Evil in All Its Disguises

by Hilary Davidson

  “Here, if you’re so curious, you open it.” I handed it to Ruby.

  She pulled the bow loose and opened the box, lifting out a long strand of reddish-orange stones. Fire opals. That was what Skye had called them. My jaw dropped when I realized that the necklace was exactly like the one I’d seen Skye wearing the night before.

  CHAPTER 31

  “Holy moly. Would ya look at that?” Ruby said.

  “I told you so,” Roberta added. “His eyes light up when he talks about Lily. I think he’s obsessed with her.”

  “Yeah, but it’s not like he only says nice things about her.”

  “What does that mean?” I asked.

  “Okay, at lunch, when you went off to toss your cookies, Denny said she hoped you’d be well enough to go to Taxco tomorrow, and Gavin said he doubted it. Then he said you’ve been so sick since your sister died.”

  “He said what?”

  “Gavin made you sound like you were some sad shrinking violet boo-hooing in the corner,” Ruby said.

  “Oh, do you remember when Denny said Lily was perfectly fine, and any normal person would be sad about something like that?” Roberta asked. “Gavin said it wasn’t normal to be hospitalized for depression.”

  “I was never hospitalized for depression!”

  Ruby’s expression was grim, as if she were puzzling something out. “I thought it was weird of Gavin to say that. I mean, you almost married his boss, so if it gets back to Martin Sklar that he’s badmouthing you, his ass is gonna be kicked to the curb.” It was embarrassing to realize that my failed romantic life was common knowledge among travel writers, but before I could say anything, Ruby went on. “Roberta and I talked about it. She said, maybe your ex wants Gavin to badmouth you. But I pointed out to her, Gavin keeps going on and on about how he’s running the most profitable division of the company, blah blah blah. He’s trash-talking you and his boss.”

  That was the moment everything came together in my mind. I wasn’t worried about being paranoid anymore, even if my thoughts seemed outlandish. For the first time, I realized that Gavin had deliberately lured me down to Acapulco. The press trip—if I could even call it that—was window dressing.

  “I can’t believe this,” I said.

  “I thought it was off when I got here and saw you in the lobby,” Roberta mused. “I was thinking, why would Lily come to a Pantheon hotel?”

  “You knew this was a Pantheon property?” I was almost shouting. “How?”

  “I’m a member of their points program,” Roberta said. “You get an email when a new hotel is added.”

  “But how did you know we were staying here? Wasn’t this a last-minute change?”

  “Well, everything was very last minute, but on Monday I asked Denny for some information for my magazine. Her assistant sent it over, and the name of the hotel was in there,” Roberta said.

  I couldn’t believe it. “Denny’s been trying for months to convince me to come to Mexico,” I said. “First it was Cabo, and then Cancún, and Monterrey. There were a few other places.” It hit me, as I said the words, that they were all places where Pantheon had properties. The hotels I’d called that afternoon—the ones that had been brusque and told me that they were fully booked up—were all in places that Denny had tried to lure me to.

  “I didn’t get asked until a week ago,” Ruby interrupted my train of thought. “I don’t get many invitations anymore, so I said yes. No wonder the arrangements have been so cheap.”

  “Cheap? Are you kidding?” I shook my head. “They flew me down in business class.”

  “What?” Ruby’s face turned so red, I thought she might explode. “I was in a crappy middle seat in coach! It was the pits.”

  One cardinal rule of travel writing was never to let the other journalists know what the host did for you, because they gave certain perks to their favorites. But putting me in business class and Ruby in coach was too big a gap. I remembered that she and Roberta had come in together, which was standard for journalists arriving from the same destination. And yet, I’d been flown in the night before. I was willing to believe Gavin had tricked me into coming to Acapulco, but it was painful to realize that Denny was involved in that deceit, too.

  CHAPTER 32

  When Ruby and Roberta left my suite, I locked the deadbolt behind them. Then I threw my things into my rolling suitcase and zipped it up. The Elisabeta Joyería box mocked me from the bedside table. I was repulsed by the idea that Gavin had been able to fool me, but even angrier that I’d made it easy for him. After all, how hard had it really been to trick me to come to Acapulco? All he’d had to do was throw an expensive airline ticket my way and promise a luxurious stay at a resort. The only tough part was that he needed an assistant to bait the trap for him.

  I had a sudden impulse to rip the necklace and let the beads scatter around the room. But when I picked the long strand up, all I thought about was Skye. Had Gavin bought her an identical necklace? Had she been involved in the trap, too? It hit me suddenly that her disappearance may have been by design; after all, I wasn’t going to run out of a hotel—even a Pantheon hotel—if I thought a friend was in trouble. It struck me suddenly that her disappearance was the one thing that made me reluctant to leave. That had been a brilliant move on Gavin’s part.

  I dropped the necklace back in its box. The lid had the address of the shop printed on the inside, and I realized Elisabeta Joyería was inside the Hotel Cerón. That made it easy for Gavin, didn’t it? He was far sleazier and shadier than I ever imagined.

  Leaving the suite without a backwards glance, I rolled the case down the hallway. The elevator seemed to take forever. Downstairs, in the lobby, the clerk gawped at me. “Miss Moore, where are you going?” he called, but I ignored him. Outside, the bellman turned to stare at me.

  “I’d like to get a taxi to the airport, please,” I said.

  They looked at each other. “Of course. Let me make a call,” said one. He pulled out his cell phone and walked away. I couldn’t hear a word he was saying.

  “Why are you leaving, Miss Moore?” the other one asked. He had a soft voice and a slight lisp, like a Mexican Mike Tyson; he was about the same size as the boxer, too.

  “Something has come up.”

  “That’s too bad, Miss Moore.”

  It was a little creepy, the way he kept calling my by name. And even eerier to realize that everyone at the hotel seemed to know me by name.

  “A taxi should be here in an hour, Miss Moore,” the other bellman called, pocketing his phone.

  “An hour?” I looked around. “What about the hotel car that picked me up?”

  “It is not available right now.”

  The car was parked down the driveway. “Isn’t that it?” I asked, pointing.

  He shrugged. “It is the driver who is not available.”

  I was determined to leave. “Fine.” I started walking, but they blocked me.

  “Where are you going?” one asked.

  “I’ll hail a taxi on the road.”

  “Oh, no, Miss Moore. You cannot do that. It is not safe.”

  Martin’s warning echoed in my ears. Whatever you do, don’t get into a taxi or a car with anyone you don’t know. I didn’t care. “Get out of my way.”

  “Sorry, Miss Moore.”

  “You don’t seriously think you’re going to block my way, do you?”

  “Orders are orders,” said one.

  “It is not safe,” said the other.

  I tried to move around them but couldn’t. The entire situation felt ridiculous, as if I were Alice in Wonderland encountering Tweedledee and Tweedledum as a pair of hulking hoodlums in hotel uniforms.

  We faced off for a while, but I couldn’t make them budge, and their combined bulk was like a brick wall in my path. “Why not wait inside for your taxi?” one finally suggested. I stormed back into the lobby, feeling trapped.

  “Would you like something to drink, Miss Moore?” asked the clerk at reception.

/>   “No, thanks.” I didn’t add that I wanted to avoid being poisoned. The combination of the charcoal, protein bar and water had made me feel better. I’d rather go hungry—and thirsty—than sample anything that came from the Hotel Cerón’s kitchen. If that was paranoid, so be it.

  “What is wrong, Miss Moore?”

  “Family problem,” I lied.

  “I am sorry to hear that. Perhaps you would like to read a newspaper?”

  I abandoned the lobby just to get away from the cloying staff, leaving my suitcase near the exit. Retracing my steps to the spa, I found it locked up and its lights off. Next to it was a tiny shop. The gilt-edged sign in the window spelled out elisabeta. The sign on the door said cerrado. Closed. An elderly woman came out of a back room with a box and set it on a counter. She was petite, maybe all of five feet tall, and her shoulders had caved in, leaving her back rounded. Her lips were painted red, and her black-and-gray hair was pulled back into a bun with a pink flower. She could have been anywhere from sixty to eighty.

  I tried the door, but it was locked. When I knocked on it, she turned, her face showing obvious surprise. Moving slowly, she crossed the door and pulled the door open. “Hola. Welcome.”

  “Hola,” I said, stepping inside. “Esta es una tienda preciosa,” This is a lovely store. The walls were painted a soft, buttery yellow and had delicate white molding looping around the top, grazing the ceiling. The floor was plain white tile, and the cases that stored the jewelry looked like antique dressing tables. The dark wood of the cases was pitted and gnarled and scratched if you looked closely, but it was well-polished and had delicate silver flowers painted on it. Whoever had restored the pieces had done so with a reverence for their age and with a whimsical sense of beauty. The three-part silver mirror dominated one end of the room, but there were smaller mismatching mirrors dotting the other walls.

  “Thank you,” she answered, in English. “I apologize for this mess. We are being forced to close the store and I must pack everything up. But you are welcome to look and to shop.”

  “Why are you closing?”

  “We have no choice. That horrible man forces us out.”

  “Which man?”

  “Gavin Stroud.” She pronounced his name the Spanish way, with the V sounding like a B. Gabbin Estroud. Her contempt for him was made clear in three syllables. “Since he took over, it is a disaster for everyone. The past year has been hard.”

  “But Pantheon only bought the hotel recently, didn’t they?”

  “Pantheon? Ha!” Her laughter was laced with chagrin. “Mr. Alvarez bought the hotel, many years ago,” she explained. “Such a good man. But he died last year, and now his son ruins everything. Not son. Hijastro.”

  “Stepson?”

  “Yes. He is the devil. My daughter, Elisabeta, this is her shop. Now, she is sick with cancer and cannot work, so I watch her shop. But he—the devil—forces us out. He forces all the shops to close.”

  Gavin had mentioned that his mother had married a Mexican, but not that his father was in the hotel business. That intrigued me. Gavin had made such a big deal about the Mexican hotels he’d acquired doing so well; how many of those properties were really his stepfather’s?

  “You know him?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “You do not like him,” she observed.

  “It’s that obvious?”

  “I think he does not have friends. Except for the girlfriend.”

  “The girlfriend? Gavin has a girlfriend?” I couldn’t imagine anyone getting close to Gavin. It would be like cozying up to a statue.

  The woman’s smile broadened. “Would you like to try on a necklace?”

  So, that was how this was going to work, I thought. She knew she had me hooked. “Yes, of course.”

  Looking down at the tray she’d placed in front of me, I examined the beads. They varied between orange and red, and some stones seemed to have an uneven hue, as if the color had been bled out of them. I picked up a necklace. “Are all of these fire opals, or are other stones mixed in?”

  “Oh, no, that is pure fire opal. The stone gets its color from the iron in it, but it also has a high water content. It is a soft stone. The best ones come from dry places, like the desert. Those fire opals have better color. They can be cut to show off their inner fire.” She picked up another necklace. “Do you see how these stones are cut? There is a limit to what you can do because of the softness of the stone. They are fire opals, but not so… hot.” She smiled at her own joke. “I know you like jewelry. Your silver bracelet is beautiful.”

  “Thank you.” I knew I wouldn’t be able to leave the shop without buying something. If my friend Jesse were there, he’d tell me how weak-willed I was. My income had shrunk in recent months, but so had my expenses, since I no longer paid the rent on an apartment in New York, I still felt as if I had more money than before. “Did Gavin buy one like that?”

  “More than one. I saw his little blonde friend wear it.”

  “His… blonde friend?” My brain struggled to process this information. I hadn’t had trouble seeing Skye with Martin. Gavin was another question entirely. Had she dated Martin, then traded down for Gavin? I could hear her voice so clearly. When the two of you started dating, you kept it quiet for a while, didn’t you? she had asked me about Martin at the bar. Then, I’m in a situation like that right now, and I’m kind of sick of it, to tell you the truth. He’s secretive about everything.

  It had never occurred to me that she was speaking about Gavin.

  The woman pushed the tray forward slightly. “What do you think of the earrings? Beautiful, yes?” She brought a gilded hand mirror out from under the counter, as well as a bottle of rubbing alcohol and some cotton balls. She let me try on several pairs, cleaning each before and after I had them on.

  It was difficult pretending to be fascinated by the jewelry when all I could think about was Skye. She’d dated Martin and Gavin? I wondered which one she wanted revenge on. Her life seemed more and more like a chaotic whirlwind, especially since Ryan was still in the picture, handing out credit cards to Skye. It made me think of Barbara Stanwyck’s character in Baby Face, trading up from one man to the next. Not that Gavin was a trade-up, but he seemed to have delusions of grandeur.

  What do you care? whispered that voice in my brain. Let them tear each other up.

  The beauty of the fire opals started to grow on me, and my greedy, jewelry-loving magpie side surfaced. I really was as superficial as Claudia always said. Finally, I settled on a pair of earrings that had a faceted bright orange stone dangling from a silver thread. The woman wrapped them up for me, in a package that looked just like the one Gavin had given me, only smaller. I paid with a credit card.

  “Can I ask you something else?” I said. “How did Gavin force the shops to close?”

  “There are no guests.”

  “None?”

  She shrugged and lowered her voice again. “I thought he might be working with the Zelas. Drugs, you know. Drugs are behind most of the crime in Acapulco now. Most of my family has left because of it. My cousin’s grandchildren can’t even go to school anymore, because there are kidnapping threats against the teachers. Many schools wouldn’t open.”

  “You think Gavin is involved with a cartel?”

  She shook her head. “It makes no sense. You can recognize the men in the cartels by how they walk, how they dress. They do not come here.” She stared out the window of the shop, into the hallway. “I know something is wrong, I just don’t know what.”

  CHAPTER 33

  I was embarrassed at not guessing sooner that Gavin and Skye were romantically involved. The clues were all there. When I thought back to my conversation with Skye on Friday night, I could see where I’d gone wrong. She’d talked about little else but Martin, and because she’d known the details of his schedule, I’d assumed she had a relationship of some sort with him. But Gavin would have an insider’s knowledge of Martin’s schedule, and he was Skye’s con
duit for information. I couldn’t say that Skye had lied to me, exactly; I’d jumped to mistaken conclusions all on my own. That wasn’t true of Gavin, though. He’d deliberately misled me. I only know Skye through her relationship with Martin. He’d been lying through his teeth. He had his own relationship with her, but he was keeping that under wraps.

  The problem was, I couldn’t imagine Gavin in a romantic relationship, period, and that was a blind spot I regretted. He was, as Roberta had said, a cold fish. But that was just the surface, and I’d never guessed at what was going on beneath.

  That thought stopped me dead in my tracks. Skye had disappeared and Gavin had wanted to pretend that he barely knew her. That wasn’t an accident. He’d lied to me, bold-faced. I was no expert, but even I knew that, when a woman disappeared, the first person the police looked at was her lover. The fact that Gavin was preemptively denying their relationship was inherently suspicious.

  There was another possibility. Gavin had wanted to play-act at seducing me, and Skye didn’t want to stick around to see that. Ironically, the only thing Gavin probably hadn’t lied about was when he said he thought Skye was cooling her heels at another hotel in Acapulco. They’d fought, and he assumed Skye had run out instead of hiding out somewhere in the hotel. Maybe her disappearance was meant to punish him. It didn’t matter anymore. All that mattered was getting the hell away from the hotel.

  I wondered what I owed Martin. As much as I’d come to despise my ex, Gavin’s crafty lure of me to Acapulco made me detest him even more. Had he poisoned me somehow when I’d sat next to him at lunch? Not with anything deadly, of course, just enough of something to put me in bed so that he could come surprise me with flowers and jewelry. Oh, how I hated him.

  In the lobby, I checked for my cab, but of course it hadn’t arrived. When my cell phone rang, I almost ignored it. I wasn’t in the mood to speak with anyone in the world. But when I saw the name on the display, I realized there was one exception.