Permanent Sunset

by C. Michele Dorsey

  “I don’t care what you prefer, sir. This is the scene of a police investigation and must be treated as such,” Detree said. Gavin turned around and found a seat next to Paul Blanchard, rather than join the immediate family.

  “At least let Sabrina get into some dry clothes and comb that mop of hair,” Henry said. He was always after Sabrina to tame her full head of shoulder-length curls. He had known her when her smooth hairstyle and chic clothes were provided by a television studio. Sabrina, on the other hand, loved that she no longer owned a hair dryer and that she dried her hair by driving with the windows open.

  Detree agreed to let Sabrina change, but not inside the house or in the cabana, which had dressing rooms just for this purpose. Sabrina had to slip behind the rental jeeps and duck down for privacy as she threw on the generic black shift she wore to pick guests up at the ferry.

  She returned to the table where Henry sat with Sean, Kate, Jack, and Heather.

  “I’ve texted Neil to come over.” Henry leaned close to her ear as she sat down in one of those god-awful folding white chairs everyone thinks looks so darling in wedding pictures but is really like sitting on a sawhorse. She had tried to convince Elena to choose more comfortable chairs for the wedding, but the bride had preferred to make decisions based upon aesthetics.

  Sean cocked his head in their direction. “Neil Perry? I did the same.”

  “You texted Neil? Why? How do you know him?” Sabrina asked. She was occasionally uncomfortable with how little she really knew about the man many island friends considered her boyfriend, including her, at times. She had spent so much time denying her attraction to Neil that when she finally succumbed to his charm, his history seemed irrelevant. After several months of spending plenty of time together (mostly evenings after work when they would take a swim with Sabrina’s dog, Girlfriend, then share a meal and sometimes more), Sabrina had grown comfortable with Neil and their routine.

  But just recently, he had grown somewhat distant, like the night before when she knew he had to fill in for one of the bartenders at Bar None, the beach bar he owned. She’d offered to bring home some of the leftover tapas from the rehearsal dinner. Just a few weeks before, Neil would have been eager to come sit on her porch after work, sipping a nightcap, munching on leftovers. But last night, he’d said he’d prefer just to go home to his place once he was done with his late shift. Just when she had let her guard down and begun to trust him, he seemed preoccupied, and it felt like he was retreating. Sabrina started to wonder if she was going to get dumped again.

  “He was my lawyer in LA,” Sean said, as if Sabrina should know this.

  “Is he coming?” Henry asked.

  “I don’t know. I got his voicemail. I know he can’t actually practice law here, but I like and trust Neil. He’s got common sense, which is why I went to talk to him at Bar None last night. I thought maybe he could help me with the prenup problem,” Sean began to choke up. Kate reached over and took his hand.

  “Isn’t he the one whose office building you bought when he wanted to leave town fast and move here?” Jack asked.

  “Yeah, then we tore it down and made a bundle when we built a parking garage. I wish I’d gotten to talk to him last night. Maybe then none of this would have happened, but he had taken off to pick up some woman.”

  He had taken off to pick up some woman? Sabrina had been right. He had been backing off. Why didn’t he just say he was no longer interested? She wasn’t one of those clingy women who couldn’t let go. Sabrina might have been caught off guard when she discovered her husband, Ben, had been cheating on her. But Ruth, the woman who had raised her, had taught her a few lessons about life and one of them was, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.” Neil Perry would not get the opportunity to make a fool of her. He was now history. She had a full life and a business to run, which at this point was likely in trouble with the second suspicious death of a guest at one of her villas in just a few months. She needed to get her act together. She needed not to cry in front of these people.

  Sabrina leaned over to speak to Henry privately.

  “We need to do something about canceling the dinner from Zeus and the music.”

  “We also need to find a place for the Keating family to stay. The other island hotels are already full with the other wedding guests,” Henry said.

  Gavin strutted over to the table, holding out his smartphone. Looking directly at Jack Keating, he began reading from his phone.

  “Keating Construction sadly announces the death of one of its most valuable employees, Elena Consuela Soto Rodriguez. Ms. Rodriguez appears to have drowned accidentally during a company event. The Keating family requests their privacy be respected during this difficult time.”

  Gavin put his phone in his pocket while everyone sitting at the table gaped at him without speaking. Why would Gavin have written a statement at all, let alone one that was so misleading?

  “Are you kidding?” Sean finally asked.

  “Jack, please tell Gavin not to release any statement until we’ve all had a chance to discuss it. This is premature, inaccurate, and totally inappropriate,” Heather said.

  “Too late. I’ve already released it. It’s called damage control. You have to take a situation like this by the balls or it will have you by yours. You should know that, Heather,” Gavin said.

  “You are just compounding a family misfortune, Gavin. I can’t believe you’ve managed to make this terrible tragedy worse than any of us could imagine,” Kate said.

  “Well, you don’t have to imagine it getting any worse now, Mother. Look who just walked through the door,” Heather said, pointing to a thin, blonde older woman dashing ahead of Lucy Detree, who was clearly trying to catch up with her.

  “Who’s that?” Henry asked, but Sabrina had already guessed.

  “That’s Anneka Lund Keating. My ex-wife,” Jack said, shaking his head.

  Chapter Eight

  Neil Perry checked the messages on his mobile phone. The new bartender he’d hired was available to fill in again for the evening shift. Mark Wentworth had been a godsend the night before when Neil got the call from Cassie Thomas about an accident. Neil was filling in for his regular bartender, Mitch. The other two bartenders were off sailing for the weekend. Mark had done a good job, and Neil was grateful he’d hired him.

  Larry Thomas had taken the corner right before Bordeaux Mountain a little too sharply. His jeep jettisoned off the road and down twenty feet into a patch of rain forest. The vegetation was so thick that if someone hadn’t been driving behind him, Larry might not have been found for days.

  St. John Rescue had to use the Jaws of Life to get him out of his jeep and bring him to the Myrah Keating Smith Health Center. Cassie asked if Neil would pick her up and take her to the clinic since Larry was driving their only vehicle.

  Of course he would, as soon as he found coverage for the bar. Larry was a good customer and friend. He ran the only seaplane out of St. John and had taken Neil to a number of islands when he first moved from LA.

  He hadn’t expected that Larry would be dead on arrival. Apparently neither had Cassie, who totally lost it and needed Neil to stay with her while she summoned her closest girlfriends. He didn’t want to have to comfort and console her while they waited, but he did. Wasn’t this one of the main reasons he had gotten out of practicing law? Too much human misery. And when it found him personally, packaged first in a divorce and then in the death of his only son, he’d gotten out fast, selling everything and moving to paradise. Paradise. Right.

  If the two messages on his phone—both urgent—were an indication of how his life in paradise was going to be today, he ought to just buy a one-way ticket back to LA. Or break down and just take the frigging Virgin Islands bar exam.

  The voicemail from an old client didn’t surprise him. Mark had told him that Sean Keating had stopped by Bar None the night before. What did surprise him was the message itself. Sean’s fiancée had died out on Ditleff P
oint, a remarkable coincidence because he knew Sabrina and Henry had a huge wedding at the new villa out there.

  Henry’s text had been more cryptic. “Death on Ditleff. Sabrina and I need you here NOW. Please.”

  Sabrina Salter, known to Neil as “Salty,” which drove her a little crazy, was the woman he found himself falling in love with. How could she be involved in another death? Only a few months before, she’d needed help from Neil with a police investigation for a similar incident. He didn’t think she did anything intentional to attract these situations any more than he did anything to encourage people to constantly seek his help.

  Neil looked at the open bar review book. Commercial Paper. He had hated studying the Uniform Commercial Code thirty years before when he was preparing to take the California bar exam. Dry and boring then, and no less so now. The US Virgin Islands had no reciprocity, regardless of how long you had practiced law anywhere. But the way things were going, if he didn’t take the bar exam, he ran the risk of being accused of practicing law without a license. No one, not even Salty, knew he was even considering putting himself through the ordeal of sitting for the bar exam again.

  He didn’t have to do this to himself. If he wanted to practice law again, he could go back to California. His ticket was still good. The amount of business his name alone would bring in would make any firm want to hire him.

  Go back? What was he thinking? Was it just all this tugging at his sleeve for help that was making him crazy? He loved living in St. John, on an old Bristol trawler in Coral Bay where he had to either row or paddle to get home.

  He slammed the bar review book closed. There were people who needed him. He thought of poor Larry Thomas, who had run out of choices the night before, and decided agonizing over his own was a privilege.

  Chapter Nine

  Sitting under the shade of the canopied table, Sabrina watched Lucy Detree catch Anneka Lund Keating by the elbow just as the woman reached their table. She marveled at how Anneka’s branch of the family made a perfect blonde brigade, starting with its matriarch and extending down to the fair grandchildren.

  She was grateful that Henry had suggested to Sean that they move away from the family table to find better reception for their phones and see if they’d heard from Neil. Sean didn’t need to be provoked by anyone else. He’d been on an emotional roller coaster since the night before, and Gavin had nearly unraveled him twice in the last half hour.

  “Ma’am, you are not the Mrs. Keating we requested return for questioning. We are looking for Lisa Keating,” Sergeant Detree said as Anneka shook her arm free of the police officer’s hold.

  “Well, you people should communicate more clearly then. I gave my name at the gate and they let me come right in. Since I’m here, I need to make sure my son is all right. Gavin, dear, this is just awful.” Anneka waltzed over to peck his cheek.

  “It’s unfortunate, but I think I’ve got things in control, at least as far as the business goes,” Gavin said.

  “Officer, please remove this woman from the premises. She has no business being here. We are grieving the loss of a woman who should be marrying our son this evening. We need our privacy,” Kate Keating said, standing to face Lucy Detree. Heather rose and stood next to her mother.

  “For the love of God, Anneka, can you just let it go for once?” Jack said, not standing to join the warring women.

  Detree seemed frozen after witnessing the family spar. Sabrina had had enough. She rose to her feet and pulled Detree to the side.

  “There’s some bad blood in this family. I think this situation could get a lot worse if the wrong Mrs. Keating, who by the way was the first Mrs. Keating, doesn’t leave quickly. I hope you don’t mind me cluing you in.”

  “Got it. Thanks.”

  “Come now or I’ll have to arrest you, ma’am. This is an official police investigation.” Detree grabbed Anneka by the same arm she’d grasped while attempting to stop her just minutes before.

  “Mother, I’m fine. Go watch the girls, please,” Gavin said, seeming to comprehend that his mother was on the verge of incarceration. Sabrina remained standing behind Sergeant Detree, staring at mother and son. She was reminded of the old saying about the apple not falling far from the tree.

  Anneka glared back at Sabrina, then smirked.

  “Aren’t you that weather reporter who murdered her husband?” Looking over her shoulder at Kate and Jack, she said, “You people really know how to throw a wedding.”

  Chapter Ten

  Neil arrived at Villa Nirvana just in time to see an older blonde woman being escorted out by Sergeant Lucy Detree.

  “Hey, Lucy, what you got going here?” Neil asked the young policewoman he’d met through Detective Janquar.

  “Sorry, Neil. This is an official police investigation. Can’t talk about it.” Lucy slammed the door to Anneka’s rental car shut.

  “I’m here officially. I got a call from a client I represented in LA that his fiancée died here. I’m here to help him out until I can find local counsel for him,” Neil lied. Why did he think he’d be reading more about Commercial Paper the way things were going?

  “Oh, you mean Sean Keating? In that case, come on up to the house. We’ve got everyone sitting around the pool. Don’t go anywhere else. We haven’t started in the house.”

  Neil’s legal antennae popped at the sound of Lucy’s warning. This sounded more like a criminal investigation to a seasoned criminal lawyer.

  “Are people free to leave?” Neil asked. He knew the rules on paper regarding criminal procedure in the islands were not the same as those practiced. He hoped they were as loose as usual.

  “We’re letting the people who didn’t arrive until this morning for the brunch go shortly. They all have their names on a list at the gatehouse showing their arrival times so they can be ruled out. Except your girlfriend and her partner. They get to stay and give statements with the other people who were here last night when it appears the death occurred.”

  Neil caught a ride up to the house with Detree. He paused at the foot of the driveway, taking in the sheer ostentatiousness of the villa.

  He could see Amy and Erin were packing up the Triple B food truck. The open great room, which served as the center of the house, was empty other than for a few cops with purple gloves standing around, a sign the cops were collecting evidence. At the far end of the great room was the predictable infinity pool, although this one even had a fancy fountain. He spotted Sabrina and Sean at one of the tables around the pool.

  Neil strode confidently toward them, not acknowledging the cops in the great room. Oh, he still knew how to play this game. The question was, did he want to?

  Sean saw him first, getting up from his chair where he’d been sitting next to Henry. Sean rushed toward him, hand stretched out, ready to greet him.

  “Neil, thanks for coming. Things are a mess here.”

  Neil shook Sean’s hand, remembering how he’d saved his butt from a drunk and disorderly charge that had involved the daughter of a film director and had promised to get ugly. He’d helped Sean out a few other times for a few misdemeanors that weren’t uncommon with young men in their twenties who drink too much and think getting laid is a national sport. But he’d liked Sean and remembered how he’d come up with quick cash when Neil wanted out of LA fast.

  Neil walked back with Sean to the table, saying hello to Sabrina and Henry after being introduced to Jack and Kate Keating and Heather Malzone.

  “What did you find out? They’re not telling us anything,” Sabrina jumped in.

  “How about first someone clues me in?” Neil asked, not entirely sure he actually wanted to know.

  “They’re not saying whether Elena committed suicide, Neil. We were supposed to be married here this evening. She wouldn’t sign the prenup my family wanted to protect the business. She felt we were attacking her character. I was so stupid. I went to tell her I didn’t care about the prenup this morning, but she was gone,” Sean said. “She was the
one, Neil. You know what I mean? The real thing.”

  Neil looked at Sabrina without even thinking. But she looked away from him and stared at her phone.

  “I thought she was distraught over the prenup and that she’d committed suicide, but the police have been treating us like something criminal has happened ever since Sabrina brought Elena in on the paddleboard,” Kate said.

  “You went out and got the body, Salty? Really?” Whatever was she thinking? Why didn’t she just wear a T-shirt that said, “Dead bodies find me”? Neil figured the bar exam was definitely a good idea if Salty was in his future.

  “Kate spotted her while she was painting. We couldn’t tell what we were seeing floating in the water. If I didn’t check and Elena was alive and then drowned, everyone would have blamed me. You know that, Neil.”

  “Calm down, Salty,” Neil reached to pat her hand, but Sabrina drew it away. This was way more than he’d bargained for when he dropped everything to come help.

  “Calm down? Don’t you dare tell me to calm down, Neil Perry. How condescending. I leap into action, ready to help in the best way I can, struggle to bring Elena in from the water, where the lace on her wedding gown had gotten stuck on a rock—”

  “She was in her wedding gown?” Neil asked. He knew he had ignited Sabrina’s temper and needed to apologize fast, but he couldn’t get past the poor woman drowning in her wedding gown.

  “Yes. It was an awful way to find her. Sabrina did a great job. I’m very grateful,” said Kate, looking over at Sabrina, whose cheeks were still flushed from her outburst.

  “Look, Salty, I’m sorry. I just can’t wrap my head around all of this.”

  “She had it on late last night before we left Villa Nirvana. I went to see her before Sabrina and I left after clearing up after the rehearsal dinner. She had refused to sign the prenup and told me she may as well get to wear it because it didn’t look like there was going to be a wedding,” Henry chimed in.