He nodded. We signed for our bill and then headed back to our rooms. I didn’t want to wake up at three in the morning, so I forced myself to watch one of the American TV channels for an hour, and then by seven I was toast.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
I needn’t have worried about waking up too early. By the time the sunlight found its way through the slats in my window’s blinds, it was nearly eight o’clock. Eventually, I noticed that my phone was buzzing at me every two minutes. It was a text from Carlos wondering where I was. Typical Carlos. He’d texted me around seven, having already been to the gym and run a few miles on the beach. And the night before, Alex had texted me wondering if I was free for dinner, which made me realize that I’d forgotten to tell him that I was going out of town. With a man. I wondered what he’d think about the whole situation. From my standpoint Alex and I were serious enough that I should probably have mentioned something like this. But I could never tell with men. For him it might be nothing. Or it might be everything.
I freshened up and met Carlos for breakfast, feeling a million times better than I had the night before. A few bowls of melon and strawberries plus a giant plate of huevos rancheros dripping with green Tabasco sauce was apparently all I needed to get back on track. Carlos, apparently famished himself after his morning exertions, spared me any lectures about food.
“So do you think we should split up to cover more territory?” I asked.
“We can do more damage that way,” he said, his mouth half full of omelet.
“The pools don’t open until later, so for now all we have is the beach and the lobby,” I said.
“Gee,” he muttered, “I wonder which one you want to cover yourself.”
I chuckled. My skin was pale white with all the sun block I’d slathered on myself, and I was wearing my most conservative one-piece bathing suit. I’d even brought a towel and book with me. I guess it was obvious that I wanted to hit the beach.
“The lobby is nice, though,” I said. “You can read the Wall Street Journal. I saw a stack of them on the desk down there.”
At that moment I realized that the two most important men in my life were devotees of the same newspaper. I wondered if that meant anything.
Carlos pursed his lips. “That’s true,” he said. “But most of the buildings aren’t connected to the lobby, so Aaron probably won’t walk through there.”
“I know. Feel free to walk around, too,” I said. “You don’t have to park yourself in the lobby all morning.”
He nodded. “Whatever you say, boss.”
I rolled my eyes. “Thank you for coming along, Carlos. You know I do appreciate it, right?”
He winced. “Separate rooms,” he muttered.
I folded my arms across my chest. “I happen to be seeing somebody right now, and so are you, by the way. I don’t think it’s appropriate for us to be doing anything we wouldn’t be proud of. Even if…” I trailed off.
“Even if what?”
Our eyes met. “You know what I was going to say, so I’m not going to say it.”
He feigned ignorance. “No, I don’t.”
“Never mind,” I said, wanting desperately to drop the subject. Our relationship at the moment was awkward enough without letting him know how attracted to him I was. “Let’s get to work.”
“You sure you don’t just want to ask at the front desk? They’d probably just tell you if he’s here and even which room he’s in.” Carlos asked.
I nodded. “I don’t want there to be any whiff that anyone is looking for him. He might go underground at the faintest hint of something unusual like that.”
Carlos nodded along but seemed unconvinced.
I signed for the bill and headed down to the beach, or what I thought was the beach. It turned out to be a path into the engineer’s area, a fenced-off rectangle with a small hut packed to the gills with equipment and beach umbrellas. Like a mouse trying to find the piece of cheese, I circled back and tried the next gate. Wrong. That one led to a golf cart path heading back to the parking lot. The third time was the charm, although I immediately felt stupid. The resort had hidden the path to the beach behind a large sign that read Beach. The thing was even in English. Some detective I was.
Having suffered my first but certainly not only embarrassment for the day, I exhaled deeply and made my way downhill towards the sand. When I finally hit the sandy beach, my flip-flops began squeaking with every step, and I could tell, even at that early hour, that the sand was warming up under the autumn sun. I surveyed the beach before me. There were five or six other people out early with me, and I decided to set up shop so that I’d be behind most people. That way they would all be facing the beach and wouldn’t notice me sitting behind them.
A beach attendant with jet-black hair and dark wrinkled skin approached me wearing a broad smile and a name tag that said Hugo. He handed me a couple of towels and then helped set up my beach chair at exactly the angle I wanted. When he finished, he stood still as a statue. I finally got the hint and fished into my beach bag and found a five-dollar bill for him, which produced a deep bow and another toothy smile.
I could get used to this, I thought, kicking my legs out onto the reclining chair and watching the waves crash onto the shore. Being waited on hand and foot, a cool breeze coming in off the Sea of Cortez, brown pelicans patrolling the waves and dive-bombing beneath the surface—this was the life. But I was at work, I had to remind myself. I was trying to solve a murder, or at least a missing persons case, and find a guy who’d run off with millions of dollars, so I couldn’t very well just kick back and close my eyes. For now I would try to blend in and look like I was part of the landscape, like I belonged.
Well, that didn’t work. A particularly loud squawk from a nearby pelican roused me from a deep and pleasant little catnap and a dream in which I had been snuggling with a basketful of yellow Labrador puppies. I straightened up and checked my phone, relieved that I’d only been clunked out for a half hour. In the meantime a few more beach chairs had been set up near me. Trying to seem casual about it, I looked around and spotted about a dozen people on the beach now, and since it was private, all of them must have been hotel guests. There were a couple of guys in regular old T-shirts, but everyone else was dressed in the way that people who stayed in seven-hundred-dollar hotels dressed. There was no shortage of stylish white and pink, wide-brimmed beach hats, and most of the women were sporting lavish designer beach towels. I realized that Hugo, the beach attendant, had one of the best jobs in the world. He got to be outside all day, catering to the needs of the pampered classes, most of whom would grease his palm with a lot more than the fiver I’d given him earlier. I made a mental note and wondered if they were accepting applications.
By ten o’clock the action started to pick up dramatically, with people coming down to the beach in groups of two, three, or even more. There was something unusual about the beach crowd, and it took me a few minutes to figure it out. No kids. Not a single one. And so the only people actually frolicking in the ocean were a few younger couples who had no business being able to afford to stay at a place like the Hacienda.
I tried to spy on every hotel guest as they passed by my chair heading down to the beach, but it wasn’t easy since they were only showing me their backsides as they passed. Even so, I was satisfied that Aaron wasn’t among them. His head and shape were distinctive enough that I felt confident being able to spot him, even from the side or from behind.
Carlos texted me at about ten thirty. I’m bored, he wrote.
No kidding. Welcome to being a private detective. He’d been along with me tailing people a number of times, but he’d never done it by himself. Be patient, I texted back. Hungry for lunch yet? I added.
Lol, came the response. He had a point. We’d both eaten giant vacation-style breakfasts only a few hours earlier. But still. Lying on the beach made me hungry. Apparently.
I waited another half hour and then got up to stretch and reapply some sunscree
n. Still no Aaron. He could be anywhere, I realized. At one of the three pools, in one of the eight restaurants, or he could very well just be lying in bed, relaxing in some kind of massive suite that only a multimillionaire could afford. Maybe he had a private balcony overlooking the beach and didn’t need to mingle with lowlifes like me.
I turned back to face the resort and scanned the rows of balconies. Sure enough, there were people reclining in a few of them, sipping orange juice and reading newspapers. But they were too far away to get any kind of good look, and I didn’t feel like getting any closer. If I walked by and kept looking up at them, I would become the center of attention myself, which was the last thing I wanted. Maybe I’d get Carlos to do it later.
Speaking of Carlos, I decided to walk around and see what he was up to. I wound my way back up to the resort, holding my twenty-two-dollar beach bag from Target off to the side so as not to offend any of the other patrons. Carlos wasn’t in the lobby anymore, but I found him strolling casually around the lower levels of the other resort buildings.
“Anything?” I asked.
“Not a damned thing,” he said. “I’m bored.”
“You mentioned that,” I said.
He slumped his shoulders. “Seriously, Raven. The guy might not even be here. And if he is here, he might just stay in his room the entire time.”
“Why don’t we head back to the lobby and grab a coffee,” I suggested. “Otherwise I might fall asleep again.”
“You were sleeping out there?” he asked, incredulous.
“Don’t get your panties in a bundle,” I said. “It was for, like, five minutes. My eyes just needed a rest from all the detectiving I’ve been doing.”
“That’s not a word,” he said.
“Tough.”
I pulled his arm and led him slowly back to the lobby area, which was mostly an open-air atrium space with a few movable checkin kiosks that could be wheeled under the palapa roofs in the event of bad weather.
Two men were standing at one of the kiosks. There was something “off” about them, so I nudged Carlos.
He looked them over. “La Policia,” he said.
I nodded. They both had closely cropped black hair, nearly identical wire mustaches, and were wearing black shirts with thick belts holding up their trousers. They were talking animatedly with the desk clerk who was trying to listen to them while typing feverishly on her computer terminal.
“Maybe they’re ahead of the game,” I said. “Could it be?”
Carlos looked skeptical. “I can’t imagine anyone but us is looking for him yet. He’s only been gone a few days.”
The desk clerk, a woman in her late twenties, finally stopped typing and looked up at the officers. And then, almost imperceptibly, she turned her head toward Carlos and me. We made eye contact briefly, and then she did a double take and began looking very serious. The officers picked up on this immediately, and they both turned toward us.
One of them was holding a small piece of paper. He looked down at it and then up at me, ignoring Carlos.
They both looked at each other and nodded. With almost lightning speed, they approached us.
“Raven McShane?” asked the taller one, with only a trace of an accent.
I gulped. “Yes. Why? Is something wrong?” I immediately began worrying that something had happened to a family member. But then again, nobody even knew I was in Cabo.
“We will discuss that later. You must come with us,” the officer said.
My heart was pounding. What the hell? Carlos tried to step between us, but the other officer had anticipated this and had exposed his side arm on his belt. Carlos, for once, was helpless.
The taller officer removed his handcuffs from his belt and moved toward me. “Wait. One second,” I said. I reached into my purse, very slowly, and pulled out my wallet. I opened it up and found the business card I was looking for. I handed it to Carlos whose eyes were wide with incomprehension.
He examined the card. “What the hell is this?”
“Just call him,” I said. “Tell him what’s going on. Everything.”
By now the cops had lost patience with me. I acquiesced and turned backwards to allow them to cuff me. And then they gave me a stern nudge towards the exit.
“Can he come with me?” I asked.
“No, Ms. McShane. You’re under arrest.”
I turned back to see Carlos and half the hotel staff watching me be escorted out in handcuffs. At the time I was more confused than scared. What the hell was going on? I was wracking my brain trying to come up with some law I had broken, some regulation I had violated. But there was nothing. Nothing at all.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
The police led me out to the parking lot where a black van marked Policia was waiting. That’s when I began to freak out. In my daze I had barely even realized that I was handcuffed and wearing only my swimming suit. My towel had disappeared, somehow, and so had my beach bag. It was just me.
They slid the van’s door open and hoisted me inside. It was dark with no windows and no real seats. Instead there was a bench on each side with thin, little seat belts. The officer pointed at the bench, and I sat down. He began buckling me in, and he took his sweet time about it, too, resting his arm against my thigh for much longer than was necessary. I had no doubt that his eyes were helping themselves to an eyeful of my cleavage.
Once the creep finally strapped me in, he slammed the door shut and climbed into the front compartment which was separated by a thick metal wall with a small plastic window in the middle.
The engine started up, and we pulled away. It wasn’t long before my mental anguish was exceeded by my physical discomfort. Being cuffed from behind, I had to lean forward on the hard bench, and that was putting a strain on my lower back. I was sitting directly above the wheel well, and so every bump we hit on the road seemed to drive a wedge directly into my spine, making each minute feel like its own awful eternity. These minutes dragged on and on until I finally realized that they must be taking me to the city of Cabo San Lucas itself, or perhaps the town of San Jose, where the airport was. Our hotel was in the middle of a stretch of nothing but other hotels and resorts, miles away from anywhere that might have a police station. Or a jail.
“Can I ask what this is all about?” I yelled, trying to be heard above the bumps and bangs of the noisy ride.
“We will talk later,” was all that came back. He hadn’t even turned to face the little window when he said it.
Later, I wondered. Did that mean later as in fifteen minutes from now or later as in tomorrow? Or in a month? I had no idea what rights an American citizen had under the Mexican constitution, or even whether there was a constitution in Mexico. And did being an American make this better or worse? Worse, I decided. Then again, I had heard somewhere along the way that Mexican police were corrupt. Maybe all they wanted was a few hundred bucks, and I could go on my way.
I tried to calm myself with that thought for the remaining half hour of the drive. I’ll just be out some money, and then I will go home, quietly, and never come back. One day I’ll look back on this and laugh.
I gradually began to sense the van slowing down and then stopping completely, as though waiting at an intersection. We must be getting into the town by now, I figured. We pulled out again, and the process repeated a few times. Start, slow, stop. City traffic. And then once I’d gotten used to the new rhythm, we came to a complete stop, and the driver shut the engine off.
It was dark. I could tell that much. When the door slid open, the only outside illumination came from a few fluorescent lamps in the cavernous, stuffy parking garage which I guessed was underground and beneath the police station.
“Don’t I get a lawyer?” I asked. “Or a phone call?”
The driver winced, looking impatient. “We are just picking you up, miss. You will have to go over your case with the state attorney.”
State attorney? That sounded serious. More serious than some kind of municipal viola
tion like jaywalking. It just didn’t make any sense.
I succumbed to their entreaties and allowed myself to be led past a thick door and up a flight of cinder block stairs. It was hot up there, with about as much circulation as you’d find in a submarine. I could already feel the beads of sweat beginning to emerge all over my body. At least I was dressed for it, I thought, indulging in a little gallows humor.
They led me up the stairs and around a corner, and that was the first glimpse of natural light I’d seen in an hour. The ground floor of the complex was abuzz with activity. A few other people were lurking about, handcuffed just like I was and accompanied by an officer or two. For the most part, it seemed like a waiting room for families. A lot of white faces were peppered among the darker-skinned Mexicans. So maybe this was the shakedown waiting room, the place where the gringos’ families came to bail them out after a bar fight or speeding ticket.
Evidently we weren’t there to linger, though, because my escorts tugged me past all the hubbub and down a narrow hallway. We passed a number of closed doors and then found our destination through an open door on the right. Hesitantly, I crossed the threshold, sensing danger in that room, but it was just a plain cube-shaped room with a table and an overhead light. Three chairs sat around a small, circular table.
“Wait in here,” the driver said, leaving no room for argument or protest.
Glumly, I sat down and squirmed.
“Can I get these things taken off?” I asked, nodding backwards at my cuffed hands.
“No,” said the other officer, who seemed glad I’d asked. He was reveling in this little show of power, but I tried to ignore him. “Just wait,” he said, his accent a little thicker than the driver’s.
I sighed and resigned myself to what might be an hour or more of sitting around with a sore back, staring at the walls. Hell, I couldn’t even twiddle my thumbs with those stupid cuffs on.
My brain kept going over our trip. What could I possibly have done to get caught up with the Mexican police? I had booked the trip on my own credit card, both the hotel and the flight. I’d paid for my meals by charging them to the room. Beyond that, I hadn’t engaged in any transactions or interactions with people at all. It was a mystery.
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