Dying for a Vacation: The India Kirby Witch Mystery (Book 4)
Page 3
Unfortunately, their peace was not to last, because the bachelorette party staggered in, obviously intoxicated. And as soon as they’d been seated with their menus, giggling and flirting with the waiter, a new argument broke out.
“I’m going to have the lobster,” Freya announced, slurring her words. She nudged the biracial girl she sat next to. “It’s the most expensive thing on the menu. Get me, Mikey?”
Mikey laughed nervously, pushing her curls out of her face. She seemed the most sober of the group.
Charlie certainly wasn’t sober. She almost screeched as she spoke. “A lobster?! Do you think Sam’s fiancé is made of money? They’re paying for this holiday as it is. Don’t take the mick.”
“Yeah,” said Sam, looking down at her menu. “If anyone should have the most expensive things, it should be me. You should be grateful I’ve even invited you. You could never afford to come somewhere like here on your salary.”
India looked at Xavier with wide eyes. The tension was mounting with every second.
Freya shook her head and drew her lip up in disgust. “You make me sick, Sam. You used to be a well nice person, but ever since this wedding business kicked in, it’s ridiculous.”
“I don’t give a toss what you think,” Sam said. “And neither does anyone else.”
“Look, let’s just all calm down here,” said Charlie, stroking Sam’s arm and throwing a dark glare at Freya. “There’s nothing to get so het up about. We’re in the Caribbean, for God’s sake. We’re supposed to be having the time of our lives.”
“Well, I’m not,” Freya said. “And neither is the bride to be,” said in a mocking, acid tone. “And she has no one to blame for her stinking, miserable attitude but herself.”
“That’s enough,” Charlie shouted, standing up in her seat. “Freya, if you can’t stop being such an awful rude cow you should leave right now and go back to the room.”
“It’s not me who’s spoiling it,” Freya spat back, getting out of her seat and staring Charlie down eye to eye.
Sam burst into dramatic tears and hid her face behind the menu. Jazz rushed around to be at her side and whisper nice things into her blonde hair.
“Now look what you’ve done,” Charlie said, pointing at Sam. “Happy now?”
“Why don’t we just admit it?” Freya’s words all ran into each other. “This hen holiday is a big, fat joke. The whole wedding is a big, fat joke. They’ve both been cheating on each other, and if you ask me, they’re just getting married to save face.”
Sam burst into even heavier tears, and Charlie marched around the table and slapped Freya clean across the face. Freya rocked back, clutching her cheek, then her facial expression changed from shock to anger. She balled her fist up, but Mikey grabbed her elbow from behind and stopped her throwing the blow.
“I think I’ll take you back to the room,” Mikey said softly. “You’re crazy drunk.”
“It’s only the truth I spoke,” Freya protested as Mikey led her away.
The waiter stood at the side, looking a little shell shocked. Xavier raised his hand and the waiter came over. “Could we have room service instead?” Xavier asked.
CHAPTER 3
The minute India woke up the next morning, she knew something was wrong. A strange feeling lingered in the air, and the pit of her stomach filled with dread. Could it really be what she thought it was? What she dreaded? She rolled over to face Xavier’s bed, but he wasn’t there. Trying not to feel panicky, India slipped her feet into the white fuzzy hotel slippers and padded out through the living room onto the verandah. She found Xavier with his face turned up toward the morning sun, dangling his feet in the plunge pool.
“Is everything okay?” India asked gently.
He turned his head, and she came to sit down next to him, crossing her legs under her. “Yeah, I guess,” he said, then rested his head on her shoulder. “I just… I feel kind of down this morning, and I don’t really know why.”
“Me too!” India said. “I woke up feeling like there was something really wrong.”
“Same. And I wanted this vacation to be so perfect, and I didn’t want to burden you, but now you’re saying the same thing.”
India took his face between her hands. “Firstly, hearing how you feel is never ever a burden. I like to hear it. And secondly, this vacation is already the best I’ve ever had, and we’ve been here less than 24 hours. Maybe we’ve just got the blues because we’re so overwhelmed by how lovely everything is. In a couple hours we’ll cheer up.”
Xavier managed a smile. “I hope so.”
“Why don’t we have breakfast and go down to the beach? I’m sure that will make us feel better.”
***
It was easy to remember the route between their cottage and the beach, and it felt much shorter than the day before. As India and Xavier made their way through the trees, India wished and wished the buzzing anxiety that plagued her would leave her alone. At breakfast, even the staff had been acting strangely. Though they were still all smiles and excellent service, there was an undercurrent India instantly picked up on. At the bar they had kept whispering to each other, and if she didn’t know better, she’d have thought some shocking news was sweeping through the serving staff. Still, she had eaten her huge traditional Grenadian breakfast of salt fish, fried dumplings called ‘bakes’, scrambled eggs and fried plantain, and tried to look less worried than Xavier.
“The food’s nice,” he’d said, rather flat. The unspoken end of his sentence was, “but everything else feels wrong,” and India filled in the gap in her mind.
“I think we’ll feel better at the beach,” India said hopefully, pushing an overgrown palm leaf to the side. She slipped off her flip flops to feel the warm sand against the soles of her feet.
But after they passed the last tree, the peaceful serenity of the previous afternoon was gone. In its place stood a swarm of cops. Beyond them, lying on the shoreline, was a body, the face turned toward the waves. It was a white woman, without doubt, and the short splay of brunette hair above her head made India realize who it was, with a jolt. It was Charlie, the woman who had so voraciously defended her bridezilla friend Sam.
“Oh my goodness,” Xavier said.
“I knew it,” India whispered. She’d tried to push the thought out of her mind ever since she’d woken up, but some tiny voice in the back of her mind kept saying: Somebody’s dead. Somebody’s dead.
They stood there, frozen to the spot for a minute. She heard the words ‘strangled’ and ‘no drowning’ carry on the sea breeze from the cops’ conversation. The waves lapping in and out so gently suddenly seemed obscene. Didn’t they know a murder had happened? How could they continue their everyday rhythm, carrying life on with it?
A woman police officer approached them. She had a stern face but a gentle voice. “Are you guests at Angel’s Dune hotel?”
“Ye… yes,” India stammered.
“Please go back up to the hotel,” she said. “You can use any of the hotel amenities, or go on guided tours. But you may not use the beach until further notice.”
“Okay,” Xavier said, his voice shaking a little. “Thank you, Officer.”
“All right,” she replied, then headed back to her fellow officers.
India slipped her flip flops back on, feeling sick. She wondered if her knowledge that someone had died was to do with her being a witch. But then, Xavier had also had a strange feeling. She wondered if he’d known it was a death, even from when he’d dangled his feet in the pool. But when she opened her mouth, she shut it again. Starting it would only make her want to confide in him, and of course she could not. Anger bubbled up in her as she thought of the distance between them. Why did the witches’ world have to have such stupid rules, such divisive rules that kept soul mates from sharing their whole selves with each other? There were so many times she’d said, “I have something to tell you, Xavier,” but then chickened out, by saying, “I love you,” or, “Let’s get Frankie’s take
out for dinner.” Every month that passed, she felt the burden weighing more heavily upon her.
When they got to the top of the steps, Xavier threw a glance at the cottage and said, “I don’t want to go in there just now. I can’t relax. I’ll go stir crazy.”
“Me too,” said India. “I feel like taking a walk.”
“Yes. Let’s.”
Fortunately, the Angel’s Dune Resort had plenty of hills, which was exactly what they both felt like climbing. India longed to feel the ache and burn of her muscles, hoping that it would displace some of her mental anguish.
When they passed the restaurant, India saw a downhill path that then led to a huge hill, still inside the resort. The top of the hill joined up with the main highway, as far as she could work out. “Why don’t we go up there?” she said. “Then we’ll meet the highway, we can go along it across the top, and come back in the other entrance where Fitzgerald drove us in.”
“Let’s,” Xavier said, his voice intense.
It was a strenuous climb, and they did it all in silence. Birds chirped around their heads, and when India took a look to her right or left to check out the view, it was so beautiful it made her chest ache. To think that the world contained such awesome beauty, and yet such evil, chilled her to her very core. In that moment, as she stared over the majestic hilltops, and thought of the body on the beach, it seemed that the world didn’t make one bit of sense. It was a world crammed with opposites that didn’t go together, that couldn’t reside peacefully, in harmony. India’s determination to be a seeker of justice registered on a new level, somehow sinking even deeper into the very fabric of who she was, and what she wanted from life. Of course, she was already thinking of who could have possibly done it, and why.
The steep uphill road did indeed join with the main highway. India guessed, from its unkempt appearance, that it had once been the main road into the hotel, but had since been abandoned for the more gently sloping alternative Fitzgerald had used.
The highway was far from busy, with only an occasional vehicle flashing past them. There was no sidewalk, so they had to walk in single file, picking their way through the grass at the edge of the highway, which weaved around the edge of a hill. The road had been cut into it, leaving tall stretches of rock exposed.
“Hey, isn’t that Fitzgerald’s taxi?” India said, turning to see a vehicle coming toward the entrance.
And sure enough, it was.
“Hello there, strangers,” he said, pulling up beside them, happy as ever. “Been to town? I didn’t see you.”
“No,” Xavier said. “We just took a walk on that big hill from the hotel. Now we’re going back inside.”
“Want a ride back in? It’s quite a long walk along that first path, you know. It feels short in the vehicle, but it’s not really.”
“Sure,” said India.
He was so cheerful, she was sure he knew nothing about the murder.
“You’ll have to sit up front,” he said. “When I came and dropped the staff off, the owner asked me to pick up some shopping from town.” He hooked a thumb toward the back, which was covered with bulging plastic bags. India and Xavier got into the front seat, and he drove into the entrance. “Now I’ve got to take that crazy group of girls out to the north. They wanted to do horseriding along the coast. They’ve got the best stables and instructors up there.”
“Fitzgerald,” Xavier said quietly. “Haven’t you heard?”
“Heard what?”
“One of them’s dead,” India said, deciding to come right out with it. It was like ripping off a band aid. “On the beach. Strangled, I heard the police say.”
All the joy drained out of Fitzgerald’s face. He looked like a totally different person, twenty years older. The taxi stalled and he didn’t bother to switch it back on. “Good God. No.”
“Yes,” India said, unexpectedly feeling her eyes well up with tears. “What I don’t understand is who would have done it?”
Fitzgerald swallowed hard and started the taxi back up. His eyes shone with sorrow, too. He shook his head over and over. “Whenever there’s trouble, that man is always around,” he muttered under his breath.
“Who? Tony?” Xavier asked. “The fisherman?”
Fitzgerald nodded, looking grave. “There was a young woman who lived near my grandma. Shirley Prince. She just disappeared one day and never came back. People say she drowned in the sea, pulled out by a current. But I don’t think so.”
“You think Tony killed her?” India said, a shiver running down her spine. Even though she had been around many murders, she never stopped feeling a horror about them.
“I don’t want to say yes,” Fitzgerald said. “In case I’m wrong. It’s an awful thing to accuse someone of, murder. But I have suspicions, let’s put it that way.”
He reached the end of the path, where it forked off in a few different directions into various parts of the resort. A tall, thin policeman stood in the fork of the road, waving for Fitzgerald to stop.
“Come out of the car,” the policeman said.
Fitzgerald got out, shaking his head. “Terrible business, isn’t it, Officer?”
“Got him,” the policeman said into his radio, then took cuffs off his belt. “Fitzgerald Joseph, you are under the arrest for the murder of British citizen Charlotte Dean.”
“What?” Fitzgerald said, his eyes huge with fear. “No!”
India and Xavier jumped out of the taxi, in pure shock. India felt her heart hammer in her chest. “No! It’s not him!” As soon as the words came out of her mouth, she knew she had no proof to back them up, but it felt true, and in that moment, that alone had to be good enough. The policeman ignored her. The silence was deafening, and all India could hear was her own blood thundering around her body and banging at her temples.
“This isn’t true, I swear!” Fitzgerald said, as the policeman led him away down one of the forks in the road. “Please, India, Xavier, investigate! Isn’t that what you do for a living? Please! My kids, my wife. Please!”
The cop dragged him around the bend in the road and they couldn’t see him anymore, only hear him shouting, “Please!” over and over. India felt like her heart might break. She sunk into Xavier’s chest and cried.
***
There was a lot of crying in the Angel’s Dune Resort that afternoon. From where India and Xavier picked at their room service meal on their verandah, they could hear people wailing. Presumably that was Charlie’s British friends. India expected Sam to be most devastated of all, and felt deeply sorry for her. What a thing to happen on your bachelorette trip.
“But who would have done this?” India said, pushing a fry around her ketchup, not able to psych herself up enough to eat it.
“Well, I don’t see one single reason why Fitzgerald would have,” Xavier said. “I wonder why they arrested him in the first place. They must know something we don’t know.”
“Or maybe they’re just keen to slap charges on someone because it’s a tourist,” India said. “It’s bound to be a lot of bad press to have an unsolved murder like that hanging over the island. Especially for this resort.”
“Maybe.” Xavier brought a lettuce leaf up to his mouth, then put it back in the bowl. “Who else could it be? I mean, that Tony guy is a creep, but do you really think he’d kill? I know Fitzgerald had that story about him killing that Shirley girl, but that was just his guess. He said that himself.”
“Maybe a guess,” India said, “or maybe intuition.”
Xavier shrugged.
“I think it’s most likely someone from her own party killed her,” India said. “As sick as that makes me feel.”
Xavier rested his elbows on the table and put his chin in his hands. “You’re suggesting the lesbian looking lady, because they had an argument?”
“Freya, her name is.” India managed to eat a solitary fry, though it tasted like wallpaper paste in her mouth half way through. “Well, it’s definitely something worth looking into.”
India nodded. She’d realized a long time ago that it was much more than mere coincidence that drew them to crime scenes. It was something like destiny. That was the one tiny lifeline that kept her gripping onto her powers and not telling Xavier. She was born to do this, she felt. “Yes. And weird as this sounds, I think we were put in the right place, at the right time. To help Fitzgerald.”
Xavier traced the lines of the wooden table with his finger. “What if Fitzgerald’s guilty?”
“This morning, when you woke up, you knew something was wrong, yes?”
Xavier nodded. “You could say that.”
“So you have intuition of some kind, or something, I don’t know what,” India said. “Now, think about Fitzgerald. Use that same intuition. Do you think he did it?”
“No,” Xavier said instantly.
“Neither do I.”
“But intuition isn’t always right,” Xavier argued.
“I know,” India said, “but imagine if he’s innocent and we presumed him guilty. We don’t investigate, he gets framed, or falsely accused. His life is over. His family’s life gets a thousand times harder. They lose their husband, their father. I couldn’t live with that. I want to give him the benefit of the doubt.”
Xavier looked at her across the table, respect shining in his eyes. “So do I. Let’s do this.”