by Beth Orsoff
“I bet it really comes in handy.”
“Actually, this is the first time I’ve had occasion to use it.”
“You should let me wear it. I still don’t think you should be here when Ernesto comes.”
At first David protested, but eventually he agreed. Then there was much scraping of chairs and shuffling of feet as David moved to a table several yards away.
I stayed under Jack and Jane’s table, listening as they ordered another bottle of water, a beer, and a basket of Cajun chicken wings. I knew Jack didn’t like my shrimp fra diavlo. Steven never liked my cooking either.
“So tell me about Lizzie,” Jack said.
“What do you want to know?”
“Is she always this crazy?”
I am not crazy!
“Yes. But she’s tame with you. You should see her at home.”
That bitch.
“We still have a few minutes before Ernesto gets here,” Jack said. “Maybe we should take advantage of it.”
I could see Jane’s foot inching up Jack’s leg. “What did you have in mind?” she asked.
I watched as Jack reached down and placed Jane’s foot in his lap and she followed with the other.
I would kill them both when we got out of here.
“That’s better,” Jack said. “So does Lizzie ever follow directions?”
“Never,” Jane said.
“So I shouldn’t be surprised if she’s hiding under our table instead of staying at the golf cart like she was supposed to?”
“Not in the least.”
Jack pushed his napkin off his lap and reached down to pick it up. “Gotcha,” he whispered into the slats.
I gave him the finger, but unfortunately I didn’t think he could see. An instant later, Jane slid her toes back into her heels and Jack was on his feet. I heard a chair above me scrape and Jack said, “Have a seat. You want a beer?”
“Couldn’t we sit inside?” Ernesto said.
“It’s too stuffy in there,” Jane replied. “Out here we have the breeze.”
“Relax,” Jack said. “It’s just the three of us.”
“I don’t like cops,” Ernesto said.
Obviously Jack hadn’t disabused him of his notion that Jane was a federal agent.
“Ernesto, we’re not interested in busting you,” she said. “We’re only interested in finding Michael’s killer. I’d think you’d want to find him too since he killed your cousin.”
“I do,” Ernesto said. “But if anyone finds out I talked, I’m dead.”
“No one’s going to find out,” Jack said. “We’ll be very discreet.”
“Where’s my money?”
Jane reached down to her purse and pulled out an envelope. She tapped Ernesto on the knee with it, but when he tried to grab it, she pulled it back.
“Don’t play games with me Blondie.”
The waitress brought Ernesto’s beer and asked if they wanted anything else. Jane told her no and she was gone.
“Information first,” Jane said. “Money second.”
“How do I know it’s all there?” Ernesto said.
“You can count it later. Five thousand tonight and five thousand tomorrow when we find out if your information’s any good.”
“That wasn’t the deal.” Ernesto slammed his fist on the table, causing his beer to tip over and rain down on me. I scooted away, but not before it doused me on its way to making a puddle in the sand, which quickly attracted a colony of ants.
From my new vantage point, I had to strain to hear their conversation, plus I was distracted by another couple above me and David talking to someone a few feet away. I leaned towards David’s table. I didn’t see any other feet and I didn’t hear anyone else’s voice, so I assumed he was talking on his cell phone.
“I’m there now,” he said, followed by a pause and then, “no I’ll come to you.” Another pause, then “I don’t know where she is, but I’m sure she’s not far.” Another pause. “Let’s worry about him first, then we’ll go back for her. They’re getting up, I’ve got to go.”
I peered through the slats and saw Ernesto’s sneakers moving toward the inside of the restaurant, followed by Jack’s Tevas and Jane’s strappy sandals. I took the opportunity to make a run for the unlit beach.
Chapter 47
I’D BEEN WAITING AT the golf cart for ten minutes when Jack and Jane finally arrived, and they didn’t look happy. Jack took the keys from Jane and slid behind the steering wheel. Then Jane took the front passenger seat, forcing me to ride in the back.
“What did he say?” I asked when it was apparent no one was going to offer up the information on their own.
“Didn’t you hear?” Jack asked.
I ignored his sarcasm. “Only up until he spilled his beer,” I said, holding my shirt out so he could see the stain down the front.
“He won’t tell us anything until we get him the rest of the money,” Jane replied.
“You didn’t give him the five thousand, did you?”
“Of course not,” she said. “We’re supposed to meet him at the dock tomorrow night with the full ten.”
“Does David know?”
“Of course David knows, he’s the one who gave us the five.”
“Then I think you should cancel.”
“Why?” Jack asked, staring at me through the rear view mirror.
“Because I don’t trust David.”
“Since when?” Jane asked.
Jack screeched the golf cart to a halt at the side of the road and turned around to face me. “What’s going on?”
I relayed David’s side of his cell phone conversation and waited for one of them to speak. Finally I said, “Well what are we going to do?”
“I think for now we do nothing,” Jack said. He cranked the engine and the golf cart lurched forward.
“My lawyer’s going to have me killed and you think we should do nothing!”
“You don’t know that,” Jack said. “You could’ve misinterpreted the whole thing. They may not have even been talking about you.”
“Sure, that’s why he said ‘they’re leaving,’ as the three of you walked out. I’m sure it was just a coincidence.”
“All I’m saying is you shouldn’t jump to any conclusions.”
“Easy for you to say since it’s not your neck on the line.” I turned to Jane who had been uncharacteristically silent. “And you agree with him?”
“I don’t know what to think.”
I was the first to reach the front door of the house, but I still had to wait for Jack to unlock it with Jane’s keys. I stormed directly into my bedroom, grabbed my pillow and my pajamas, and headed for Jane’s bed.
Jack followed me inside. “If you want company tonight, I’d be happy to oblige.”
“I bet you would.”
He sighed, then headed to his own room and slammed the door shut.
Jane appeared in the doorway and motioned for me to follow her into the bathroom, where she turned on the faucet for the tub. I knew I smelled like beer, but she didn’t have to be so obvious.
“I was going to take a shower before I went to sleep.”
“It’s not for you,” she said. “Although you might want to wash the beer off. You really reek. This is so Jack can’t hear us. I think I’ve figured out who killed Michael.”
“Who?”
“He did.”
Not this again. “He couldn’t have killed Michael. He was with me the whole night.”
“So you keep assuming. The coroner’s report said Michael died somewhere between midnight and four a.m.”
“When Jack was with me.”
“No, when you think he was with you. You were passed out, so you have no idea if he was there all night or not. He could’ve left, killed Michael, stolen the jade, then not realizing he still had Michael’s blood on his hands, hidden it in your suitcase.”
“How do you not realize you have blood on your hands? Don’t you think he’d be s
mart enough to wash them?”
“Of course, but you can never get it all off. That’s how the cops can always find drops of it with that special UV light.”
I did always wonder about that when I saw it on T.V. “And his motive?”
“I’m not sure yet. Money probably. He is a poor student after all.”
“But why hide it in my suitcase?”
“He probably planned on coming back for it, but you surprised him by leaving early.”
“Only after he blew me off. And besides, Manuel asked him to take me out on the boat that night. Couldn’t Manuel have gotten the jade while Jack and I were watching the sunset?”
Jane reached over and shut the water before the bathtub overflowed. She put her finger to her lips as she waited for half the tub drain out, before she started the faucet again.
“What if Manuel didn’t ask him to take you out? What if he really was surprised to see you out on the water with Jack?”
This was giving me a headache. I couldn’t keep up with who was lying and who was telling the truth. “When we got back to my room that night, I took a shower. If Jack was only after the jade, he had plenty of time to get it back. Why didn’t he?”
“Give me a minute,” she said, closing her eyes while she twisted the ends of her hair into ringlets. By the time she’d successfully re-routed her conspiracy train, she looked like she’d gotten a bad eighties perm. “I got it,” she said jumping up from the edge of the tub. “Didn’t Sergeant Ramos say the pieces they found in Michael’s room were part of a collection, and that some of them, the valuable ones, were missing?”
“Yes.”
“But the ones they found in your suitcase were fakes, or at least not priceless antiquities?”
“Yes.” I still wasn’t following. Maybe I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to believe my judgment about Jack could be so wrong. But I had to admit, my track record with men lately hadn’t been too good.
“What if Jack grabbed the originals while you were in the shower, then left the fakes in your suitcase so you could take the fall. Maybe he’s even the one who called Sergeant Ramos and tipped him off.”
I tried to digest this new theory. It all fit except for one part. “If Jack already has what he wants, then why help me break out of jail? And why is he here with us now?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “That’s what we have to figure out.”
“And what about David?”
“Something’s definitely going on there, I’m just not sure what. From this point forward, we trust no one but ourselves.”
Chapter 48
I SPENT A MOSTLY sleepless night wondering if Jack was going to slip into our room the moment we fell asleep and slit our throats. Finally around three I got up and put a chair in front of the door. It didn’t help. Every time I heard the slightest noise, I was instantly awake.
I finally slept a few hours as the sun was coming up. When I awoke at 8:30, the door was open and I was alone. I ran into the living room and found Jane on the couch sipping coffee and watching “The Today Show.”
“Jack’s gone,” she said. “He left a note,” she added as she handed it to me.
Ladies,
Had some things to take care of. I’ll be back before the meeting tonight.
Jack
“Well that’s vague.”
Jane shrugged and muted the sound on the TV. “I called my dad again. I wanted his take on all this.”
“And does Mr. Chandler think Jack’s the killer?” I asked, joining her on the couch.
“He has no idea, but he told me I should stay out of it and come home. Don’t worry,” she said, smiling at the look of devastation on my face, “you know I never take my father’s advice. And he knows too, so I was able to convince him to do a little digging. The DEA and Customs are running a joint task force down here. Apparently antiquities smuggling has become very popular with drug dealers.”
“Don’t you find that odd?” I did.
She shook her head. “Not really. According to my dad it’s an easy way for the dealers to launder their money.”
“How?”
“They sell the pieces through legitimate antiquities dealers unknowingly. Or sometimes they know, but don’t care. The antiquities dealer acquires the piece from the drug dealer, then sells the same piece back to someone else on the drug dealer’s payroll who just happens to pay in cash. The antiquities dealer gets his points—”
“Points?”
“A commission, like a real estate broker. Then he deposits the rest of the money in the bank as a legitimate transaction and transfers the funds to a dummy corporation set up by the drug dealer’s lawyer in advance. The lawyer then parcels the money out through different shell corporations saying that its payment for services like cleaning, shipping, preserving, anything really. After that it gets very hard to trace.”
“And you think Jack is involved in all this?”
“Maybe. And possibly David too. But I definitely think Michael was. That’s probably why he wanted to travel with you in the first place. Newlyweds returning from their honeymoon in Belize are a lot less likely to get stopped by Customs then a single Hispanic male traveling alone.”
“So wanting me to fly home with him to make the ex-girlfriend jealous was all bullshit?”
“You never really believed that, did you?”
“I guess not.” Actually, I did, but I wasn’t about to admit it now. “While all this is fascinating, it still doesn’t tell us who killed Michael or why.”
“No,” Jane admitted. “But we’re one step closer to finding out.”
“And what’s the next step?”
“Getting Ernesto his ten thousand dollars so he’ll fill in the rest of the blanks.”
We both showered and dressed, Jane in a mini-skirt and layered tank tops, me in my men’s khakis, over-sized leisure shirt and baseball cap, and headed into town. First Caribbean Bank of Belize was only three blocks from the Parrot Caye Police Station, but Jane wasn’t concerned. I, however, was, so I dropped her off and parked the golf cart at the other end of First Street, near all the shops and restaurants. I could still keep an eye out for her with the camera, but I’d look like a tourist, instead of a getaway driver. Which was how I spotted John and Cheryl riding their bikes.
They stopped in front of the same outdoor café I’d seen them in the last time. I was so busy watching them—they propped their bikes up against the railing of the restaurant, then the hostess seated them at a table just inside the gate—that I hadn’t even noticed Jane leaving the bank.
“You could’ve came and picked me up,” she said, slipping into the passenger seat and scaring the hell out of me. “This money is for your benefit.”
“Sorry,” I said, letting the camera dangle from the cord around my neck. “You’ll never believe who I just spotted.”
“Leonardo Di Caprio?”
“No, why would you even guess him?”
“I read somewhere that he bought an island down here. Who?”
“John and Cheryl.”
“Give me that,” she said, pulling on the camera, and consequently my neck.
“Ow!”
“Sorry, but I want to check them out before they leave.”
“I don’t think they’re going anytime soon,” I said, slipping the camera over my neck and handing it to her. I pointed in the general direction of the restaurant. “You see the bikes out front?”
“No,” she said, and I moved the camera lower. “The two beach cruisers propped up against the railing?”
“They’re the couple sitting at the table behind the bikes.”
“The two gay guys?”
“No,” I said and grabbed the camera out of her hand. She was right, there was a male couple sitting at a table just inside the railing, but behind a different set of bikes. And to my surprise, three tables to the left of them was Rodrigo, the “friend of the family” that warned me about buying fake antiquities. Of course his warning ultim
ately got me arrested for murder, so clearly he wasn’t a friend to me. And either this was the most popular restaurant on Parrot Caye, or something was going on here.
“What do you think it could be?” Jane asked, ever at the ready to jump on a new conspiracy theory.
“I don’t know,” I said, widening the lens so I could see both Rodrigo and Cheryl and John in the same shot. “They don’t seem to be paying much attention to each other.”
“That doesn’t mean anything,” she said. “If it’s covert surveillance, you wouldn’t be able to tell.”
“But who’s surveilling who? And why?”
“Let me see,” Jane said, grabbing the camera back from me. “Is Cheryl the blond with her hair in a pony tail?”
“Yes.”
“Someone needs to tell her to lay off those fruit smoothies. Either that or she should buy longer shorts.”
“She’s pregnant,” I said in Cheryl’s defense.
“She’s not carrying the baby in her thighs, is she?”
“Will you stop looking at her legs and focus on her face. Do you think she’s looking at Rodrigo? Or do you think Rodrigo’s looking at her? Or is this all just a coincidence and hanging out with you has made me paranoid?”
“I don’t believe in coincidences,” Jane said, still peering at our subjects. “And I think you’re focusing on the wrong one. All Cheryl cares about is getting to the bottom of that shake. John’s the one that looks antsy.”
I grabbed the camera back from her. Jane was right. John was the one whose knee was bouncing non-stop and who kept glancing towards the inside of the restaurant. But Jane didn’t even have time to come up with a new theory before the waitress John was waiting on arrived with their check. John barely looked at it before he threw a few bills on the table, and he and Cheryl left. And yes, she did manage to finish that smoothie first.
“Well aren’t you going to follow them?” Jane asked.
Normally she drove, but I was sitting behind the wheel. “Do you think we should?”
“Of course we should. How else are we going to find out how they fit into this whole mess?”
“You mean if don’t you?”