“I think, just to be sure, we should pay right away,” Lilian’s mom said, sulking.
Her husband guided her to one of the chairs in the lobby, where he had her take a seat. He kneeled next to her, continueing to talk to her softly.
“This is very hard for this poor woman,” Snellen said somberly. “You can’t even imagine something like that happening to your own child. And now that another young woman has been kidnapped …”
Dominique remained quiet.
The uncomfortable silence continued until Snellen’s younger colleague entered the lobby with a few sheets of paper and handed them over to his superior.
“And?” asked Lilian’s father, who walked up to them immediately.
Snellen read for a moment, a frown on his forehead.
“Well,” he finally said. “It looks like we need to go back and speak with our young Mr. Flannagan.”
“What? With Marc? Why?”
“Because the FBI traced the email this morning through a variety of relay stations to the original IP address it was sent from. And that was at …” He looked down at the papers again. “The Bon Bini Beach Resort, right here in Aruba.”
They all turned and looked at Dominique.
“Does it give you a name too?” Dominique asked, breathless.
Snellen nodded slowly. “Yes, it does. That IP address is in the name of WernComp. Does that mean anything to you?”
Of course that meant something to Dominique. Her heart was racing a thousand miles a minute.
“That’s my father’s company. That means it’s the computer at our condo!”
62
The rest of the night was a blur. First, there had been that horrific scene in the lobby of the central police station. When Lilian’s mother heard that the threatening emails about the kidnapping had come from the condo, she lost her mind. She became furious at Dominique again and had screamed at her. With great difficulty, Sergeant Snellen and Lilian’s father had managed to calm her down.
Then Snellen had wanted to know exactly who could have had access to the computer in the house during the past few days.
Still in shock, Dominique had listed the names. First, Lilian and she, later Todd and Marc had been to the house, then Thomas and Lilian’s parents, and finally Angie, Leroy, and possibly Harry.
Snellen had taken notes and handed out orders to his subordinates. Quick and to the point, he went on to inform Lilian’s parents and Dominique about what was going to happen next.
The police were going to question Harry and bring Angie and Leroy to the police station. On top of that, Snellen was going to interrogate Marc again, in order to find out if he may have worked with an accomplice in Lilian’s kidnapping.
After all of that and once everything had settled down, after Snellen had left to go and question Marc, Lilian’s mother flipped out one more time. She blamed Dominique for taking her daughter to Aruba and said that she had brought her into contact with American criminals. After screaming at her in a very threatening manner for a few minutes, she had collapsed into chair in the lobby and could only sob uncontrollably.
Her husband had said to Dominique that maybe it was a good idea for her to leave. But she had not. She had decided to wait outside.
There, she had seen how Leroy was brought in by two police officers. He had his head down and did not make eye contact with her.
Soon after, two police offers arrived with Angie, who was crying.
“Sorry, miss!” she called out to Dominique. “This wasn’t supposed to happen!” Before Dominique could ask her anything, they were inside.
Dominique decided to enter the station again after all, but she sat far away from Lilian’s parents.
It took more than an hour, more than sixty grueling minutes, before Snellen returned to the lobby. He made a quick hand gesture, indicating that Lilian’s parents and Dominique should follow him.
They followed the sweaty man to the interrogation room. There was no one else there. The fan on the ceiling turned slowly. An irritating fluorescent light buzzed.
Snellen waited for them to take their seats on the other side of the table before he sat down too.
“So?” Lilian’s mom asked impatiently.
The policeman folded his arms across his belly.
“We’ve had some very enlightening conversations with both Mr. Martina as well as Miss Delacruz,” he explained.
“Leroy and Angie,” Dominique clarified when she saw Lilian’s parents’ confused faces.
Snellen nodded. “Martina confessed that he wrote the ransom emails.”
“What?” Lilian’s father called out. “Where is this bastard keeping our daughter?”
“Please, calm down,” Snellen said, raising his hands. “As far as we know, Martina has nothing to do with your daughter’s actual disappearance. He only tried use the situation to make money off of someone else’s worry and grief.”
Lilian’s mother put her hands to her face. “Oh, what a heartless son of a bitch! He knew Lilian was gone, so he …”
“Exactly,” the policeman agreed. “He knew everything that was happening. He used that knowledge. Very smart. But, sadly for him, not smart enough.”
“Are you sure that he didn’t kidnap our Lilian?” Lilian’s father persisted.
“Almost. There is no evidence of anything else, and none for the kidnapping itself.”
“So, if all he did was send those ransom emails, it means we are back to where we started,” Lilian’s mom concluded sadly, grabbing her husband’s hand.
“I’m afraid so,” Snellen answered with deep empathy. “At this point, we don’t have a single clue to go on.”
“What about Angie? When she was brought in she said to me, ‘Sorry, this wasn’t supposed to happen.’ So how is she involved in all of this?” Dominique asked.
“Miss Delacruz appears to have stolen items from the houses she cleans regularly,” Snellen explained. “Small amounts of money, food, and sometimes personal items. During the interrogation, she said she had also taken things belonging to your friend. One of those things was a notebook, because she noticed that your friend had clamped a wad of money between the last page and the back cover. Maybe that was her allowance money. Later, when she realized the notebook had a lot of personal information in it and had heard, of course, from you that your friend had disappeared, she had felt guilty. So, she returned the notebook.”
Dominique was surprised, but it explained a lot.
She saw how Lilian’s mother took the notebook from her handbag and held on to it tightly.
“What exactly is in this notebook?” Snellen wanted to know.
“Well, it has a lot of personal notes basically. All about Lilian in Holland,” Dominique said. “Nothing about Aruba,”
“You don’t want it, do you?” Lilian’s mother asked, clearly afraid. “It’s pretty much the only thing of Lilian’s that I have at the moment.”
“We would like to dust the notebook for fingerprints and read the notebook just to be sure. But we can photocopy the pages. You will only have to part with it today.” Snellen looked down at his papers for a moment. “What I do need to know, Miss Werner: Are you going to file a complaint?”
Dominique looked at him with surprise. “Me? What do you mean? Against whom?”
“Against Miss Delacruz. For theft.”
A faint smile ran across her lips when she thought about how Angie had shared her life story with Lilian and her.
“No, I don’t think so. After all, she did return the notebook. And those other items she needs more than we do.”
“As you wish.” Snellen wrote it down. “Then, as far as Miss Delacruz goes, we will keep it to an official warning and release her. But, as for Mr. Martina, it is obviously a different story.”
“That bastard!” Lilian’s mother said with deep conviction.
63
Dominique said a quick good-bye to Lilian’s parents in the lobby and left the police station immediately. It
was still light outside. While she walked the street the cool evening breeze felt refreshing to her, but the thoughts in her mind were scattered.
Another girl had been kidnapped! An American. What did that mean? Maybe there was a local gang at play here, or an individual who only kidnapped young women? If Fernandes was right, then it would be a Dutch man. But how would all of that affect Lilian?
She grabbed her phone and called Thomas. It took a while before he answered.
“Do? Hang on a minute? I’m in the middle of another call on a different phone.”
She could hear him talking in the background and could pick up a few English words here and there, but couldn’t make out what he was talking about at all.
A few minutes later he returned.
“Sorry, I’m in the middle of a business deal. If they call me back again, I will have to answer it right away, so I need to keep it short.”
“Okay, I just came back from the police station. They’ve arrested Leroy and Angie.”
“Angie? Is that the cleaning woman?”
“Yes. She stole a few things from our house. One of those things was Lilian’s notebook, but she returned it to us.”
“Was she working with Leroy?”
“No, he was the one who sent the ransom emails. From our own computer.”
“Good God, what nerve!”
“You can say that again. They are keeping him. But Angie will be released with an official warning, because I didn’t want to press charges against her.”
“Why not?”
“I’ll explain that when we have more time.”
“Okay, so what about Lilian?”
Dominique waited for a few cars to pass before she crossed the street. “Nothing at all.”
“What if they put this Leroy under more pressure?”
“Snellen assumes that he only tried to get a piece of the pie, and that he has nothing to do with the actual kidnapping. Besides, another girl was kidnapped last night.”
“What?”
“An American girl, from another town on the other side of the airport.”
“This is just un—shit, my other phone is ringing. I have to go. Talk to you later.”
He disconnected the call.
Dominique leaned against a house, called her father, and quickly updated him on the current state of affairs.
After that she just felt empty and alone. What else could she do?
Aimlessly, she walked through the city, drank coffee on a terrace, and did some window-shopping. A few guys around her age tried to start a conversation with her, but she was in no mood for any of that.
She kept repeating everything in her mind. Could Leroy be involved with the kidnapping after all? That didn’t seem very likely. But what if he had accomplices and they thought: We are going to kidnap one of those two Dutch girls. Then why did they pick Lilian? It was more than obvious that Dominique was the one with the rich father. Or were they cunning enough to assume her father would pay Lilian’s ransom as well?
When she finally sat down at an Italian restaurant, after an hour of aimless wandering, she ordered some pizza and a salad and started with a glass of wine. By the time Dave, Chuck, and Jerome found her later that evening at La Mamba, she had drank much more. She told them what had happened that day as if it was all part of a slapstick movie. It didn’t take long before the guys stopped laughing, but listened to her in seriously, while Dominique screamed out: “Here you are thinking: I’m going to have a blast in Aruba. And what do you know? They kidnap your best friend! And your taxi driver tries to extort money from you!”
She thought it was all hilarious, even when she told the story a second and third time. Meanwhile, she kept on downing one glass of wine after the other. Dave barely managed to stop her from ordering tequila shots. But he didn’t stop her from continually giving him kisses.
When she fell the first time, Amanda and Latoya had just joined the group. They looked at the drunken Dutch girl with both pity and disgust.
Dominique didn’t notice a thing. She wrapped her arms around the two girls’ shoulders and told them the same hilarious story.
Dominique fell for the second time on her way to the restroom. When Latoya helped her into the bathroom stall, she stepped away just in time, otherwise Dominique would have vomited all over her shoes. While Dominique kneeled down in front of the toilet bowl and emptied out the very last bit of her stomach’s contents, Latoya held her hair back so it wouldn’t fall into the toilet bowl. When it was over, she helped Dominique freshen up a little at the dirty little sink with paper towels and some water.
Back at the bar, Dominique immediately wanted to order another glass of wine, but Dave decided enough was enough. He gently forced her outside. When she started fumbling with her phone in an attempt to call a taxi, he helped her. When the taxi arrived, he stayed with her.
After they arrived at the house and the driver had helped him guide a completely disoriented Dominique inside, Dave had let her drink a few glasses of water. Which he would mop up from the floor a few minutes later. He washed her face and helped brush her teeth in a very awkward way, and decided quickly to settle for the fact that she had at least rinsed out her mouth.
When he carefully placed her on her bed, still fully clothed, she appeared to have a sudden moment of clarity.
“Dave, you’re an angel!” she called out.
With some degree of difficulty, she took off her T-shirt and bikini top and proudly showed him her breasts.
“Look, this is for you!”
Dave smiled and said softly, “Thank you, but I don’t think now is the right time for that.”
“Don’t you like them?” she asked indignantly and slowly looked down at her breasts. If she was trying to be sexy, she pretty much killed the mood by letting out a loud belch, which immediately brought up some vomit.
Dave carefully put her back down on the bed, laying her head on the pillow. After he put a sheet over her, he cleaned up the vomit with a washcloth he had grabbed from the bathroom. By the time he had rinsed it out and came back into the room, Dominique had fallen into a deep sleep. He looked at her tenderly for a while, and then arranged the sheet so it covered her whole body, except for her head. He placed a glass of water on the nightstand next to her. After an extensive search, he found a bucket under a kitchen cabinet, which he placed on the floor next to her bed.
He left the bedroom door ajar and returned to the living room. He grabbed a beer from the fridge. After he found some snacks, he got comfortable in one of the easy chairs. He would have preferred to have gone back into the city and have some drinks with Chuck and Jerome, but he didn’t want to leave Dominique there all alone. Never before had he seen a girl who was so vulnerable and lonely as she had been tonight.
64
At first, she thought an annoying bug was buzzing around her head. But as Dominique slowly began to wake up, she realized that the muffled sound she heard was her phone. Slowly, she sat up and opened her eyes. Where was her phone?
The sound stopped. With a great sigh of relief, she reached for the glass of water that was on her nightstand and drank it all at once.
That helped quench her thirst, but didn’t help her pounding headache one bit. Only then did she realize that she was topless. That was strange, because she always slept in a T-shirt. She noticed she was still wearing her shorts.
Carefully, she let herself fall back on to the pillow. What happened the night before? She knew she had gone to La Mamba. She vaguely remembered being in a taxi with Dave.
Dave! Did he come with her? Did he see her topless? Maybe they had …
With a quick check, she felt that she was still wearing her bikini bottom. So that probably had not come off. But what had happened then?
She heard her phone ring again. This time, she found her phone quickly: in the back pocket of her shorts.
She could see on the display that it was her mother. For a moment, she considered ignoring the call, but decided to pick
up anyway.
“Hey, Mom. I meant to call you.”
“Hi, Do, I hope I didn’t wake you?”
“Yes, kind of.”
“Oh, sorry. It’s four in the afternoon here. What time is it there?”
“That would make it ten in the morning here.”
“Well, that’s a good time to get up. Any news about Lilian?”
“No. Well, yes—another girl was kidnapped. We heard yesterday; It may be related. But nothing about Lil herself. If there was any news they would have called me by now.”
“Is Thomas still there with you?”
“No, he is in a hotel, and so are Lilian’s parents.”
“So you’re all by yourself there now?”
Dominique let out a long yawn. “Sorry. Yes, I’m here alone now. But I kind of like it that way.”
“Shall I come to stay with you?”
“Thanks for the offer, Mom, but it’s really not necessary; I’ll be fine.”
“Well, if you need me, I will come right away. You know that, right?”
“Yes, Mom, I know.”
“Is there anything else I can do for you?”
“No, really, thank you. I need to take a shower now. Oh, and, Mom?”
“Yes?”
“Sorry for being so mean to you before and not calling.”
“It’s fine, Do.”
“Bye, Mom.”
“Bye, hang in there!”
Dominique put her cell phone down on the bed, stretched, and sat up, letting out a loud moan. She threw her clothes on a chair and got in the shower. She let the soothing warm water run all over her body for at least fifteen minutes.
She could hear her stomach growl as she toweled off. She felt as if she hadn’t eaten in twenty-four hours. She walked into the living room on her way to the kitchen, a towel wrapped around her head and wearing only a thong.
“Well, good morning to you too,” she heard behind her.
Startled, she turned around, instantly placing both of her hands in front of her breasts.
She saw Dave on one of the easy chairs in the TV corner. He was slumped down so low that she had not noticed him at all.
Bon Bini Beach: A Thriller Page 20