Drowning Lessons

by Rachel Neuburger Reynolds

Olivia was back in speed dial mode. She took advantage of the mainland Panama cellular service and I had six voicemails from her by the time we emerged from the station into the already searing sun. It wasn’t even noon.

  After a few desperate voicemails, the next ones quickly flipped back to her role as a dizzy bride She was back to her old pleasant self when she asked me if I was still excited about the zip line excursion back over at the Red Frog Beach Resort. It had seven zip lines, 150 feet in the air, and soon we’d all be flying by macaws and silver faced capuchin monkeys.

  God, how I loved monkeys. I’d recently learned that they preferred stale dinner rolls over bananas. Who knew? Possibilities included seeing a three-toed sloth if you looked carefully. A real treetop challenge, with cocktails every step of the way.

  Keep secrets?

  Solve a murder?

  But still, host the zipline treetop adventure?

  Such is my station in life, I suppose.

  My plan up to this point had been merely to warn people of the danger of getting buzzed while flying across 300 meters of forest at 42 miles an hour while 100 feet in the air. At least it was safer than the drunk driving that happens after most weddings in America.

  I said to Olivia, “I think my time would really be better spent elsewhere. As you said, time is of the essence…”

  “Means to an end, sister, means to an end. You’ll have everyone there and you’ll figure out something. I know you will. See if there is enough to concoct a story about Emma, like…” The phone cut out.

  “Why do you get to keep your phone?” Josh asked as I threw it in my bag.

  “So I can get harassed by the queen of darkness every twenty minutes. And before you ask why I put up with it, I don’t know. Years of practice.”

  My experience in coming up with hashtags for failing Broadway musicals didn’t exactly qualify me to investigate a murder in a foreign country. To be honest, I was the person who never could “see it coming” in movies.

  I earnestly turned to Josh and said, “We can’t do this.”

  He considered this. “No, we can do this. There are only so many people, and we’ll do it together. We aren’t detectives, but it’s possible that the detectives aren’t even detectives here.”

  “Have you decided that I’m not completely in over my head, then?”

  “I never really thought you….Things don’t come out right sometimes. Note that in your little slam book.”

  Chapter 19: Something Like Square One

  Migs was sitting at the restaurant when we got back to Punta Caracol, with a small brown leather suitcase on the ground next to him. I wasn’t supposed to meet up with him until we headed to the zip line. I quickly put two and two together, as my heart sank, realizing Migs was going to leave.

  Josh walked away without a goodbye, so I sat down with Migs by myself, only to find his aggressive flirting style had vanished. He held up his phone despondently.

  “This is now the official camera of the Fowler/Parker event.”

  “You aren’t leaving?” I asked.

  Please don’t leave. Pretty please with a cherry on top.

  “No, but I’ve had my ear to the ground and know that people are being moved around to different hotels on this set of Real Housewives of Bocas drama, and I know there’s room at this inn, as you Americans say. If you want me to stay and finish this job, I’m now staying here. My replacement gear is being sent here, and I don’t want my kit destroyed again. You are messing with my livelihood.”

  “Of course. Of course. Thank you Migs.” I really meant it.

  “And I need a bonus.”

  “You’ll get a bonus.”

  “Big bonus.”

  “Like you couldn’t imagine.”

  There goes my savings.

  He slyly winked, quickly returning to the Migs I knew and enjoyed. He finished his coffee, slid his sunglasses down his nose, showing off his gorgeous green eyes, and smiled that bad boy smile.

  “So, I’ll be right next door to you, baby, should you have any photographic needs deep into the night.” He winked, got up and left the table, turning back to me just as he reached the door to his cabin.

  I didn’t feel 100% safe anymore sitting alone in my cabin, so I took a break in the restaurant. I ordered a tall iced tea, flavored with guanabana, a fruit only found in the Bocas archipelago.

  I was looking for a bit of a break, but my mind couldn’t get away from the dreaded slam book I’d finally wrestled away from Walter. I tried to eliminate any suspect I could from the book, but I’d only successfully ruled out a woman named Sarah and her husband, literary friends of Olivia’s. They’d moved off to Hong Kong long before Walter was on the scene, and this was their first time out of Asia since then.

  Every other face in the book seemed to look back at me with devious eyes, hiding something. According to the notes in the book, everyone had secrets that I already knew. No one was innocent.

  I was now paying more attention to the juvenile notes in the book and feeling increasingly embarrassed.

  Edgar’s wife may or may not have been a very high-priced call girl at one time. Madman Murphy was known for running down the Main Street of his small town once he reached a certain state of intoxication. Colleen’s husband, also known as Scumbag Scott, was known to proposition everyone except his wife.

  And Lloyd? Well, I knew his page by heart.

  “So, what’s your plan then?” Josh was standing above me, having magically appeared from his cabin. I couldn’t believe this new, serious Josh that had replaced yesterday’s nervous and shy wallflower.

  “I don’t know.” I didn’t want to look up at him again.

  “No, plan? Come on, what’s the plan? How should we work on this? What have you been doing so far? Let’s strategize.” He was pensively enthusiastic to join the investigative team.

  I looked up to catch his pensive stare, but I failed to come up with an acceptable response. “I’m going to interview people at the zip line tour. One by one.”

  “You’re serious?”

  “Do you have a better idea?” Shaking him would be impossible. “Maybe Walter actually did do it,” I challenged. I can’t say it hadn’t crossed my mind.

  “Maybe Olivia did it,” he snapped back.

  “Don’t be ridiculous.” It was time to stop talking, but I couldn’t. “And, I apologize if this is a rude question, but you don’t seem to care so much about your friend dying, so what’s your plan?”

  “Don’t care? You think I don’t care?” He looked into the sky, waiting for an answer from no one in particular. “You know, I think it might be a good idea if we do this separately instead of sitting here bickering like old ladies. So, now you can go work on getting your events back on track.” His normally kind face was turning red with anger, not embarrassment. I lost my partner almost as quickly as I acquired him.

  He had a rabid loyalty to his old friends just like I did. The groom history recap had reminded me that Walter, Nico, Josh, and Edgar had met early on at Philips Exeter and stayed tight from then on. They all went to Washington University in St Louis for undergrad, which was considered part of the Ivy League of the Midwest. That’s where Nico picked up Lloyd, entering into a dark and secretive friendship.

  Nico was betting that Lloyd was going to make some astounding medical discovery that would make them both rich. But, no one truly ever understood the bond, which went way beyond making money. And they made a lot of money. They whispered secrets.

  Edgar, Nico, and Walter stayed on at Washington to get their MBAs. Lloyd stayed on for medical school until he was questioned for serial killing and then left. He was an MD and a Ph.D., though where he finished his medical studies no one knew. It was possible he didn’t. Josh left after undergrad and went to work for some publisher.

  Hardly any closer to a suspect than I was when I started, I slammed the book closed. It was time to go. As Josh had pointed out, I had an event to run.

  Chapter 20: The View Fro
m Above

  I was running late for the zip line tour, due to a never-ending conversation with Olivia, which was more of a one-way rant on her part. It seemed that the “cack-handed, maladroit and floundering” American Embassy wasn’t in enough of a rush to get this fixed. But, they’d fully investigate the issue after the Bocas airport opened.

  Olivia promised to be back on the 4:00 flight, determined to still make it to the costume party and to maintain the status quo.

  Everything that could go wrong was going wrong. Jewel Orchids ordered from Vietnam were being held in customs, so there was a new flower crisis to fix. Olivia was putting Marianna on that one, so I could stay focused. The balance of workloads wasn’t quite fair.

  Migs sat with me on the dock, listening in amusement, ready to drive us off to Red Frog Beach. As we cast off, he said, “It would be perfectly understandable if you wanted me to turn right instead of left, and we went off to a little island I know where I could blow your mind, for a week, a month, who knows…”

  Doesn’t sound too bad.

  We pulled into the marina, and the rest of the wedding guests were under the giant canopy at the Red Frog Beach resort, continuing the perpetual cocktail party. Dressed in red jungle wear, the team of bridesmaids confronted me.

  Amanda said, “Lexie, you abandoned us. This is, has and will always be a four-person operation, and we’ve been scrambling. What do you have to say for yourself?”

  The most important and inevitable question came from Marianna’s mouth, “Where are Walter and Olivia? And Nico? It’s like a wedding movie without the main characters.” She scrunched up her face.

  I remembered something that my mother had said about Marianna when we were twelve, that she always looked like she was smelling fish.

  My quickness in lying was an increasingly bad habit I’d acquired over the last few days from Olivia. “They had to go to Panama City. There was some problem with the marriage license. They’ll be back tonight for the costume party, for sure.”

  Ugh. The costume party. It remained my most dreaded event, and that included the ones where I could have possibly drowned.

  At Red Frog Beach, I slowly walked through the impromptu cocktail party, answering the same question about Olivia and Walter a dozen times, looking around for anyone who looked slightly weary, guilty or nervous. There were board games scattered around and a few were partaking in those. I walked towards Lloyd playing chess with Walter’s grandmother.

  Lloyd. He was the stuff that urban legends were made of. I was sure he was very nice. Really.

  Just as I got near him, he turned and smiled at me, saying, “I’m kind of a cliché.”

  I caught his dangerous gaze, starting to apologize. “I never said…”

  He held his finger up to his lips, silencing me, turning and walking away.

  Josh was nowhere to be seen. Becky looked around constantly, pretending to be part of a conversation with Georgie and Dave. She had been one to ask about Nico’s absence, and not the other couple. Staying at Mariposa del Mar, she’d noticed his absence.

  Looking around the party, the only hunch I had to go on was Edgar. He wore an everyman polo shirt and khaki shorts ensemble, had lost a little of his hair, and sported a small but noticeable paunch. He was talking intently to Uncle Gordon. His business with Nico was a long time ago. Maybe.

  Walter Sr. made it through the crowd, charging at me like a linebacker. He wasn’t as good looking as his son, but twice as imposing.

  “A word, please,” he said to me, as he dragged me out of the crowd into the harsh sun. “Where is Walter? Is he being remiss in his responsibilities? Is he getting cold feet? It’s been 24 hours since anyone has seen him. I went by his villa and he’s gone. I need my phone.”

  “I don’t know where the phones are. Please believe me.”

  It was true. It was a bigger mystery than Nico.

  “Then I’ll take a boat to town and buy a new one. Not exactly a foolproof plan your group has.”

  His eyes bored into me, and I stared up at a man who was a good half foot taller than me. At my height, I was not used to being talked down to in the literal sense.

  “Everything we’ve told you is true. Olivia woke up this morning to find that there was some wedding paperwork they hadn’t been taken care of in Panama City, so they flew over there. Your son hasn’t jumped ship. He’s as devoted as ever.”

  Livid Bridesmaid Phil was the next one to drag me away with unnecessary force, leading me farther away from the party.

  Walter’s father called after me, “And where’s Nico?”

  How could it have only been noon?

  Phil waved Walter’s father away, scolding me. “You’ve got to keep this on schedule. You know how difficult it is to keep this group together. They’re like a gang of drunken squirrel monkeys. Get going! I’m coming with you. You need support.”

  “I’m going, I’m going,” I said as I walked towards the dock to take the short trip down the coast to the zip line entrance. Migs was still waiting on the boat to take me away. Maybe I’d run away from Phil and let Migs take me to his remote island after all.

  “Lexie,” Phil asked. “Are they really in Panama City?” He knew Olivia too well not to wonder.

  I had no words but nodded, exasperated, getting into yet another boat.

  The sounds of the rainforest seemed subdued while the three of us quickly walked down the path. The sight of the zip line tour professionals calmed me immediately. I realized that I hadn’t been breathing.

  Two guys were already carrying coolers up to the launch deck, filled with bottles of champagne for pre-embarkation. I pointed out to Leo, who was in charge of the operation, that I had serious safety concerns, as most people would be half in the bag already.

  Leo looked like another ex-pat American who’d rather have been somewhere else. I wondered what his life was before he traded it in for the tropics.

  He lightly punched my arm and said, “You don’t need to lecture me on safety, tall one. When our tours are cocktail-heavy, we close the Tarzan swing, the treetop challenge, and the vertical rappel. We just hook them up, let them fly, and then someone re-hooks them at the next stage. Seven zip lines are usually enough for anyone who, as you say, is half in the bag. And we do turn around anyone who’s clearly had too much. Of course.”

  He hadn’t really satisfied my safety worries, as I brought up the example of Aimee Copeland, a twenty-year-old who had been zip lining in Georgia. She’d fallen into a lake and got a case of necrotizing fasciitis, commonly known as the flesh-eating disease. What would happen if one of our drunken sailors slipped into some rainforest lagoon below?

  Leo, far less patient with me than Carl from the snorkeling trip, barked back that more people die of being hit by lightning twice than dying in any zip line accident. “No one has died here. And,” he finished, “that girl Aimee Copeland lived, as do 80% of necrotizing fasciitis victims.” We had both done our research.

  Phil had somehow wrangled a glass of champagne for himself, having decided that he wasn’t going to the be one going up. “I’ll man the fort down here.”

  Though they were steep and creaky, I was not afraid of the stairs up to the zip line, almost a hundred feet above the comfort of the earth. I was more apt to jump out of a plane than to volunteer to sit in a kiddy pool.

  “Remember,” he warned, yelling up to me as I arrived in the treetops. “We have walkie-talkies. We will hear everything. One word up there about necrotizing fasciitis to the tourists and you are out.”

  Migs was up there in twenty seconds, setting up his iPhone on a tripod he’d bought in Bocas Town for $15. His mood was effervescent. Everything was amusing him to no end.

  Maybe a solitary moment, eye to eye, every guest would tell me something.

  Someone’s got to crack.

  Besides the Dissector, the killing had to be a first for anyone at the party. It had to be. There had to be a tinge of guilt in someone. A moment of the fear of being found
out.

  First up was Walter’s grandmother, to whom I asked, “So, what did you think of Nico?”

  She squished up her nose and asked, “Who?”

  I checked her off the list.

  Becky, looking exhausted and straight out drunk, was up next. “Becky, you shouldn’t be doing this. I think that you might have had one too many.”

  Between deep breaths, she said, “I. Want. To. Do. This.”

  She had her glass of champagne and then reached for another. She wasn’t talking the marathon she usually did, and each word she uttered was slow and deliberate.

  Looking a little touched in the head, Becky said, “Something’s not right, Lexie. Something is not right with all of this. I don’t think Walter is in Panama City. I don’t think Nico wandered off to wherever. It is not right.” Then she flew off, still with her yet to be revealed secrets.

  “Everyone’s okay,” I yelled after her, my words falling on deaf ears. Her reaction struck me as strange. Her giddy, repetitive nature had been replaced by a very serious, very straightforward tone.

  I was pissing off every guest who took a glass of champagne from me. Migs giggled as I sent off another offended guest.

  “I’d like to make a coffee table book of only candid photos of you with every person you piss off. You’re tremendous. They’d fly off the shelves.”

  I quizzed every guest with the same brilliant statement, “I know about the bad business between you and Nico.”

  Not much of a brilliant investigative plan.

  Migs snapped a few pictures of me, after a few guests had flown off into the jungle, and asked, “You think anyone’s going to say, ‘Why yes! Glad you asked!’”

  “It’s subliminal, Migs. I’m looking for a moment of recognition. Isn’t that what detectives do anyway?”

  “In old movies. Very old movies.”

  Most people looked at me strangely, either not knowing him at all, or asking me what the hell I was talking about. My current prime suspect, Edgar, laughed and said, “Really? That was ages ago. Settled. Done and done. Why are you bringing that up now?”