The money slipped from Paul’s fingers; a stiff breeze caught the bills and blew them across the lawn where they landed in a bougainvillaea bush. Paul got unsteadily to his feet and stepped away from Eileen, his spidery bearing harmless once more. He stuck his hands in his pockets and gave his brother a wide berth before he sauntered through the french doors whistling the Bonanza theme song. Holden said nothing as Paul went inside. He gazed at Eileen, a mixture of anger and disgust on his face.
Eileen licked her lips. How much had Holden heard? Did he believe what Paul had said? Holden stepped slowly toward her and said, “I suggest that we talk privately for a moment.”
Eileen nodded numbly and hooked her arm in his. He didn’t retrace their steps through the large living room and the foyer where the pianist played a lilting ballad. Instead, Holden guided her to the garden, leading the way down a mossy path through the lush garden and out to a small utility gate. Eileen’s lip trembled and her face burned with embarrassment as she imagined what Holden would say. He’ll fire me, she thought miserably. Her eyes started to leak tears again. It was a childish thought, but all she could think was that it wasn’t fair.
At the end of the path, Holden released Eileen’s arm and pressed his back against the rough bark of a tamarind tree. It was hard to read the look on his face as he folded his arms across his chest. For a while, he stared down at his feet as though willing them to speak for him. She'd seen him do it before, weigh his words so they properly conveyed what he wanted to say. Eileen's anger bubbled as she watched him. Why drag this out? she wondered as her impatience grew. His fingers traced a line around his mouth and she was just about to tell him what he could do with his job when he held up a hand and said, “I’m sorry about Paul. He was an ass and I’ll deal with him tomorrow.” He exhaled and looked at her. “But what I want to know is why you didn’t tell me.”
The rage inside her deflated like a balloon and turned to exasperation. She threw up her hands and asked, “Tell you what? If I was packing shelves at the supermarket, would you have wanted to know that too?”
He shrugged. “Yes.”
Hands on her hips, she glared at him. “No, you wouldn’t. I don’t have time for all of this long talk. You're gonna fire me, but you know what? I don’t even care.”
She could barely see him in the darkness, hidden as he was by the tree’s shadow, but his deep voice was even and patient. “When did I say that?”
Eileen squinted at him in the dim moonlight trying to read the expression on his face. His question caught her off guard. Was he playing the diplomat and trying to make her quit?
“Eileen, I’m not a man of many words. I have my quirks. But that doesn’t mean that I consider you less of a person because of what you did before.”
“That’s what you say now. But in the end, you’ll always judge me.” Tears stung Eileen’s eyes, but she refused to cry again as she paced next to a rose bush.
“Eileen…” Holden stepped out of the shadows with his hands pushed deep into his pockets. “…have you ever considered that I always knew?”
Eileen spun around to face him. He couldn't be serious. But in the soft moonlight, Holden's face betrayed no laughter or mirth, just hopeful sincerity. It was one thing to be accepted; it was another to not have to seek acceptance. Eileen bit down, squeezing words between her teeth like an angry hiss. “You’re a liar.”
He blinked, looked down at his feet and then at hers. “It’s your shoes. I heard you pacing the corner that night. Same rhythm, same clicking heels. I had my suspicions, but the first morning you came to work and I heard you walking across the floor, I knew. You saw the sign I had stapled to the wall outside the building, didn’t you?”
Her lip trembled, but she nodded.
“I didn’t want to hire you at first — not because of what you did — but because you took my breath away when we first met. I didn’t want —” Holden threw up his hands and pressed his knuckles against his forehead. “The point is that I don’t care what you did before.”
Eileen started to cry. “But everybody else will know.”
Holden waved his hand dismissively at Paul’s house. "Ignore them. They’ll stew in their bitter juices until I or some other undertaker collects them.”
Holden held out his hands to her. Reluctantly, Eileen rested her hands in his, savouring the warmth of his large hands clasping hers. “The long and short of it is that I don’t want you to leave. You do a really good job. Plus, you actually brighten up that gloomy funeral parlour. Clifford is entertaining in his own annoying way, but you’re different.”
Eileen's heart fluttered in a way it never had.
“Will you stay with me?” he asked, stepping so close that there was not even a hair’s breadth between them.
Eileen felt faint. She had imagined this moment. Dreamed of being this close to him. She felt his breath on her lips, surrendered to the desire inside her that had yearned for him for weeks. His arms wrapped around her waist and their lips touched. Every nerve in her body tingled as his tongue slipped into her mouth. Eileen had never felt that much heat or intensity from a kiss before, never known the unadulterated pleasure that came from a tongue caressing her own. She pressed her hands against his chest, felt the muscles tense as he sighed with lust. Even his moan was delicious, an ardent plea to deepen the sensations to which they freely surrendered.
The heat between them built and their desires grew feverish as they explored each other’s body. Holden pressed Eileen against the tree, his hands roaming over her waist and hips as the tree bark pressed into her back. She wanted him. All of him, right there in that moonlit garden while the party was in full swing less than a hundred yards away.
But, as though he read her mind, Holden pulled away and said breathlessly, “This isn’t right. We can’t do this here.” He glanced toward the house, light blazing from the windows and piano music drifting into the garden. “Not that I don’t want to…I sense that memories of this moment would delight me in my old age.”
Eileen bit back a smile.
“I want to date you properly first.” Holden touched her cheek as he looked into her eyes. “If, of course, that’s what you want too.”
If her heart could have burst, it would have. Hot sex in the garden would have been amazing, but she couldn’t deny that a storybook romance had its own appeal. “Yes,” Eileen blushed. “I’d love that.”
A cloud shifted overhead, unveiling the moon and washing the garden in silvery light. “How about we leave this place? Maybe get some fried fish from Astor’s Road?” He grinned. “Our first date.”
Eileen smiled and nodded. “Yeah. I’d like that."
Chapter 17
Something is fishy
They got two juicy steaks of fish fried to perfection over a wood fire from a sidewalk vendor whose coal pot was still aflame at that late hour. It was a typical Friday night on Astor’s Road. Similar to Buckworth Street, the road was heavily traversed with buses and cars, but instead of accountants and pharmacies, it had more than its fair share of rum shops and shoe repair businesses. At night, the street transformed into a drive-through food court with vendors setting up brightly painted trays and coal pots to ply their trade. The fish vendor they visited occupied a small soot-stained corner, her bright yellow stall a stark contrast to the corona of dark, smoky residue that framed her location.
She heaved her generous figure off the flaking yellow bench, taking bits of shiny paint for a ride on her ample backside when she got up to prepare their food. Two fat steaks of dolphin were stuffed with a heavenly homemade herb seasoning, then doused in flour and dropped into a pan of oil that bubbled merrily on the fire. The aroma of frying fish was enough to make Eileen dizzy with hunger.
“My child father make this coal pot here, you know,” she said as though Holden and Eileen had asked. “Yes, he gimme some pretty red-skinned daughters. Got good hair and thing,” she added as she checked the fish.
Holden winked at Eileen and whisper
ed, “This is why I like vendors; they’re so amusing that it’s like free dinner theatre.”
The woman returned to the bench and sat on the opposite end so gently that Eileen wondered if her robust frame was a suit, so graceful were her movements.
“Yeah, that is an old gearbox housing that my child father rigged up to cook the fish. But it is my seasoning that does make it taste good. Best fish in Barbados," she bragged. Her grin was cocky as she rubbed her hands and turned the damp flour into moist balls that clung to her fingers like tiny white barnacles. She shook her hands, releasing the flour balls and giving them a new home on Holden’s crisp black suit. The vendor didn’t notice though; she was too busy looking at the frying pan. “Ah, it ready.”
She returned a moment later with two steaming strips of foil and plastic forks. The fish tasted as good as it smelled. Eileen couldn’t imagine a better first date with Holden: delicious fish in the cool night air with the stars overhead and a chatty vendor who skipped nimbly from one subject to another while they ate. There wasn’t much the vendor missed from her busy street corner. She knew which paros had gone to university and fallen prey to drugs, which politicians drove by on Friday nights with their outside women. She even knew where Holden could get stolen picnic hams in time for Christmas. The vendor shrugged like it was a given that anyone in their right mind wanted picnic hams at half price. No? Well, that was Holden’s business because she certainly wanted a stolen picnic ham. It was for the children, of course. The daughters with the good hair, she reminded them as she dusted more flour onto Holden’s pants. To Eileen’s mind, she could have eaten that fish and laughed at the vendor’s quirky monologue every night and never gotten bored.
They wiped their mouths and Holden handed the lady a hundred dollar note. She dug into her apron pockets for change, but Holden held up his hand. “No change needed. Get the ham for your girls.” The woman’s face lit up as she looked at the hundred dollar bill. Holden reached out to shake her hand. “And you’re right; it is the best fish in Barbados.”
“You’s a good man.” She grinned and then caught sight of the flour crumbs that coated the left leg of Holden’s pants. “Don’t mind that flour. It sends my children to school, so it is a blessing.” Eyes wide, she cocked her head to the left, her sharp ears attuned to a sound that Holden and Eileen didn’t catch until a few moments later. “Wait… you hear that?”
It was a siren, growing louder and louder as a police car sped by. Two more cars soon followed, all of them heading west. Eileen’s eyes met Holden’s. There was a very good chance that their date had come to an end. They thanked the vendor and left.
Stomachs full, they wondered aloud what had happened as they drove the five minutes to Holden’s house. Just as Eileen pulled the car to a stop, they heard the phone ringing inside his house, breaking the quiet of the night air. He looked at her briefly. She nodded and cut the engine as he rushed inside to answer.
A few minutes later, he walked back down the stairs, loosening his bowtie before he leaned through the car window and said, “The Slasher struck again in St. James. Derricks said that they found something at the scene that they need to investigate further so we can’t go there just yet.” He stuffed his hands in his pockets and rocked on his heels. “Seems we have some time to kill,” he said.
Eileen sighed. Holden didn’t fool her with his attempt at striking a casual tone. Her fantasy of turning their night into something special was dashed. Not to mention the fact that it would be her first Cane Field murder scene. “We do,” she said with a glum expression.
Holden raised an eyebrow and said, “I haven’t sat in the garden for a long time. How about we do that?”
Eileen followed him down the walkway and through a trellis covered with bright yellow allamanda vines that glowed neon in the moonlight. Beyond the trellis, soft lights flickered inside coral-stone lanterns that trailed the length of the winding flagstone path. At the end of the path was a gazebo surrounded by ferns, red ginger lilies and hundreds of fireflies.
Holden gestured to the wooden bench before sitting on the structure’s wooden floor. Eileen took a deep breath and sat down.
“So…how is your night going?”
Eileen grinned. “It had some fits and starts, but it's gotten better.” She winced and said, “Oh... I forgot to tell Clifford that Dorothy was looking for him.”
“Was she now?” Holden asked with a sly grin.
“What’s so funny?” His smile was contagious and she couldn’t help the giggle that bubbled up as she awaited his response.
“Clifford and Dorothy have a…chequered history.”
“Meaning?”
“They’re casual lovers. Whenever they're bored or attend the same party, they end up in bed.”
“Dorothy and Clifford? Nah…I don’t believe it. Plus, she’s kinda…”
“She’s not conventionally beautiful,” admitted Holden. “She’s got that squarish build and a deep voice, but Clifford has always preferred a more robust lady.”
He wasn’t wrong about that; Eileen had seen the way those other women glommed on to Clifford. But when Eileen tried to imagine tall, slim Clifford in the throes of passion with sturdy Dorothy, she just couldn’t.
Holden laughed. “Stop wrinkling your face like that. ’Every piece of cloth in town got its owner’ as the old people would say. They’ve been knocking around together since they were teenagers and I don't think anyone ever understood their attraction." Holden chuckled. "Do you know how her brother Lloyd found out? One time, he stood on a chair to spy on them through those cross-ventilation squares close to the ceiling. The chair broke and Lloyd fell on a kerosene lamp. He got a cut on his arm and minor burns.”
Eileen grimaced. “That sounds painful. But why didn’t it work out if they were fooling around for so long?”
Holden plucked a piece of spindly grass that waved in the light breeze and spun it between his thumb and forefinger. “Clifford said he loved Dorothy and wanted to marry her. But he had some…difficulties overseas and Dorothy’s father forbade her to marry him.”
“Sounds like one of those old-fashioned novels. That probably explains why she kept watching him all night.”
“It’s true. Unrequited love is one of those stories that you read about and hope never happens to you.”
Eileen’s heart skipped a beat. She searched her mind for a new topic to discuss, desperate to shift the conversation's course. The last thing she wanted to focus on was heartbreak.
“I love them, you know,” she said pointing to the flecks of light that floated around the ferns just out of her arm’s reach.
“Fireflies?”
“Yes. When I was a little girl, I used to catch them in jars and keep them next to my bed. I’d put tiny flowers at the bottom of the jar and pretend the fireflies were fairies in a magic forest. I liked watching them in their little see-through world.”
Holden twirled his blade of grass again. “They’re amazing insects,” he admitted. He caught Eileen’s eye and said, “Not many creatures can make their own light and shine it on the world. You can’t blame someone for falling in love under those circumstances.”
His voice was low, earnest — the way a man speaks when his words are the only channel his soul can find.
Holden wasn’t like other men who told their imagined war stories so often that you wondered what the truth looked like in its embryonic stage. He was smart, thoughtful, kind, ambitious and probably deserved better than a smart-mouthed wild child like Eileen. Now that Eileen’s ardour had cooled, she realized that this wasn’t a passing fancy for her. She hoped the same was true of him.
Inside the house, the phone rang again. Holden’s frown soured his handsome face. He sighed. “I guess it’s time to go.”
Chapter 18
Revelations
Anna Brown’s dump site had been Holden’s first exposure to the Cane Slasher’s machinations. At the time, Holden assumed it was a lover’s quarrel gone wrong and believed
the crime would be solved quickly. Now, a deathly sense of dejá vù overtook him as he watched an almost identical scene unfold in front of him. The police tape, the camera flashes, the young woman's contorted body among a pile of cane trash and withered blossoms were all the same. The only difference was the victim, Donna Green. Bile rose in Holden's throat.
He was a voyeur to this spate of killings, an outsider with a front seat to the carnage wrought by a deeply disturbed person. A few feet away, the young woman’s family held hands as the girl’s mother quivered in agony at the centre of the group. Next to them, Dr Thorpe was packing away his bag after administering a sedative to the mother.
“How could a man wake up every day with so much anger in his heart that this is normal to him?” Holden mused.
Eileen shook her head distractedly, her eyes glued to the family. She leaned close to Holden and whispered, “Did you notice the young guy with them?”
“What about him?”
“Is he wearing pyjamas?”
“It’s hard to tell since it’s so dark, but they look like hospital scrubs to me.”
“Didn’t you say that you thought the killer had medical expertise because he kept hitting the jugular all the time?”
Covertly, Holden raised his eyes to look at the young man again. He was close to the family yet distinctly apart from them. Instead of commiserating with relatives, his gaze was focused on the scene, watching with interest as investigators took photos and wrapped the young woman’s body for transportation.
“Are you sure he’s with them?” Holden’s question was tinged with doubt.
“Yes. When we first got here, I saw the girl’s mother talking to him.”
“I guess we’ll find out soon enough what’s going on. Look.”
The commissioner had ducked under the yellow tape, his face grim as he braced himself to offer the police force’s sympathies and update the family, before beckoning to Holden and Eileen.
“This is Holden Davis, owner of the funeral home that will safely transport your loved one to the coroner,” Derricks said with practised fluidity. Knowing Derricks as he did, Holden suspected that he had crafted and memorized a multitude of mini speeches which he could rattle off to journalists and grieving families at will. Derricks was nothing if not practical.
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