“I fantasized about Charlegne. It hurt, but what could I do? The little witch got into my system. I’ve been trying to sweat her out for years. At five to ten, this irritating woman came on deck, talking nonstop about how ‘amazing’ her trip was. She’s one of those women who has to hear the sound of her voice at all times. I could have socked the attendant for seating her next to me. I really didn’t need her inane chatter.”
“And Charlegne?”
“She came up just a minute or two before ten. About gave me a heart attack. That chatty woman wouldn’t shut up about Charlegne. Who knows? When she learns her idol is dead, she might actually stop talking.”
“How did you know about Charlegne’s death?”
Martin’s eyes narrowed. “Why should you care? I didn’t do anything wrong. I heard some stewards talk about it, so I went down to the infirmary. Figured that’s where they’d hide her. When I was there, I heard voices.” Sandy eyebrows jumped up his forehead. “It was you! You talked about it! I recognize your voice! How did you know about it?”
Li crossed his arms to smother the shakes in his fingers. “I found her body.”
“So is that what this is? Morbid curiosity?”
“Not as morbid as sneaking around trying to find out how your wife’s rival died.”
A sharp, unfriendly grin spread across Martin’s face. “You’re a little snot, aren’t you? You think you’re some big shot who knows all the secrets. Listen, kid, there are people on this cruise who could crush you if they wanted. Unless you took too many stupid pills this morning, I’d lay off on the questions. Say the wrong thing to someone and get your throat cut.” His smile dropped. “I went because Charlegne and Rosie worked in the same industry for twenty-some years. I wanted the real story. I wanted to know for my wife’s sake.”
“Even though she loathed Charlegne?”
“What did I say about questions, kid?”
Li changed tactics. “Tell me what Charlegne did that morning.”
“I said—”
“It’s a statement, not a question.”
Martin chuckled. “A loophole. You’re a sneaky punk. I’ll humor you. She didn’t do much. Just ambled along the deck like a damn princess. Even had the nerve to wave at me. She sat in a chair on the Sunbathing Deck, snapped her fingers, and gave her orders to the attendant. He came back with a cup of coffee—”
“On which side did he place the cup? Left or right?”
Martin cocked an eyebrow. “Who cares?”
“Please, Mr. Hale.”
“It was her right.”
I knew it! She must have moved! But did she do it on her own, or did someone help?
“What happened next?”
“She smiled at me, and then tipped her hat further over her face.”
“Is there anything else she did? Anything at all?”
“Nothing shifty, kid. Just normal sunbathing stuff. When the attendant went to get her coffee, Charlegne lathered on the sunscreen as if terrified that—” Martin’s eyes nearly popped out of his skull. “Wait a second…That can’t be…No, I saw her do it! But you said…And then the doctor said…What the hell is wrong here?”
Li nodded. “I know what you’re thinking, Mr. Hale. Something is wrong. She used sunscreen. But the doctor said there was absolutely no sunscreen found on or near her body. So where did it go?”
CHAPTER 16
Mexico
So this is Mexico…
Li stepped onto the asphalt peninsula serving as the pier and cast his sights on the sail-sized Mexican flag shadowing the Bahía de Todos Santos. Like the Statue of Liberty, it welcomed strangers to its home. He made it. He was in the Port of Ensenada on the Gold Coast of Baja California, his first time out of the country. Li wondered what his dad would think of this bustling spot with the sun shining with the arrogance of a Hollywood legend and the turquoise tint to the harbor.
But he also wondered what his dad would think about the purple bruise bleeding across his pale skin.
Travis hailed his friend from across the pier, standing before a lurid, burnt-red building designed to look like a Spanish mission, although the paint scheme revealed it was too new to be authentic. Tourists swamped the place, jabbering and posing for pictures. Li, glad for the well-broken sneakers on his feet, hurried to his friend.
“You made it!” Travis said. “I was starting to wonder whether you would flake on me. I don’t like being stood up.”
“Almost as much as you hate being cooped up.” Li cupped his hands around his eyes and peered into the welcome center. Stalls crowded the open room, selling wares from jewelry to leather goods to liquor. Tourists, mostly female, flitted from booth to booth like bees. Their husbands and boyfriends babysat the growing mounds of shopping bags from benches in the middle of the building.
“You can go inside, Li. We’re allowed to be normal people out here.”
Li’s smile brightened his face and smoothed out all his stress lines. “I wish we could actually get something. I don’t have much cash on me, but…”
Travis chuckled at his friend’s transparent enthusiasm. “Nothing wrong with a little window shopping. Maybe you’ll get lucky. Besides, we have time to kill before—Whoa!”
Li wrenched his eyes from the welcome center, and his jaw went slack. Travis had the same, open-mouthed look of astonishment on his face.
A woman paraded across the asphalt with Steven Danforth trailing behind her. She wore a tightly cinched cream peplum suit jacket and a black, knee-length pencil skirt. Her stiletto heels clicked like horseshoes across the ground. Black gloves sheathed her hands, her fingers crusted with rings. She crowned the look with a large hat, black and cream and better suited for the Kentucky Derby than a trip to Mexico.
The wide hat brim tilted up, and Li thought his jaw would scrape against the asphalt.
It was Priscilla Reilly. She made a transformation that could rival butterflies.
“Close your mouths, boys,” she said. Her silvery laugh echoed in Li’s ears as she marched into the welcome center. Steven’s upper lip curled in disgust, but he followed.
Travis whistled and rubbed his eyes. “You must have kept me waiting out in the sun too long, Li. Did I just see Ms. Dowdy-Dear Reilly stroll up here looking like an evil Charlegne Jackson clone?”
Li tried to bring moisture back to his throat. “Uh-huh.”
“Now I’m sorry I didn’t believe your murder theory, buddy.”
“What does that have to do with Ms. Reilly changing her clothes?”
“Because if anyone is going to kill Charlegne…” He gestured to the door. “…it would be our newly-crowned Princess Priscilla. She got her claws into the label before Charlegne’s body went cold. I bet she’s been waiting for years.”
Li closed his eyes and massaged his right temple. I should have known, he thought. Priscilla’s a social climber. Shrewd. Manipulative. Opportunistic. She attached herself to a luxury label, created this frumpy, emotional character, gained Charlegne’s trust, and, when the impossible happened, took control of the whole business. A slick plan. How far would she go?
“Makes me wonder how long she had those clothes stashed away,” Travis said, breaking Li’s thoughts.
“Years probably.” She used fashion to emphasize her character. Sagging, oversized blouses and dresses in off-putting colors to establish this submissive personality and, when Charlegne died, a nun-like dress thing to stress her ‘emotional suffering.’ There were times when she slipped. Sometimes she overacted the part. Sometimes the shrewd mind broke through, like when she gave expert fashion tips. Now she can revert to normal Priscilla. Her plan succeeded.
Travis shook his head in disbelief. “I don’t think she can pull it off. Charlegne was the line. The only reason it existed is because of her energy, or something. She knew how to make people do what she wanted.”
A head poked out of the welcome center. “Are you ladies going to keep talking about fashion, or can we get on this tour?”
>
“David?” Li asked. “Are you coming too?”
David sidled out of the building. He gave Li a very military salute, but a grin rich with teeth lit up his face. “Your tour guide at your service, sir.”
“I thought that since this is your first time in Mexico,” Travis said, “you should have a quality tour guide. David’s been on this route more than anyone else. So I asked him to come. Sound okay to you, Li?”
Li rolled his eyes. “Does Paul over-wax his shoes?”
“Again with fashion. Can’t you talk about manlier things?” David checked his watch. “Whoa! No time for that. We’re going to be late. They arranged an earlier tour for the Howard Line crew, so let’s get a move on.”
“Good idea. Besides, I want to get back in time to have dinner in the crew mess.”
“You’re in a foreign country, Li, and you still want dinner on the ship?”
Li folded his arms across his chest. “Chef Jack is making his grandfather’s fried chicken. I don’t care what you say. Neither of you will deny me my one guilty pleasure. I think I’ve earned it.”
“La Cenicienta del Pacífico,” David said, the Spanish rolling sensuously off his tongue. “That’s what the port-dwellers—the porteños—call their city. The Cinderella of the Pacific. Heart of Mexican wine country. Cosmopolitan center on the make. Rags to riches. You can relate, huh Li?”
Li pulled his gaze from the jostled view out the bus window and frowned at his bunkmate. “You’re the third person to compare me with Cinderella. What gives?”
“Well, you don’t have a lot of money or status, and you’re pretty much a slave on the ship…”
Travis leaned across the aisle separating their seats. “And you have issues with shoes and curfews.”
Li rolled his eyes and returned to the view. “Why does it look like some of these buildings are unfinished?”
“You noticed that?” David asked, quirking an eyebrow.
“My dad was a contractor. I know what a finished product looks like.”
“Well, you see…” David’s voice dropped to a conspiratorial level. “…there’s a law here that states when a building is completed, property tax goes into effect. So…” He left the rest to Li’s imagination.
Urban sprawl melted into farmland. Li devoured David’s stories like a kindergartner on his first field trip. His smile was irrepressible. He looked alarmingly young, his skin smooth, untroubled, and flushed with eagerness. Even his bruises seemed to fade. He laughed freely, told a few jokes his dad used to tell, and drank in the atmosphere of having escaped his grief.
David and Travis studied him with mirrored expressions of curiosity and suspicion.
“First time out of the country?” David asked.
Li wiped away the tears brewing from the latest laughing fit. “Yep. My family didn’t have much money to travel. I thought you knew that.”
“I did. It’s just you look really young.”
Li’s brow puckered, and he threw a sidelong glance at his bunkmate. “Well, I’m only twenty.”
Travis came to David’s rescue. “He means you look like your age again. Usually your face has so many stress lines, a steam iron would be intimidated. Now you’re laughing and smiling, looking like a kid again. Eighteen at most.”
“Like the little brother I never had,” David embellished.
“You try to act mature and let all the crap roll off your back, but it doesn’t really work.” Li’s forehead creased with a frown. “Sorry, buddy. We can see right through you. You’re a broke, homesick kid still grieving for your dad and terrified of the future. Didn’t Cinderella—?”
“Oh, for God’s sake, Travis!” Li snapped. “Not again!”
“Wait a second,” said David. “If Li’s Cinderella, who’s the Fairy Godmother?”
“Hey, are you seriously going to talk as if I’m not here?”
“Maybe his Fairy Godmother hasn’t shown up yet.” Travis craned his head to look at his scowling friend over David’s shoulder. “Hear that, Li? You still have a chance to go to the ball!” He snickered.
“You ignored me just to irritate me, right?”
“Duh!” David and Travis matched grins and fist-bumped.
Li’s ears burned red. “I hate you both.”
“And we take security in the knowledge that you will never seek vengeance,” David replied.
Li’s eyes widened. A little lightning bolt of a thought flashed in his head. He awarded his attention to the view again, watching as the green furrows of farmland hardened into the rocky crags of the shoreline. “Security,” he muttered to himself. “Why didn’t you call?”
“What was that, Li?” David asked.
Li turned away from the window. “When the passenger held those stewards hostage yesterday, why didn’t you call security, David? There’s a phone right next to the beverage station.”
“Don’t you think I know that? I did call. Twice. Couldn’t get through.”
“But there’s always someone manning the security desk.”
“I’m not the guy who decides when they take their coffee breaks, Li. I called security shortly after I learned we had hostages. No answer. I tried to calm the woman down, nearly had my head popped off by one of her paws, and tried again. Still no answer. That’s when I tried the whiskey and soda. That seemed to work the best.”
“That doesn’t make any sense, though.” Li slipped into his thoughts. Someone should have taken that call. If security missed something like that, who’s to say they didn’t miss anything that happened to Charlegne on deck? But the cameras…Wait! The cameras! That’s it!
David shrugged. “I’m not here to make sense of what people do. I’m just here to show you around, Li.”
Travis stretched and yawned like a cat ready to shift his position in the sun. “I’m here for the tequila. Are we there yet?”
“Keep your shirt on, Patrelli. When it feels like the bus is trying to throw you out of your seat, we’re in the parking lot.”
In fifteen minutes, the bus bumped and bounced over the half-buried boulders in the dirt parking lot. Li thanked several supreme deities for insisting he have a lighter breakfast, given the stomach acrobatics the bus gave him. Once parked, the tourists lurched out of their coach, undid a few kinks in their joints, and strolled towards the market.
“So where’s this geyser, Dave-o?” Travis asked, stretching a knot out of his back. “This looks more like the marketplace in Aladdin. You didn’t kidnap us to go shopping, did you?”
“It’s at the end of the market.” David waved a hand down the dirt path curling like a snake through the column of shops and stalls. “There are two viewing terraces. No rush though. Everyone’s going down to see the geyser first and then hobble back up here to buy the local crafts. If we do the opposite, we’ll beat the crowd.”
The open-air marketplace rumbled with motion and noise. Tourists cluttered the path and stalls, merchants hawked their regional crafts, hot grills slapped with meat threw out pillows of spice-seasoned smoke to temp the crowd, and the air clogged with voices—shouting, haggling, begging, gossiping—in dozens of languages, mostly Spanish. Dust kicked up by thousands of feet mingled with the aroma of the very near ocean. Li went into sensory overload.
David led his friends through the stalls, charming the locals in their own tongue and getting a few freebies for his troubles. Li ran his fingertips over the soft skin of a leather bag, the plush of a hand-loomed blanket, and the smooth chill of a Mexican silver pendant. His heart ached that he couldn’t afford just one little present for his mom. That blanket would have been perfect. She could snuggle up in it when it got cold enough to galvanize her arthritis.
Li glanced at the price tag, and the slim pleat of bills in his pocket howled with laughter.
Maybe I can buy a postcard for my collection, he thought. I might be able to afford that.
And the searing spurt of jealousy he felt when he saw Travis unload his bank account for a leather belt did
n’t help either.
“Okay, we did the girlie stuff,” David said, “now let’s do the manly stuff. I know a guy here that sells some really premium tequila. If we play nice, he’ll give us a taste.”
Travis slipped on his new belt. “All right! That’s what I call service! Let’s get…Oh shoot! What are we going to do with Mr. Clean-and-Sober over here?”
Both heads turned to Li.
“You guys go ahead,” he replied, trying to smother the wave of jealous sickness he felt as he watched Travis admire his purchase. “I want to explore on my own for a bit. Maybe go down to the geyser.”
David nodded. “We’ll meet there then. Now remember, Patrelli, this is only a taste. Not that you can afford a bottle after paying for this ridiculous belt and that crazy buckle.”
Travis played with the buckle, trying to make the sunlight bounce off it and around the stall. “Hey man, it draws attention to my best asset.”
Li stumbled into the crowd, woozy with budding depression, and hoped to find a postcard stand where he could bankrupt himself. Someone fell into step beside him.
“Nice to get away, isn’t it?”
Li jumped and stared into the face of Rosemary Hale.
“Mrs. Hale?”
She laughed, and Li noticed how the stress lines around her lips were nearly invisible. “I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to scare you. I just wanted to talk.”
“Talk?” His mind groped for the most pessimistic outcomes. Does she want to talk about Charlegne? Did she hear that stupid rumor too? What if someone sees me talking to her? What will they say about that? And what will her husband do? Is he jealous? Why does this always happen to me?
“Yes, silly. Talk. I missed you at the Captain’s Table last night. I told Jean Paul that I wanted you to serve our table, but I gather he’s part of the problem.” Her smile seemed warm and genuine, but Li couldn’t suppress the memory of her mutation into the Dragon Woman. “Come on. Let’s sit down at a table and chat.”
She hooked him by the arm and pulled him toward a stall selling blankets and serapes. The colorful woven draperies rustled in a mellow breeze, sunlight ferreting out the hidden jewels in each hand-dyed thread. It was an altar of rainbows.
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