by Brenda Hiatt
Chapter Five
“THE ANTILLA is probably Aruba’s most popular site, as you can see by the other dive boats here,” Jason continued, gesturing at the half-dozen vessels anchored within a quarter mile of us. “That makes it important to stick together. Don’t lose sight of your buddy.”
“No chance of that,” Ronan murmured beside me.
Was he flirting, or was it something more nefarious? The tingle I felt wasn’t quite as warm as before.
“We’re going to start with a few surface drills as soon as everyone’s in the water—removing and replacing weights, and navigating with our compasses just a few feet below the surface. Then we’ll descend, practice buddy breathing, use our compasses to get to the wreck and do some exploring. Since it’s our last dive, go ahead and use up whatever film you’ve got. This site will be worth it.”
As before, I was the first one in, with Ronan right behind. We’d already practiced weights and compasses in the pool, but just like everything else, it was trickier in the ocean. Rick dropped his weights, in fact, but Jason managed to grab the belt before it sank out of reach.
“That would have delayed us a good fifteen minutes,” Jason said, handing the weights back to Rick. “We’re in sixty feet of water here, so it would have taken me a while to go down and get back with them. Remember, if you drop your weights, someone else has to retrieve them, since you can’t get to the bottom without them.”
I made sure to cinch my weight belt securely around my waist, thinking how stupid I’d feel if Ronan had to fetch it for me.
The compass navigation went smoothly, though Dobry and Bebe somehow ended up twenty yards from the boat at the end of it.
“Okay, you were right, and I was wrong,” I heard Bebe admitting sheepishly. Dobry didn’t even look smug; he really was a nice guy. I was going to miss these people.
This time I remembered to equalize early and often on the way down and reached the bottom without incident. We gathered around Jason on a sandy spot of the ocean floor—we’d been well drilled by now not to touch coral or other marine life—and he demonstrated buddy breathing with Rick.
Somehow I’d managed not to think ahead, but now I felt my heart speed up a bit as Ronan removed his regulator and held it out to me. Reminding myself that it was only a drill, that the seawater had already washed away all traces of his mouth, I took out my own regulator and replaced it with his.
After three or four breaths, I handed it back to him, waited a moment, then offered him my regulator, telling myself that this was nothing like kissing by proxy.
The grin and wink he gave me before inserting my mouthpiece between his lips undermined that thought somewhat. I counted seconds while holding my breath rather than dwell on that.
When we all had our own regulators back, Jason had us gather closely so that he could show us on his compass which direction we needed to go to reach the wreck. Then he waved us off in pairs.
Since I was the one taking the class, Ronan indicated that I should do the navigating. I nodded and squinted down at my compass, turning it until it pointed precisely the same way Jason’s had, just a hair north of true east. It was a lot harder to keep the compass needle steady in the ocean than it had been in a pool with no currents.
Though I had to correct course several times, less than five minutes passed before the bulk of the Antilla loomed up before me. Triumphant, I glanced back at Ronan to see him giving me the “okay” signal. I knew he’d have managed it in half the time, but I still felt pretty proud of myself.
Once the rest of the class arrived at the wreck, Jason gathered us together, nodded his approval and indicated we should follow him. We all spent the next twenty minutes or so exploring the Antilla, a four-hundred-foot monstrosity.
A German freighter sunk during World War II, many of its enormous compartments now lay open to the sea, creating metal caves and tunnels big enough to swim through—not that I’d have dared to do so, if Jason hadn’t been leading the way.
I felt like protesting when Jason indicated that it was time to begin surfacing, but when I checked my air gauge, I saw that I was down to one thousand PSI, which meant I had enough to surface safely, but not much more than that. I half promised myself that I’d make another trip to the Antilla before leaving Aruba—with a camera.
Not until we were back on the boat removing our equipment did I remember the odd questions Ronan had been asking me about the ring between our two dives. My suspicion seemed silly now. But how could I be sure?
Well, I supposed I could always just ask him. If I had the guts.
“Congratulations!” Jason said as we struggled out of our wetsuits—some of us (me) struggling more than others. “You’ve all now completed your training to become certified Open Water Divers. We’ll go back to the classroom for one last quiz, fill out some paperwork, and I’ll give you your temporary dive cards. You can use those to dive until your permanent ones come in the mail.”
It occurred to me that Ronan might disappear before we finished with all that, never to be seen again. Which meant that if I was going to ask him anything, it had to be now. While we were still on the boat. I screwed up my dwindling courage and walked over to him before I could talk myself out of it.
“Ronan, you seemed awfully interested in that ring I found. Why?” I asked all in one breath.
He straightened from his task of detaching tanks from vests and looked me right in the eye. For a moment I thought he intended to lie, probably very convincingly, but then he gave a slight nod.
“Yeah, I guess you should know what I found out. If you want, we can talk after all of your class stuff is done.”
“Yes, I definitely want,” I said, referring only—okay, mostly—to information about the ring. Certainly I was now burning with curiosity.
My impatience to hear what Ronan had to tell me nearly overshadowed the importance of the next hour or so. Still, I couldn’t deny a flush of pride when Jason presented me with my very own (temporary) dive card, knowing I’d earned it. I hadn’t felt such a sense of achievement since Debra’s birth—something else I’d done on my own, as Tom had been too “busy”—read: squeamish—to be with me.
The moment Jason released us from the classroom, I looked around for Ronan, half expecting that he’d reconsidered and left. But no, there he was in the dive shop, waiting among the t-shirt displays.
“Just a sec,” I said to him. On impulse, I grabbed a NO FEAR t-shirt off the rack and plunked it on the counter by the register. I was going to work at making that my new motto.
“Are you planning to join the others at Carlos & Charlie’s tonight?” Ronan asked as I paid for the shirt. “You can dance on the bar with Bebe and Linda to celebrate your certification.”
I snorted and shook my head. “I was there last night, and once was enough. And no, I did not dance on the bar.” The image almost made me laugh—and I didn’t even want to think what it would do to my daughters.
“Do you want to get some lunch while we talk?” he asked then.
“Sure. I’m starving.” I was glad he’d changed the subject.
“Diving will do that. There’s a good steak place across the street and down a block or so. My treat.”
Flattered as I was, there was no way I was going to be obligated to him for the price of a meal. Not yet. “Steak sounds good—but we’ll go Dutch, if that’s okay.”
He shrugged and headed to the door. “Sure, if that makes you feel safer. This way.”
Safer? I started to protest, then realized he was right. I was still playing it safe. But fearless didn’t mean stupid. Right?
“Care to give me an overview on the way there?” I asked, not wanting to examine my motives any more closely.
Ronan hesitated for so long that I thought he might renege altogether, but then he shrugged. “Sure. Why not. In a nutshell,
I believe that ring you found could be a clue in a high-profile murder case.”
That was so completely not what I’d expected that I stopped walking to stare at him. “A murder case?” I squeaked, then cleared my throat. “How—What makes you think that?”
“The inscription.” He touched my shoulder to get me moving again. “As I recall, the names were Stefan and Melanie, and the year was 1998. Right?”
Mechanically moving forward, I nodded. I hadn’t realized he’d looked that closely at it yesterday.
“About eight months ago, industrialist Stefan Melampus’s wife, Melanie, disappeared at sea, and he was later charged with her murder. It was all over the news for a week or two. You might have seen it.”
That was right about the time I’d caught Tom cheating on me, so I hadn’t been paying a whole lot of attention to the national news, but the names sounded vaguely familiar. “I think so,” I said uncertainly. “And you think that could be her ring?”
“They were married in ’98, so it’s certainly possible. Besides—” He broke off and shrugged. “Anyway, if it is, it could be important.”
“Why? I mean, if she was lost at sea, wouldn’t it make sense that her ring would be in the ocean?”
He arched one dark brow, giving him a slightly devilish look. “She disappeared off the coast of Miami, for one thing. For another—How, exactly, did you find the ring?”
We reached the restaurant then, so I waited until we’d been seated and were again alone to answer. “How did I find the ring? Well, you saw it. It’s in great shape. But that’s kind of the point of platinum, isn’t it? It doesn’t corrode?”
“That’s not exactly what I meant. Was it buried in the sand, or what? You didn’t say.”
“Oh.” I thought back to yesterday—was it only yesterday?—and my triumph. “It was right above that big moray eel under the keel of the Debbie II . . . Oh, that’s right, you were on the boat. Well, there’s a—”
“I’ve been down there. I’ve seen the eel you’re talking about. Huge sucker.”
I nodded. “The ring was on a little piece of metal sticking out from the side of the wreck, above and a little to the left of the eel. There was sand on the shelf, but the ring wasn’t buried in it. It was just sitting on top.”
“Which means it can’t very well have been there for eight months,” he said, “even if it somehow got there from Miami.”
“No, I guess not. So what would that mean?”
“Either it’s not the same ring, or Melanie Melampus wasn’t wearing it when—”
“Um, may I take your order?”
Ronan broke off what he’d been about to say at the waitress’s interruption. I wondered how long she’d been standing there.
“A bottle of the Malbec to start,” Ronan said as I hesitated, glancing at my menu for the first time. “And an order of the crab-stuffed mushroom appetizers.”
She nodded and left, and he looked back at me. “All of the steaks are good, but the tenderloin is my favorite.”
“That’ll be fine,” I said, just as glad not to have to decide for myself. “Now, what were you saying about Mrs. Melampus and her ring?”
One corner of his mouth quirked up, acknowledging with amusement that I wanted to keep things businesslike. Which I did, of course.
“This is all assuming it really is her ring. You never did tell me what you did with it after your room was searched last night.”
I hesitated for a long moment, then decided that even if he was a legitimate suspect, he wasn’t likely to do anything heinous here in a public restaurant. “I’ve got it right here,” I said, digging it out of my pocket and displaying it on my palm.
He blinked. “It was in your shorts pocket, on the boat, while we were diving?”
“Well, yeah. I have no particular reason to think whoever broke into my room was after this ring. They could have been looking for cash, drugs, anything.”
“Good point.” I didn’t think he sounded convinced, though. “Mind if I take another look at it?”
I only hesitated for a short moment this time, then handed it across to him. “It hasn’t changed since yesterday, and you took a pretty good look then. You were the one who pointed out that it’s engraved.”
He didn’t reply, but held the ring just above the table top to examine it. The light in this restaurant wasn’t as bright as the pizza place yesterday had been. After a moment, he shot me a glance I couldn’t quite decipher, then pulled a pair of glasses out of his breast pocket and put them on. I managed not to snicker out loud, remembering my own reluctance to do just that yesterday.
When he handed it back to me, I glanced nervously around then pocketed it, wondering what I was afraid of. “Well?” I asked him.
“I think that’s Melanie’s ring. Assuming she was wearing it the night she disappeared, your finding it here could mean that her killer, or someone associated with the killer, is—or was recently—here in Aruba. Which means someone isn’t going to be happy you found it.”
I stared at him, dread starting to creep up on me. “And that’s why you think whoever broke into my room last night was after the ring?”
“I’d say it’s a definite possibility, yes.”
“And what makes you so sure this is—was—her ring? Two first names and a year isn’t a lot to go on.” I was clutching at straws, trying to keep panic at bay.
“Last night I went online to look up the Melampus case, since it had been a while since I’d followed it. This ring was listed among her effects, the things missing along with her body.”
“That information is available online?” I couldn’t keep the skepticism from my voice. “I know you can find almost anything on the internet these days, but—”
“You have to know where to look,” he said with a disarming grin and a shrug. “I’ve done some work in insurance.”
I opened my mouth to say I’d worked in insurance too, but didn’t know how to access that kind of info, but the server arrived just then with our wine and appetizer. After she opened the wine, Ronan ordered the tenderloin for both of us. By the time she was gone, something else had occurred to me.
“So that’s what you spent your evening doing? Digging into insurance records?” I’d almost said “hacking.”
Again, he shrugged. “I was curious. What, did you think I’d spent the evening searching your room, instead?” He said it with a grin, but I still felt myself flushing.
“No, of course not. I just didn’t know why you were so interested in the ring, that’s all.” Suddenly I was the one on the defensive.
“Well, now you know. I guess you could say I’m kind of a news junkie.” He took a sip of the ruby-red wine. “Excellent, as always. Anyway, enough about me, Wynne. What brings you to Aruba, all by your lonesome?”
There was more I wanted to know about the ring—about him—but I accepted the change of subject . . . for now. “My twenty-fifth wedding anniversary,” I said, then paused, waiting for his reaction.
He didn’t look so much startled as curious. “Not many couples take separate vacations for their anniversaries. Or is your husband already a diver?”
I couldn’t help smiling at the thought. “Hardly. And no, it’s not a separate vacation thing, exactly. I booked the trip—and the dive lessons—last summer, but we’ve since divorced.”
“Ah.” Was it my imagination that he looked relieved? Probably. “And you decided to come anyway? Gutsy. Good for you.”
I took a sip of my own wine, then a bite of the crab-stuffed mushroom, to conceal my pleasure at his validation of my choice. “These are both delicious. And thanks. Most people would say I was crazy to come here alone.”
“I’m not most people,” he said with a twinkle in his very blue eyes. “I think it’s important to stretch boundaries, to refuse to live l
ife according to other people’s expectations.”
That was so exactly what I’d been telling myself that I was both startled and gratified. “It’s good to hear someone else say that. But it’s easier to say than do, I’ve found.” I took another sip of the excellent Malbec.
The look he gave me was a little too perceptive. “It gets easier with practice.”
“That’s good to know.” I glanced down and realized I’d eaten at least my half of the appetizer, and probably more. “Oops, sorry. The rest is yours.”
“No apology necessary. I’m glad you like it.”
He popped the last mushroom in his mouth, then drained his wineglass. He refilled it from the bottle, then looked at me questioningly. Mine was nearly empty too, to my surprise. After a slight hesitation, I nodded, and he topped it off.
“I’m also glad that you plan to keep stretching your boundaries,” he said after a moment.
I blinked. “Did I say that?” One glass of wine wouldn’t have—
“Not in so many words. But you do, don’t you?”
I considered before answering. “Yes, I suppose I do. I’ve, well, I’ve spent most of my life living for others. It’s my turn now.”
“Good girl.” He reached across the table and patted my hand encouragingly.
For a moment I frowned at his hand on mine, then I pulled away. “Don’t.”
He looked confused. “Don’t what?”
“Don’t patronize me. I’ve had enough of that to last me a lifetime. It’s one thing I came here to escape.”
His brows rose, and he drew back his hand. “Fair enough. Though for the record, I wasn’t patronizing you. In fact, you don’t strike me as a woman it would be easy to patronize, Wynne.”
I gave a sour little laugh. “Oh, my ex-husband could give you lessons, believe me.”
