She let Girlfriend out through the screen door in the kitchen, which led to Henry’s tiny yard. She always teased that it could be mowed with manicure scissors, but it was big enough to let the pooch do her business. Girlfriend came back in and flopped on the cool tile floor, happy to watch Sabrina cook, almost as if they were back home.
Sabrina threw the broccoli in the microwave to defrost and started beating some eggs, finding herself whipping them into a froth as she thought about Seth at the police station and those wacky Leonards at Villa Mascarpone. She wondered what was going on over at her place. She knew Henry had been able to secure the doors to her house. They had both been concerned that Tanya might stumble upon the INN crew, but Henry was able to reach Tanya by phone and divert her before she left for work. Sabrina couldn’t imagine what the container looked like, barricading her place from the road. She wanted to be there, to sleep in her own bed, to be washing cleaning rags, baking appetizers, listening to Pavarotti, drinking vodka with lemons.
She tucked toast into the toaster and dropped a generous chunk of butter onto Henry’s Cuisinart French griddle. He had such pretty stuff, and it always looked new, although she knew he cooked. The smell of the melting butter made her realize how ravenous she was.
“Smells good, Salty. You got a beer out there?”
“I’ll get it,” Henry said.
Sabrina checked the freezer, again pleased to see her pal Henry had her covered. Grey Goose, just where it always was. Just for her. She did love Henry, although she didn’t like him not trusting her.
Ice cubes and a large splash of the Goose. Alas, no lemons, but otherwise, Sabrina was content to be sipping as she was stirring and spreading, not even noticing Henry had come for the beers. She could hear the television in the distance and wondered if the three of them could enjoy their omelets and pretend this was just another night in paradise. Sabrina plated the three cheddar broccoli omelets, placing triangles of toast alongside, each dripping with melted butter. She grabbed utensils and napkins and headed for the living room.
The sight of Angela Martino staring at her would have landed Girlfriend a triple omelet if Henry hadn’t grabbed the plates from Sabrina. Angela looked heavier on Henry’s mega flat-screen television, and her makeup seemed more professional, but there was no mistaking that jowly, scowling expression and those small, dark, shuttered eyes peering over a long, narrow nose. Sabrina had met her in person only a few times but knew there couldn’t be two people in the world who looked so uninviting.
“What’s Angela—” Sabrina started to say, when the unmistakably menacing sneer of Faith Chase spread across the screen. Her blonde helmet-head hairstyle curtained her face, in the middle of which sat a patrician nose with nostrils so flared a bird could fly in.
“Now, Ms. Martino, you say you’ve had this company—what do you call it? Ten Villas? Anyway, this company’s been managing your home on St. John for how long?”
Angela’s face reappeared. Sabrina wasn’t sure which was worse. It wasn’t a pretty choice.
“About two years, Faith. I had someone else before, but this new company approached me and offered some added services for my guests, so I signed on.” Angela’s typical bellow had diminished to a mere murmur when answering Chase’s questions.
“And you didn’t know you were hiring a woman who had been on trial for killing her husband, the father of two young children, did you, dear?” The sweetness to Chase’s voice was thicker than Karo syrup. Sabrina hated Karo syrup.
Sabrina stumbled over a chair. Neil pulled her down next to him and put his arm around her. Sabrina let him.
“No, of course not. I live in Chicago. That case apparently was in Boston. I had no idea. And Sabrina Salter never volunteered that information,” Angela said, throwing Sabrina under the INN bus as she looked down, away from the camera, as if forlorn.
“What a piece of work,” Henry said, downing the end of his beer. Henry never chugged beer.
“Tell me, dear, do you have any concerns that the woman you hired to manage the villa you so love—the woman who killed her own husband, the woman who found a dead man at your beloved villa—do you have any concerns that Sabrina Salter might be responsible for that man’s death?”
Neil squeezed Sabrina’s shoulder. Her body was as rigid as stuffed game hanging over a fireplace. Was there any limit to what this woman would do? She was purposely distorting what had happened in the past to fit what she wanted people to think had happened now. Sabrina had no chance if the Faith Chases of the world got to write the rules.
“No, I really don’t, Faith.”
Sabrina felt oddly grateful to Angela for not agreeing that Sabrina was responsible for Carter Johnson’s death.
“I mean, I should have been told about her past,” Angela continued, “but I think I’m a pretty good judge of character, having run my cheese business, Martino’s Wholesale Cheese Company on Commercial Street, for twenty-three years. Here in Chicago, we make the finest cheeses in the country, specializing in mascarpone, which is why I named my villa Villa Mascarpone,” Angela said. But Faith Chase wasn’t going to let this turn into a commercial.
“Thanks for speaking with us, dear. We do hope the family of your murdered guest can be found soon,” Faith said, and Angela mercifully disappeared off the screen.
Henry hit the mute button on the television. The three beautiful omelets sat on his coffee table. Sabrina fidgeted, beginning to feel funny she was sitting so close to Neil.
“I will never get away from that woman,” she said finally.
“Then you have to beat her at her own game, Salty,” Neil said, standing and picking up the omelets before handing them to Henry.
“How do you do that?” Henry asked, sounding almost as bleak as Sabrina.
“Well, first we heat up these kick-ass omelets and make another drink to bolster ourselves. Then we sit down and figure out how to find who the real killer is.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Sabrina was impressed when Henry returned the reheated omelets along with cloth napkins. Even with the drama of the day, he remembered to garnish the plates with a curled peel from an orange he must have had stashed somewhere.
“So who’s going first?” Neil asked. It was time to come clean about what they knew about Carter Johnson.
Sabrina took a bite of her omelet in an effort to avoid the answer, although it stuck in her throat like a chunk of dread.
“Oh, why not? I will,” Henry said, sitting down next to her on the leather couch. Sabrina just kept chewing.
“One night I went to Skinny Legs to get a burger after checking some guests into one our houses over in Coral Bay. I didn’t see anyone I knew, so I sat on a stool at the bar, ordered a Dos Equis, and started looking up at the television. The Red Sox were playing, losing bad, and I shook my head. A guy sitting at the stool around the corner of the bar looked at me and said, ‘Those bums never seem to get it right, do they?’ He had a New York accent and he didn’t seem to be with anyone.
“I told him I was originally from Boston and that the Sox managed to break my heart every year, but usually not until September, after they’d made me think that somehow this year was going to be different,” Henry said, picking up a bite of omelet with his fork but putting it down before he got it in his mouth. He wasn’t looking at either Neil or Sabrina, both of whom stayed silent.
“I thought he was gay. I’m usually pretty good about getting a sense of this, and when I asked him where he was from and he told me New York, we had the usual Red Sox/Yankee banter and I thought he was flirting. Then I found out he was in one of our houses, and I thought, Am I going to get lucky here?
“He got up to leave, and I asked if he’d ordered our Ten Villas special appetizers, the kind we deliver to customers, and I told him Sabrina’s famous for them. He said he hadn’t and now he kind regretted it because he wasn’t much of a cook. The next afternoon, right before the sunset, I went over to Villa Mascarpone with a complimentary tray o
f apps. I was all dolled up and arrived to find Carter out by the pool, taking photos with a telephoto lens of Ram Head in the distance. He told me he was a professional photographer, and he looked annoyed, not pleased, about me dropping by. I told him I’d just put them in the kitchen because I could tell I wasn’t welcome. Carter ran ahead of me and started scooping up photos he’d taken, large ones, off the dining room table as I headed for the kitchen. I walked over to the table and told him I’d love to see his work, and he said he’d e-mail photos of St. John to me and Sabrina after he got home. Then he took the tray from me, put it on the kitchen counter, said thanks, and looked over at the door. I know when I’m getting the bum’s rush, so I left. I felt like an idiot.”
“Did you get to see the photos?” Neil asked as Sabrina put her arm around Henry, knowing that the miserable pilot who broke his heart had taken every ounce of confidence Henry had earned the hard way.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
Henry squeezed her hand.
“You just didn’t call it right, Henry. Everybody screws up once in a while. I see that all of the time at Bar None,” Neil said.
“I was afraid if I volunteered that I had visited Carter to the police, they’d think I was somehow involved in his death. I saw what happened to Sabrina and I was afraid,” Henry said. “But I did see a few of the photos. They were all taken from up at Villa Mascarpone. None at the beach or even in Cruz Bay. I’m pretty sure there were pictures of all of the surrounding houses up there. Oh, and I saw a picture of Mara and the kids and one of Mr. Banks. He got some nice shots.”
Sabrina was remembering a conversation she was trying hard to forget when Neil turned to her.
“Okay, Salty. Your turn,” Neil said.
“All I did was bring him a replacement tank of propane when he called and told me he had forgotten to turn the grill off. He said he was a city boy and never grilled before and probably never would again, given the way his steak turned out. I barely spoke to him, but I was afraid the cops would never believe me,” Sabrina said, picking up her plate and then grabbing Neil’s and Henry’s, taking them into the kitchen where she would be out of their vision, where they couldn’t see how pale she knew she had become. She’d felt the blood drain from her face as she told lie after lie. How could she tell either of them she had brought the propane to the house and then had an afternoon of wanton sex with a man she barely knew—a man who ended up dead two days later? Sabrina was having trouble enough admitting it to herself.
“Salty, get back in here. You have to see this,” Neil called to her from the living room where the television was blaring.
“What?” Sabrina said, glad the topic of Carter Johnson was over, at least for the moment.
When she entered the room, Sabrina could see Faith Chase on the corner of the television screen superimposed over what looked like the beach next to the dock in Cruz Bay where another female reporter stood, mike in hand, fielding Chase’s questions.
“So this is where Sabrina Salter has been hiding since she stood trial for killing her husband in Nantucket? She gets away with murder and then gets to live in paradise?”
“That’s right, Faith. We’ve learned that Salter has her own business on the island, and we’ve reported from her home where the police recently conducted a search. The police aren’t commenting on what they found, but I can tell you they took multiple bags of evidence,” the reporter said in an exaggerated deep tone.
“Well, we’re staying on this story, folks. With another dead body at her feet, dead from a gunshot wound to the abdomen just like her husband, let’s see if Sabrina Salter gets away with murder a second time. St. John is one of the three U.S. Virgin Islands, what some people call ‘Love City.’ Well, it’s not too lovey lately, is it? We’re just learning that this tiny Caribbean island may not be paradise after all.” Faith Chase signed off.
Neil grabbed the remote control and hit mute.
“I cannot stand the sound of that woman’s voice,” he said in a tone more serious than Sabrina could remember hearing before.
“Now she’s attacking the whole island,” Henry said.
But what Sabrina couldn’t get past was hearing Faith Chase draw the similarities between Carter’s death and Ben’s. Her suggestion hung silently in the air along with the knowledge that if anyone ever discovered she had had an afternoon with Carter Johnson, Sabrina was as good as convicted. She was going to have to live with this secret until she died, or else it might kill her.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Deirdre knew how ridiculous she and Sam would appear if anyone could see them. They were sitting on the bar stools, which Sam had dragged from the kitchen out to the tiny trail bordering the pool. She sat on one, draped in long sleeves and a billowing skirt that protected her from the sun and the no-see-um insects. It was hardly happy hour for them, but she had an odd sense of satisfaction and destiny perched on her stool, sipping the crisp glass of Sauvignon Blanc Sam had poured her.
He sat over on his own stool, in Bermuda shorts and a T-shirt, already tanned and annoyingly oblivious to the bugs. Between them, a third stool had been placed for the bowl of pretzels Sam had supplied for their adventure.
The sun would set soon, and the chance to observe any neighborhood activity would disappear with it. Deirdre tried to hold off her growing fear of disappointment. She had waited so long; it was hard not to be impatient. She feared she might become impulsive if she didn’t see something soon.
The little trail was cramped but still the perfect surveillance spot, just as he had described. The photos he had e-mailed were accurate, but it wasn’t the same as actually seeing Villa Mascarpone and its view of the villa below, which to Deirdre seemed a little like a fortress, with its heavy garage doors at the bottom of a downhill driveway. She’d seen the woman drive in and open those doors with a remote control.
“We’ll have to go in soon, Deirdre. It’s getting dark and the bugs must be getting you,” Sam said, offering her his hand, which she took while never looking away from the road leading to the house where the children lived.
“I’m fine, honey. Let’s give it a little more time. Pour us another glass of wine, and after we’re finished, I’ll go in,” Deirdre said, squeezing his hand with affection.
“We’ve got time to do this right, you know.” Sam filled her glass and then his. He amazed her, sometimes, when he could fill an ordinary moment with elegance. You’d have thought they were sipping champagne on deck chairs on the Queen Mary.
“Strange to encounter Neil Perry here, wasn’t it?” she said, knowing Neil was a topic that would distract Sam from wanting to save her from the no-see-ums.
“Well, yes and no. I’d read he’d left California after his son’s death. Finding him on an island where everyone seems to be running away from something isn’t shocking.”
“Such a shame—he saved Jess Rankin only to lose his own son,” Deidre agreed, remembering articles about the brilliant defense Neil Perry had waged on behalf of a seventeen-year-old kid with Asperger’s syndrome, accused of burning down his own house with his bipolar mother in a wheelchair inside.
“Well, Neil became such a celebrity. It wasn’t really surprising the press would scrutinize his personal life. I don’t think anyone knew his own kid had Asperger’s until Neil’s ex-wife gave an interview. It wasn’t long after that the kid overdosed. Neil’s defense of Rankin was so passionate that he was compared to Atticus Finch, which is why my students love studying the case,” Sam said. He was a history professor with a law degree, which Deirdre sometimes suspected he regretted not using.
The sound of tires grinding on gravel in the distance made Deirdre sit at attention. She reached for her binoculars, the high-powered ones she’d bought on the Internet from the site that had been recommended. They were pricey, but it seemed silly to cut corners when the vision she hoped to see was one she’d spent more than a decade waiting for. They were tiny, almost like opera glasses, and added to the irony of the eveni
ng.
Deirdre turned on her stool so she could see the car as it rounded the corner, driving past the home of the older couple who lived across the street where a cruiser had been parked when Sam and she had first gone out to the path to sit and wait. It was gone now, so that she could see right inside the passenger side of the approaching car.
Deirdre’s first sight of one of the Eagan twins was that of Kelly’s face contorted in sobs. The girl seemed to be in agony. Deirdre looked toward the backseat to see if Liam was in the same state, but it was empty. Mara Bennett stared ahead, driving her vehicle down into the dungeon of a garage before Deirdre had a chance to think.
“Oh my god, Sam. Something is wrong, terribly wrong,” Deirdre cried, turning to her husband who had been looking with the house binoculars.
“What? I couldn’t see inside the car.”
“Kelly’s crying hysterically and Liam isn’t in the car. Oh, dear God, Sam, you don’t think something has happened to Liam, do you? Do you think he might be hurt or even worse? Oh my God,” Deirdre said, her entire body trembling as Sam rushed over to hold her.
“Of course not, honey. It’s probably just a teenage snit or something,” Sam said, taking her into his arms.
Deirdre pushed free.
“We don’t know that, Sam. It could be something terrible. I have to go. I have to.”
“Deirdre, no. Don’t. You’ve waited this long. Don’t do this. You could ruin everything, honey. Please, please listen to me.”
“I can’t, Sam. I just can’t. If it’s a mistake, it’s mine to make. I have to go,” Deirdre said as she rushed down the path into the falling darkness.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Henry had just finished describing the fiasco on the beach in Cruz Bay when Sabrina heard her cell phone blast Kenny Chesney’s “Way Down Here,” her favorite St. John song and her ringtone. She decided she would just check who the caller was and then let it go to voicemail. Was there any one left on God’s green planet who hadn’t had a turn to harangue her today?
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