Of course they did. And they would have no trouble appearing in advertisements for Ten Villas and St. John claiming, “Better than Hawaii.” They’d taken tons of photos, just like Mr. Taylor had instructed them to.
Henry hung up, confused and limp with exhaustion. He had one more call to make.
“Angela, Henry here. How are you?”
“How do you think I am? You and Sabrina have made my beautiful villa a haven for the underworld. What kind of people are you renting to anyway? And why weren’t the Kimballs there? I’ve rented to them for years and no one got murdered. Who will ever want to stay at Villa Mascarpone ever again?” Angela wailed into the phone.
“Everyone who has rented in the past year, Angela. They’re all coming back and have authorized deposits on their credit cards. I told them all that the notoriety of what’s happened has everyone clamoring to come here and that Villa Mascarpone has become the place to be.” Henry felt like he was back in the first-class cabin of Allied Air, sucking up to people he would never choose to be with.
“Oh, Henry, that was so clever. I’ll feel so much more confident tonight during my interview. Thank you,” Angela said.
“What interview?” Henry asked.
“I’m going to be on Chasing Justice with Faith Chase. I hope you’ll watch.”
“Wouldn’t miss it for the world, Angela. Break a leg,” Henry said and meant it.
Chapter Sixteen
Sabrina looked at her cell phone to see what time it was as the car peeled out of the parking lot. It was 10:00 a.m., not even twenty-four hours since she had found Carter Johnson on the hammock. How could her life have been changed so much in one day by a person she barely knew?
“Where are we going?” she asked, as Neil drove up the hills on Centerline Road, the main roadway that bisected the island from one end to another. Lush, green trees on each side of her, the sweet smell of the rain forest so thick she wanted to dive out of the car and hide in it.
“Somewhere we can talk without a cop or a reporter,” Neil said in a tone too serious for her. Didn’t he feel the relief she had when Detective Janquar released her after minimal questioning?
“Are you worried about Seth being at the police station?” Sabrina asked, realizing that she was. What worried her was the cocky expression Seth wore when she saw him in the hallway. She had always liked Seth, although after hiring him as their pool guy, she saw him very little. He went on his rounds cleaning pools for them and for other people without much fuss. Sabrina had no complaints from clients and only knew a little about him being fired by Rory Eagan, allegedly for trying to date his daughter.
“I’m worried about everything, Salty. That’s what lawyers do and why I got out. Well, at least one of the reasons,” Neil said as his cell phone began bleating “Ants Go Marching.”
“Hey. Yeah, I know about it. I ordered it. Does it fully cover the front of her house?” Neil asked the caller. Sabrina wondered if he was talking about her house or maybe he had a girlfriend he was having work done for. She didn’t like that idea.
“Well, then, great, it’s working. She can park in it. It’s big enough. Sure,” Neil grunted into the phone, handing it to her. “It’s Henry.”
“Hi, how’re things going?” Sabrina asked, knowing everything do to with Ten Villas was on Henry’s overly full plate. He quickly let her know that he had soothed all their clients, that her house now had a forty-foot-long empty cargo container sitting in front of it, and that Villa Mascarpone was no longer being held captive by the police as a crime scene. It was more than she could absorb.
“A container? How did that happen?” Sabrina asked, remembering how much she and Henry had each longed for the one containing all their worldly goods to arrive in St. Thomas when they’d first moved to St. John. There was no choice about how to get your stuff to St. John. You either chucked it all or shipped it in a container. She and Henry had made a compromise. They’d each tossed about 75 percent of what they owned and thrown what they couldn’t bear to leave behind in a container they shared. Now it seemed Sabrina had one all to herself.
“Ask your boyfriend,” Henry said.
“He’s not my—” She stopped midsentence, not wanting Neil to hear Henry tease her. “I guess I better go up to Villa Mascarpone and clean it up.”
“That’s where I’m headed. I told the Leonards they could get in by two o’clock,” Henry said before hanging up.
Sabrina told Neil she needed to get to Villa Mascarpone. Although normally Henry could clean any villa by himself, as could she, leaving him with that puddle of dry blood and the vapors of death wasn’t something she could do to him.
“Great, I need to see the place,” Neil said. He pulled over at Tony’s Kitchen, a roadside beverage and snack van, and got out. He came back with two opened cold bottles of Guinness and a bag of salt-and-vinegar potato chips. Sabrina took a gulp from her bottle and felt an explosion of flavor on her tongue.
“This is the best sip of beer I’ve ever had,” she said, grabbing a chip out of the bag.
“That’s the problem with beer, Salty. Nothing can ever taste as good as the first frosty sip. After that, it’s all downhill.”
“That’s kind of a downer, Neil, especially considering you own a bar.”
“It’s reality. Speaking of which, it’s time you get real with me. What’s with that kid, Seth? Do you have any idea why he’d be at the police station? Does he know something about the guy at Villa Mascarpone you aren’t sharing with me?”
Neil emptied his Guinness and then started the jeep and drove up Gifft Hill. They passed the fork in the road, which was a wooden fork painted fluorescent green decades before by some ex-patriot with a sense of humor, she’d been told. Sabrina’s take on it was that if you lived in St. John, you’d already reached the fork in the road.
She told Neil what she knew about Seth. He was probably just a little over twenty-one and had come to St. John after dropping out of college. Seth told her he lived on a boat for a while, but he was too antsy to be confined in small quarters. The tiny apartment he now rented in Cruz Bay was no bigger, but it was on terra firma. He started the pool cleaning business, something he had learned while as a kid working in Florida. He had a thriving business within six months. If something went wrong, you could call him and he’d be out on the job within a half hour. Sabrina liked Seth. She just didn’t like the way he’d looked at the police station.
Sabrina dodged the question about Carter Johnson.
“Tell me why I have a container sitting in front of my house, Neil,” she said. Nothing made any sense to her, and she couldn’t imagine how the placement of a container in front of her modest Caribbean cottage would unscramble her life.
Neil explained that the container he ordered be placed in front of her house was to protect her from the reporters.
“Think of it as a barricade, Salty. A reporter embargo has been declared. No one will be able to see you once you park your car. Of course, you might have to run over one of them getting there, but no big loss.”
They rounded the curve on the cliff leading to Villa Mascarpone. Sabrina wanted to jump out of the jeep, dreading the sight of the house, which previously had been her favorite on the entire island.
She felt better when she saw Henry’s scooter parked in the circular driveway. He was already spilling bleach on the stone where the bloodstain sat like an ugly shadow. Neil pushed his sunglasses onto the top of his head without saying a word and did a 360-degree turn taking in the pool area.
“I’m going to have a good look around here while you two do whatever you do to clean a house. The cops have been here for twenty-four hours and probably taken anything of interest to them, but I want you both to be on the lookout for anything that seems different to you. Don’t worry about how small it is, just let me know,” Neil said.
Henry agreed to continue cleaning the stone pool deck and other outdoor areas, although Sabrina offered to help with the bloodstain. She was relieved wh
en he declined and headed inside to do the interior. She started with the smaller bedrooms, which looked as though they had been unoccupied, and worked her way through the living room and dining rooms. She saw nothing different from the other times she had cleaned the house after guests.
Sabrina headed into the master bedroom, where she knew Carter Johnson had brought his luggage the day she picked him up at the ferry. Dirty sheets, to be expected, on the bed. Slightly damp towels lay on the bathroom floor and the smell of soap lingered in the air. But nothing unusual.
She picked up the linens, throwing them into a laundry bag, and made the bed with fresh sheets before moving into the kitchen. No messy pots and pans in the sink, telling her Carter had used the outdoor grill or eaten out, which she already knew. A few dirty glasses on the counter and a dishwasher filled with clean dishes. She opened the fridge and saw a few remnant bottles of beer and a nearly empty tray of a Ten Villas appetizer assortment, the kind they charged twenty-five bucks for, delivered. But Sabrina had never delivered any to him and knew Tanya hadn’t either. Where had they come from?
Sabrina took the tray out of the refrigerator and walked through the kitchen into the dining area toward the sliding glass doors in the living room, where Neil was standing.
She called out to Henry across the pool, still slaving over the stain.
“Hey, Henry, you know anything about Carter Johnson getting a tray of assorted appetizers from us?”
“Maybe. What about the new bottle of propane next to the empty one I found on the deck? Do you know anything about that?” Henry asked, strutting toward her around the edge of the pool.
Sabrina stared at Henry but didn’t answer. He met her eyes with equal obstinacy and silence.
“Well, whatever the hell the two of you know, you better clue me in right now,” Neil said, “because you’re playing a deadly game here. One or both of you could be charged with being an accessory to a murder if you are obstructing a police investigation by lying or even omitting information. And just to be clear here, I don’t represent people who lie to me.”
Chapter Seventeen
Neil’s warning was a somber reminder of how high the stakes could climb when the police got involved in your life, a lesson Sabrina thought she had learned. She looked at Henry, her dearest friend, and was about to suggest they table the conversation for a more suitable time and place when she caught a glimpse of an apple-green object bobbing in the thick tropical shrubs that bordered the pool.
Sabrina placed her index finger against her lips, motioning to Henry and Neil to check out whatever it was she was seeing. Both crooked their necks and looked back at her in simultaneous curiosity. The bright-green object lent a sense of absurdity to the evolving saga.
Neil strode around the pool and stepped up over the small stone retaining wall onto the border shrubbery, moving through the thicket before disappearing into the brush. Sabrina and Henry remained poolside in silence, hearing only the rustling of bushes until Neil’s voice boomed through the foliage.
“Hey, what do you think you’re doing? This is private property. Get the hell out right now or I’m calling the cops.”
“Sam, Sam. Come here quick,” a woman said, with a tinge of hysteria in her voice.
The periwinkle-blue gate to the pool flew open and a very tall, middle-aged man carrying several pieces of designer luggage burst in, nearly falling into the hexagonal-shaped pool.
“Deirdre? Deirdre? Where are you?”
Sabrina raised both eyebrows, turning to look at Henry.
“Henry, meet Sam Leonard,” she said.
“Then this must be Deirdre,” Henry said, as the wispy strawberry blonde almost floated through the bushes ahead of Neil, her broad-brimmed green hat bouncing as she stepped over to meet Henry. She was a vision of delicacy, dressed in a long, gauzy pink cotton skirt and an ivory camisole. Sabrina found women who could pull off this look maddening. They managed without a word to inspire the men around them to take care of them, obviously a talent lost on her.
“Hello, Henry,” she said, extending her hand to him as if she owned Villa Mascarpone and he were her guest. For a moment, Sabrina thought Henry might kiss Deirdre’s hand.
“Thanks for getting us into our villa. We’re very grateful, Sabrina,” Deirdre said, apparently no longer feeling threatened by Neil. Sabrina accepted her handshake, not surprised to feel skin softer than a baby’s bottom.
Neil stood behind Deirdre, just inside the gate, taking it all in. Deirdre turned and looked at him, as if she expected an explanation. Sabrina was surprised to hear Sam say, “And you’re Neil Perry, aren’t you?”
Sam walked over to shake Neil’s hand.
“You know each other?” Henry asked, looking as confused as Sabrina felt.
“I don’t think so,” Neil said, “unless I met you at Bar None. I meet so many people—”
“No, no. I’m a history professor at Mount Holyoke. I teach an elective, the Great American Trial. The State of California versus Rankin is a big part of it, isn’t it, Deirdre?” Sam said, looking over at his wife.
California v. Rankin? What was that all about? Two years of obsessing over whether she’d be convicted for her husband’s murder had left Sabrina with little appetite for news about other cases. Now Sabrina wished she had followed the urge to Google Neil after that night on the beach to see what she had missed. Somehow, Googling him had felt like more of a commitment than she was prepared to make at the time.
“I would love to interview you for the course while I’m on the island,” Sam said, in what Sabrina guessed was an academic’s gush. This was just too bizarre.
Neil walked over to the empty propane container, like a man on a mission, and picked it up. “I’m afraid my lawyering days are over. I’m just a barkeeper now, and I like it that way.” Sabrina had never seen Neil Perry so uncomfortable.
“Sorry if I frightened you on the path,” Neil said to Deirdre, slipping through the gate.
“What path?” Sabrina asked, noticing Henry’s furrowed brow. He was going to need Botox if this kept up.
“The one beyond the pool with such a lovely view of Reef Bay,” Deirdre said.
There was no path beyond the pool.
Sabrina picked up the pail of cleaning materials and sack of dirty linens, smiled at Deirdre, and asked Henry if he was ready to leave the Leonards to enjoy Villa Mascarpone, especially since they had been so patient.
“You folks have a lovely stay,” Henry said. “Oh, I’m sorry,” he added. “You’d probably like a tour of the house.” Sabrina could tell how flummoxed he was. Henry was normally the epitome of the gracious host, and he was off his game.
“No, no problem,” Sam said. “We’re fine exploring on our own.”
“Well, the laundry room is on the lower level,” Henry began to explain.
“I know. Carter told us,” Sam said, looking over to Deirdre, whose smile resembled that of the mysterious Mona Lisa at the moment. The woman fascinated Sabrina, but what really caught her attention was hearing Sam use Carter Johnson’s name.
“Carter told you about the laundry room?” Henry asked, his voice an octave higher than normal.
“We called the house number directly when you sent us the details about the location and contact information. We had some specific questions. Carter called us back and filled us in. Such a sad end for him. He seemed like such a friendly man,” Deirdre said, looking at her husband with the smile still on her face.
Henry and Sabrina filed out of the pool area through the gate without another word. Henry latched the gate behind him. Sabrina set down her pail and laundry bag. Without saying anything, they both walked over the driveway to the shrubbery that extended along the pool area.
There was a path, freshly cut, wide enough for a person to pass along, looking down at Mara Bennett’s home and beyond to the splendor of Reef Bay with a sweeping view of Ram Head in the distance. Sabrina wondered if Carter Johnson had cut it so he could get a better view
for his photographs.
They walked single file along the path until it ended at the edge of the Villa Mascarpone property line. In silence, they reversed direction.
Neil sat waiting in the car, windows up, air conditioning cranking. The sun was blazing down, although it was after 3:30. Henry walked by the car toward his scooter. Neil lowered the window on the driver’s side.
“We need to finish our conversation. There are too many unanswered questions and too many coincidences for me. Homicide is serious and neither of you should take it lightly,” Neil said as both Sabrina and Henry stopped in their footsteps.
“We’d better meet at my condo,” Henry said. “It’s the only place reporters can’t get in. But first, I have to meet the Gunnings at the ferry and take them out to Hibiscus Hill.”
Sabrina had totally forgotten they had new guests arriving today. She really had left everything to Henry.
“Thanks, Henry. I’m sorry I’m so preoccupied with what happened here. I’ll make it up to you when this gets straightened out. You can take some time off, promise. I just don’t quite have my wits about me,” Sabrina said, worried that forgetting details like new guests not only arriving but needing to be picked up at the ferry might mean her focus was off. When the cops were scrutinizing everything she did, Sabrina knew she needed to be on her game.
Henry nodded and got onto his scooter. “If you get there before me, make yourselves at home.”
Sabrina and Henry had keys and knew the passwords and codes to each other’s houses. They had trusted each other from the start, knowing neither of them could make it in St. John alone after the trouble each had barely escaped. She felt bad about the exchange they’d had about the appetizers and propane. How important were those things anyway? It was the trust that was important. They were going to have to have a very difficult conversation for it to continue.
She got into Neil’s jeep after placing the pail and laundry bag in the backseat next to the empty propane tank. Neil looked as uncomfortable as she felt, his jaw drawn tight, his fists clenched on the steering wheel.
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