“Holy sh—”
Ivan slipped the rope over my head and around my waist. He cinched me up, measured out some slack, and moved on to Frank. “The key here is to keep calm.”
“Right,” Frank said. “Like that’s possible in this situation. We’re literally tied to a killer.”
Ivan tied the other end of the rope around his own waist and leveled his gaze at me. “I’m dead serious.”
Of that, I had no doubt.
“Maddie, you’ll dive down by the wall of the cavern first. Once you are a full body length below the surface you’ll see a tunnel. Enter it. Then feel your way left, right, right, left, straight, and you’ll be there.”
“And what if I make a mistake?”
“Don’t,” he said.
“Left, right, right, left, straight?”
“You got it,” he said.
“Ready?”
I wasn’t, but I nodded anyway.
“Frank?”
“Left, right, right, left, straight.”
“We’re ready,” Ivan said. “Let’s go.”
The next thing I knew, he’d counted to three and we jumped as a group into surprisingly warm, clear water that would have felt heavenly under different circumstances.
“Everyone take a breath,” Ivan instructed.
Both Frank and I took a breath.
“Deeper,” he said. “Maddie, take the deepest breath you can, hold it, and go.”
Without allowing myself to think about just how unbelievably panicked I was, how much I hated confined spaces (particularly pitch black ones underwater), or where I was really going, I did exactly what I’d been told, hoping left, right, right, left, straight was, in fact, right.
And not left.
I dove down into darkness, found the tunnel, and burrowed my way toward I didn’t know what, using my arms to alterately breaststroke and feel the walls of the tunnels. Just when I was sure my lungs would burst, the tunnel seemed to fall away and I saw light from behind my eyelids. I feared it was the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel, but then I broke the water’s surface into what was, indeed, one of the most stalactite-and stalagmite-filled crystalline cavern I’d ever been inside, willingly or otherwise.
And I was looking straight at Eloise, who, despite a head full of Bo Derek–style braids, was as unharmed as promised.
She was, however, as shocked as I was in shock.
“You’re the surprise?” she asked, looking more than a little disappointed.
“Eloise, thank God you’re okay.”
“Why wouldn’t I be?” she asked. “I mean, I was a little weirded out about the whole diving straight into a cenote to get to a cave thing, after what happened to Geo and Ivan and everything, but if he can keep me from being afraid of reptiles and stuff, I totally had to trust him. And isn’t this just the coolest place? Can you believe how there’s all this natural light from above?”
“It’s beautiful, but—”
I felt a tug around my waist, and Frank popped up out of the water.
“Daddy?”
He coughed up some water. “Eloise!”
“Why are you here?” she asked, finally voicing just how unusual our presence really was.
“Honey, sometimes, when you’re particularly charmed by a man”—I pointedly didn’t look at Frank—“you can get distracted and miss a few key signs.”
On cue, Ivan appeared from below the water.
“Ivan?” Eloise asked. “What’s is going on?”
“A picnic,” he said.
“That, and Ivan killed Alejandro,” Frank blurted.
“What?”
As Eloise’s incredulous voice echoed through the cave, Ivan swam over to the ledge where she’d been awaiting his return, got out of the water beside her, untied himself, and began to tow us over. “As I said to your parents, I’m sorry to have to do this, but I can’t have you ganging up on me. I really hope you understand.”
“I don’t understand at all,” Eloise said.
“Ivan killed Alejandro and almost killed Geo,” Frank repeated.
“That’s impossible,” she said. “He was almost killed himself in that—”
“Cave?” I asked, noting a stalactite formation that looked like a church organ. “I’m afraid it’s true, honey.”
She turned to him. “Ivan?”
“Sit there and don’t move,” he said, directing her to a flat spot between two rock spires while he relieved Frank of what was an apparently waterproof backpack and tied the two of us near each other but just out of arm’s reach.
“I thought you really liked me,” Eloise said.
“I do,” he said, securing Frank and me to nearby rock spires. “That’s one of the main reasons this is happening.” He finished tying us up, then secured Eloise. “I’m not hurting you, am I?” he asked.
She looked at him like he was as insane as he truly had to be.
We all watched as he quietly unpacked sandwiches, fruit, and chips from Frank’s bag.
“Lunch?”
“No thanks,” we all said, basically in unison.
“Suit yourselves,” Ivan took a bite of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. “But I suggest you eat the perishable stuff first.”
Frank looked like he was about to vomit again as Ivan chewed, swallowed, and sat down on a rock. “First of all, I never intended to kill Alejandro,” he said.
Whether or not we believed him, we all nodded in agreement.
“I came down here to Mexico on my honeymoon …”
“You’re married?” Eloise and I both asked, she looking more horrified than she had been to hear he was a murderer.
“Not anymore.”
“Wait,” Eloise said. “You said you were only twenty-three.”
“I’m twenty-nine,” he said, “but the dreadlocks shave off a few years.”
“Does it even matter?” Frank said.
“We landed in Mexico,” Ivan continued, “and we were guided toward a man sitting in a booth near the airport exit who we assumed was with our resort. So we listened as he explained all the sights and attractions. He told us if we signed up for a hour-and-a-half presentation at the Hacienda de la Fortuna and paid twenty dollars each, we would receive free tickets Chichen Itza, which was a three-hundred-dollar value.”
“Were you staying at Hacienda de la Fortuna?”
“No, but he promised us the presentation would get refunded through our hotel if we changed our minds, so we signed up. Later that night, we decided we didn’t want to waste time at a timeshare presentation, so we spoke to someone at our hotel and showed them our receipt.”
“Let me guess—they knew nothing about it?” I offered.
“Exactly. And since we wanted to go to the ruins, we decided to just go on the tour. So we went, had the gourmet breakfast, and took a tour of the property. No big deal. That was, until they started the whole hard sell business on us. Six hours and a lot of free drinks later, we finally stopped saying no, signed a contract, and handed over a credit card that we couldn’t afford to max out.”
“Sounds brutal,” Frank said, twisting his hand back and forth. “But that’s hardly worthy of murder.”
“Twisting will only make the rope tighter around your wrists.”
Frank stopped working his wrist.
“At the time, I had two years of law school under my belt.”
“You’re a lawyer?” Eloise asked.
“At that point I was sure I was going to be, so I asked about everything during the contract signing. There was one Spanish document I asked about in particular, and I was told that it pertained to our forty-eight-hour right to cancel. My wife, who was also a law student, asked how we went about canceling if we needed to, and our salesperson provided her an email address.
“By the next day, we’d sobered up from all the alcohol they’d given us to make us sign and decided we’d made a bad decision. We scanned our contract looking for a phone number, but all we could find was the boo
king line so we wrote up a signed letter, attached it to an email, and sent it off to the address the salesperson had given us.”
“Did you also dispute the deposit with your credit card company?” I advised, forgetting about our circumstances long enough to put on my Mrs. Frugalicious cap.34
“Absolutely. But when we got home, we got a call almost immediately, welcoming us to the Hacienda de la Fortuna. I informed the agent that we had canceled our contract. Later that day, I was called by none other than Alejandro Espinoza, who claimed we’d signed away our right to cancel because we got a special deal and that the document in Spanish was a waiver to the usual forty-eight-hour cancelation.”
“I heard a story like this in the timeshare office,” I said.
“There are a lot of them,” he said. “Alejandro insisted our only option was to downgrade our package, but we wouldn’t get the deposit back. I said we wanted our contract canceled and our deposit refunded. He threatened that our contract was headed straight to the legal department and that I should be prepared to play hardball. Frustrated and worried, I started doing some research and found various complaints and articles from other people who had been in our exact situation. I started emailing every address I could find, filed complaints with the Federal Consumer Board, and sent a certified letter to the Hacienda de la Fortuna.
“That’s when the dogfight really began.
“For months, Alejandro and the legal department kept calling and threatening us, everything from collections to sending thugs after me. Instead of giving in and keeping the timeshare like I probably should have, I became obsessed with fighting back.”
“I’d have done the same thing,” Frank said, sounding way more cavalier than I’d ever seen him act.
Ivan sighed and hung his head for a moment. “Well, by that time, my wife had decided I was far too compulsive for her. She left me for one of our law professors.”
“That’s awful,” Eloise said.
“At that point, I had nothing to lose.”
Frank looked like he was ringside at the fights. “So you came down here to kill Alejandro?”
“My plan was to come down and fight him in court and/or the court of public opinion. I mean, why are these outfits allowed to lie and manipulate people? Why hasn’t anyone stepped up to stop this kind of unethical behavior?”
“That is a good point,” Eloise said. “It really is.”
Ivan smiled at her. “So I came down here, got a job at the resort, and started collecting information that would expose the operation for what it is.”
“Didn’t Alejandro recognize you?” Eloise asked.
“Not with the dreadlocks I’d grown to disguise myself. Plus, I quickly discovered I was one in a sea of strong-armed timeshare owners, so he probably wouldn’t have known who I was anyway. I managed to collect enough information to get some traction, then—”
“The Family Frugalicious showed up,” I said. “And messed with your timetable.”
Ivan nodded. “Something like that.”
“How did we mess things up?” Eloise asked, looking more than a little hurt.
“For one thing, you made me feel things I didn’t think I could feel after my wife left.” He smiled sweetly at her. “But when Alejandro started bragging about how he was bringing the TV show down here and was about to be both rich and famous no matter what it took, I knew I had to act right away. No way could I let him destroy your family or any other family that came down here as a result of watching your show.”
“So you roofied and drowned him?” Frank asked.
“I slipped a little something into his cocktail and called him on a house phone to meet me near the Estanque Reflectante, where I knew the security cameras were down. I’d planned to get him to admit to his timeshare tactics, and insist he make amends. That, or I was going to expose the web of Hacienda de la Fortuna corruption and cartel ties I’d also uncovered.
“What I didn’t know was that he was drinking vodka instead of water half the time and that the combination with the Rohypnol would make him erratic. He met me at the pool. I let him know who I really was and what I expected from him. Then, instead of some slightly out of it conversation where he admitted what I needed to know, he called me a bunch of awful names in Spanish, picked up a hand weight, and chucked at it my face.”
Ivan lowered his head.
“I’m afraid that’s when I lost it and pushed him into the pool.” He paused. “I couldn’t exactly say how it happened, but the next thing I knew, he was … sinking.”
None of us said anything.
“At first, I panicked,” Ivan continued, his voice shaky. “Then I realized that no one would be surprised, nor would they want to really investigate the untimely drowning of a tyrant with known mob connections.”
“So that romantic beach walk we took during the reception was really just an alibi for you?” Eloise asked.
“No,” he said emphatically. “It was only after you guys decided to start investigating that I realized I’d need one. That, and I needed to get creative if I wanted to stay off your radar.”
“So you nearly drowned Geo?” I asked.
“I was trying to scare you into halting your investigation.”
“Which had the opposite effect,” Frank said. “After all, we are investigative journalists.”
I sighed.
“My only choice was to stay one step ahead of you.”
“By trying to convince me the murder was connected to Alejandro’s land deal?” I asked.
“I wanted you to know who the people your show is doing business with really are. I mean, along with the timeshare hard selling, that whole public-land-for-private-use sweetheart deal was all about kickbacks, payoffs, and sketchy connections.”
“The mayor insisted the deal was completely on the up and up,” I said.
“Of course he did,” Ivan said.
“He admitted that the investor you saw was American, but said he was also a Mexican citizen.”
“Did he tell you who the man actually was?”
I shook my head.
“His name is Godofredo ‘Jeff’ Kortajarena.”
“Sounds authentic to me,” Frank said.
“He made a fortune in the US selling clothing made in south-of-the-border sweatshops.” Ivan shook his head. “They don’t come much dirtier than him, making it an easy leap for everyone, including the mayor, to think Alejandro was killed by a rival bent on stopping the deal.”
“And you get away with murder,” I concluded.
“I stopped one man,” Ivan said sadly. “I just wish there weren’t so many Alejandros out there, eager to bully people out of their money and happiness for the illusion of paradise.”
The word paradise echoed through the cave.
“At least Alejandro’s death had nothing to do with Anastasia or the show,” Frank finally said.
Ivan snickered. “Considering he’d all but inked a deal for his own reality show about the resort and the world of timeshares, I’d say his life certainly had everything to do with your show coming here.”
“And Geo told me that when they were in the planning stages of this shoot, he walked in on a conversation between Stasia and one of the execs. He was concerned that the wedding alone wasn’t going to be interesting or cost-effective enough to justify the expense for all of us to come down there.”
“What did she say?” Frank asked.
“That she’d make sure it would be.”
“I’d say the same thing if I were her,” Frank said. “It’s all about making things happen in this business.”
I looked down at the rope tied around my hands. “And look what happened as a result.”
Frank was uncharacteristically silent.
“On that note,” Ivan said, reaching for one of the backpacks, “I believe my work here is finished.”
“You’re not really going to leave us here to die,” Eloise wailed, “are you?”
“I’ll let someone know how
to find you as soon as I get where I need to go,” he said. “In the meantime, you have provisions and Eloise’s survival expertise to rely on.”
“Eloise’s expertise?” Both Frank and I asked simultaneously and incredulously.
“From everything she’s told me, she’s picked up quite a few handy outdoor survival techniques from watching reality TV.”
“I should never have told you that,” she said. “Or anything else.”
“What exactly were you telling him?” Frank asked.
“Ivan, is that how you kept one step ahead of Maddie?” Eloise asked. “By asking me all of those questions about my family?”
“I was truly interested,” he said, looking straight at her. “And not just because I needed the information.”
“I thought we had something—”
“Special,” Ivan said, lopping off a handful of his dreadlocked hair. “We did. I’m truly sorry it has to end like this.”
“You don’t have to do this, Ivan,” she pleaded.
“But I do,” he said, big chunks of hair falling into the water. “Ugh. I hate these damn dreadlocks even more than that nauseating patchouli.”
“I think she meant you don’t have to leave us here,” I said.
He swung his gaze over to me. “Sorry. This is how it has to be.”
“But it doesn’t,” I said, hoping my prior history of talking my way out of danger with murderers (albeit not entirely successfully) might serve me. “No one knows you killed Alejandro except us.”
“I would have done the same thing,” Frank said.
“Alejandro deserved what he got,” Eloise added.
“I agree,” I said. “We’ll never say a word to anyone. You’ll still get away with your plan.”
“We swear,” Eloise said. “Never, ever.”
“We’ll take you back to the US with us. We’re supposed to leave tomorrow night.”
“Sorry, folks,” he said. “But you should know that I have to get a lot farther away than that to be free of the reach of the Familia de la Fortuna.”
“But we’re the only ones who know what happened,” I protested.
“It’s just a matter of time before people start talking and figures it all out too.”
“If they do, we’ll vouch for you …” I reasoned.
Sweetheart Deal Page 22