by Brenda Hiatt
I couldn’t remember ever being called “poor baby” by anyone other than my mother. And she hadn’t said it in a couple of decades, at least. Even during the divorce, she’d been more interested in talking me out of it than comforting me.
“Hey, there.”
I turned to see Ronan coming across the lobby. “That was quick. Where were you, in the casino again?”
He grinned. “Guilty as charged. So, do you want to go somewhere, or just get drinks in one of the bars here?”
I remembered what Agent Truman had said about the ruthlessness of Stefan Melampus’s enemies and said, “I’d just as soon stay here, I think. Maybe the pool bar? It’s a beautiful night.”
Besides, I didn’t want to associate that lovely area with my FBI inquisition.
“Great idea. Come on.” He grabbed my hand, which was both startling and pleasant, and headed for the patio with me in tow. Ironically, once out back, he turned toward the same corner where I’d just spent an hour with Agents Truman and Walters.
“Um, how about something a little closer to the bar,” I suggested, pointing to a relatively isolated table set well back from the pool.
He changed course without argument. “So, what’ll you have? I’ll go get us drinks, then you can unburden yourself to me.”
I couldn’t help returning his smile, though I knew I shouldn’t let him pamper me like this. It would be way too easy to get used to, and once I left Aruba, no one was likely to pamper me again for a long time—if ever. Besides, I had a serious bone to pick with him, and I didn’t want to get distracted before I’d done so.
“A margarita on the rocks, with salt,” I told him.
While he was at the bar, I pulled out my phone and turned it off. If those agents wanted to talk with me again, it wasn’t going to be tonight. I also didn’t want any demands or worries from my mother or even my daughters. I was going to unjangle my nerves, get some truth out of Ronan, and then go to bed.
After a good night’s sleep, I’d decide whether to keep those other two appointments or catch the first flight back to Indianapolis. At the moment, I was leaning toward the latter—safer—option.
“Here you are, my lady,” said Ronan, setting down my margarita with an exaggerated bow. “On the rocks, with salt. Now, what kind of wringer did those Feds put you through?”
“Just a lot of questions.” I didn’t meet his eye. “Where I found the ring, what the guy looked like who attacked us, stuff like that.”
“Us? You told them about me?” he asked sharply.
I looked up at that. “Actually, no. But would it matter if I had? What haven’t you told me, Ronan?”
“I’ve told you plenty—more than I probably should have.” It wasn’t really an answer, and we both knew it. “How did the Feds know to contact you in the first place?”
“I e-mailed them,” I said bluntly. “Yesterday morning, before you and I met for breakfast. After seeing that woman who looked like Melanie the night before, I read up on the Melampus case online, and it seemed like the right thing to do.”
“And you always try to do the right thing, whatever the cost, don’t you?” His tone wasn’t as cynical as his words, but it still made me defensive.
“I think most decent people do—don’t you?”
He didn’t answer that, instead just saying, “I don’t want you to get hurt, Wynne. I hope you know that by now.”
“Won’t I be safer if I know what I’m up against?” I challenged him. “For instance, how long have you known that Melanie Melampus’s sister was here in Aruba?”
He hesitated so long I didn’t think he was going to reply. “You showed them the pictures, didn’t you?”
I nodded. “You suspected from the start it was the sister and not Melanie herself, didn’t you? Did you know she was here in Aruba?”
“She’s the reason I’m here.”
Goose bumps flared all over me, despite the fact it was still about eighty degrees. “You mean . . . you know her?”
“No, of course not,” he said so emphatically that I believed him. I relaxed marginally.
“But why didn’t you tell me before that she was here on the island? I even asked you directly if you’d talked with her, and you said no.”
“And it was true. I haven’t spoken with her yet. The only address the insurance company has is a PO box, and there’s no phone number listed. We weren’t even sure she was in Aruba, but it was the only place left to look.”
“So where has she been? The FBI guys thought she might have spoken with Melanie before her disappearance. I assumed from that she’d been in Miami.”
He shook his head. “To the best of my knowledge, she hasn’t been in the States for years—maybe decades. I haven’t even found anyone who’s seen her, though she granted a couple of phone interviews after Melanie’s disappearance. That’s the real reason I wanted to borrow those photos—to make copies.”
“But Agent Walters said Melanie and her sister look a lot alike. How would he know that if no one’s seen her?”
“Because Melanie said so herself. It was in the news a little over a year ago, how she’d finally found her long-lost sister and flew to Brazil to see her. You didn’t follow that story either, I take it?”
I shook my head, trying to remember if I’d seen any mention of it in my various internet searches. If I had, I must have skimmed over it.
“It wasn’t that big a story—just a blip, really, mainly on the entertainment-type news shows. The gist of it was, Melanie and her sister were separated when they were very young—like five or six years old—when they went into foster care.”
“Foster care?” Obviously, I hadn’t done nearly enough research on Melanie. “Why were they in foster care?”
Ronan shrugged. “Mother died, father was abusive—or maybe it was the other way around. I forget. But it was a rough way to grow up, I imagine. Not much in the way of opportunities. No one ever would have heard of either of them again if Stefan Melampus hadn’t fallen for Melanie.”
Now I was really curious. “And how did that happen? I assumed she was a socialite-type, but it sounds like they didn’t exactly move in the same circles.”
“No, not at all. It was like something out of a classic romance, actually. He saw her on stage at some community theater in Miami—I think he was there for some fundraiser—and arranged to meet her afterward. A real Cinderella story. I think she was working as a waitress at the time, barely making rent.”
“And the sister?”
“She’d apparently been adopted out of the foster system, and her parents moved to Brazil with her. Melanie never had the resources to track her down until after she married Melampus.”
I mulled that over for a minute or two. “So did it take her that long to find her, or did she only start looking a year or two ago?”
“I have no idea. Those kinds of details haven’t been in the news, at least that I’ve seen, and I’ve had no reason to go looking. Why?”
“Just curious,” I said with a shrug. I supposed it made sense that the first thing on a new bride’s mind—especially one who’d gone from rags to riches as dramatically as Melanie had—wouldn’t be a sister she hadn’t seen since she was six.
But maybe later, once the first gloss was off her fairy tale? Yeah, I could buy that, having been there.
“Okay, let’s assume it was Michelle Alvares I saw in Oranjestad the other night and not Melanie. That would still mean she was the one who tried to lure me to the Cartier store. Agent Truman brushed off her involvement in all this, but—”
“Yeah, I’ve been thinking about that ever since you saw her downtown that night. It’s why I tried so hard to find her then, in fact. She had to know about the ring—maybe even lost it herself and is trying to get it back.”
“Then you thi
nk Michelle killed her sister for the insurance money?” I felt another chill wash over me. Melanie Melampus wanting the ring back so she wouldn’t be found was one thing. But a possible murderer trying to cover her tracks was much, much scarier.
He spread his hands. “I honestly don’t know. When I came here to find Michelle, I didn’t really think she had anything to do with Melanie’s murder. I was just hoping to discover some kind of irregularity about the life insurance policy. But your finding Melanie’s ring, plus the stuff that’s happened since, make it look like she was involved, one way or another.”
“Agent Truman mentioned other people, former associates, who want to see Stefan Melampus go down for this supposed crime,” I said, trying not to let fear take over. “He thinks the guy who attacked us this morning might have been one of them.”
“Did you tell him you saw the same man with Melanie’s sister?”
I tried to remember. “I don’t think so. They were firing so many questions at me, I didn’t get much of a chance to volunteer anything. Anyway, that doesn’t mean they’re wrong. Michelle could be working with Melampus’s enemies. If she knew about the life insurance policy, she’d have a financial incentive to see her sister dead and Stefan Melampus framed for the murder.”
“So you think—what? That Michelle somehow orchestrated whatever really happened on Stefan Melampus’s yacht that night?” He actually seemed interested to hear my theory.
“It’s not impossible, is it? You said yourself you didn’t think Stefan Melampus was guilty.” I thought for a moment, a scenario unfolding in my imagination.
“Melanie might even have been in on the scheme herself,” I speculated. “Maybe she and her sister planned to split the life insurance money. It would explain her taking out that policy. But then her sister double crossed her and really had her killed. Maybe she had the killer—if it was someone else—send her the ring as proof or something.”
“Which would explain that ring turning up in Aruba.” He stared at me for a long moment with an odd half-smile playing about his mouth, then said, “In case you’re interested, you just came up with the exact theory I’ve been operating on since I first saw that ring.”
“I did?” I couldn’t help feeling a bit proud of myself. After all, he’d had years of experience at this kind of thing and I’d had what—three days? “I guess I’m just a natural, huh?”
“So it seems.” He clinked his glass against mine. “So, are you going to drink that before all the ice melts?”
I picked up my forgotten margarita and took a sip, marshalling my courage for my next question. “So, why didn’t you tell me your theory from the start? Why didn’t you trust me?” I didn’t quite manage to keep the hurt from my voice.
He hesitated for a long moment, and when he answered, it was with obvious reluctance. “I guess I was afraid if you knew the person after the ring could have been involved with a murder, you might bolt. So I let you go on believing it was Melanie you’d seen.”
Anger started to stir, temporarily pushing my fear to the background. “And you didn’t want me to bolt—why? So you could use me as bait? To lure Michelle out of hiding? So much for all of your claims that you don’t like to think of me at risk.”
“I don’t, Wynne. I do mean that. And except for that attack this morning, I don’t think you really have been. If you want to fly back to the States tomorrow, I won’t try to stop you. But this thing may well go far beyond Michelle Alvares and Aruba. And I won’t be able to protect you, once you go home.”
With a shiver, I remembered again what Agent Truman had said about Stefan Melampus’s powerful, ruthless enemies. Which meant there might be some truth in Ronan’s words, even though I was pretty sure he was saying these things to keep me here for his own mercenary purposes.
“So, just how much was that insurance policy worth?” I asked, suddenly curious. “You never said.”
Again, he hesitated. “Ten million dollars,” he finally said, with obvious reluctance.
“Holy sh—! I mean . . . that’s a lot of money.” Definitely enough to make a person capable of violence. No wonder Michelle Alvares wanted that ring back. But I needed to know the rest. “And what’s your cut, if you get the insurance company out of paying?”
“My usual fee, plus expenses. And . . . a bonus. Ten percent of whatever I save them.” He said it without expression, but my eyes widened.
“A million bucks? I’m surprised you haven’t tried to take the ring from me yourself,” I said without thinking.
The look he gave me was hard to decipher. “Do you really think I’m that kind of man, Wynne?”
“I’ve only known you a few days,” I pointed out. “I was married to my husband for almost twenty-five years before I found out what kind of man he was.”
“Point taken. And it’s not like I’ve been completely honest with you, even for the short time you’ve known me. I won’t say the thought of taking the ring didn’t occur to me, though I never considered doing anything that would put you in danger. I hope you believe that, at least.”
“I do.” And I pretty much did. But that didn’t mean he hadn’t been the one to break into the hotel safe. Or my room that first night, for that matter.
But I didn’t have it in me to ask him about it right now. Though his motives might be mixed, at the moment he was my only friend in Aruba. I didn’t want to think about what would have happened underwater this morning if he hadn’t been right there with me.
Of course, I wouldn’t have been diving at all, if it weren’t for his eagerness to get more evidence for the insurance company, I reminded myself. A million dollars . . .
“I still wish you’d trusted me all along,” I couldn’t help saying.
He put a hand on top of mine, where it lay on the table between us. “It wasn’t a matter of trust, exactly, Wynne. Over the years, I’ve got into the habit of playing my cards pretty close to the chest. I once lost out on a very big case because I talked about my theories to another investigator. Because I was too trusting.”
“Then it is about trust,” I pointed out. “But I’m not an insurance investigator.”
“Not yet,” he replied with a grin. “Maybe you ought to look into becoming one. As you said, you’re a natural.”
“I’ll think about it,” I said with a laugh. “But it sounds like a riskier line of work than I’m looking for.”
“It’s the risk that makes it fun.” He really seemed to mean it.
I shook my head. “Maybe for you. You’re young, single, footloose. I—”
“You’re not single?”
“Well, yes, I am—now. But I have two daughters—”
“Who have lives of their own. Face it, Wynne, you’re as footloose as I am—or at least you could be, if you’d let yourself.”
I stared at him as his words sank in, and I realized it was true. I was as free as I wanted to be. The concept was as scary as it was liberating.
“Paradigm shift?” he asked sympathetically when I didn’t reply.
“Yeah. It’s a lot to wrap my mind around.” In fact, everything I’d learned tonight was a lot to wrap my mind around. It might take me days to process it all.
“Take your time,” he said. “Meanwhile, maybe we can come up with a plan to flush out Michelle Alvares.”
“Not tonight,” I told him firmly. “I’m going to head up to bed. Believe it or not, all this excitement has worn me out, after the boring life I’ve led till now.”
He chuckled with me but stood to help me to my feet. “I keep forgetting you’re not used to this kind of thing. Do you want me to walk you up?”
I did, to be honest. The thought of returning to my room alone, maybe to find further threats on the phone—or something worse—gave me the willies. But I was determined to be a grown-up about this.
“No, I’ll be fine. But thanks.”
“Okay, if you’re sure. You have my number now. Don’t hesitate to call if you need . . . anything. Even if it’s just a sympathetic ear.”
“Thanks. I’ll do that.”
By the time I reached my room a few minutes later, I’d decided that if my key didn’t work, I was going straight back to the front desk. And if my room had been ransacked again, I was changing hotels for the night, then flying back to Indy in the morning. My courage was at low ebb.
Of course, since I’d planned for disaster, my key card worked on the first try, and when I cautiously entered my room, everything looked just as I’d left it. Maybe the bad guys, whoever they were, hadn’t figured out which room I was in yet. I could only hope.
Still, the first thing I did was to check the hem of the drapes. Yes, the ring was still there. I left it and started to get ready for bed. I’d told Ronan the truth when I’d said the events of the day had taken their toll; I was exhausted.
Not until I was plugging my cell phone into its charger did I remember I’d had it off for the past hour or more. I powered it up, mainly from a sense of duty, and sure enough, I had a voice mail waiting.
“Hey, Mom, it’s me,” came Deb’s voice, and I relaxed. Just more phone tag.
But then she continued. “I’ve been trying to get you since last night, and I really need you to call. It’s not something I wanted to leave on a voice mail, especially since you’re on vacation and all and I don’t want to ruin it, but—call me back, okay?”
I glanced at the clock and decided Deb would still be awake, since it was an hour earlier there. What could be going on that she wouldn’t want to mention in a voice mail? Luckily for my peace of mind, she picked up on the second ring so I could ask her that question myself.
“Deb? I just got your message. What’s going on?”
“Oh, Mom, hi! I’m sorry if that message scared you, but I was starting to worry about you, too. I’m really glad you’ve called.”
That didn’t calm me a bit. “What is it? What’s happened? Are you and Bess okay?”
“We’re fine. It’s nothing like that. But Mrs. Henderson called me last night and said that when she came by to feed Milo and bring in the mail, it looked like someone had broken into the house.