“Me?” Gina asked, surprised.
“Yes. There were three guys thirties age in the group. They tried to get her to talk. She wasn’t rude, but she made it clear she wanted to be on her own.”
“Did the tour go to lunch at the Tierra Mar restaurant, the same one we went to?”
“Yes.”
“Did you sit at the same table?”
“Yes. Is that important?”
“It might be. Klaus, it will be easier if I tell you what I am trying to do. Can I trust you to keep this conversation confidential?”
He nodded.
“The Aruba authorities conducted an investigation of Cathy Ryan’s death.” Gesturing to her bag, she said, “I’ve read the police report. They quickly concluded it was an accident caused by operator error and that Cathy was drunk at the time of the collision. In other words, it was entirely Cathy’s fault. I have reason to believe that it may not have been an accident.”
Klaus took a long sip from his beer. “I want to help you if I can.”
“Did you see the accident happen?”
“A little bit. I was last to leave the restaurant. I meet with the manager to make sure the names on the reservation are the same as those people on the tour. I was just walking outside when I heard someone yelling. I looked and saw Cathy smash into the yacht.”
“What did you do?”
“I ran to my ski and rode out to try to help.”
“Did the people on the yacht try to help her?”
“I saw the man and woman. They were very old. Maybe seventy-five years. They could not help. They told me they called the police.”
“Where were the other people on the tour?”
“They had started to ride back toward the shop. As you know, the skis are very loud. Unless they turned around to look, they would not know about Cathy.”
“What happened next?”
“When I got to Cathy, she was not conscious. Her face was down in the water. She was floating because she was wearing her vest. I pulled her on the seat of my ski and I came back to the dock. Very quickly a police car came, followed by an ambulance. They started pushing on her chest.” His face took on a pained expression. “Then they put her on a bed, put a mask over her face, and carried her to the ambulance. I could tell they believed it was too late.”
“When you were with her, did she ever regain consciousness?”
“No.”
“The police report concluded that Cathy panicked. She kept accelerating until she hit the yacht.”
“That is very surprising.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because we have so many beginners rent the skis. And so many idiots who all they want to do is race. Cathy was experienced and careful. She was not the type to panic.”
“Klaus, when we were at the lunch table today, I couldn’t see our skis from where we were sitting. If someone wanted Cathy to have an accident on her ski, is there something he could do to it?”
“You mean, sabotage it?”
“Yes.”
Klaus exhaled. “The ski is designed to lose power when you release the hand grip with your right hand. You could put a small cover with a spring on the hand grip to cause it to stay at full power even after you let go.”
“What would you do if the ski you were riding kept going at top speed even after you released the grip?”
“It’s a strange situation. The safest thing, and the smart thing, would be to jump off the ski. You would hit the water hard, but you would be okay. I would probably spend a few seconds trying to fix the grip that was stuck.”
“Would you be looking at the grip?”
“Probably.”
“And that means not looking at what’s ahead of you?”
“Again, probably yes.”
“Do you know what happened to Cathy’s Jet Ski after the accident?”
“It was badly broken apart. I saw pieces in the water when I rode to help Cathy.”
“Do you know if anyone examined the ski after the accident?”
“I don’t know. The police spoke to me for a few minutes on the dock before the ambulance took Cathy away. They told me to go back to Paradise Rentals and wait. An investigator would speak to me there.”
“Did you—?”
“Before I left the dock, the police told me to phone the shop. I told the owner what happened. I also told him to tell the others on the tour to wait at the shop. The investigator wanted to speak to them also.”
“Did the investigator interview all of you together?”
“In the beginning, no. He spoke to me and the owner. He wanted to know if the ski Cathy was riding had any problems before the accident. I told him honestly no.”
“And then he questioned the other riders?”
“Yes. None of them saw the accident. They had already ridden away. He was very interested in what happened at lunch and how much everyone had to drink.”
“Was the restaurant pushing their ‘world-famous piña coladas’ like they were today?”
Klaus smiled. “Yes. The same as today.”
“The police report states that everyone, including Cathy, drank a lot at lunch and that likely played a role in the accident.”
“That’s not correct. I had nothing to drink. And Cathy had very little.”
“The restaurant bill that was added to her room charge shows she had two piña coladas. It’s in the police report.”
“When the waiter came around with more drinks, Cathy’s glass was still halfway. Before she could say no, it was refilled. When we were getting ready to leave at the end of lunch, I noticed her glass was still to the top.”
Klaus took the last sip of his beer and looked at his watch.
Gina said, “Klaus, I can’t tell you how grateful I am. You’ve been very helpful.” She reached into her bag for her card. “This has my cell phone and email address. If you can think of anything else—”
“I will contact you. Thank you for the beer.”
20
Back in her hotel room Gina was too preoccupied to appreciate the beauty of the sunset. The bright orange ball had disappeared below the horizon. A yellow glow illuminated the puffy clouds before slowly fading into a peaceful twilight.
Her appointment with Inspector Werimus was at ten-thirty the next morning. It would be about a twenty-five-minute ride to police headquarters according to Google Maps.
Gina’s initial plan to investigate Cathy Ryan’s death included tracking down and speaking to each of the people who were on the Jet Ski tour with her the day of the accident. Their names were in the police report. Four were from the United States and one was from Canada. It wouldn’t be hard to find them.
But what was she hoping to learn from them that she didn’t already know from Klaus? Gina asked herself. If Cathy had any inkling that she was in danger, it was unlikely she would have shared it with anyone on the ski tour, or for that matter anyone at the hotel.
When she returned from meeting with Klaus, Gina spoke to the concierge. After confessing that he really shouldn’t be sharing guest information, he revealed that when Cathy had her accident she had two more days on her hotel reservation. He told Gina he had no idea how Cathy intended to spend the remaining time. The only activity she had booked through the hotel was the ski tour.
There was only one other person in Aruba that Gina thought might be helpful to her. The owner of Paradise Rentals. She was annoyed at herself for not asking Klaus what happened to the ski after the accident. Maybe he didn’t know. But the owner certainly would.
Gina considered but then passed on the idea of trying to talk to the owner tomorrow morning before her ten-thirty appointment. She might be in a better position to ask him questions after she met with the investigator.
For perhaps the tenth time that day she glanced at her phone hoping to see a voice mail or text from Meg Williamson. Undaunted, she opened her laptop and waited for her email to download. Scanning through it, she was disappointed to see
no response from Meg. “It’s the squeaky wheel that gets the grease,” she said to herself as she phoned and left another message for Meg and then sent her another email.
Her mood brightened when she read the email from her father. He had been to the movies and also raved about a new restaurant that had just opened.
She felt relieved. In previous emails and phone conversations, he always wanted to talk about what she was doing, what story she was working on, how things were going with Ted. After telling him, she would ask, “Dad, enough about me. What have you been up to?” His answer was usually a vague “Don’t worry about me. I’m okay.” She whispered a prayer of thanks that he had so many friends in the community and that they were including him in their plans.
21
The Aruba police station was in the heart of Oranjestad, a city of thirty thousand people. The boxy, Spanish colonial–style building had a soft vanilla color exterior. Three rows of chairs were on either side of a center aisle where Gina entered. Directly ahead of her a uniformed policeman was seated behind a formidable wooden desk.
As Gina approached, the policeman had his head down reading the paper in front of him. Twenty seconds passed. Unsure about how to get his attention, she cleared her throat with a little more volume than was necessary. It worked.
She could now read the nameplate on his lapel. Knudsen looked up and apologized. Before he could continue, she said, “My name is Gina Kane. I am here to see Inspector Hans Werimus.”
Pushing a clipboard in her direction, he asked her to sign in. “I have an appointment with him at ten-thirty.”
“Please take a seat. I will let him know you are here.”
Gina turned around, walked a few steps to the first row of chairs, and sat down. Knudsen took several minutes to finish reading the apparently captivating report in front of him. She considered but decided against another attention-getting throat clearing. Her patience was finally rewarded when Knudsen picked up the phone and began dialing.
Thirty minutes passed. There was no point going over the police report again. She had nearly committed it to memory. She glanced at her watch. Almost eleven o’clock. The slow-turning wheels of justice, she thought to herself.
She heard the phone ring on Knudsen’s desk. He answered and quickly put it back down. “Ms. Gina Kane,” he said, making eye contact with her. He pointed to his left indicating a route she should follow around his desk. A man was waiting for her at the end of a long hallway. He was well over six feet tall. Gina remembered reading someplace that the Dutch were among the tallest people in the world; the average male was over six feet.
“Follow me, please,” he said as he led her around a corner into an area of eight cubicles that were separated by shoulder-high partitions. From nearby voices she could tell that at least some of the cubicles were occupied.
Stopping at the second cubicle, the inspector pulled a desk chair around to face outward, gesturing toward a smaller chair. “Please sit,” he said. “I’m sorry. We are a little cramped for space.”
“I appreciate your taking the time to meet with me, Inspector Werimus. I have several questions I want to ask—”
“Before we go forward, Ms. Kane, I want to clear up a possible misunderstanding. I am Inspector Andrew Tice. Inspector Werimus was dispatched to work on an emergency case and will be unavailable for the next several days.”
“Frankly, that is very disappointing,” Gina said, dropping her notebook on her lap. “I flew all the way down from New York to meet him.”
“I am sorry for any inconvenience. Sometimes these things can’t be avoided. Perhaps I can answer your questions.”
“Perhaps,” Gina said, with an edge of sarcasm in her tone.
Tice opened a drawer on his side of the desk and removed a file. “Before we begin, Ms. Kane, I am interested in learning more about why you are interested in this case. You told my colleague you are a writer?” he said, glancing at the file.
“That’s correct.”
“Of fiction?”
“No. What I do for a living, does that really matter?”
“It might,” he said with a condescending smile. “Tell me, are you an attorney?”
“No, I’m not.”
“You say you are a writer—”
“I am a writer,” Gina responded with a condescending smile of her own.
“Very well. Are you a writer who works for a law firm?”
Gina decided to change tactics. “Inspector Tice, I have no affiliation with a law firm. But the more questions you ask, the more I’m tempted to consult with one. Can we get to my questions now?”
“I’m sorry, Ms. Kane. People from the United States have a fondness for filing lawsuits whenever something goes wrong. Lawsuits create bad publicity. Aruba is a small country that is very dependent on tourism, much of it from the United States. I will be happy to answer your questions.”
* * *
Gina stared without seeing out the window of her cab as she headed back toward her hotel. She lamented the waste of time it had been to go to police headquarters. Tice knew very little that was not in the police report. Gina had challenged him on the patrol officer’s finding that there was “a strong odor of alcoholic beverage” on Cathy’s body. “Cathy Ryan had been facedown in the water for as much as two minutes. Can you explain to me how the officer would have been able to smell ‘an alcoholic beverage’ under those circumstances?”
“I cannot. But it would not have been in his report unless he observed it at the scene.”
“So Patrol Officer van Riper noted the ‘strong odor of alcoholic beverage’ based on what he observed at the dock. Did he make this observation before or after learning that Cathy Ryan had been served alcohol at the restaurant?”
“I don’t know the answer to that. I’m sorry.”
So am I, Gina had thought.
Tice had stood by the accuracy of the report that stated Cathy had consumed two drinks at lunch. Gina had been reluctant to name Klaus as her source of different information. If I drag him into this now, he might not be there if I need him later, she thought.
The only area where Tice had been somewhat helpful was telling her what happened to the ski after the accident. “The inspection concluded that the ski was in good working order before the accident, which was caused by operator error,” he had told her. “It would then have been released to Paradise Rentals, its rightful owner.”
“So the police transported the ski from the dock where the accident took place back to the rental shop?”
“No,” he said. “We are not a delivery service. The owner of the ski would be responsible for retrieving it and transporting it to wherever he chose.”
“And you don’t know what Paradise Rentals did with the ski?”
“No, why would I?”
You’re not interested in what happened to Cathy Ryan’s ski, but I am, she thought.
“Excuse me,” she called, raising her voice in an attempt to get the attention of the taxi driver.
He turned down the radio.
“Slight change of plans,” she said as she gave him the address of the rental shop.
22
The owner was on the phone when Gina returned to the rental shop’s small boathouse office. He was finalizing an order for four kayaks for the afternoon on the following day. Before entering, she had glanced down at the docks near the gas pump. There was no sign of Klaus and the Jet Skis were not in their dock slips. Probably leading today’s tour, she thought.
Placing the phone down, the owner turned to Gina. “Can I help you?”
“Yes, you can,” she said, “Mr.…?”
“De Vries,” he answered, pointing to a framed license hanging on the wall behind the counter.
“This is your place, Mr. De Vries?”
“For the last twenty-five years, yes,” he said, smiling.
“Two and a half weeks ago, a young woman named Cathy Ryan was killed while riding a Jet Ski that was rented here.”
&
nbsp; “Are you a lawyer?” De Vries asked, the smile having been replaced by an angry stare.
Here we go again, Gina thought to herself. She spent the next two minutes assuring him that she did not work for a law firm, had no interest in suing him, and that she was convinced that the ski he had rented to Cathy was in good working order when she rented it.
“I want to find out what happened to the ski after the accident. The police said they released it to you. Did you bring it back here to your shop?”
“Of course not,” he said. “How stupid do you think I am?”
“It was your property—”
“I know who it belonged to. You were on the ski tour yesterday. Am I right?”
“Yes.”
“How would it look if you walked down to the dock and saw a wrecked ski? You’d ask, ‘What happened?’ I’d say, ‘No big deal. A young lady who rented from us got killed when she crashed into a yacht in the harbor. But I’m sure you’ll have a nice ride today.’ ”
“Okay,” Gina said. “I understand why you wouldn’t want to bring it back here. What did you do with it?”
“I called a carting service and told them to take it to the dump.”
“You didn’t want one of your people to look at it, to see if—”
“To see if what? The police told me the young lady, who by the way was drunk, had panicked and caused the accident. What was I supposed to look at?”
“Do you know what dump they took it to?”
“There’s only one in this area, but you won’t find the ski there.”
“Why not?”
“Because it was over two weeks ago. I’m sure by now it’s been crushed.”
23
A little crushed was how Gina felt the next morning as she buckled her seatbelt for the almost five-hour flight from Aruba to JFK. Leaving nothing to chance, she had rented a car and made the thirty-five-minute drive to the dump site that served the central part of the island. The sound of trucks going in and out had been punctuated every ten minutes by the high-pitched whine of a compactor and the crunching of its contents. A supervisor on-site had confirmed that items made from metal—cars, appliances, and yes, a Jet Ski—would be routed to the compactor to be crushed and sold for scrap. Typically, it took three days from arrival for a metal item to make its journey to the compactor. Nothing would remain of a Jet Ski that had been dumped almost three weeks ago.
Kiss the Girls and Make Them Cry Page 6
