”

  “I won’t. I had no idea, Denny.”

  “She’s been having a rough time in her personal life for a while now. Ryan keeps bailing her out of things—he was the one who paid for her rehab at Betty Ford—but I think that’s just making everything worse. She knows he’ll always catch her, no matter how far she falls.”

  “Denny, I think there’s a possibility that Skye has been kidnapped.”

  “Kidnapped?” Denny’s face froze. Her eyes were wary, as if she were pondering my mental state. In a way, I couldn’t blame her, because the same ideas that fit together so well in my head sounded like pieces of a half-baked melodrama when they tumbled out of my mouth. But I had to forge ahead; I owed Skye that much.

  “Gavin told me that a kidnapping threat was made against Martin last year, and it kept him from coming to Mexico. I think that, because Skye is close to Martin, she may have been kidnapped. They could be using her to get to him.”

  She stared at me, long and hard, before finally blinking. Her eyes moved over my face, as if she were assessing how seriously to take me. “How did you find out?”

  “It wasn’t hard to do,” I bluffed.

  Denny shook her head. “Skye would murder me if she thought I was the one who told you she went out with Martin. But since you know, that’s strictly past tense. She really made a play for him, but I don’t think he was interested, even though Skye would never admit that.”

  That was the confirmation I’d craved, but it left me cold. I didn’t understand why Skye would want to date my ex; I’d never taken up with any friend’s former lover. To my mind, that would have been disloyal. But I wasn’t going to say any of that to Denny. Instead, I shrugged. “Skye wasn’t herself last night. I thought she might be tangled up with Martin, but now I can’t tell whether she was more interested in him or Pantheon.”

  Denny’s expression registered alarm. “What did she say about Pantheon?”

  “Not much. It’s just… she told me she’s working on a story, and I think it might be about Martin and the company.” The thing is, I know how to get even with him. I’m going to destroy him professionally, and he’ll never even see it coming.

  “Lily, if that’s what Skye was up to, Martin Sklar would make her disappear.”

  Denny’s voice got far away, and the ground seemed to shift under my feet. She’s right, I realized. That’s exactly what Martin would do.

  CHAPTER 20

  Dazed, I returned to the spa to retrieve my shoes, then wandered back to the lobby. I watched Denny chat with Roberta while Ruby occasionally tossed in some complaint. The clerk tried to put Ruby in room 513,
but she balked at the “unlucky” number and, after much debate, was booked into 517 instead. I was standing with them, but I had nothing to say. Mentally, we were worlds apart. They chattered about the spa, lunch, and upcoming zocalo tour. Travel journalism was the last thing on my mind at the moment.

  As foolish as it seemed, the idea that Martin might have a hand in Skye’s disappearance had never occurred to me. In spite of everything that happened with my sister, I hadn’t thought Martin capable of that kind of brutal callousness. He’d wanted to get rid of Claudia, but that was because he’d believed she was a danger to his son. Terrible as that was to contemplate, part of me understood it. I’d done some awful things when I was looking for my sister, and the memory of them shamed me. But motive meant everything to me. Claudia’s longtime love, Tariq, had once told me anyone could kill, under certain circumstances. I’d argued with him at the time, but as days and weeks and months had passed, I’d realized that, deep down, I’d come to believe he was right.

  Gavin’s words about Skye from that morning came back to me: She’s a friend of yours, isn’t she? You must have noticed the way she likes to play games with people. How well did he know her? What had happened during her relationship with Martin that had made such a strong impression on Gavin?

  I turned to the clerk. “Can you tell me where Apolinar Muñoz is, please?”

  “I believe he is in his office,” she answered. “Let me check.”

  “No, I’d rather surprise him. Where is his office?”

  Her big brown eyes went wide. “Señor Muñoz does not like surprises. I will call him.” She tapped three digits into the phone. She cupped her hand over the phone. “Your name, señora?”

  “Lily Moore. He knows me. We met earlier this morning.”

  The clerk whispered into the phone, so quietly that I couldn’t catch anything except her soft “Sí, señor. Gracias, señor” at the end of the call. She put the phone down and gave me a shadow of a smile. “He would like you to wait for him. He will be here very soon.”

  “Can’t I go to his office?”

  She shook her head. “He prefers here. Please, take a seat.”

  I didn’t want to do that. Instead I strolled around the lobby, scanning it every couple of moments, until my eyes landed on a large, framed black-and-white photograph of John and Jackie Kennedy. It took up a fair part of one wall, and it looked as if it were taken years before they got to the White House. They were tanned and relaxed and JFK was boyishly slim. Jackie was the only one facing the camera, and there was a gigantic fish hoisted between them, suspended by a rope, with its tail in the air.

  “Ah, you have found my favorite photograph,” Apolinar said, appearing suddenly beside me. “The honeymooners.”

  “The what?” I tried to hide my annoyance that he’d succeeded in sneaking up on me.

  “Jack Kennedy and his wife honeymooned here, in Acapulco. It was 1953, I believe.” He stared at the picture. “They seem as if they are truly happy, don’t they?”

  “They do.” The grudging tone in my voice had nothing to do with the vibrant, charming image in front of me.

  “For many years, Acapulco was a retreat for wealthy Americans. But few Americans come here anymore,” Apolinar added, turning away from the photograph. He led me to a couch, sitting down beside me and pulling his trousers slightly to prevent them from creasing. He wasn’t wearing his suit jacket anymore, which made his lavender shirt, still open at the throat, seem like a playboy’s affectation. For the first time, I noticed he was wearing a silver chain around his neck. Mostly hidden under his shirt, it fit with his image and obvious taste for fine things.

  “Acapulco is a wonderful place to visit, and a wonderful place to live.” His voice was warm. I wondered why he suddenly sounded like a public-relations rep from a tourism bureau. “Many people are now buying condos here. Or they rent a villa. People want to stay longer than a weekend.”

  “Even with the crime here?” My tone couldn’t have been more pointed. A derisive grunt escaped from his throat and his eyes slithered over me. It felt almost predatory, but not in a sexual way; it was more like an assessment, as if he were weighing every detail on an imaginary scale.

  “The U.S. State Department is telling people not to come here,” he answered. “Why? There is crime, but people who are not involved with the cartels have nothing to fear.” He shrugged. “I’m sure you will not see anything but the best side of Acapulco.”

  “You sound very attached to the place.”

  “I grew up here,” he said.

  I’d wondered why he was trying to spin me, and now I understood. Acapulco was his city, and he had a native’s pride in it. For the first time, I wondered if I were judging him too harshly.

  “Really? In the city?” I asked.

  “In Barra Vieja. Do you know where that is?” I shook my head and he continued. “Close to the airport, on the east side of the bay. Not many tourists go there.” He glanced over my face, watching my reaction. “I wanted to be one of the divers at La Quebrada when I grew up.”

  There was something intriguing in his manner; he wasn’t flirting with me, but he was watching me with a hawklike intensity, as if recording every word and gesture. “I heard the diving last night, but only from the bar. I can’t wait to see it, but I can’t imagine how they do it.”

  “I did it.” The pride in his voice was unmistakable. “I started training when I was thirteen. I knew Teddy Stauffer.” He was watching me so closely he caught the complete lack of comprehension in my face. “Teddy Stauffer!” he repeated. “Mr. Acapulco. You don’t know him? He was Swiss, a bandleader, a hotelier, a nightclub owner. He made Acapulco popular with the stars. All these famous people you see on the walls here”—he made an expansive gesture with one hand—“all of them came to Acapulco because of Teddy.”

  I stared at his hand, noticing the crosshatching of scars on the knuckles. There could have been any number of explanations, really, but it made me think of a man I’d met in Peru, one with a propensity for violence. Beating people could build up scar tissue. I buried the thought under what I hoped was a reasonable facsimile of a smile. “You were one of the divers? I can’t imagine having the nerve to do that.”

  “It does take huevos. But you learn, like everything else, with practice. Perhaps we could go to see them together. It’s a highlight of any visit to Acapulco. They will be performing at one o’clock this afternoon. Will you come with me?”

  His voice was casual, and there was nothing dangerous in his tone, but his suggestion unnerved me. I felt as if he were trying to get me alone, outside of the hotel, and that set alarm bells off in my head.

  “I wish I could, but there’s a press trip lunch at twelve-thirty.”

  “Of course. The press trip.” The way he said the words verged on contemptuous.

  For a moment, we sat in silence, and I glanced at his hands again. There was a jagged scar up the side of one palm. My eyes were only on it for a second, but when I looked back at his face, I knew he’d noticed. There was something serpentine about his unblinking gaze, and it made me uneasy. Everything about him did. Listen to me, Lily. You don’t want to know that guy.

  I cleared my throat. “I want to talk to you about Skye McDermott. I think there’s a possibility she may have been kidnapped.”

  “Kidnapped?” His face was impassive. He stared at me with the icy impassivity of a stone statue. In a way, his control was admirable; I wished sometimes that I could display so little emotion. But it reinforced my dislike of him.

  “Gavin mentioned that there were kidnapping threats made last year at another Pantheon hotel.”

  “Yes, that was in Cancún.”

  “No, Gavin said it was in Cabo. That’s where Pantheon opened its first hotel in Mexico, from what he said.”

  “Cabo. Of course. You were saying?”

  “That made me think Skye might have been abducted.” I was only giving him the smallest sliver of what I really thought. It had been on th
e tip of my tongue to mention the likely connection between Martin and Skye, but my instincts told me to hold back.

  “That is not at all likely.”

  “How can you say that?”

  “The threat was only to Pantheon’s board of directors, and in particular to Mr. Sklar. There was never any threat to guests at the hotel.”

  “What about other executives?” Gavin’s angry jibe rattled in my head. Of course, Martin was perfectly fine with sending me here in his stead. Gavin may have been a reliable foot soldier for Martin to use, but he wasn’t a happy one.

  “I am here to keep everyone safe,” Apolinar said.

  “What about Skye? Is she safe?”

  “I’m sure she is.” Everything about Apolinar—his expression, his demeanor, his tone—told me that he didn’t give a damn. It was worse than that; the darkness behind his eyes belied his calculated words and surface polish. I was sure he knew more about Skye’s disappearance than he would say.

  “Have you reviewed the security tapes from last night?” I asked, well aware I was poking at a hornet’s nest.

  His smile was frigid. “Miss Moore, I understand that you wish to help—”

  “Please call me Lily.”

  “Lily.” He gave me a full-wattage movie-star smile. His mouth was full of capped teeth, white as the Hotel Cerón’s own facade. It didn’t look attractive so much as expensive. “I can assure you that all necessary steps are being taken.”

  “Have you even looked at the tapes yet?”

  There was a pause, as if he were weighing his options. “There are no tapes.”

  “That’s impossible. There are security cameras everywhere!” I pointed at one of the black spheres embedded in the ceiling. “What do you think that is?”

  “That is where there will one day be a security camera,” Apolinar said. “That day is not yet here.”