by Lynn Ambers
I found out from my research that the address I was going to be a going to was a hotel. I don’t know whether this guy was staying there or owned it or what, but I was about to find out. The owner’s name did not match that of the name I took from Valerie’s planner. I was hoping that going there would help me find out something to lead me to Valerie’s killer.
I eased the rental car from the tight parking spot onto the narrow street in front of the little hotel. There was just enough space for cars to be parked on either side and two cars to pass each other with the slightest margin. Phone poles, palm trees, and mixed matched fencing and gates were on either side of the road as I made my way to the main street that would lead me to the highway.
I drove slowly down El Mar St. I went back towards the airport to get to 482 the highway that would reach Cayonne. Shopkeepers were unlocking the doors and tourist were carrying beach chairs and umbrellas heading to the beach for a morning tan.
I always read the direction of couple times before leaving to ease my anxiety of not knowing where I was or where I was going. I got to the highway and started driving south.
I saw strip malls and fast-food restaurants beyond the highway. I was amazed to see how much Puerto Rico felt just like the mainland Unites States. It almost felt like I was home in Florida. The landscape was beautiful with blooming jacaranda trees and schefflera trees. There were many palm trees of course being an island in the Caribbean. The tropical setting was gorgeous.
I took the exit that the GPS lady told me. I stopped for a quick bathroom break and to check out the different foods and drinks that a Puerto Rican gas stations had to offer. I bought a bag a plantains and headed back to the car. My nerves were beginning to kick up resulting in a slight belly ache.
I continued my way on a two-lane highway that was winding uphill and then downhill. I got the feeling sometimes like the road was leading to nowhere. The greenery was breathtaking as I was going up in elevation. I was driving what seemed to be both farm country and mountainous.
Since having never been in this part of PR before, I might have thought the section would be full of old rusty cars, but nothing could have been further from the truth. There were brand new cars and trucks. They shined bright in the beautiful sun.
The places to stay and eat were very new. There were some older stores, cafes, and buildings here and there, but most everything was very up to date.
I drove among plush surroundings of mountain views and large areas of trees providing shade and subtle natural beauty. The surroundings seemed to have more trees than businesses in the area. I drove a little enjoying the views and came upon large pink walls like with terra cotta tiles on the top for decoration.
I spotted the name of the hotel from the pad of paper I took from Valerie’s. The sign read La Saneesta Hotel. “Your destination is on the left” the GPS said, and I saw a two-way entrance with a nicely landscaped median.
I turned into an entrance and looked down a long driveway shaded by tropical trees. I drove forward and my nerves kicked up. I could after all be driving to meet a killer.
I thought to myself, “what am I doing?” Then I thought of David in that jail cell and his dreams of music and marrying the girl that he loves. I also thought of how valuable he was to the function of the farm as well. My finances were determined on everything functioning well. I had to find who killed Valerie.
The fact that I was pretty sure David was innocent was driving force for me. He worked too hard and had too much going for him to have thrown it away on killing Valerie. I was not going to let him take the fall for someone else’s evil.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
The entrance of the hotel was quite lovely with foliage, pillars, and a long drive to the front of the place. There was something a bit odd and compound like about the place, but it was beautifully decorated. I was quite sure the website said it was only sixty dollars a night to stay there. It looked more like maybe a two hundred dollar a night place.
I turned to the left at the end of the road and drove into a landscaped courtyard with a roundabout. I saw the hotel and there were garage doors, lots of garages doors. What kind of hotel has a bunch of garages I wondered? I had never seen that before.
I saw the sign for the main office. I parked the car in the roundabout as there were no cars anywhere. The entrance had been beautiful, but the buildings looked like a compound or military-like, yet the building was painted pink. They invested in the entrance but then once you were there, the looks dropped off.
I walked up and saw double doors but then a window with bullet proof glass was before the doors. I looked back and forth from one to the other and decided to go with the safer of the two and walked up to the bullet proof glass.
I look through the glass to see a guy at a desk looking at a laptop. He did not notice me, so I looked around a bit to see what I was getting myself into. I saw signs on the wall for hourly rates. It began to dawn on me where I was. I think this was a special kind of hotel.
Having realized I was in a place for casual liaisons, I said a friendly, “Hello, “to the man behind the desk. He did not even budge. I felt uncomfortable. “Hello, “I said a little louder and tapped on the glass.
“How long would you like the room for?” the clerk said uninterested.
“What no, I am looking for Caleb,” I said. The clerk looked at me for longer than necessary.
“Who?” he said
“Caleb” I said.
“There is no one by that name here,” he said.
“What yes, I was sent by Valerie,” I said. He looked at me strange. The guy just got up and walked out of the office through a back door.
I wasn’t sure what to do and felt a bit stupid just standing there. I just waited. I looked around and saw a man loading a wagon with plants behind an ATV in between two of the buildings.
I heard a noise and looked towards the left building and noticed one of the garage doors slowly going up to reveal a shiny chrome grill of a large car. A chrome Mercedes emblem was visible as the end of the garage door slowly rolled up. The Mercedes drove out of the garage with movie -like slowness. It came towards where I was standing near the window. I held my breath as there was no one else around. I could be killed, I thought, and no one would know.
The car drove past me. I tried to see who was driving or if someone else was in the car. It was too dark to see any faces. I just saw a man’s hands with a tanned hand on the steering wheel, but the tint on the top of the windshield hid the guys face. The car stopped about thirty feet from the curb where I was. I looked in the car’s direction.
“Don’t stare. Our clients value discretion and we give it to them,” said a thick Hispanic male accented voice from behind me. I turned around to see an incredibly handsome fifty-something man with a navy-blue polo and white pants. He had what was sure an expensive watch and rings on.
“You are looking for me I understand,” he said. “I am Caleb, did I not pay my taxes with the US government. Wait no, you are too beautiful to work in a government job,” I smiled.
“Nice well you are right about the government job,” I said. “I am a reporter. My name is Lorna. I am doing a report on Valerie Ceres’s bakery and her life in Marina Key. She told me you were a big part of her success in the keys.”
Caleb looked at me and then smiled. I detected a slight disruption in coolness at the mention of Valerie, but so slight anyone could miss it.
“Oh Valerie, my little angel. How is sweet Valerie? Gulp on my part he did not know or was acting. I watched him stare off in the distance.
“Oh no, you did not hear?” I said having never thought about whether he knew about her death or not. He did not show for her ceremony.
“Hear what?” he said.
“I am sorry to be the one to tell you this,” I said.
“What?” he said.
“Valerie was found dead in her bakery?”
“What, no, how?” he said. I couldn’t tell if he was sincere.
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“I am sorry, it was an apparent suicide?”
“Suicide, Valerie, absolutely, not. Please, come with me over here, I need to sit down,” he said.
“We, meaning townspeople of Marina Key, are all just devasted that something like this would happen. Valerie did not seem like a person who did drugs.”
“I’m speechless, I didn’t think she did drugs,” Caleb said.
“I truly am sorry to break this news to you. You know we are not all saints in the town, but you know America has such a big problem with drugs and the people trying to profit from them. When we saw that Valerie overdosed, well it became a real story to learn from.”
He turned to me and said, “I just can’t believe it. Let me just process this. She had so much to live for and that bakery?”
“I truly am sorry for your loss. Maybe you could shed some light on who she was. She never really told us much about herself in the few years she lived there. We knew she was an excellent baker. I am here to do a nice piece on her for the newspaper.”
“Yes, her mother taught her how to bake. She never was much of a cook Valerie, but she knew how to bake. Sadly, Valerie’s mom died when Valerie was young. Her mom had cancer, “he said.
“Of my god, that is awful,” I said.
“Her father beat her up a lot. They did not have a lot of money,” Caleb said. “My mother helped raise Valerie. I fell in love with her and when she was nineteen, we started a relationship. God, I loved her so much.”
“Oh my, I didn’t realize.” I said.
“There is no way you would have. The two of us had a wonderful relationship for about a year and then things just fell apart. She said she wanted to go to the states and try to get rid of her sadness. I loaned her some money and gave her some money to make it in the states. Once she was there, we lost touch except for payments on the loan. It is my fault I should have been more in her life, been more like a mentor or father to her.”
I was a bit surprised as to what he was saying. I was not sure if he was telling the truth. My uneasiness made it hard to react.
“I am sure you did all you could to help her,” I said. “Addiction is an exceedingly difficult habit to kick. It takes a lot of work. Sometimes you are the person who can help an addict and sometimes you are not. We can only just be there to support them and not enable, you know.”
“I never thought of it that way but maybe you are right,” Caleb said. “I just genuinely loved her. She will be missed by many of us here. I don’t know what else I can tell you.”
“Well, yes there is. Is this a special type of hotel by any chance?”
He laughed. “I don’t understand?”
“You know like a place where people go to sleep around with someone?”
“It is a special hotel for people who want discretion with certain things. We treat out guests with the utmost secrecy. Come let me show you around. I am immensely proud of this place.”
I kind of felt sick about what the place represented, but I was very curious to see inside. I was sure I would never see another one of these places again.
“Come, let me show you,” Caleb said. He called someone and asked for a room key. Let’s go look. We can hop in my car. It is almost too warm to walk, yes.”
I was very hesitant to get in the car. The place felt so desolate. I felt like I could be murdered, and my body easily dumped in the trunk of the car in the garage. No one knew where I was now.
I hesitantly got into the front seat of his BMW. He got into the driver’s side and pulled the car towards one of the garages.
Chapter Thirty
Caleb drove forward in between two buildings. It was all so quiet, stark and a little bit eerie. One of the garage doors opened and Caleb drove in. I was nervous. A part of me trusted him and another part did not.
“You ready to look? Don’t worry I will not try anything on you. I can tell that you belong to someone. Plus, I am not one for American women. No offense.”
“Non taken,” I said relieved that I kept my engagement ring and partly relieved thanks to the insult.
“I am so curious,” I said.
“Let’s go,” he said. I opened the car door and stepped out on a linoleum floor which was a little strange for a garage but okay I thought. The garage was spacious. There was a set of stairs on the other side of the car near Caleb. I walked around the car and he waited at the bottom of the stairs and put out his hand for me to go first. I walked by him and said, “Thank you.”
I slowly went up the stairs looking around. There was a door at the top. I opened it to a large studio looking apartment. The design was impressive. A little modern and a little cozy.
The air-conditioned room was full of mirrors. There was a round table with two chairs in front of me. There was a round bed covered with a red silky bedspread. A medium flat screen television was playing porn. I tried not to look shocked by the overt scene on the television.
I turned around and saw a small sliding door in the far wall. The entrance to the bathroom was to the left. There was small window to in the back of the apartment that looked like it looked over nice green plush trees.
“What is the little door for?” I asked Caleb who was standing near the top of the stairs.
“This is for privacy catering,” Caleb said.
“Huh, “I said.
“See this little door,” he said. Caleb walked over and opened it to an empty space that looked like a box. “There is another little door on the other side. Our guests order food or cocktails, or coffee whatever they please. Our waiters put your order in this space from the other side. Then the little door is closed. You, then open this door and find your order. Total privacy. No one is ever seen.” I shook my head in understanding.
“Well, this is quite the romantic place,” I said a bit sarcastic.
“You don’t approve?” he said.
“No, actually I am rather impressed. It is genuinely nice. Nicely decorated. It is much better than most of the hotels I have been at and a better price.”
“Oh good, I am glad you are pleased,” he said. “You know men and women get to release themselves here. Relax and unwind. Marriage is for an exceptionally long time, you know. Life always gets people down. We like to pick people up.”
“I know, my parents got divorced when I was a teenager. I am aware of the problems and changes. The bad stuff does not always happen to everyone. The television and movies always make us believe that it does. People have their own beliefs,” I said.
He smiled and looked as if he was reminiscing.
“So, I was wondering why Valerie visited you once a month?” I watched him as he stared at me a little too long and then I noticed saw a lot of naked people in a rendezvous on the flat screen.
“How did you know that she visited me,” Caleb said.
“Well, she mentioned a couple of times when I was delivering her fruits and eggs from my farm. Like, oh I am going to Puerto Rico to visit a friend. I figured you were her friend,” I said. I hoped that made sense.
“She owed me money and she would bring it to me personally. We enjoyed seeing her back her in her hometown.”
“I see. I guess the Florida Keys, although close, it is still a plane ride away.” I looked at him and he looked at me. Both knowing that lies were in the air. “Well, I guess I should be getting back. Thank you so much for showing me around. I can see that lovers in Puerto Rico are sure taken care of. I think there are a couple of places like this in Miami.
“Why would a reporter be a delivering fruits and eggs, I thought you said you were a reporter?” I just looked at him for a moment.
“Well, I am a reporter on the side. You know a small town. My fiancé owns a farm, so I work for him,” I said.
“Ah, I see.” He said looking into my eyes for longer than necessary. As if to see if I was lying to him.
“We best be getting you back. I have work to do. I hope I helped your paper somewhat, and you can write something nice about Valerie.
She will be missed. I wouldn’t want anything misrepresented about her. She was a particularly good girl,” he said this in a very strange way and was looking right at me again.
I started to sweat. I made my way towards the stairs. I faked a smile.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I will write something wonderful about her.”
“Please send me a copy when you do.”
“Oh, I will,” I said.
He turned down lights and walked towards me. I hesitated and then turned and walked towards the stairs. I gripped the railing hoping a push from behind would not come. I felt a hand on my back but gentle.
Caleb said, “I am really glad you came here. You are welcome anytime.”
I turned around and said,” Thank you.” I walked down the stairs still holding onto the railing as I walked down.
“I’ll just walk to my car,” I said.
“Okay I will walk with you,” he said. He opened the garage door. I felt a relief from the tropical breeze that hit my face. We walked towards where I parked my rental car.
“If there is anything else, just call here at the hotel and they will put you thru to me.”
“Thank you so much Caleb for your hospitality, I was not sure what I was going to find here. You have been gracious,” I said.
“Were you thinking maybe machine guns and tables of cocaine, “he laughed.
“Maybe something like that, I watch a lot of movies.” I said and smiled. I opened my car door.
“Well, I hope you have a nice drive back to the city, and a safe flight,” he said.
“Thank you and thank you again for your hospitality. It was nice to meet you Caleb,” I said.
“Likewise, and your welcome,” he said. He turned and walked towards his office. I was still very suspicious, although he seemed kind. The bad ones always do. I turned the car on and drove out of what I hoped was the last by the hour hotel I would ever see.
Chapter Thirty-One
When I returned from Puerto Rico it was the last Sunday of the month. I usually hosted a farm-table dinner for the crew and friends. I considered not doing the dinner this month because of David’s arrest, but I think it was something everyone needed. It was important that we stayed bonded.