A Widow in Paradise & Suburban Secrets

by Donna Birdsell

  “Nothing.”

  “That’s it? You were supposed to run away with me. You told me you loved me. You got nothing to say?”

  Lisa shrugged. “Roger had more money. More than you, and a hell of a lot more than him.” She jabbed a thumb in Guy’s direction.

  “Gee, thanks,” Guy said.

  Lisa shrugged again.

  Lyle leveled the gun at Guy. “And you. You’ve been a pain in my ass since before we met. I hated you before I ever even knew you, and now I can finally do something about it. In fact, I can do something about all of you.”

  “Lyle, let’s talk about this,” Roger said.

  “The only thing I want to hear is where those books are. You better tell me, or I’m going to start popping these people. Only question is who should go first.” He moved the gun from one to the other to the other. “Eenie, meenie, miney, moe…”

  There was no way Dannie was going to die without finding out exactly what had happened. She’d gone nine long months believing Roger was dead, and she wanted a damn explanation.

  With hardly a thought she rolled onto her hip and kicked out hard, clipping Lyle in the kneecap. He screamed in pain.

  The gun went off, the bullet splintering the ceiling fan above them.

  Guy leaped for Lyle, tackling him at the hip. Lyle landed with an “oof.” The gun flew out of his hand, skittering under the TV stand.

  Lisa scrambled for it, but Lyle grabbed her legs. She kicked him in the face, bloodying his nose. Lyle countered with a wild slap that glanced off Lisa’s thigh. He twisted violently, trying to shake Guy off his knees. It was a no go. Guy outweighed Lyle by at least thirty pounds, and those thirty pounds were all muscle.

  Dannie came up with the gun. Borrowing a line from every cop show she’d ever seen, she said, “Everybody, freeze!”

  Only, nobody froze.

  She pressed the gun to Lyle’s back. “I said freeze.”

  Lyle stopped struggling, lying facedown on the carpet. Lisa crawled away from him, wiping blood from the side of her mouth with the back of her hand. Her red hair blazed around her face like a firestorm.

  “Jesus Christ, Lyle. What’s your problem?” she screamed.

  “What’s my problem?” Lyle shouted into the carpet. “You use me to get your fake money, and then you take off with another man. You women are all alike.”

  Roger still sat in the center of the room, as if he were unsure what to do. Guy grabbed Lyle by the back of his collar and hauled him to his feet.

  “Tie him up,” Dannie said.

  “With what?” Guy asked.

  Dannie looked at Roger.

  “There’s some duct tape in the garage.”

  “Go get it,” Dannie told him.

  Roger disappeared. He was gone so long, Dannie feared he wasn’t coming back. But he finally returned, carrying a roll of silver tape and a half-empty beer. “Sorry. It took me a while to find it.”

  “Looks like you had no trouble finding the beer,” Dannie said. “By the way, you look like crap.”

  The Roger she’d known had always been the healthy outdoorsman type. But sometime in the past eight months he’d turned into a character from a Jimmy Buffett song. Dannie had no doubt he’d blended his share of margaritas.

  Guy taped Lyle’s wrists behind his back, then moved to his ankles, and finally stuck a piece over his mouth for good measure. When he was finished, he picked Lyle up and plopped him on the couch.

  Dannie slid the safety into place on the gun before she stuck it into the waistband of her shorts. “Guy, would you and Lisa mind excusing Roger and me? We have a few things to talk about.”

  Guy nodded. “So do we.”

  He picked Lyle up and threw him over his shoulder, following Lisa out of the room. When they’d gone, Dannie looked at Roger.

  He took a long haul on his beer.

  “What happened?” she said quietly. “Whatever possessed you to do something like this?”

  Roger gave her a pleading look. “I had to. You have to understand. Ben Wiser thought I was embezzling.”

  “Were you?”

  “Not exactly. I mean, I took the money, but Jimmy Duke is a scumbag—”

  “So you embezzled from a scumbag. What does that make you?”

  Roger took another pull on his beer.

  Dannie felt herself falling apart, and she didn’t want to. At least, not until she knew every single detail of what had happened.

  “How did you do it?” she said with a calm she certainly didn’t feel. “How did you make everybody believe you were dead?”

  Roger shrugged. “I paid Alejandro big bucks to hit the buoy while I was standing at the front of the boat. I fell overboard and swam beneath the buoy. Lisa was waiting there with a diving tank and scuba gear. We swam underwater to shore while they searched for my body. Lisa had come down a couple days earlier and had already rented us a place. We just got in the car and drove away.”

  God, it was like a movie. Or a nightmare. Dannie actually pinched herself.

  Roger continued. “I’d sent the money I took from Jimmy Duke’s account at Wiser-Crenshaw to a bank account in Costa Rica. Lisa had it transferred into an account here, under a fake name. Lisa Lewellyn. I used an alias, too.”

  “Randy Jarvis.”

  He nodded. “I dyed my hair, grew a beard, got my ear pierced. People aren’t too suspicious around here. There are lots of drifters. Fugitives escaping their boring stateside lives. We pretty much blended in.”

  “You left us,” Dannie said, unable to keep the anguish from her voice. “You left me. You left your children. Do you know how much we missed you? Do you have any idea how I mourned for you? You bastard.”

  She couldn’t help it. The tears came, raw and bitter and uncontrollable.

  Roger stood, and reached out to touch her shoulder.

  “Don’t,” she said. “Don’t you dare touch me.”

  “Dano…”

  “My life has been hell since you’ve been gone. Do you know somebody broke in to the house? Slashed the tires on my car? I refuse to go through the rest of my life fearing for my kids’ safety. You embezzled money from a thug. You faked your death. You left us with nothing. Nothing.”

  “That’s not true. I left you well taken care of. You have the insurance money and the money from my stock at Wiser-Crenshaw.”

  Dannie laughed. “The joke’s on you. Or on us, I guess. “The insurance company won’t pay out because we can’t get a death certificate from the Cuatro Blancan authorities, because they couldn’t find a body. And Wiser-Crenshaw found out about the money you stole, so they won’t give us a dime, either.”

  Roger sat on the couch and put his head in his hands. “Jesus. I had no idea. What have you been doing for money?”

  “Certainly not using the stuff you left in the garage, that’s for sure. And by the way, why the hell was it there?”

  Roger blew out a breath. “Lyle made it on one of his high-end copiers. He and Lisa were going to steal the money in Guy’s safe and replace it with the counterfeit. Only, she wasn’t sure exactly how much was in there, so Lyle made extra. I didn’t get a chance to destroy it before I left.”

  “So that was the big idea you stole from Lyle? Taking Guy’s money and running away with his wife?”

  Roger nodded. “How have you been paying the bills?” he asked.

  “I’ve used just about everything we had saved. I got a job, too, but it doesn’t pay much. I came down here to try to talk the police into giving me a death certificate.”

  “Dannie, I’m sorry. I really am.”

  “Tell it to the kids.”

  Roger’s voice cracked. “I can’t go back until things cool off, Dano. Christ, if I do I’m a dead man. Jimmy Duke will kill me. Do you understand that?”

  “Oh, I understand, all right.” The question was, did she care?

  She looked at her husband. Or rather, the man who used to be her husband but was now Randy Jarvis—embezzler, fugitive, fra
ud and escapee from his boring stateside life. To say she didn’t know him anymore was an understatement.

  But while he might not have been the man she always thought he was, he was still the father of her children. She didn’t want to see him dead, but she did want him to live up to his end of the bargain.

  Dannie wiped the tears from her cheeks with the back of her hand. Her heart felt as if it had withered in her chest. “I do understand, Roger. But guess what? You’re not getting out of this without giving me and the kids what we need.”

  Roger’s cheeks reddened. “Jeez, Dano. I wish I could give you some money. But we’re almost broke here. She’s…She ran through almost everything I had. The bitch—”

  “I don’t want money,” Dannie interrupted. I want the books.”

  “The books? What books?”

  “You know what books. The books Lyle is looking for. The books you kept on Jimmy Duke’s illegal income.”

  Roger exhaled and dragged a hand down over his face. “I can’t tell you where they are. They’re the only thing that might save my ass.”

  “So you’re telling me your own safety is more important than your children’s?”

  “Of course not—”

  “Because if you don’t tell me where those books are, Jimmy Duke’s men will be breaking in to our house and harassing us for the rest of our lives while you hang out drinking beer and working on your tan.”

  “Jesus.” He rubbed his face again. “Okay, okay. I’ll tell you where they are.”

  Dannie waited, but he didn’t say anything. Finally she said, “Well?”

  “They’re in the boat.”

  “What boat? Alejandro’s?”

  He shook his head. “The boat in our garage.”

  Dannie’s mouth fell open. “What made you think I wouldn’t get rid of that thing? That I wouldn’t sell it?”

  “Well, I didn’t know you’d need the money.” He smiled at her. “And I know you, Dano. You’re sentimental.”

  “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “Come on. You saved the cork from the bottle of wine we had on our first date.”

  “It was a good bottle.”

  “You also saved the mint we got with the check.”

  “What’s your point?”

  “My point is that I knew you wouldn’t get rid of anything that meant a lot to me.”

  “Eventually I would have.”

  He sighed. “I planned on doing some traveling, getting back to the States eventually, with a new identity. In fact, I’ve been trying to get a passport for months, but even the forgers around here are slow.”

  Dannie rubbed her temples. “Let me ask you this. Were you planning on letting me know at some point that you were still alive?”

  Roger finished off his beer and stared down at the carpet. “I thought about it.”

  Dannie fought back a fresh spate of tears.

  “Listen,” he said. “Don’t tell anyone you saw me here, okay? Give me a fighting chance.”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  TEN MINUTES LATER Dannie and Guy walked out of Roger and Lisa’s bungalow. Alone.

  Lyle was still tied up on the kitchen floor. They left it to Roger and Lisa to figure out what to do with him, which only seemed appropriate.

  Dannie and Guy agreed that reporting Roger to the authorities, at least for the time being, could be detrimental to their plans.

  Dannie didn’t tell Roger that the Cuatro Blancan police suspected he was still alive. Nor did she tell him about the insurance investigation. A girl had to have her secrets.

  They drove the moped back to the docks to catch the ferry. On the way, they spotted Judy Finch talking to Paco outside the taqueria. Guy pulled the moped over to the side of the road. Dannie removed her sunglasses to get a better look.

  Judy was scribbling furiously in her notebook in her microscopic handwriting.

  “You think she’ll find Roger?” Guy asked.

  “Probably,” Dannie said.

  “What should we do?”

  Dannie put her sunglasses back on. “Screw it. It’s every man for himself now.”

  Chapter Twenty

  MOST OF THE PASSENGERS on Dannie and Guy’s flight were asleep, but Dannie couldn’t have closed her eyes if she’d tried.

  Aside from the three cups of coffee she’d downed at the airport, she was running on adrenaline and indecision. She still had no idea what she was going to do with the books.

  It wasn’t as if she could turn off her feelings for Roger just like that. She’d loved him for a long time. Probably still did, in some way that begged for in-depth analysis.

  If she went to the police, he’d be in a lot of trouble.

  On the other hand, Judy Finch had probably found him, and if that was the case, he was already in a lot of trouble.

  As if he’d read her mind, Guy said, “So what are you going to do?”

  Dannie switched on the overhead lamp. A small cone of light shone down on them, cocooning them in the relative dark of the plane, creating a strange sort of intimacy. It was as if they were the only people who existed in that moment.

  “I should probably take the books to the police,” she said.

  “It would be the right thing to do.”

  He didn’t sound so sure. And then she realized why.

  “If the police get hold of Roger’s books, they’d probably find out you’re involved with Jimmy Duke. That your spa is one of his ‘investments,’” she said.

  Guy nodded.

  “Why didn’t you say something to me? Why are you even letting me consider going to the authorities with this?”

  Guy looked tense and exhausted. “Because it isn’t my decision. You’ve got the most riding on all of this.”

  She reached over and curled her fingers around his. “I’m sorry.”

  “For what?”

  “For not believing you when you told me Roger was alive. For getting you into this mess in the first place.”

  Guy rubbed his thumb over hers. “I got myself into this mess. I’m the one who made a deal with the devil.” He sighed. “I just really thought I could make it all work. I had some great ideas for that spa.”

  He pulled her closer, tucking the scratchy airline-issue blanket under her chin. “I get no big thrill out of being right about Roger, you know.”

  “I know.”

  “And I love you.”

  She looked up into his eyes. She wanted to say something back. Not the Big L—she couldn’t go there yet—but something to show how much he’d come to mean to her. But all she could muster was a heartfelt “I know.”

  “Listen, you do what you have to do to protect yourself and the kids, okay? If that means going to the police, I’ll take my lumps.”

  She kissed his lips softly. Then she laid her head on his chest and fell into a fitful, dreamless sleep.

  THEY LANDED IN Philadelphia just after sunrise. It was four days before Halloween. The air was sharp, the sky overcast. Harbingers of November.

  As they walked to the car, Dannie said, “I made a decision.”

  “Yeah?”

  She could tell he was trying to sound casual.

  “I’ve decided to give the books to Wiser-Crenshaw.”

  He looked at her, puzzled.

  “In exchange for what’s rightfully mine. I want the money for the sale of Roger’s stock. I mean, technically the books are their property, right?”

  Guy nodded.

  “They wouldn’t want them to get into the wrong hands. Like the D.A.’s, maybe?”

  “Definitely not.”

  “They can figure out what they’re going to do about Duke. But I’m going to strongly suggest they terminate their business dealings with him.”

  The tension in Guy’s shoulders seemed to ease a bit. He grabbed her hand as they walked across the long-term parking lot. “Sounds like a plan.”

  The expressway was all but deserted, and they reached Dannie’s house in
the suburbs in no time at all. As soon as they walked in the front door, she knew something was wrong.

  Woman Reclining on Blue Bed, the painting that hung above the little table near the front door, was gone.

  Dannie went straight to the freezer.

  “The money’s gone, too,” she said, holding the empty hot-dog box. “Let’s go check on the books.”

  As they hurried through the house toward the garage, Dannie could see that the place had been thoroughly searched this time around, although nothing else seemed to be missing.

  In the office, the filing cabinets and desk had been broken in to, the contents of the closet strewn all over the floor.

  “Duke must be getting desperate,” Guy said.

  “You think it was him for sure?” Dannie asked.

  “That would be my guess. He wants those books.”

  Guy followed Dannie into the garage, and she switched on the light. Broken glass lay on the floor beneath a window on the far side.

  “Looks like that’s where they came in,” she said.

  Guy nodded. “Where did Roger say the books were?”

  She pointed at the boat, which lay like a beached whale in the middle of the floor, pushed off the blocks on which it had rested. Duke’s men had obviously searched it.

  Dannie grabbed a flashlight and a hammer and walked around the hull to the topside of the craft.

  Ignoring her claustrophobic bent, she climbed into the cabin, shining the flashlight over the wreckage in the eerie darkness. It was like searching the Titanic. Only, Treat’s Dream was a much, much smaller boat. And it hadn’t hit an iceberg. And it wasn’t underwater. And of course, nobody had made a movie about it.

  She stepped over torn-up carpeting and broken decking to get to the small galley kitchen in the front of the cabin. The doors of the cabinets had been unlatched, and hung open above her head.

  Dannie went to the second one and swung the hammer, splintering the back panel inside the cabinet. She cleared the broken wood with the claw of the hammer, exposing a hollow space about six inches deep between the cabinets and the fiberglass hull of the boat. Inside, just where Roger had told her, a paper grocery bag was taped to the fiberglass with duct tape.