Thou Art With Me

by Debbie Viguié

  “Trust me. I am the man, I will lead. You will know through my movements where you are to go, what you are to do,” Dimitri said softly, his voice almost hypnotic. “Close your eyes.”

  “But-”

  “Ssh, just feel the music. You need to let go.”

  Cindy closed her eyes and within moments her other senses seemed to spring to vivid life. And for just a moment she let herself forget that she was dancing with Dimitri. And in the next moment they glided to a gentle stop.

  “What is it?” she asked, opening her eyes.

  “One minute, fifteen seconds,” Dimitri said with a grin. “Let us see you beat that.”

  “But, how will you know how Jeremiah is feeling?” she asked.

  “You will know, and in the way he moves I will know as well,” Dimitri assured her.

  Her heart was hammering as she walked over to Jeremiah. He took her in his arms and she pressed her body against his. She tried to think of the things that Dimitri had said about the swish of a hip and the sweep of a leg.

  You can do this, Cindy. You can be sexy.

  Dimitri started the music and she pressed her body harder against Jeremiah’s as they began to move across the floor. She focused on maintaining contact as much as she could. She stared deep into Jeremiah’s eyes and she could feel a fire starting to burn in her stomach. Her heart was racing, her breathing was becoming more shallow.

  Jeremiah dipped her. It wasn’t a move Dimitri had taught them, but she went with it, arching her back slightly. The music stopped and Jeremiah slowly brought her back to a standing position.

  Dimitri clapped. “Twenty-five seconds. Very good. I owe you sparkling cider and chocolates. It was well done.”

  Cindy blushed as she pulled away from Jeremiah. She dropped her eyes, suddenly feeling too shy to look at him.

  By the end of the session Dimitri seemed pleased with their progress. They moved on to their next small group session and it went better than the last one had. When they were done with that they walked out toward the pool and sat on a couple of the lawn chairs.

  “I think we need to get a look at Dr. Carpenter’s files,” Cindy said. It was something she had been thinking increasingly about.

  “I’ve been thinking about that, too. There’s a chance the killers forgot to get rid of those or didn’t want to risk arousing Dr. Carpenter’s suspicions,” Jeremiah said.

  “Either way we should be able to check it out later tonight.”

  “Someone’s coming,” Jeremiah said, turning his head suddenly.

  Cindy didn’t hear anything, but sure enough, a few seconds later Jack appeared on the trail. He waved when he saw them.

  “How’s it going, Jack?” Jeremiah asked.

  “Good, I’m just looking for my wife. You seen her by any chance?”

  “No,” Cindy said. “How long has she been gone?”

  “We got out of our therapy session with that crackpot doc over half an hour ago. She took a walk to let off some steam. I figured she’d end up back at the room, but I haven’t seen her.”

  “He put you through the wringer?” Cindy guessed.

  “Oh, man, that guy is nuts. Certifiably loony if you want my opinion. By the end I just wanted to put my fist through a wall, you know?”

  “Sorry to hear that,” Jeremiah said.

  “Yeah, I think our next session with him I’ll conveniently be experiencing a headache or something like that. I figure no sane person puts themselves through his special brand of torture twice.”

  “Dinner’s in about ten minutes, I’m sure Jill will show up there if nothing else,” Cindy said.

  “Great, more of her and Kim gossiping, that’s just what a guy needs.”

  “Well, if we see her, we’ll tell her you’re looking for her.”

  “Yeah, thanks. Catch you guys around.”

  Jack turned and ambled away.

  Cindy and Jeremiah shared a silent look. They were clearly both glad not to be that couple.

  “I guess we can start walking,” Cindy said as she got up.

  Jeremiah grabbed her hand and they headed toward the main building. They had only gone a few feet when a sudden scream split the air.

  18

  “What is that?” Cindy gasped.

  “I think it came from one of the suites,” Jeremiah said.

  They started running in that direction. The scream stopped abruptly and that was almost worse.

  They reached one of the suites just in time to see Dorothea emerge, eyes wide in terror.

  “What is it?” Jeremiah demanded.

  “A snake in my jewelry box!” the woman cried, pointing back inside.

  Cindy paused, “A snake?”

  “Yes!”

  Jeremiah ran inside and Cindy forced herself to follow. Flynn was backing out of the doorway that led from the living room to the bedroom, his face ashen.

  “There is a snake,” he said, pointing.

  As soon as he got out of the doorway Jeremiah walked into the bedroom. As much as she didn’t want to deal with a snake, Cindy forced herself to walk in after him and Flynn followed.

  On the dresser was a small travel sized jewelry box, and, just as Dorothea had said, there was a small snake slithering through the jewelry.

  “How on earth did it get there?” Cindy asked.

  “I think someone put it there,” Jeremiah said grimly.

  “Why would anyone do that?” Flynn asked.

  Cindy could hear raised voices outside. Clearly others had heard the scream and had come running as well.

  “I don’t know, but the snake isn’t poisonous,” Jeremiah said.

  He picked the snake up and Cindy and Flynn stepped back, giving him plenty of room. Then they followed him back through the living room and outside. Several people had gathered and most of them shrank back as Jeremiah walked through them with the snake. Moments later he was letting it go into some bushes.

  “Ewww, why didn’t you kill it?” Kim asked.

  Jeremiah stared at her. “It would have been disrespectful.”

  “What are you talking about?” she asked.

  “This is reservation land that we are on. To the Native Americans, all life is precious. The snake wasn’t poisonous and it posed no threat. I just returned it to its environment. I would very much like to know how it ended up in there,” he said, looking back at the suite.

  “Slithered, no doubt,” Jill said with an exaggerated shudder.

  “By the way, Jill, your husband is looking for you,” Cindy said.

  “What?” Jill asked, looking startled at suddenly having attention on her.

  Cindy turned away and watched as Dorothea went back into the suite. She emerged just a few seconds later. “My pearl necklace is gone!”

  “Are you sure?” Arnold asked as he pushed his way forward from the back of the crowd.

  “Yes. I opened my jewelry box because I was going to wear the necklace to dinner. That’s when I saw the snake inside.”

  “Was the necklace still there at that point?” Arnold asked.

  Cindy bristled at the question. It could be seen as an implication that she or Jeremiah had taken the necklace when they’d been in the room after the discovery of the snake.

  “I have no idea,” Dorothea said.

  Arnold glanced at Jeremiah and Cindy, before he could say anything, though, Flynn spoke up.

  “It couldn’t have been. I was in there with Cindy and Jeremiah when Jeremiah removed the snake. No one else has been in that room.”

  “So, maybe whoever took the necklace left the snake as a distraction,” Cindy said.

  “That would only work if the thief needed time to get away, leave the resort,” Jeremiah said.

  “So, we just need to find out if anyone’s missing,” Tristan said from his place further back in the crowd.

  “No one has left and no one is leaving,” Arnold said, irritation heavy in his voice. “And let’s stop throwing around words. We don’t know that someone
took the necklace. It’s probably simply been misplaced or lost somehow. Dorothea, when did you last see it?”

  “Last night when I took it off and put it away before getting ready for bed,” she said.

  “Are you sure you put it away? Maybe you put it somewhere else without thinking or lost it before you got back to the suite?”

  She folded her arms across her chest and her eyes glared daggers at him. “Young man, I am quite certain,” she said, nearly spitting the words at him.

  Cindy had already liked Dorothea, but now she really liked her.

  “Alright, why don’t the two of you come with me to the office, and we’ll try and get to the bottom of this,” Arnold said. “Everyone else, head in to dinner.”

  Dorothea and Flynn closed their door and followed Arnold.

  Reluctantly Cindy and Jeremiah followed the rest to the dining room.

  “My money is on Jill, she’s been eyeing that necklace since the first night and her husband couldn’t find her a while ago,” Cindy whispered to Jeremiah.

  “You might be right. Kim was there with her. It could have even been the two of them.”

  “Who do you think took her necklace?” Beth asked as soon as she and Tristan were seated at the dinner table with Cindy and Jeremiah.

  “I don’t know,” Cindy said, not wanting to show her hand.

  “Jill and Kim have both been awfully obsessed with it,” Tristan said.

  “You think either of them is capable of picking up a snake?” Beth asked skeptically.

  “Good point. Unless the whole squeamish thing is an act.”

  “Everything about those two seems fake to me,” Beth said.

  “Well, hopefully it will all be sorted out by the time we finish dinner,” Jeremiah said.

  “Just in time for another group session,” Tristan said with a sigh. “Oh, well, it could be worse.”

  “We could have another session with Dr. Carpenter,” Beth said.

  “We had the two o’clock session with Dr. Carpenter. Man, did he put us through the ringer,” Tristan said while Beth nodded. “He ultimately told us that we needed to get separate hobbies so that there was an area of our lives that didn’t have overlap which would be good for us as individuals and a couple apparently.”

  “We had the four o’clock session with him yesterday,” Cindy said.

  “What did he tell you guys?” Beth asked.

  “That we needed to engage in more public displays of affection.”

  Tristan laughed. “Wow, you got an easy one. Trade you?”

  “Not even!” Cindy said.

  And despite what he had told them to do there had still been very little public or private displays of affection. Granted, there was a lot going on, but still.

  An obnoxious idea hit her. She slipped off her shoe under the table. Then she stretched out her foot and rubbed it against the inside of Jeremiah’s calf. He jumped and turned to look at her, clearly startled.

  She smirked. “Doctor’s orders,” she said.

  Mark jerked awake as he heard his cell phone ringing. He was disoriented and for a moment had no idea where he was. Then it came back to him as he recognized the wood of his desk at work, wood that now had a little puddle of drool on it.

  He sat up and something fell off his back and onto the floor. He picked it up. It was a piece of paper with the words “Do not wake until children are in college”.

  “Very funny,” he called out, waving the paper in the air.

  Around the room other officers burst out laughing.

  He was awake. But why? It seemed to him there had been a reason why.

  His phone trilled. A message. Joseph had called and left a message.

  He pulled the phone up to his ear and dialed Joseph back. The other man answered on the first ring.

  “Joseph, what do you have for me?” Mark asked.

  “Eric Wilson called me back. He told me that what Marcia said was true, except for the fact that her lawyer was better than his. What was significant, though, was that he told me a couple of members of the staff enticed him to enter a high stakes poker game at the casino. They drove him there, went with him, and he did lose big. He also figured that there had been cheating going on although he couldn’t figure out how.”

  “Did he say anything?”

  “No, he figured it out at the end when he got wiped out while holding four queens. He said by the time he wised up he realized what kind of people he was dealing with and he figured if he made a fuss he might end up dead.”

  “If only Malcolm had the same insight he might still be alive.”

  “Yeah. It sounds like these are bad dudes. I hope that helps.”

  “It does. Do you think Eric would be willing to testify about any of that in court?”

  “He might be persuaded. For either money or ego. If he had a chance of getting some of his money back or having it shown that he was cheated it would help. He fancies himself quite the sophisticated card player and anything that would help restore that reputation would be appealing to him.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  Mark hung up and staggered to his feet. He needed to go home. He glared as several officers continued to snicker. He would get back at all of them.

  After he got some sleep.

  Which at the rate things were going might be when the twins went off to college.

  “I hate you guys,” he said to the nearest cluster of men who just laughed.

  Dinner was halfway through and still Dorothea and Flynn had not appeared. Jeremiah was on edge. With everything else they had going on the last thing they needed was one of the other guests playing jewel thief. It could be a simple case of monkey see, monkey want, but it didn’t feel quite right to him. The addition of the snake was too deliberate, almost like a message of some sort.

  Movement just outside the door of the room caught his eye. It was the masseuse, the one Dorothea and Flynn had said was a fairly new addition to the staff. He looked like he was trying to get someone’s attention. He was not as discreet as he probably thought he was.

  A few moments later across the room both Jack and Levi got up and strolled toward the lobby. They were trying to look casual and Levi was failing miserably at it.

  Jeremiah stood up and pulled his phone out of his pocket. He held it up to his ear. “Yeah, what is it?” he asked as he ended up walking out of the room slightly ahead of the other two men.

  “No, it’s going fine. Wait, say that again, I couldn’t quite hear you,” Jeremiah said, pausing and holding his free hand up to his other ear.

  Jack and Levi joined the masseuse and all three moved into the gym. Jeremiah moved quietly up against the wall just outside the door, and leaned against it, still holding the phone to his ear like he was listening to someone.

  “We’re still set, right?” Levi was saying.

  “We’re good to go if you are,” the masseuse said. “We have it all set up so that after dinner tomorrow night both ladies will be having serious girl time, massages, facials, the works. They won’t miss you for hours.”

  “This is great. I’ve been dying for some action,” Jack said.

  “We’ve got the hottest poker game this side of the country. You gentlemen are just lucky you earned yourselves a couple of seats,” the masseuse said. “As soon as dinner is over tomorrow, you’ll meet our guy out front and then you’ll be in poker heaven.”

  Jeremiah quickly moved away. He’d heard enough and lingering longer just added to the risk of being caught. He put his phone back in his pocket as he returned to the table. No sooner had he done so than he felt it vibrate. He pulled it back out and saw that Mark was calling.

  He answered. “Hey, it’s not a great time.”

  “Fine. I only have three words for you: rigged poker game.”

  “I’m right there with you,” Jeremiah said. “I’ll call later.”

  Cindy was staring at him wide-eyed and he could tell that curiosity was killing her. He reached over
, grabbed her hand, and gave it a squeeze. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Jack and Levi returning to the dining room.

  “How about we skip dessert and get a walk in before the next meeting?” he suggested.

  Cindy nodded vigorously and a minute later they were outside heading for their bungalow. Once in there he filled her in on what he’d learned.

  “Do you think Malcolm knew they cheated and threatened to expose them so they killed him?” she asked.

  “That’s sounding more and more possible. I mean, if they’re taking people for millions, they’re not going to want anyone messing that up for them.”

  “So, there are conspirators here and at the casino,” Cindy mused.

  “Yes. We need to get over there and figure out exactly what’s going on.”

  Mark called again and Jeremiah put his phone on speaker as he gave them the rest of the story. Then he asked for Kyle’s number which Cindy was able to give him before hanging up again.

  “He does not sound alright,” Jeremiah commented.

  “I don’t think he’s slept in a while.”

  “Okay, back to that casino. Maybe we can sneak over there tonight,” Jeremiah said.

  “First we have to go to the last session of the night, back with the whole group.”

  Jeremiah rolled his eyes. “Can’t you just fake a headache or something and get us out of it?”

  “I doubt it. Besides we don’t want to draw even more attention to ourselves than need be.”

  “You’re right,” he said with a sigh. “Now’s not the time to rush and ruin everything.”

  “What we need to do is figure out a way to get you into that poker game,” Cindy said.

  “Sorry, not me, I can’t play.”

  “You must play poker,” she said.

  “No. Baccarat, yes. Poker, no.”

  “Spies really play baccarat?” she asked.

  “It’s kind of a prerequisite when working in some countries. Or a badge of honor. Either way, yes, I play baccarat.”

  “You’ll have to show me sometime.”

  “We’ll have to get Joseph to bankroll us. It’s an expensive game. But for now what we need to focus on is getting you in that poker game,” Jeremiah said.