by Brenda Hiatt
“Yo,” he answered.
“Mr. Haliakis? It’s Wynne Seally.”
“Oh, hey, Ms. S. You sound kinda upset. Something wrong?”
“Yes, I’m afraid something is very wrong. I need you to give a message to Mr. Melampus for me—and an apology.” I quickly told him about the slashed portrait and the note, concluding with my intention to comply with Michelle’s demand.
“I know Mr. Melampus needs this ring as evidence to clear him, but my daughters’ safety comes first. I hope he’ll understand.”
“He will, Ms. Seally, I know it. He’d tell you to do whatever you have to, to keep them safe. He’d want you to stay safe, too, so be careful, okay? Let me come with?”
“No, but thank you. And please let Mr. Melampus know how sorry I am.”
I figured if Gus was working with Michelle, I hadn’t told him anything he didn’t already know. And if he wasn’t, it couldn’t hurt to have someone else aware of what was going on. In case I didn’t come back.
Swallowing hard, I hurried to get my sewing scissors from my toiletry case, then knelt by the drapes to retrieve the ring. I snipped a few threads and prised it out through the hole.
Next, I quickly changed out of my sundress and into shorts, t-shirt, and sneakers—something I could move easily in. Just in case. Finally, I pulled my hair back into a ponytail and used the bathroom, since I didn’t know when I’d get another chance.
I glanced at the clock. Almost eleven thirty. Where had the time gone? I stuck the ring in my pocket and my cell phone in my purse and headed to the elevator.
On the way down, alone in the elevator, I pulled out the ring and held it in my palm for a moment, heartily wishing I’d never found the cursed thing.
But . . .
But if I hadn’t, I’d have missed out on the adventure of a lifetime: underwater thrills, getting to know Ronan, discovering I had a knack for cloak-and-dagger tactics. My part in that adventure would be over in an hour, and I was ready to be done with it, but I was glad I’d experienced it. If nothing else, it had given me stories to tell my future grandkids—and memories that would last the rest of my life.
In fact, my normal life was going to seem pretty boring after the past week. But as long as my girls were safe, I could handle boring. I’d lived with it for forty-six years.
The elevator doors opened, cutting off my musings and catapulting me back into the adventure that wasn’t over yet. I hoped the concierge would be able to get me a cab at this hour—a real one, not one of the rickety dollar ones.
Even more, I hoped I’d see Ronan, or at least get a call back from him, before I left the hotel. Most of all, I hoped that I wasn’t doing something completely stupid by complying with the demand in that note. What if it was a trap? But even if it was, with my girls at risk, what choice did I have?
Once in the lobby, I anxiously scanned the area, which was nearly deserted at this hour. No sign of Ronan. I walked partway down the open-air corridors in either direction, hoping to get lucky. I even peeked into the piano bar, which still had several people in it. No Ronan. No Tom or Curt Phelps either, but that was just as well, since I wasn’t planning to tell either of them about this.
Disappointed and more than a little panicky, I went back to the main area of the lobby. No one was at the concierge desk this late, so I went to the woman at the reception desk and asked if she could call me a cab.
“Of course,” she replied, picking up the phone.
“Wynne?” came Tom’s voice at my shoulder.
Crap. “Oh. Hi,” I said. “I was just—”
“I heard you asking for a cab. Never mind,” he said to the desk clerk. “I’ll drive her.”
The woman nodded, smiled, and hung up the phone, then turned to help the same woman from earlier that evening, who now seemed to have some kind of issue with the size of her blanket.
“But—” I began, but Tom put a hand on my arm and turned me away from the desk.
“Wherever you’re going at this hour, Wynne, I’ll take you. I don’t mind. Really.”
I glanced back at the reception clerk, but the cranky guest was still in full tirade. “I appreciate the offer, Tom, but I really think it would be better if I took a cab. In fact, I insist.”
“Oh, going to visit a boyfriend?” He looked more amused than jealous.
“Of course not. It’s just . . . a personal errand. Something I need to do alone.”
“Hey, I’ll just play cab driver, okay? Once we get wherever you’re going, you can do whatever you need to do alone. I won’t interfere.”
The clock behind the reception desk showed eleven forty. I was running out of time.
“Okay, fine. But when I ask you to let me out of the car, you stop and let me out. No questions asked. Okay?”
“Deal,” he said. “Come on.”
I was as surprised as I was relieved that he didn’t demand an explanation on the spot, but I wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth right then, with time so tight. I followed him out to the parking lot and climbed back into the ostentatious red convertible. Not exactly an inconspicuous car. But if he kept his promise to let me out when I asked him to, it shouldn’t matter.
“I need to go back to the lighthouse—the same one we were at earlier tonight,” I told him as he started the car. “I, um, think I may have left something there.”
“Oh. Okay.” He pulled out and headed north without further comment or question.
Which struck me as really strange, gift horse or no. I couldn’t exactly ask him why he wasn’t suspicious—not without making him suspicious. Still, I felt increasingly uncomfortable as we drove in silence up the coast.
We were about five minutes from the lighthouse when Tom said, “So, you have the ring with you?”
I turned to stare at him. “What?”
“The ring. Phelps told me you’d probably be bringing it up here and suggested I drive you. It’s okay. He told me the whole story. You’re doing the right thing, turning it over to him.”
“Turning it over. To Curt Phelps?”
“Well . . . yeah. That’s the real reason you’re going to the lighthouse, right?”
I was becoming more confused—and worried—by the moment. “Tom, what exactly did Phelps tell you?”
He glanced at me in evident surprise. “About what’s been going on here—with you. He asked me what I already knew, and I had to tell him it wasn’t much.” His mouth twisted down with annoyance. “That was embarrassing, Wynne. Made it seem like you don’t trust me.”
“Um . . . you did cheat on me and then walk out, remember?” I couldn’t resist saying, despite my growing fear.
“That’s different. This is important stuff. Life and death stuff.”
I refrained from pointing out that his infidelity and abandonment had certainly been important life stuff for me. We were nearly to the lighthouse by now.
“So what did Phelps say had been going on?”
“Well, he told me about the murder case—the stuff that wasn’t in the press, that is—and about how the ring you found can prove Melampus was framed. You were right about those FBI agents, by the way. Sorry if I seemed skeptical earlier. When I told Phelps I tried to get you to give them the ring, he told me about their real agenda.”
“Which is?”
“He said they’ve been staking out the hotel, trying to get the ring to make sure it can’t be used as evidence. In fact, they were the ones behind that guy trying to steal it yesterday. And they’ve intimidated you to the point that you were afraid to give the ring to Phelps.”
We rounded the last curve mounting the hill up to the lighthouse.
“The FBI didn’t have anything to do with that, Tom. They weren’t even in Aruba yet when that happened. Didn’t Phelps tell you about Michelle Al
vares?”
“Who? I don’t think so.”
The lighthouse loomed up, ghostly in the moonlight. Tom slowed, then stopped. The parking area around it and the nearby restaurant appeared empty, but our headlights illuminated a dirt road continuing on past the lighthouse—a road I hadn’t even noticed when we’d been up here earlier.
“This was where I was going to ask you to let me out,” I said, “but I’ve changed my mind. Since you bought into Phelps’s song and dance, you can help me now. He apparently knows you’re coming anyway.”
“Song and dance?” Tom repeated. “What do you mean? Phelps is an attorney with a highly respected—”
“I mean that the FBI aren’t the bad guys here, but it sounds like Phelps may be. The person who’s been intimidating me is Michelle Alvares, Melanie Melampus’s sister. I think she’s the one who framed Stefan Melampus for his wife’s murder, may even have murdered her herself. And now she’s threatening our daughters, if I don’t give her the ring.”
Tom just shook his head back and forth, apparently unable to process this new information. “Bess and Debra? But they’re back home in Indiana. Besides, that doesn’t make sense. Phelps told me that Stefan Melampus would be grateful if you brought him the ring. Grateful to both of us. That he’d give my business a boost.”
I closed my eyes, realizing the futility of trying to work through Phelps’s clever interweaving of truth and lies right now, when time was so very tight. He’d obviously read Tom well, playing to his biggest weakness—desire for money and prestige.
“I’ll explain it all later. Right now, we need to follow that dirt road.” I pointed. “For the girls’ sake.”
Tom put the car in gear and slowly drove forward, onto the rutted, uneven surface. “I’m pretty sure the rental agreement said not to take this car off of paved roads.”
I stared at him in disbelief. “Even you can’t really think that’s more important than our daughters’ lives.”
“Of course not! If I really thought—But I’m sure you’ve misunderstood. A man like Phelps certainly wouldn’t threaten our girls, and if anyone else has, Phelps will be able to deal with it. Everything will be fine, Wynne. You’ll see. Just let me handle it.”
We continued along the dirt and gravel road for maybe a quarter of a mile. I peered forward, expecting at any moment to see something—a car, or someone standing by the road. But so far all I saw in the swath of the headlights was more sand and jagged black rocks.
“Someone’s coming up behind us,” Tom said. “That’ll be Phelps, I imagine. Once he explains, you’ll understand—”
“Stop the car,” I told him, turning around to watch the headlights of the other vehicle approach, bouncing along the road at twice the speed we’d been going. It appeared to be a large SUV, much better suited to this terrain than Tom’s Porsche.
It stopped just behind us. The driver got out, leaving the headlights on, and walked toward us.
“Mr. Phelps!” Tom exclaimed, getting out of the car. “I told Wynne it would be you. She has everything mixed up, but now you can tell her—”
“Get back in the car,” Phelps said, cutting him off. “Keep driving until you reach the end of the road. Then we’ll talk.”
“But—”
“Now.”
Tom took a quick step back, and in the light of the SUV’s headlights I saw why.
Phelps was holding a gun.
Chapter Twenty
“I . . . I GUESS we’d better do what he says.” Tom’s voice was shaky as he climbed back into the car beside me. “Maybe . . . maybe the FBI is following him or something, and he wants to be prepared.”
“We should be so lucky,” I muttered. I couldn’t understand why Phelps hadn’t just demanded the ring. I pulled it out of my pocket and looked back at him, but he was already getting into the SUV.
Tom started forward again, faster this time, even though the ruts were getting worse as we went on. Meanwhile, I was getting more and more scared as I realized just how badly I’d screwed up by not considering that Phelps might be involved with Michelle and her cronies.
Not only had I told him about seeing Michelle Alvares in Oranjestad, I’d made it clear I’d be willing to testify on Stefan’s behalf. Which meant just getting the ring from me wasn’t enough. They needed to get rid of me, as well.
On that thought, I dug my cell phone out of my purse.
“What are you doing?” Tom demanded. “He’s right behind us, with a gun.”
“Which is why we need backup,” I said, waking up my phone. “Blast. No signal.” I started turning the phone this way and that with no result, and then the road abruptly ended in a pile of black rocks. Silently praying for a miracle, I stuck the phone back in my purse.
“Should we get out?” Tom’s voice was shaky again.
“Let’s wait and see what he tells us to do.”
I preferred not to walk in this terrain in the dark unless we had to. One of us would probably sprain an ankle. And the spray from the ocean, probably no more than a dozen yards away, was misting us where we sat.
“Just give him the ring. Then he’ll let us go. You should have done that when we stopped before.” His voice got stronger as he tried to exert control again.
“I didn’t exactly get a chance,” I pointed out. “Anyway—” I broke off as Phelps approached, the gun still in his hand.
“You have the ring?” he asked me.
I pulled it out of my pocket again. “Right here. I could have given it to you back at the lighthouse and saved us all some time.”
He looked almost as surprised as I felt at my confident, almost flippant tone. I was feeling anything but confident on the inside. I didn’t look at Tom, so I don’t know how he reacted.
Phelps walked to my side of the car, took the ring, and pocketed it. “Sorry. Things have become a little bit more complicated than that.”
That’s what I’d figured, but I wasn’t volunteering anything. “Oh?”
Tom wasn’t so reticent. “Here, what’s going on, Curt? I got her up here like you asked. You have the ring. What’s with the gun? Surely that’s not necessary.”
“I’m afraid it is,” he replied. “Ms. Seally here knows more than is safe. We can’t afford to let her testify.”
Even though I’d guessed exactly that, hearing him say it so matter-of-factly made my blood run cold. I tried to think, to come up with a plan to get away or appease Phelps, to convince him I was no threat, but my brain wouldn’t work.
Next to me, Tom made a little choking noise. “You . . . you’re going to kill her? Us? I didn’t know anything. I still don’t. Only what you told me yourself.”
Phelps smiled grimly—it looked weird and frighteningly evil in the harsh light of the SUV’s high beams. “Come on, Tom. Do you think I can let you go once I get rid of your ex-wife? If I’d realized from the start just how little you knew, I might have left you out of this. But it’s too late now.”
“No! No, it’s not,” Tom pleaded. “I swear I won’t say anything. I’ll forget I was ever here.”
If I’d had any remaining trace of affection for Tom, that would have killed it. Clearly, even if I could force my frozen brain to come up with any kind of plan, I couldn’t expect Tom’s cooperation.
“My hero.” I let sarcasm drip from my voice.
At least he had the grace to wince. Phelps actually laughed.
“She’s right, you know, Tom. Is this really how you want to be remembered? Ah, here they are, finally.”
I turned and saw another set of headlights bumping along the dirt track toward us. Another SUV or truck of some kind. I had a sinking feeling I knew who was in it.
The truck stopped behind Phelps’s SUV, and two people got out, a man and a woman who indeed proved to be Michelle and “Lenny” when t
hey stepped into the headlight beams. So much for two against one, even if Tom weren’t worse than useless.
“Did you get it?” Phelps asked them.
“Yeah,” the man answered. “Two sets, like you said.”
“Well, bring it,” Phelps said. “We don’t want to spend all night at this.”
Lenny and Michelle went back to the truck, and Phelps turned to us. “Okay, out of the car. You can help us carry everything to the shore.”
“You’re . . . you’re not going to shoot us?” Tom asked hopefully.
I wasn’t nearly so hopeful. Not even when Phelps replied, “Not unless we have to.”
The other two were returning now, both of them loaded down with something obviously heavy as well as bulky. Not until they reached us could I tell what it was: two sets of dive gear—tanks, vests, wetsuits, the works. It took them two trips to bring everything from the truck to the side of the Porsche.
As Lenny set down his second load of fins, weights, and wetsuit, he grinned at me. “Maybe you won’t be so cocky about this dive, lady.”
“Dive?” Now there was definitely panic in Tom’s voice. “But I don’t even know how to scuba dive.”
Lenny looked at Tom, then me. “Different boy toy tonight, huh? What happened to the other one?”
I glared at him, not about to mention Ronan in front of Phelps. I wondered what Lenny had told him about the unsuccessful underwater attack.
Lenny didn’t pursue the question, but turned back to Tom. “Don’t worry, dude, Mom here will show you what to do, won’t you? Maybe he won’t mind as much as I did.”
“You ungrateful bastard,” I said to him. “If I hadn’t helped you—”
“Helped me? You almost killed me down there. That’s what gave me this idea, when we was thinking up a good accident for you. That and what you said about wanting to dive the California wreck. Now you’ll get your chance.”
I remembered my conversation with Ronan on Van’s dive boat—within Lenny’s hearing. Ronan had said it was a dangerous dive—and he’d meant during the day. I also remembered the map I’d seen of Aruba’s dive sites. Until now, I’d forgotten that the California wreck was just off this coast—that the lighthouse had been named for that ship, in fact.