That piqued my interest. “You did? Can I see them?” Photographers often used attractive journalists or PR people as impromptu models on press trips, so there wasn’t anything untoward about it. But I had an overwhelming desire to see Skye again, to look her over in case there was something I’d missed that would explain everything.
“Sure.” Pete stared clicking away at his laptop, and I came closer, sidestepping the glass on the carpet, so I could stand beside him. He opened a photo library and I saw dusky shots of a midnight-blue sky with streaks of torchlight against it. There was a shirtless man staring down with great intensity; Pete had somehow framed the shot so that you saw the flames reflected in the man’s eyes.
“That’s an amazing photo.”
“One of the divers. I took that last night.” He was scrolling away, going back through his shots from the day. “There she is,” he announced.
I leaned forward, taking in a shot of Skye staring into a mirror as she tried on a large silver necklace with onyx beads. It was taken at an angle from behind her shoulder, so that it captured the edge of her face as well as her expression, making it feel oddly intimate. Whatever else I thought of Pete Dukermann, I had to admit he had an arresting talent for composing a shot, and for capturing odd angles and reflections. I understood why Jesse, also a photographer, admired Pete professionally even though he didn’t like him at all.
Pete clicked through a series of photos, all featuring Skye. Nothing jumped out at me. It was only when I glanced up and spotted the black duffel bag that I froze. It was the same bag Pete had carried that morning. He’d been pulling something out of it when I’d surprised him at the cliff. Now, I finally saw what it was: a necklace of fiery red and orange beads, exactly like the one that had been around Skye’s throat when she vanished.
CHAPTER 23
I must have made some kind of sound, because Pete looked up at me. “You look like you just saw a ghost, Lily.”
My chest felt tight, and I couldn’t get any air into my lungs. A tiny wheeze escaped from my throat, a dull, half-strangled sound.
“Are you okay? Maybe you should sit down.” He stood, leaving the desk chair for me to sink into. Instead, I made my way across the room, reaching for the beads and easing them out of the bag. Even as I did, I tried to tell myself I was mistaken, but I wasn’t. It was a long, flapperlike strand of beads, just like Skye’s.
I held it up. “Where did you get this, Pete?”
His face was petulant again. “That was Skye’s idea.”
“What was her idea?”
He muttered something I couldn’t catch.
“Where did you get this necklace?”
“From Skye.”
Liar, I thought, but I was shaking with rage and too stunned to say a word. Instead, I moved on pure instinct, rushing to the bedroom door and opened it. The room was more chaotic than the living room.
“What are you doing?” Pete yelled.
I ignored him and pulled the closet doors open. In my mind’s eye, I saw Skye lying there, unconscious, but there was nothing inside except a rucksack on the carpet, the safe, and extra pillows and blankets on a shelf at the top. The door to the bathroom was closed, and I ran to it, pushing it open just as Pete grabbed my arm.
There was no one in the bathroom.
Pete’s fingers dug into my shoulder, and he pulled me off balance so that I tumbled into the doorway. As I caught myself, I shifted sideways and jabbed my elbow as hard as I could into his stomach. Even with his extra padding, he doubled over.
“Where’s Skye?” I demanded.
“Don’t… know…” He panted the syllables out, his breath escaping in small puffs as he rested his palms on his knees. He didn’t lift his head.
“You have her necklace.”
“She… gave it… to me.”
“She was wearing it last night when I saw her!”
He stood up, shaking his head. I had to fight an overwhelming urge to elbow him again. “She gave it to me,” he insisted.
“You can stick to that story if you like, but I know you’re lying. And you’re not going to get away with it. I’m going to get people up here and you’re going to be locked up for a very long time in a Mexican jail.”
As the words poured out of my mouth, I realized I was being stupid. All I had to do was quietly inch out of the room and bring reinforcements; instead I was daring Pete to stop me, and given that he was six foot four and on the heavy side, that wouldn’t go well for me. Instead of trying to intimidate me, Pete sank to the floor, crouching with his head in his hands. “She gave it to me, Lily. She did.”
“Why would she do that? Did she think you were going to wear it somewhere? You’re so pathetic you can’t even come up with a lie that makes any sense!”
“It’s for my wife,” Pete whispered.
“Your wife? Why would Skye send her anything?”
“I… she… we separated. We’ve had a lot of tough times, but this is the worst.” He took a couple of deep breaths. “Skye and me talked about it. She’s been having all these problems with her boyfriend. He won’t acknowledge their relationship. It’s all top secret with him. She hates that. He won’t even let her call him her boyfriend in private. He says they’re grown-ups, not boys and girls.”
I’d expected more stupid lies from Pete, not a story that resonated with what I knew to be true. Skye had told me the same thing, but in different words. “What does her boyfriend have to do with this?”
“He buys her jewelry. Like, they argue, and next thing he’ll give her a necklace or a bracelet.”
It felt as if someone had just lowered the temperature in the room by twenty degrees. That was Martin’s modus operandi. “Go on,” I said.
“She’s seriously pissed off at him. She wouldn’t tell me why.” He looked up at me. “I swear, Lily, I’m telling you the truth. We had dinner, and when I was telling her my problems with my wife, she pulled off the necklace she was wearing and gave it to me. She said the stones were fire opals, and they were supposed to reignite passion.” He shook his head, looking down. “Like that’ll work for me and Donna.”
“Your wife left you?” I asked.
“Worse than that,” he answered. “Why’d you think I threw my wedding ring into the water this morning?”
I remembered the glint of gold I’d seen. “Are you crazy? Why would you do that?”
“Look, I don’t want to talk about it, okay?
“How did your arms and hand get scratched up?”
That question filled him with a fury I could read in his face and in his movements as he got to his feet. His skin was almost pulsing with anger.
“I told you, I don’t want to talk about it!” he was almost yelling now. “Just get out of my room.”
I took a last look around and realized why Pete had been so secretive. There was the residue of white powder on the wooden surface of a night table next to the bed, along with a razor blade.
“Oh, please,” I said. “You don’t think I care about your drug habit, do you? Get over yourself.”
I could see a series of small glassine envelopes on the night table. That brought Claudia back with a rush in my brain; I associated those little packets with her, and with heroin. “You running some kind of business on the side, Pete?”
“It’s for personal consumption. That means it’s all legal.”
“You’ve got to be kidding.”
“Check for yourself. Mexico decriminalized coke and a bunch of other shit in 2009, so long as it’s only for personal possession.”
“Even if that’s true, I bet there’s a limit on what counts as personal possession.”
Pete grunted. “I told you to get out.”
That was exactly what I planned to do. I walked to the doorway between the bedroom and living room, then stopped and turned back. “Do you have any idea what Skye is sick with?”
“No, except that she said she couldn’t eat. It made her want to vomit.”
“
What about drinking? Did she say anything about having a problem with that?”
“She wasn’t drinking at all!” Pete sounded affronted. “Who told you she has a problem with booze?”
I didn’t want to answer that.
“I bet it was Denny,” he said. “She’s full of shit. You know what she told me when I asked to join the press trip? She said the hotel was all booked up.”
“Focus, Pete. Skye. Think about Skye.”
“I am. She told me she feels terrible about what happened with Denny.”
“What was that?” I asked.
“I dunno. Skye was cryptic as hell. She kept dropping all these hints yesterday, but she wouldn’t answer a direct question.”
“Okay, what room did you see her come out of?”
“End of the hall. Don’t know for sure.” He rubbed his stomach, right where I’d elbowed him.
I turned and headed back into the chaos of the living room. I turned down the long hallway that led to the suite’s front door.
“You’re a real bitch, Lily Moore!” Pete shouted after me.
I didn’t turn around. “I know.”
CHAPTER 24
No one answered when I knocked on the door at the end of the hallway. I rang the bell, waited, then tried the one for the suite across the hall. The bells echoed through rooms that were obviously empty. I wondered if the key card in Skye’s bag would’ve opened one of these doors, and I wished I’d held it back.
Pete was a liar. I just wasn’t entirely sure which parts of his stories were fabricated. There were bits of truth mixed in there, glimmering like silver threads, and they complicated everything. Did I believe that Skye had given Pete her necklace, and that she just happened to have one exactly like it, which she was wearing when I saw her? No. But I knew Pete wasn’t lying about Skye’s frustration with her secretive boyfriend, or the story she was writing. She’d said similar things to me. She could be lying to both of us, but that was a different issue.
Giving up on my fool’s errand, I turned back toward the elevators, giving Pete’s door the evil eye as I went past. Part of me regretted venturing into Pete’s room. I should’ve known that would be a huge mistake, but I was desperate for any word about Skye, even a dubious email. I was also deeply suspicious of Pete. I’d never known him to be violent, but the combination of cocaine and the disaster zone he’d created in his room was frightening. He’d admitted his marriage had broken up. Worse than that, as he’d described it, whatever that meant. He was spiraling out of control, and I wondered what he was capable of. His concern for Skye struck me as genuine, but even that troubled me.
When I got to the elevator bank, my knees buckled and I fell against the wall. I took a few shuddering breaths to steady myself. It wasn’t the confrontation with Pete so much as a feeling of helplessness. I had no idea where Skye was, or what had happened to her, but I knew that she hadn’t just run off, and she wasn’t safe. Pete could have had a hand in her disappearance—clearly, he’d been involved in something violent—but who did I turn to in order to report him? The police were not an option. The consular office was closed. Denny would be concerned, but she had no more pull with the local police than I did. I could go to was Apolinar, who also happened to be someone I thought might have had a hand in Skye’s vanishing trick. Gavin seemed determined to play the ostrich, clinging to the idea that Skye had taken off in a huff.
Who else could I turn to?
The only person I could think of was Martin.
It was a devastating comment on my predicament that he was the closest facsimile to a person I could trust. That thought stabbed my temple, mocking me.
You think he’ll come in and fix everything, Claudia whispered from the back of my brain. That’s what you want him to do.
No, I argued back, I don’t want Martin here. Yes, I want him to find Skye, but I don’t want anything else to do with him. I want him to force people who work for him into helping Skye.
What makes you think he’ll want to help anyone except himself?
I had no answer for that. If history was anything to judge by, Martin would protect his son, and he would take care of himself. He didn’t care about anyone else, not really.
Standing straight, I pressed the call button for the elevator. It creaked and groaned on its trip down to the first floor. For a split second, as the doors reluctantly pulled apart, I thought I might catch sight of Skye. It was superstitious of me, but I imagined if I kicked up enough of a fuss looking for her, she’d be bound to reappear and I’d look like an idiot for being worried. But she wasn’t there.
I slipped by the lobby and went through the glass doors, feeling instant regret as I abandoned the air-conditioned climate for an al fresco steam bath. The sun was doing its damnedest to burn through the cloud cover, but the result was a hazy sky that was hard on the eyes. A pair of bellmen watched me as I lit a cigarette. They talked in low voices to each other, occasionally chuckling conspiratorially. What purpose did they serve, standing in front of a near-empty hotel, waiting to greet guests who never arrived? Gavin had mentioned renovations, but I saw no signs of work in progress. Maybe construction was set to start after the press trip ended, and Pantheon kept on the full staff to impress the journalists. It was all just window-dressing, for our benefit, and it looked as artificial as it felt.
Staring through the glass into the lobby, I tried to picture Skye as I’d seen her the night before, when we’d run into each other. She’d been beautifully dressed and her hair was perfect. But her face was red and there’d been dark circles under her eyes; she’d looked exhausted. I’d never asked her where she was going. There were strange shadows hiding in the planes and hollows of her face. Yes, she may have been sick, but that wasn’t why she burst into tears in the lobby.
The contradictions in her bothered me. I hadn’t seen them clearly before; I’d been too distracted by the possibility she was sleeping with Martin. But Martin was half a world away, and Skye was all dressed up in her seductive finest. It wasn’t as if she were going outside of the hotel. I’d asked her to come up to my room, but she’d wanted to go to the bar. The only man who’d shown up at the bar was… Apolinar. Right after he left, so did Skye. Was that a coincidence?
If the past few months had taught me anything, it was that there was no such thing as a coincidence.
Dimly aware I was making a decision I’d regret, I dropped my cigarette on the asphalt and rooted through my bag for my phone. Once it was in hand, I chewed on my lower lip, steeling myself for what I needed to, then wincing in pain as I bit down too hard. Even thousands of miles away, Martin Sklar still had the power to hurt me, it seemed.
Goosebumps ran up the back of my bare legs. How did you get past the fact that someone you thought you loved had wanted to kill your sister? And yet, I had to. My fingers tapped out Martin’s cell phone automatically, as if we’d been in touch yesterday.
As it rang, I wondered what time it was in Burma. Just as it seemed the call was sinking into the voice-mail ether, Martin answered, his voice so muffled I almost missed his quiet hello.
The air I’d been holding in my chest rushed out of my lungs. I turned my back to the bellmen; I wanted privacy. “Martin, it’s Lily.”
Time slowed down to a crawl as I waited for him to answer, then sped up again as I heard his voice for the first in months.
“Lily, sweetheart…” There was a pause, and I could hear him breathing heavily, as if he’d just been running. “It’s so good… to hear your voice.”
The words were exactly what I would have predicted him saying, yet Martin sounded strangely subdued. No matter what happened, he maintained a front of resolute cheerfulness. At least, he had when I’d known him. Maybe that facade had folded up and skipped town. Or maybe you just woke him up, Honey Bear, that voice in my head pointed out. Why do you have to read deep meanings into things with simple explanations?
I didn’t have time to argue with both of them. “This isn’t a social call. I’m at
your hotel in Acapulco, on a press trip. Skye McDermott has been missing since last night.” My voice was hard but brittle, as if it were about to break.
“Skye?”
“Don’t you dare play dumb with me, Martin. You know exactly who I’m talking about.” All of the anger inside me turned darkly cold. The anxiety I’d felt the night before, thinking about Skye being with Martin, evaporated. Martin had never been honest with me, and that realization drew whatever sadness I was carrying around inside me out like the poison of a snakebite. I’d wasted years playing along with his games. The person I’d been back then was buried just as surely as my sister was.
“I haven’t seen Skye in quite some time,” Martin said.
“Were you involved with her?”
The silence stretched like a chasm between us. “I took her out to dinner. Once or twice.”
I didn’t want to ask if he’d slept with her. At last, I was holding onto a bit of truth, a puzzle piece that actually fit.
“Martin, just listen to me,” I said, suddenly calmer. “Last night, when I got here, Skye and I went for drinks at the hotel bar. We talked for a while, and then she got up and she… she just disappeared. She never came back. And she meant to come back. She left her purse at the table, with her wallet and credit cards and passport and medication and… look, she left everything behind. No one has seen her since. I don’t know what’s happened to her, but I’m scared for her. The hotel won’t do anything and the police here are...” My voice trailed off.
“Don’t worry, sweetheart. I’m going to make sure my people take care of everything.” It was the verbal equivalent of a pat on the head and it made me want to lash out at him.
“What people do you have taking care of anything? Gavin Stroud? Apolinar Muñoz? You may as well throw dimes down a wishing well. When are you going to get the police involved?”
“If there’s one thing I’ve learned about doing business, it’s that you don’t want any contact with the police. That’s certainly been my experience in Mexico.”
Evil in All Its Disguises Page 12
