by Rachel Woods
“What made you choose the Heliconia?” Octavia asked. “You don’t look like the type of woman who normally goes there.”
“I thought that … well, it doesn’t matter what I thought,” I said, not wanting to get into my personal issues. “I’ll tell you this: I wish I had never gone to that damn hotel.”
“A lot of women end up feeling that way,” she said. “It’s a nice premise. But, you have to be very careful when you go to a place like that. Because it’s all fun and games until somebody gets blackmailed.”
Sighing, I nodded.
“Or … falls in love.”
Stricken, panicked, I stared at her. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about your feelings for Icarus,” she said. “You’ve fallen for my cousin.”
“No, I’m not in love with Icarus,” I rushed out, feeling desperate and confused.
“Oh, come on … I saw the way he was looking at you,” she said. “And the way you were looking at him. Maybe you two haven’t fallen in love, but you’ve fallen into something, and I think it’s a bit deeper than lust.”
Swallowing, I looked away, not sure what to say.
“But you didn’t come here for relationship advice,” she said. “You need a legal strategy.”
“Which will be?” I said, thankful for the opportunity to move the topic away from my feelings for Icarus.
“We’ve got to find another suspect,” she said. “Someone who had a stronger motive and a better opportunity to kill Henri than you did.”
“Sounds like you want me to find the real killer.”
“That may be the only way for you to stay out of jail,” she said. “Right now, the cops think they’ve got their man—or woman, rather—and they’re not looking for any other suspects. So, we have to do our own investigation.”
“How?” I asked, though I had a feeling my commercial litigation skills—if I could get them working properly—might be useful.
“Well, Ish can help with that,” she said. “Every now and then, he does a little freelance investigative work for me. I’ve just opened my practice in St. Mateo—I used to practice in the USVI—and I’m from here, but I’ve been gone awhile. Ish knows everybody and people tell him stuff they wouldn’t tell me.”
I nodded, hopeful.
“Look, I know it probably seems like your life is collapsing around you,” she said, “but we’re going to get you out of this mess, okay? So, not that you want any motivational platitudes—”
“Motivational platitudes would be nice, actually.”
“Well, then, stay strong,” she said and smiled. “And keep the faith.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
“I hate to say this,” Doris started, shaking her head. “But, I’m not even surprised that Henri is dead.”
“You’re not?” I gaped at her, not sure how to process what she’d said.
A little after nine o’clock that night, my nerves were on edge as I sat at small table across from Henri’s sister, a petite St. Matean woman with a compact body like a gymnast, nothing but sinew and muscle. She had a slightly vague resemblance to her brother, and I noticed she was wearing the same gold medallion necklace that had been hanging from Henri’s neck when I’d first encountered him on the path to the waterfalls.
Driving from Octavia’s law office back to the Heliconia, Icarus had said, “We can go talk to Henri’s sister after I get off tonight. Should be around seven.”
“You want me to come with you?”
“You don’t want to talk to her?”
“Maybe she won’t want to talk to me,” I said, worried. “I was arrested for killing her brother. I’m sure she knows that. Octavia’s gag order can probably stop the story from showing up in the New York Times, but I doubt we can do anything about island gossip.”
“St. Mateo is like a small town,” Icarus confirmed. “Everybody knows everybody’s business.”
“Maybe you should talk to her alone,” I suggested, but Icarus didn’t think that was a good idea. Doris would want to talk to me, he’d promised, especially when I told her that I hadn’t killed Henri. Doris would be able to discern that I was telling the truth and would want to help us find out who really killed her brother.
“What do you mean by that?” Icarus asked, obviously shocked by Doris’s chilling admission. “Why are you not surprised that he’s dead?”
“All them get-rich-quick ideas he always coming up with,” the sister said. “I try to tell him it’s not going to work. The Bible say when you dig a ditch for somebody, you gone fall in it yourself. And that is what happened to Henri. He done got caught in the trap he try to set for you.”
Doris’s words seemed harsh, but her solemn eyes told the story of her sorrow over her brother’s murder. Her fatalistic, philosophical sentiments were most likely some attempt to assign meaning, or maybe even blame, to a devastating, hopeless situation.
When we’d arrived, Icarus and Doris greeted each other with easy, comfortable familiarity, and then he introduced me and explained to Henri’s sister exactly why we were there. As he’d warned me, he was honest with Doris about who I was—the woman who’d been arrested for killing her brother. “But, Ms. Miller didn’t do it,” Icarus had said. “The police have the wrong person. That’s why we want to talk to you. We want to know if you know of anybody else who might have killed Henri.”
Doris had given me a shrewd look, and for a moment, I didn’t know if she would collapse into sobs or start screaming like a banshee while she attacked me. After a moment, she allowed us to come inside the tiny home. In the small kitchen, Doris offered me a seat at a table that was just a bit bigger than a snack tray, and Icarus stood in the entryway.
“I think when he went to work for the Heliconia, that was the worst thing for him,” Doris said and then took a swig from the plastic bottle of Coke she’d taken from the mini-fridge. “Something about being around all them rich people put a bitterness in his heart. And, all of a sudden, he got to get out of the double-H. He can’t stand the east side no more. He do whatever he have to so he can leave this place, like it’s so horrible. It’s not the worst place in the world. It’s good people here. Kind people. We care about each other. Friendly people with a good heart. But, Henri want to leave, he want to be rich, so he come up with this plan.”
“And what was his plan?” I asked, even though I knew all about Henri’s wicked schemes.
“Henri say all the women who come to the Heliconia are rich,” Doris said. “He say they got more money than they need. He come up with an idea to force one of these rich ladies to give him money. He say he going to video one of ladies when she naked, doing one of her fantasies. Then, he will tell the lady, you give me money or I put the video all over the Internet.”
“But how did Henri decide to target me?” I asked. “Did he find out I was coming to the hotel and do some research on me or something?”
“Wasn’t planned like that,” Doris said. “I ask Henri, what lady you gone do this to? He say, it don’t matter.”
“Wait a minute,” I said, my heart hammering. “Are you saying I was chosen at random?”
“Didn’t matter to Henri who the lady gone be, he say,” Doris said, pursing her lips in disgust. “All that matter is she rich and got the money to pay him.”
Dumbfounded, I glanced at Icarus, who was frowning, and then back to Doris, whose sympathetic gaze I couldn’t bear. I looked away, toward the little picture window above the sink. Focusing on the wilting herbs growing in the mason jar filled with water, I tried not to cry.
I wanted to scream at the injustice and unfairness of this hell I was going through. A nightmare I could have avoided if only I hadn’t been making love with Icarus in the spa bungalow when he decided to put his disgusting extortion plan into action. It was like a punch in the gut, knowing Henri hadn’t specifically targeted me. The blackmail scheme wasn’t even about me. It was about Henri finding a rich woman, any rich woman, to extort money from.
>
The blackmail attempt had been a random attack, which bothered me and made the whole sick, twisted situation worse. I wouldn’t be dealing with blackmail demands and a first-degree murder charge if I had changed my mind about going to the Heliconia Hotel to deal with my anxiety.
“What I think is that he got killed by one of them fools he was working with,” Doris said, rolling her eyes.
“Fools Henri was working with,” Icarus said. “What fools? Henri was working this scam with other people?”
“They thought they were so smart,” Doris spat, tone dripping with scorn. “They thought that they would get away with it. Henri say they gone call themselves the alliance.”
“The alliance?” Icarus asked.
“Henri was in some kind of alliance?” I asked, trying to follow her, praying I wouldn’t miss a crucial clue.
“Henri didn’t come up with this idea by himself,” Doris said. “He had help. So-called friends. I told him not to get involved with them, that he couldn’t trust them.”
“What friends?” Icarus asked.
“Nick and Sam, for sure,” Doris said. “And Stazia.”
“Stazia,” I echoed, thinking of the fake maid who’d left the blackmail letter in my suite.
“Maybe one other person, but I’m not sure because I told him I didn’t want to know anything about it,” Doris said. “I told Henri I didn’t want the cops asking me no questions, you know, if the plan didn’t work out. And it didn’t. I knew it wouldn’t. But, I didn’t think …”
Trailing off, her eyes brimming with tears, Doris looked away, shaking her head.
Disquieted by her display, I thought of reaching across the table to place my hand over hers, but I hesitated, not sure how my gesture would be received.
“Did you tell the police about all this?” Icarus asked, getting the conversation back on track. “You told them that Henri and some other hotel workers decided to blackmail one of the guests?”
“I absolutely did,” she said and then sighed. “But I don’t know if they take me seriously, you know? Because I don’t have no proof of what I say. It was not like Henri write this idea down. He tell me about it, and so the police say, that is hearsay. Then they say they already know who killed my brother.”
“I know the police told you I killed him,” I said, my heart slamming. “But, Doris, I swear to you, I did not kill your brother.”
“Then why do the police think you did?” Doris asked, and though there was fierceness in her gaze, I had the feeling that maybe she didn’t really think I was guilty, but she wasn’t sure. Maybe she wanted me to convince her of my innocence. “The cops say the evidence they got against the killer is very strong.”
“The evidence they have against Quinn doesn’t really prove that she killed Henri,” Icarus said.
“Henri neighbor say you was banging on his door,” Doris said. “Say you was cussing and demanding that Henri open the door. Is that true?”
Wary, I braved a quick look at Icarus, but he was focused on Doris, and I wasn’t sure what to say. Yes, it was true that I’d been banging on the yellow door of the little blue house, but I hadn’t known that Henri lived there. I’d gone to the house looking for Icarus.
“Yes,” I admitted, finally. “But—“
“What did you go there for?” Doris asked, her red-rimmed eyes blazing. “If you don’t go to kill him?”
“I wanted to get the video,” I said, suddenly remembering the reason for this fiasco my life had become because of Henri and his unholy alliance. “The deal was, if I paid your brother, he would give me the video and he couldn’t show it to the whole world. But after Henri let me in, we argued. And then …”
“And then …?” Doris prompted, her gaze intent.
“Henri hit me,” I said. “He knocked me unconscious. So, I don’t remember everything that happened.”
“Then maybe you don’t remember killing him,” Doris suggested, leaning back in her chair, eyes shrewd.
“Quinn didn’t kill Henri,” Icarus said. “She was unconscious when whoever did kill Henri stabbed him in the chest.”
“How do we know she was unconscious?” Doris asked, staring at Icarus. “Because she says my brother knocked her out?”
“Because I found her,” Icarus said.
Jolted by his confession, I looked at him, wondering if he would regret admitting that he, too, had been at the scene of the crime. I had neglected to tell the police, not wanting to get Icarus in trouble, but I had a feeling Doris would pass this information on to Detective François.
“You found her?” Doris asked and then slid skeptical eyes my way before quickly returning her gaze to Icarus, asking him, “You went to Henri’s house the day he was killed?”
“I went to confront him,” Icarus said. “I suspected he was the blackmailer, and I was hoping I’d get him to confess. But, the first time I went, Henri wasn’t there. Later, I went back to Henri’s place, and that’s when I found Quinn, unconscious on the floor in the living room.”
“None of this is right,” Doris wailed. “I know my brother did wrong, but he didn’t have to die. Jail, yes. He deserve to go to jail, but did somebody have to kill him?”
“That’s what Icarus and I want to find out,” I said, encouraged by Doris’s use of the word “somebody”, a word she wouldn’t have used if she was convinced that I had killed Henri. “And we will, I promise.”
Scoffing, Doris said, “You just want to save yourself. You just want to find somebody else who could have done it so you won’t go to jail.”
Deflated, I tried not to be discouraged by the fact that I’d obviously misread her. “Doris, I want to find the real killer because your brother won’t get any justice if the wrong person goes to jail for killing him.”
“Quinn is the wrong person,” Icarus reiterated.
“Then find the right person,” Doris said, her eyes solemn again and her tone resigned, almost defeated. “Find who really killed Henri.”
Ten minutes later, Icarus drove away from Doris’s tiny house, steering casually and confidently along the winding road flanked by palm trees. The dilapidated, disenfranchised neighborhood was washed in an inky darkness, punctuated every now and again by a sickly porch light or a flickering neon sign in the window of a roadside shack.
“Doris said that Henri’s alliance was Stazia, Nick, and Sam,” I said, glancing at his profile in the dark. “I know Stazia, but who are Nick and Sam?”
“Nick and Sam both work at the Heliconia,” Icarus said, turning onto the main road leading back toward the Heliconia Hotel. “They do fantasies, too.”
“Do you think Nick killed Henri?” I asked, staring at the dark road, illuminated by the headlights of Icarus’s Jeep. “Or maybe Sam? One of them might have argued with Henri and killed him.”
“Need to have a talk with both of them,” Icarus said.
“What would we say?” I asked. “If one of them did kill Henri, they’re not going to admit that to us.”
“Maybe we can trick them,” Icarus said. “Maybe I could tell Nick that Sam said he’s the killer. And then, I could tell Sam that Nick said he was the killer. Cops use those kinds of tactics, sometimes.”
“But you’re not a cop, Icarus,” I said. “What you want to do sounds dangerous. And what if it doesn’t work?”
“Well, I have to try,” Icarus said.
“We have to try,” I corrected.
“Better if I talk to them alone,” he said.
“Why don’t you want me to go with you?” I asked, my blood pressure rising.
“Because a cornered animal will always attack,” Icarus said and then turned off the highway and onto the private road that meandered toward the hotel’s front façade.
Shaking my head, I asked, “What do you mean?”
“Neither one of these guys is going to like being confronted,” Icarus said. “And if one of them did kill Henri, then things could get physical. And I’m not going to let anything bad happen to
you.”
DAY TEN
Chapter Twenty-Five
“Are you sure that Icarus even talked to Nick and Sam?” Lisa asked, suspicion evident in her tone.
“He said he did, and I believe him,” I said, pacing around the coffee table between the couches, trying to maintain my resolve to keep an open mind about Icarus and give him the benefit of the doubt. I didn’t want Lisa’s doubt to infect me.
Last night, after Icarus took me back to the Heliconia, we made out in the car for a while, but eventually, he left to go find either Nick or Sam. He had some ideas of where they might be, places they usually hung out, bars and clubs that locals frequented and where tourists weren’t always welcomed.
This morning, Icarus stopped by to tell me he’d been able to track down Nick and Sam last night. Both of them denied any involvement in a deal to blackmail one of the guests. “Not surprised they lied,” Icarus had said. I wasn’t surprised by their denial either.
After Icarus left to go to work, I called Lisa to give her the latest on the continuing saga of the nightmare my life had become, telling her about my interrogation and arrest, the visit to Doris’s, and what we’d learned from Henri’s sister.
“You know what I think you should do,” Lisa said.
Her phrase made my stomach twist. The last time she’d given me her opinion, she’d had the crazy idea for me to get over my anxiety by flying to St. Mateo, checking into the Heliconia Hotel and embarking on a quest to have an extraordinary amount of sex.
I’d taken Lisa’s advice and look what happened.
Immediately, I chastened myself. Couldn’t blame Lisa for this mess I was in. Wasn’t my best friend’s fault that I’d been blackmailed. Wasn’t anyone’s fault. As Doris had told me, Didn’t matter to Henri who the lady gone be. All that matter is she rich and got the money to pay him.
Lisa said, “I think you need to call Nick and Sam yourself.”
“You think so?”
“Quinn, your freedom is at stake,” Lisa said. “You can’t go to jail for something you didn’t do. You have to get to the bottom of this bullshit. Take control of the situation, stop letting Icarus make all the damn decisions.”
