A Widow in Paradise & Suburban Secrets

by Donna Birdsell

“Yes,” she said quietly. “Yes, it is.”

  She could feel Guy watching her as she watched the waves.

  Roger was out there, somewhere.

  Tears gathered in the corners of her eyes.

  “Watch my towel for a minute,” Guy said. “I’ll be right back.”

  She lay back in the sand and put her head on her bag, closing her eyes. If only she wasn’t here to find out about Roger’s death. If only she could take it easy, as the natives kept suggesting, and just lie on the beach all day, working on nothing but a tan and a drink.

  She opened her eyes when she felt a shadow loom over her.

  Guy.

  She sat up.

  “This is Pedro.” Guy nodded toward the waiter standing beside him with a tray of Cuatro coladas. “He’s got a boat, and said he’d be willing to take you to El Cuello on his break, for the right price.”

  Pedro nodded.

  “Are you kidding me?” Dannie jumped up and brushed the sand from her skirt. “When’s your break?”

  Pedro shrugged. “Whenever.”

  “How long is your break? Will you have time to take us there and back?”

  Pedro shrugged again. “Sure.”

  “Oh, wow. Great. Okay, let me go get my friend.” She picked up her bag. “I suppose you’re going, too?” she said to Guy.

  He shook his head. “This one is all yours.”

  She smiled, rising on tiptoe to kiss his cheek. “Thank you.”

  Was it her imagination, or did he blush?

  Nah. It was probably just the sun.

  She ran back up to the hotel. Lyle was slumped in a wicker chair in the lobby, his hat pulled down over his eyes.

  She shook his shoulder. “Come on, hurry up! We’ve got a ride to El Cuello.”

  He jumped up and followed her toward the stairs. “Wow, that was fast. How’d you do it?”

  “Actually, I didn’t. It was Guy.”

  Lyle came to a dead halt. “Is he coming along?”

  “Nope.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Nope.”

  Lyle took off his hat, wiping the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. “Damn, it’s hot.”

  “Don’t worry. In a few hours we’ll be on an air-conditioned plane back to Philadelphia with Roger’s death certificate and a nice tan, and we’ll never have to see this place again.”

  TWELVE HOURS LATER they were on a plane, all right. Except it wasn’t moving, and the air-conditioning was broken, and they didn’t have the death certificate. They weren’t tanned, either.

  At least, Lyle wasn’t. He was burned, a deep lobster-red.

  “Didn’t you have sunscreen on?” Dannie asked, pressing a finger onto his leg. The white mark it made faded quickly back to red.

  “I was so hungover I forgot.” He looked absolutely miserable.

  Indeed, it had been a miserable day.

  Pedro’s boat had turned out to be a motorized skiff, which took the residual waves left by the hurricane about as well as a Hollywood actress took cellulite.

  Dannie clung to the sides for dear life, wearing two life jackets. Pedro babied the tiny engine around the south end of the island as it plowed over three-foot swells. The ride took more than half an hour, and by the time they arrived in El Cuello, both Dannie and Lyle had retched up everything they’d eaten for breakfast.

  Pedro dropped them off at the end of a long dock, promising to return for them when his shift was over.

  “When is that?” Lyle asked.

  Pedro shrugged. “Whenever.”

  They asked a fisherman the way to the El Cuello police station, and he pointed to a small yellow building at the end of the narrow beach, fronting onto a street that looked like something out of a Tijuana postcard.

  The place was locked when they arrived. They wandered through streets littered with debris from the storm, asking everyone they saw where they could find the owners of the local fishing charters. No one seemed to know.

  Eventually they went back to the police station and waited in front of the building, playing four games of gin rummy with a deck of cards Dannie had found in her purse. They waited for more than two hours, but no one returned.

  When they heard the spastic drone of the engine on Pedro’s dinghy, they ran back down to the dock. The fisherman said he’d forgotten to tell them that all the police officers had gone to a neighboring town for a meeting about the hurricane cleanup.

  So here they were twelve hours later, sitting on the narrow tarmac at the Cuatro Blanco airport, waiting for clearance to fly back to the States without having accomplished anything.

  Well, that wasn’t entirely true.

  Lyle had managed to get first-degree burns on his legs, and she’d won a Dirty Dancing competition with a man she both lusted after and despised.

  Okay, maybe she didn’t despise him so much anymore. Not since he’d found a boat to take them to the other side of the island. Maybe he’d finally realized he’d been wrong about Roger.

  Still, she wished she could have uncovered some information about Roger’s death. Even she could see there had to be some connection between Roger and Lisa besides the affair. The counterfeit money had to be more than a coincidence.

  Was it possible Roger had been framed for something? Killed for something Lisa had done? Or maybe Lisa had killed him herself?

  A shiver ran through her, despite the suffocating heat in the airplane’s cabin.

  Dannie got up to put her bag in the overhead compartment. A woman peered at her from the rear of the plane.

  It was the same woman who’d been in the hallway of the hotel the night before. The one from the line at the airport.

  She was one of the lucky ones, like them.

  The airline had double booked every flight out of Cuatro Blanco for the next four days, so it was pretty much now or never.

  She and Lyle had considered extending their stay by a day or two, but the airline couldn’t guarantee them a flight before Friday, and Lyle had an important meeting to attend on Wednesday.

  She settled back in her seat. Lyle was snoring beside the window.

  The “fasten seat belt” light went on above her head, and Dannie closed her eyes. She wondered if she’d ever know the truth about Roger.

  Chapter Eight

  “MOMMY, I MISSED YOU!” Betsy, still wearing her pink baby-doll pajamas, clung to Dannie’s leg.

  It wasn’t quite eight in the morning. Dannie had come straight from the airport after nearly three hours of waiting on the runway in Cuatro Blanco—apparently typical for the island—and an overnight stay in Miami because they’d missed their connecting flight. She couldn’t wait to see the kids.

  Richard paraded in front of her, showing off every gift Elizabeth and Albert had given them the whole weekend.

  The twins sat on her lap, and Dannie buried her nose in Erin’s hair. Nothing like the scent of baby shampoo to put everything into perspective.

  “How did it go?” Elizabeth poured Dannie a cup of coffee as they sat in her mother-in-law’s immaculate living room.

  Dannie noticed several pieces of Elizabeth’s bric-a-brac had gone missing. She wondered if her mother-in-law had put them away to save them, or if Richard had already reduced them to rubble.

  “It was a bust,” Dannie said. “A hurricane swept through the island Sunday evening, and the roads were a mess on Monday. We got to El Cuello, but couldn’t talk to the authorities because everyone was busy with the cleanup. In fact, we were lucky to get out of there at all.”

  “So you didn’t find anything out?” The disappointment was raw in her voice. She and Albert wanted closure, too.

  Dannie shook her head. “I’m sorry.”

  Elizabeth sighed. “Maybe next time.”

  “There won’t be a next time. I’m not going back to Cuatro Blanco.” Dannie stood, hoisting the twins onto her hips. “All right, guys. Tell Grandma and Grandpa thank you.”

  “Thanks, Grandma. We liked it he
re, even though you don’t have Cocoa Crunchies.” Richard turned to Dannie and made a face. “We had to eat oatmeal for breakfast.”

  “Yeah,” said Betsy. “And we had fruit for dessert. Mommy, tell Grandma what you always say. If it doesn’t have chocolate in it, on it, or under it, it’s not dessert.”

  Elizabeth raised her eyebrows. “Is that what you say?”

  Dannie’s face heated. “Something like that. Listen, I really appreciate your help.”

  “We enjoy having them.”

  “I’m sure you do. But I know they can be a handful.”

  Elizabeth touched Dannie’s arm and gave her a little smile. “You’re doing a good job with them, dear.”

  Tears stung Dannie’s eyes over this praise from a most unlikely source. “Thank you.”

  Albert tore himself away from the history channel in the living room long enough to see them off. He kissed the kids, telling Dannie to bring them back soon as she hustled them out the door.

  Still, Dannie thought she saw the tiniest expression of relief on Elizabeth’s and Albert’s faces through the big bow window of the living room.

  Exhausted Grandparents Waving Goodbye.

  THE FRONT DOOR SWUNG open when Dannie touched the doorknob. She stepped over the threshold into the house, crunching on shards of broken glass that littered the foyer, glittering in the sunlight.

  Quincy sniffed around the front door, whining and barking.

  “Nobody move!” Dannie grabbed Richard’s shoulder and turned him around. “Get back to the car.”

  “How can we get back to the car if we’re not allowed to move?” Richard said.

  Dannie pushed him out the door. “Get going. Back to the car. Hurry.”

  She called the dog and herded the kids back to the van, locking the doors when they were all inside. She started to dial 911 on her cell phone, but then remembered the hot-dog box full of counterfeit money in her freezer.

  What if the police found it?

  Or what if that was what the thief had been after?

  She debated going back into the house to see if it was gone, but she didn’t want to leave the kids in the car alone. And she certainly wasn’t bringing them in there.

  The police would have to wait until she knew for sure where the funny money was.

  She dialed the first few digits of Lyle’s number, but then thought better of it. She needed to stop treating Lyle like Roger’s replacement.

  As she pondered her options, her cell phone rang.

  G. Loughran.

  Her heart gave an involuntary flutter.

  She waited four rings before answering.

  “How did you get this number?”

  “Lyle gave it to me.”

  “I highly doubt that.”

  “Actually, I got it off his cell phone when he was napping on the table in the lounge.”

  She had to smile at that one. “What do you want?”

  “I called to see if you found anything out in El Cuello.”

  She sighed. “If you must know, no. I didn’t.”

  “I’m sorry.” He actually sounded sincere.

  “Yeah, well. Things seem to be heating up here at home.”

  As they talked, she backed the van out of the drive and headed toward her in-laws’ house.

  “What do you mean, heating up?” he asked.

  “Somebody broke in to my house.”

  “Oh, my God. Are you okay?”

  “Yeah. Just a little shaken up. It happened while we were gone, thank God. I’m going back to my in-laws’, I guess.”

  “Why don’t you come here?” he asked.

  “Cuatro Blanco?”

  “No. My house.”

  “You’re back? How did you get back?”

  He hesitated. “A friend got me onto a private plane.”

  “Would that friend happen to be a redheaded flight attendant?”

  “Actually, it was the redhead’s pilot. He flies a charter back and forth from Philly, and there was an extra seat. I got in around seven this morning.”

  Two hours sooner than she and Lyle had.

  “So what do you say? You wanna come over?”

  Did she?

  She did. And before she could analyze why, she said, “What’s your address?”

  TEN MINUTES LATER Dannie was sitting at Guy’s kitchen table while Quincy and the kids played in his tiny backyard.

  The house was small, with a country-cottage decor that had to be Lisa’s doing. Dressed in black spandex shorts and a sweat-soaked T-shirt, Guy looked completely out of place amidst the gingham and lace.

  “We interrupted your workout,” Dannie said.

  “No, it’s fine. Just let me grab a quick shower. Do you want anything while you’re waiting?”

  “How about some coffee?”

  He pointed to the corner of the kitchen. “The machine is right over there. Coffee’s in the cabinet above it. You’ll have to make it yourself, though. I don’t know how to work it.”

  “No problem. I can operate a coffee machine with my eyes closed and one arm wrapped around a toddler.”

  Guy smiled. “I’m glad you’re here.”

  So was she.

  He disappeared down a hallway, while Dannie busied herself with the coffeemaker. She looked out the kitchen window into the backyard. Quincy chased Betsy around the pole of a bird feeder while the twins played on a blanket Guy had taken off the bed in the spare room. Richard was blowing dandelion seeds all over the grass. Guy would be so pleased.

  She found a mug with a handle shaped like a pair of scissors, which she held under the dripping stream of coffee, unwilling to wait for it to fill up the pot. She downed an entire scorching-hot cup in ten seconds, then refilled the mug and went outside to the deck, stretching out on a mesh lawn chaise.

  Caffeine coursed through her veins, clearing the fog that had settled on her brain over the past twenty-nine sleepless hours. She realized she had to get to the bottom of all this. Maybe if she helped Guy find out what had happened to Lisa it would give her some kind of clue as to what Roger had been involved in.

  Her cell phone buzzed in her pocket. She took it out and looked at the caller’s number.

  Lyle.

  She took another swig of coffee for fortification before she answered it.

  “Are you okay?” Lyle said on the other end. “I went by the house and saw a broken window by the front door.”

  “I’m fine. The neighbor’s kid hit a baseball through the window,” she lied. “No big deal. I called a glass place, but they can’t fix it until tomorrow.”

  “Why don’t you bring the kids and stay here tonight? You can’t sleep at your place with that window. It isn’t safe.”

  “I appreciate the offer, but we’re at Elizabeth and Albert’s. We’ll be fine.”

  “You know I’d be happy to have you,” Lyle said.

  “I know. Thanks. I’ll call you tomorrow, okay?”

  She hung up just as Guy stepped out onto the patio.

  “You need more coffee?” he said.

  She shook her head. “One more cup and I’ll be wired enough to light up Times Square. What are you drinking?”

  He raised his mug. “Rooibos tea. It’s great for the digestive system.”

  “So are Twinkies.”

  “Are you hungry?”

  Dannie rubbed her forehead. “I don’t know. I guess so. My body can’t even tell what time it is anymore.”

  “You need some sleep—”

  “Richard!” Dannie yelled. “Get your face out of that birdbath! And Betsy, put your shirt back on.”

  “Interesting children.” Guy took a sip of his tea. “How are they taking Roger’s absence?”

  Dannie sighed. “Richard is acting out a bit. He asks about his father all the time. Betsy’s in her own little world, and the twins are just too young to realize what’s going on.”

  “At least they have Lyle.”

  Dannie couldn’t tell if he was being sarcastic.


  But how could he know that Lyle really wasn’t into kids? Or animals.

  He tried. He really did. But Lyle was particular about his house, and his suits, and his car. And being particular didn’t coexist very well with chocolate-smeared fingers and dirty diapers and slobbering dogs.

  Guy, on the other hand, seemed impervious to the fact that her son had broken the hat off a garden gnome, the twins had spit up on his blanket and the dog had already dug a hole in the patch of black-eyed Susans near the fence.

  Betsy was sitting up in a rhododendron bush and chirping like a bird. And chirping. And chirping. And chirping…

  “So you want to tell me what’s going on?” Guy said.

  Dannie settled back into the chaise. “I told you. Someone broke a window in the house.”

  “Any idea who?”

  “Probably just some kids. I don’t know.”

  “Did you call the police?”

  She hesitated. “No. Not yet.” She could feel him looking at her.

  “Come on, Dannie. Level with me.”

  “About what?”

  “Whatever it is you’re hiding. I can hear the tension in your voice. You’re scared.”

  She sighed. It was time to come clean. She needed help with all of this, and for whatever reason, her gut was telling her that Guy was her man.

  “You know the counterfeit money you found in your safe?” she said.

  Out of the corner of her eye she could see Guy’s body tense.

  “What about it?”

  “Are you sure Lisa put it there?”

  “Positive. She was the only other person on earth who knew the combination to the safe.”

  “Do you know where she got it? The money, I mean.”

  “No.” Guy crossed his legs at the ankles. “Why, do you?”

  “I might.”

  He sat up, focusing his full attention on her. “You gonna tell me?”

  She swung her legs off the chaise and turned to face him. “Okay. A couple of days before you called me, I was going through some things in the garage, and I found a golf bag full of hundred-dollar bills.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. And Roger never played golf in his life. Then when I tried to use some of the money to pay for a round of drinks with some friends, the manager informed me it was counterfeit.”