Murder on the Equator Box Set

by Becca Bloom

  As busy as she was, the receptionist waved us over to her with a large smile, pinching her fingers together to let us know that she would be with us in just a second. Holding her hand over the phone, she said, "Señora Cuesta slept all night. She just ordered room service.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “Can you confirm your catering of the doughnuts? My manager has been breathing down my neck,” she requested.

  Tia Rosa elbowed Abuelita in the ribs contentedly. "You see? We no open, and we make business." To the receptionist, she said, "We do the both. Tonight for the dinner; Sunday for the gala."

  With a wink and a nod, the receptionist returned her attention to the phone call, professionally wrapping it up in a pleasant singsong voice and letting the blinking hold buttons wait. "Excellent. I will let the manager know that we can count on you for the doughnuts. While you’re here, is there anyone you wish to speak to? Miss Matty requested that I not hesitate to contact her if you wish to speak with her further. As did Shirley." She picked up her phone, her finger poised over the buttons.

  "Thank you so much for your help," I acknowledged, hoping that the couple I wished to speak to would be as obliging. "A couple arrived yesterday who were close friends with the deceased, and I would very much like to speak with them. Antonio and Diana Manjarrez?"

  She checked her guest registry. "Here they are. I’ll ask if they can join you in the lobby or if you can join them in their room."

  Abuelita said, "No room. They come to lobby. I no feel comfortable in same room with killer."

  The receptionist gaped at Abuelita and looked to me for an explanation.

  "We don't know who the killer is yet. Abuelita has her suspicions, but they are, as yet," I said with a fierce look at Abuelita, "unfounded. We are hoping that they may provide useful information, since they were two of Sophia's closest friends. It really is important that we speak with them."

  I pinched my lips shut and glared at Abuelita on the hope that she would take my hint to keep her suspicions to herself. The last thing we needed to do was alert a murderer that we were on to him or her.

  With a weak smile, the receptionist hung up the phone. "They will join you in the lobby in a couple of minutes."

  Her work with us done, she turned her attention back to the blinking lights awaiting her, and we made our way to the corner of the seating area.

  I made a mental note to check in with Miss Matty, as well as ask her version of the vicious grudge Señora Cuesta held against her. I also wanted to visit Señora Cuesta, more to reassure her than to ask more questions.

  I watched the elevator doors while I added to my list of things to do that day. The busier I kept myself, the better.

  Expecting Antonio and Diana to use the elevator instead of the stairs, I was confused when Tia Rosa and Abuelita stood up.

  "They here. We go," said Abuelita, crossing the lobby to the elevators.

  “You’re leaving me?” I asked. So much for their support. I’ll just face the possible cold-blooded killer alone.

  They ignored me.

  Antonio and Diana now stood in front of me. My muscles tensed and I tried to subdue my annoyance.

  Gesturing at the chairs opposite me, I watched as Diana slipped her perfectly coiffed hair over her shoulder with bejeweled fingers. Antonio pulled the arms of his sweater tied around his shoulders down from his neck and flashed a smile I was certain he used to charm his way through life.

  Her freshly manicured nails fluttering over her heart, Diana glanced at my knee. "Oh my goodness, what happened?"

  I felt my nostrils flare as I looked down at the nice, crusty scab forming over my scraped knee. I’d been forced to wear shorts because everything else chafed my tender skin. Being so pale, it looked much worse than it really was, but I was not about to tell her that. "Some lunatic almost ran me over yesterday in the parking lot here." I looked at them levelly, my eyes ping-ponging between the husband and wife, the former boyfriend and best friend of Sophia. The exes.

  Antonio didn't miss a beat. He said, "Pedestrians do not have the right-of-way in this country. You ought to take more care unless you want to suffer a worse accident."

  What a jerk. He knew it was him I was talking about. At least his wife had conscience enough to look uncomfortable as she shifted her weight in her seat and crossed her legs in the opposite direction, away from her husband.

  It was time to change tactics. He wasn't going to apologize, and I wasn't about to beg for one. I did need their cooperation, though, so I forced a smile, saying, "I didn’t come here to discuss traffic laws. I'm sure you've been informed that Sophia was found. Do you know how she ended up buried six feet under a concrete floor?" Maybe I could have been a little less blunt, but I really didn't like these people. Maybe Abuelita's gut was right for once.

  Antonio narrowed his eyes at me, and Diana fiddled with her diamond rings.

  Antonio finally spoke. "Alex mentioned it. He also warned us that by means none of us can understand, you managed to get approval from General Bolivar to poke your nose in a case nobody has thought of for thirty years. What makes you think it wasn't better to leave things as they were?"

  Was this guy for real? "And deny Sophia's friends and family closure? Not everyone is able to forget so easily. You have the opportunity to give them peace. As her former boyfriend, I thought you’d be anxious to help."

  Diana sobbed. In a whisper, she said, "I never forgot her. She was my best friend."

  Antonio turned to his wife. "You are no different from the rest of us. We were happy to think she had run away from her miserable life and had set up somewhere else. What's so wrong with allowing everyone to continue to think the best?"

  "Because it isn't the truth. No matter how painful it may be, don't you think the truth is better than a delusion? She was murdered! Her mother—"

  He scoffed, interrupting me. "Her mother is a pain pill addict who will most likely have to do another stint in rehab thanks to you."

  His comment angered me like nothing else. I couldn't imagine the pain Señora Cuesta must have experienced when her only child disappeared. Divorce from her husband and with no other children to console her, she was truly alone. No amount of pills could dull that kind of pain, as I'm sure she knew very well from experience.

  Diana sniffed. "Don't bring Señora Cuesta into this, Tony, please. All of us fight our battles differently."

  Antonio did not look happy at her correction, but he sat back in his chair and took a deep breath.

  I took a deep breath too. If I was to get any information out of them, I needed to cool down. "Look, I've been authorized to investigate the death of a young woman everyone loved. Not one person I have spoken with has said anything bad about Sophia. That you were her closest friends only speaks well of you. We haven't gotten off to the best start, but it is my hope that we can put our differences behind us to find out what really happened to Sophia. Don't you want to know?"

  Diana nodded. Antonio gritted his teeth and held his breath. When he exhaled, he dropped his head in a reluctance nod.

  Not wanting to ruin the mood, I asked in a soft voice, "Do you have any idea what might have happened? Is there anyone you suspect who might have had a motive against Sophia?"

  Antonio looked out of the corner of his eyes at his wife. She began fidgeting, her foot bobbing from side to side uncontrollably.

  They definitely knew something.

  Diana began, "Look, this isn't something—"

  Antonio interrupted her, speaking through clenched teeth. "Di, this isn't something we should be discussing with her."

  Her eyes flashed at her husband, her cheeks bright red. "Oh yeah? Do you think it's been easy for me to keep this secret all these years, knowing what we did?"

  Antonio's eyes cut between me and her. He hissed, "Now is not the time. This has nothing to do with us."

  Diana shook her head violently. Setting her hands on her knees, she said in a calm, controlled voice, "No, Tony. W
e should have come clean years ago." She turned to me determinately, and before Tony could interrupt her, she said, "We cheated."

  Antonio slumped in his chair, raising his hand to cover his face.

  My first thought was that Antonio had cheated on Sophia with Diana, but that thought was soon blown out of the water when Diana added, "We all cheated. All of us except for Sophia … and maybe Shirley."

  It hit me like a tidal wave to hear confirmation of Luis’ suspicion aloud. Miss Matty's exemplary study group, the infamous bunch who had gone on to study in the best universities was nothing more than a bunch of cheats. I had to ask, "Did Miss Matty know?"

  Antonio scoffed. "No, but how could she really believe that the best scholarships to be offered in the country were snagged by four of her students from the same class? She was a great teacher, but no teacher is that good."

  “Only four? I thought all five of you went on to study,” I asked.

  “Sophia was smart, but she couldn’t compare against our perfect scores. Her father made arrangements to send her away. He thought it would be good for her,” Antonio answered.

  My mind reeled. Full scholarships, especially in a country where few parents could afford to send their kids to University, where like golden tickets — hard to come by and awarded to too few. Had Sophia been about to blow the whistle on her friends, ruining their careers before they had even begun? Who in the group had the most to lose?

  "Whose idea was it?" I asked.

  "Alex's," they answered in unison.

  Antonio added with a bitter snarl, "He always did have a way for exploiting a situation to the fullest."

  I sensed that that was a loaded statement. Alex was bad news. He’d arranged the cheating scam. He would have known who stood to benefit the most. And he’d warned “The Exes” not to talk to me. Did he have something to hide? Who was he exploiting? I was about to ask Antonio what Alex had done to him when every phone at the hotel rang.

  Employees scrambled around. The receptionist looked to be on the verge of tears as she popped up from behind her desk, dropping her phone in the process, and ran in the direction of her manager's office with her hands over her mouth. Voices, starting softly and growing louder as they drew nearer to the lobby added to the chaos enclosing us.

  Antonio and Diana perched on the edges of their chairs, looking like they were ready to flee at the drop of a hat.

  The elevator door chimed, and Abuelita and Tia Rosa speed-walked toward me, grabbing my arm and pulling me out of the front doors before I could even say goodbye to The Exes.

  I was too stunned to react right away, but once my feet hit the warm concrete outside and the humid air blasted my face, I skidded to a halt. "What is this about? I need to get back in there and talk to Alex."

  Tia Rosa blinked up at me as she slowly shook her head from side to side.

  Abuelita explained, "Alex no can talk. He dead."

  Chapter 21

  What? My first big lead, and he was dead? I’d be upset at Alex for complicating what was already difficult, but I also felt a touch guilty at my reaction to the news. If Abuelita and Tia Rosa were to be believed, of course. "Wait, how do you know he's dead?"

  Tia Rosa pulled me down to her height, and whispered in my ear, "We Snoopy."

  And I’m Charlie Brown, I thought.

  Abuelita added, "We spy in the room."

  "Ah, you were snooping," I said.

  Tia Rosa looked at me as if I really needed to improve my English. Clucking her tongue and shaking her head, she repeated, "Is what I say. We Snoopy."

  “Of course. My bad.” Focusing on the more urgent matter at hand, I asked, “What did you find?” Not that I condoned their behavior, but I wasn’t about to ignore evidence they might have discovered just because I didn’t feel comfortable with their methods.

  Abuelita picked up her pace and lowered her voice as we continued walking away from the hotel. "We look in Antonio room, and we find some interesting thing."

  Part of me wanted to ask what they expected to find in the room. Even if Antonio or Diana murdered Sophia, it wasn't like they would carry convicting evidence with them thirty years later. The other, more rational part of me kept my thoughts to myself so as not to distract the elderly sisters.

  "Interesting?" I asked, prompting them to continue talking.

  Abuelita said, "He the big boss man at the bank of Rosa. We very careful.”

  I prayed Tia Rosa didn't leave any strands or purple fluff behind or Antonio could cause her a lot of trouble. I plucked a couple of loose hairs from her sweater, letting the morning breeze carry them away, and prayed again for good measure. It would break her heart to lose the building when she had invested so much time, money, and hope in it.

  Tia Rosa grinned, revealing deep dimples in her cheeks. Reaching into her plastic bag, she pulled out a pair of surgical gloves, saying, "Very careful. This time, we use the gloves." She was so proud of herself, I refrained from pointing out that she ought to have worn a hair net too.

  "I find paper in the garbage basket. Is from the hotel. I translate for you.” Abuelita shoved her open palm in front of Tia Rosa, who deposited a rumpled paper torn in half inside what looked like the clear bags hotels give their guests for dirty laundry. “It say: You will pay. I know everything." Abuelita pointed at the plastic-encapsulated note. “You see? Is safe. No finger prints.”

  I groaned. "You removed evidence? What are we supposed to do now? We can't just give it to Agent Vasquez and say, ‘I'm sorry. I just happened to snatch this from a suspect’s garbage can. Can you check it for prints?'"

  Abuelita stopped mid-step, her fisted hands on her hips. "I no have time think, okay? I read what say, I hear Rosa scream, I run to her, I see the dead body, I hear person come,” she said, now flailing her arms in the air and too upset to check her volume despite my not-so-subtle gestures to quiet down.

  Louder than before and with her finger pointed at my collarbone (which was about as high as she could reach), Abuelita continued, “No you shush-shush me, señorita. I no finish. We step out the room, the paper still in my hand and the maid she hear us. I no can return to room or she make suspicions."

  A group of kids playing soccer on a Dead End street stopped what they were doing to gawk at us. One could only hope they didn’t understand English.

  “You took a note from a guest’s room you broke into and you found Alex’s body?” I asked, squeezing the throbbing muscles at the back of my neck. Whoever had coined the expression “pain in the neck” must have known Abuelita and Tia Rosa. Right now, I wanted to hug them and strangle them, and the inner turmoil they provoked gave me a headache.

  Another dead body and a threatening note. My thoughts swirled. Who had written the note? My money was on Alex, but did it have anything to do with Sophia's death? Was he blackmailing others because he knew they had cheated or because he knew something about Sophia's murder? Or was I jumping to conclusions because time was running out? Sunday was two days away.

  Too many questions; too few answers. There was only one thing left to do. "I'm going to go back to the hotel. If you give me the note, I'll try to replace it in Antonio's room." Unless the place was swarming with police, in which case, I wouldn't be able to replace anything or ask any of the questions I needed to.

  "We no can return," Abuelita said.

  Tia Rosa squished my hand between her own. "Vaya con Dios," she said with feeling.

  Abuelita spoke solemnly. "The murderer is in hotel. He kill again. You sure you go?”

  I’d be crazy if I wasn’t nervous, but I imagined how I’d feel if the murderer killed another classmate when there was the slightest chance I could have prevented it. Another dead body certainly never stopped Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson or Miss Marple. Or Agent Vasquez … who most likely was on his way to the hotel, adding another level of urgency that I get in and out of there before he showed up. I was a thorn in his side (and not even I could blame him at this point). He would not be happy to
see me.

  Holding out the hand that wasn’t entrapped in Tia Rosa’s vice-like grip, I asked, “The note?”

  Abuelita handed it to me hesitantly. “You be careful,” she said before she released her hold on the laundry bag.

  I almost said, “I won’t do anything you wouldn’t do,” but I couldn’t imagine a scenario Abuelita wouldn’t charge into headfirst and decided such an answer wouldn’t provide much reassurance. The stolen evidence in my hand was proof enough of that. So, I just nodded and pretended to be braver than I felt without my elderly friends at my side.

  The lobby was empty when I returned to the hotel. Choosing the stairs lest I be trapped alone in an elevator with a murderer, I ascended to the second floor where the guests for Miss Matty's gala stayed in rooms lined along the hallway (with the exception of Señora Cuesta, who refused to occupy the same wing of the hotel as Miss Matty).

  The manager tried to console his guests with reassuring words and a weak smile as he stood in front of the door that must've been to Alex's room. He checked his watch several times, no doubt anxious for the police to arrive, make their inquiries, examine the scene, and remove all evidence that a crime had ever been committed at his hotel.

  Shirley and Miss Matty hovered one doorway down from Alex's room. I walked by Antonio and Diana's closed-door, holding the pilfered note close to my body. How could I return it without causing more of a commotion?

  Miss Matty's face was pale and grim as she greeted me. Shirley’s eyelashes batted back the tears threatening to spill over.

  "Jessica," Shirley said, "I'm so glad you're here. Do you think we are all in danger? First, Sophia, and now…" She gestured down the hall, unable to say the name aloud.

  Though Miss Matty's complexion showed how affected she was, her eyes were not dulled by tears. What I had to tell her would be difficult for her to hear, but I had to wonder if she might have suspected all these years. Like Luis had said before, that her first class could claim such a lucrative prize was almost too good to be true.