Murder in the Raw

by C. S. Challinor

  “Lucky you were able to get away at such short notice,” David Weeks addressed him.

  “The courts are in summer recess, so it wasna a problem.”

  “Hope we’re not keeping you from your family,” Nora O’Sullivan said.

  “My son’s attending university in Florida, so I took the opportunity of visiting him in Miami on the way here.”

  “And is there a Mrs. Graves?” the bosomy Pam Farley asked.

  “My wife died of cancer five years ago.”

  Silence chilled the conversation, quickly filled by a few guests voicing their commiserations. Vernon Powell seemed to see Rex for the first time. A glance of sympathy passed between them.

  “We must all come here Saturday,” Toni Weeks said in a transparent effort to lighten the mood. “Saturday is open mike night at The Cockatoo. It’s a lot of fun.”

  “Is this restaurant owned by the resort?” Rex asked.

  “Yes, but it’s open to the public, as you can see. The Cockatoo is our usual port of call for dinner. The band starts at eight.”

  “There’s a nightclub called Boo-Boo-Jam at the far end of the beach,” drawled the balding, sandy-haired Texan. “Great for kebabs and island music. It’s frequented by locals—the air is thick with dope. Sabine caused a sensation. That gal was a very sexy dancer.”

  Another lull broke the convivial chatter. The waiter appeared to clear away the appetizers. Rex sat back in his chair and contemplated Pam Farley in the wake of her husband’s stark compliment. She was younger than Duke, but not young enough to be a trophy wife, though she tried hard to project the illusion. Rex wondered if she had felt threatened by Sabine—if any of the women had.

  The closest in age was Penny Irving, another unusually attractive young woman, but whereas the photos portrayed Sabine as fragile and slim almost to the point of anorexia, Penny exuded fitness and health. Winslow had mentioned that she and her husband owned the Body Beautiful chain of health spas across Canada. Rex noticed they had each selected the leanest items on the menu.

  He skipped Martina and Gaby von Mueller in his review, since they had an alibi for when Sabine went missing. Nora O’Sullivan, it seemed, had decided to age gracefully and let the gray in her hair show. With her alabaster Irish complexion and cornflower blue eyes, the effect was not unbecoming.

  While Elizabeth Winslow recounted an anecdote about her trip to the hairdresser in Marigot that day, Rex took the opportunity to pass the handsome redhead under his scrutiny, guessing her to be in her late forties. Seated beside her, Toni Weeks also retained a noble beauty. According to Paul Winslow, her mother had been a distant relative of the emir of Kuwait and had married an Englishman.

  “Our daughters are the same age,” Toni told Rex. “Jasmin and Gaby get together each July at La Plage. Jasmin will be here next week. She’s spending a fortnight in Nice with her French pen pal.”

  “Und Gaby had Latin school this summer,” Martina von Mueller added in heavily accented English. “She arrived a week ago.”

  “Latin school?” Rex inquired.

  “Where we speak Latin,” Gaby replied. “I want to study law, so Latin is very important.” The girl’s English was much better than her mother’s.

  “Rex is a criminal lawyer, not an entertainment attorney like Vernon,” Toni explained to Gaby.

  Rex wanted to get back to the subject of Latin school. “Num Latine ibi cotidie loqueris?” he asked. Do you speak Latin every day there?

  “Cotidie et omni tempore.” All day, every day.

  “That’s amazing. And they say Latin is a dead language.”

  “So useful to have a background in Latin for medicine also,” the Austrian doctor remarked.

  “Well, I’d be happy to chat in Latin with you while I’m here,” Rex told Gaby, who appeared pleased by the attention.

  “So, Rex,” Weeks said. “Are you going to be getting into our naturist culture?”

  “Och, I dinna know about that,” Rex stumbled in his embarrassment, his Scots accent thickening in proportion to the alcohol he drank. “Not much occasion to go about wi’ no clothes on back home.”

  “Is it true that it rains all the time in Scotland?” Brooklyn asked. “I played golf in St. Andrews once and it pissed down every day.”

  “Aye, just aboot.”

  “Just like Ireland,” Nora said.

  “Well, don’t be shy, old fellow. We’ll let you keep your sporran on.”

  The table erupted into laughter at David Weeks’ comment.

  “What’s a sporran?” Gaby asked.

  “It’s a Scottish fanny-pack,” said Brooklyn.

  The guests laughed uproariously again. The second course arrived, filling the air with an aroma of savory ribs and spicy seafood. Rex attacked his grilled chicken and rice with gusto.

  “Grand Case, the neighboring town, is the gastronomic capital of the island,” Dick Irving, the Canadian, told him, addressing him for the first time since their introduction. “There are about thirty restaurants packed along the main boulevard.”

  “I passed by there on the way to the resort.”

  “You must have taken the Marigot route from the airport,” Duke Farley said.

  “Aye. The driver was verra informative,” Rex added, slipping deeper into his Scots accent. “It was like having my own personal tour guide. Is Pascal the limo driver too?” he asked, remembering the reference to the limousine in Toni Weeks’ statement.

  “Yeah, but if there’s a scheduling conflict, Greg Hastings, the manager, sometimes drives. A few of us rent Jeeps, but cars get broke into so often on the island we prefer to be chauffeured whenever possible.”

  “Who owns the resort?”

  “Monsieur Bijou,” Brooklyn replied. “He has another hotel and a new club in Marigot, but lately he’s gotten into residential projects. He just opened a luxury condominium complex up the coast.”

  “Marina del Mar,” Paul Winslow said. “He’s got fingers in several pies. It’s thanks to him the police finally pulled their thumbs out and decided to look into Sabine’s disappearance.”

  “Truth is, we’ve gotten nowhere in a week,” Duke Farley exploded. “She couldn’t have just vanished into thin air.”

  The guests looked expectantly at Rex, who cleared his throat. “Aye, well I’ll see what I can do, starting first thing in the morning, but I canna make any promises.”

  Solving the case of the missing actress might prove to be a challenge. An island in the Caribbean was an ideal place to commit the perfect crime, he reflected. If you could pitch a body far enough into the sea, you could hope the sharks would get to it before the police did. And one week had already gone by.

  The next morning, Rex set out with Paul Winslow for the promontory where Sabine Durand’s trail had ended. He was relieved to see that Paul had donned tennis shorts for the expedition. Dick and Penny Irving, the couple from Toronto, were just returning from an early jog along the shore, bodies replete with artful tattoos and rings in their genitals. Their sole items of clothing were matching white sweatbands embroidered in red with “The Body Beautiful.”

  The presence of such athleticism made Rex momentarily consider liposuction on his love handles. Luckily, the imperfections of his body were concealed in court by a black robe, but he decided then and there to go on a diet.

  “Ideal specimens of the human anatomy,” Winslow remarked of the Irvings as they ran by. “Puts one to shame, doesn’t it?”

  “You’re in pretty good shape.”

  “Nowhere near those two, but then I’m too lazy. I suppose they have to be good advertisements for their health spa chain. Vernon works hard at it too. Wouldn’t go with the image of an aggressive New York entertainment attorney to be covered in flab.”

  “Was he in the military?”

  “Served in Vietnam, I believe.”

  “That explains his upright posture and stern demeanor.”

  “Well, he hasn’t much to be happy about with Sabine gone—unless, of cours
e, he had something to do with it. But he never was much of a live wire to begin with.”

  They approached the boat rental shack, which had not yet opened for the day, and continued past it to the rocky promontory, which rose in their path, gradually sloping into the water.

  “Watch yourself on the rocks,” Paul warned. “They’ll be slippery.”

  They walked out over the wrinkled wet sand to a low part of the promontory and climbed over to the strip of shore on the other side. Without any wind, there was not enough swell to break on the rocks out at sea.

  “Today will be a scorcher,” Winslow commented absent-mindedly, staring out to the ocean as though it held the answer to Sabine’s disappearance. “I can’t bear to think what happened to her.”

  “I canna understand why she would come out here,” Rex said, looking about him. “Especially after dark.”

  Broken shells and bottles littered the windward part of the island. Scrub grew on the far side, adding to the desolate appearance. A rugged cliff blocked direct access inland, providing a cove hidden from view.

  “I always think the water looks forbidding at night,” Winslow murmured.

  We bathed in the sea off the moonlit beach.

  The poetic sound of Sean O’Sullivan’s words had taken root in Rex’s mind for some reason.

  “It’s still grey this time of morning,” Winslow remarked. “Makes you wonder what’s lurking beneath.”

  “Aye. That’s why I don’t like the water. I won’t go in where I canna see the bottom.” Rex scoured the narrow shoreline, but he knew the chances of finding anything of interest were remote. Too many people had traipsed over the sand, not to mention the tide flowing in at regular intervals.

  “This is where the gendarmes found her ankle bracelet.” Winslow pointed to a spot above the waterline midway along the outcrop of rocks.

  “What about the bloody scrap of material?”

  “Up there where you’re standing. It was caught on a piece of driftwood. The blood matched Sabine’s. She had a rare blood type, so there can be no doubt it was hers.”

  “Who did the testing?”

  “Vernon found a lab in Philipsburg. The police wouldn’t pay for it. They combed the beach and questioned everyone at the resort, but they refuse to pursue the enquiry until a body is found. They did give us a swatch for the testing, though it took a bit of arm-twisting on our part.”

  “What did you match the blood with?”

  “Max von Mueller performed cosmetic surgery on Sabine five years ago. He called his clinic in Vienna and compared the findings with his records. The blood type was a positive match.”

  “He’s a cosmetic surgeon?”

  “One of the best in Europe.”

  Rex found it surprising that the doctor with the round face and protruding belly was an aesthetic surgeon. He looked more like a psychiatrist or pediatrician.

  They headed back toward the resort, where the beach attendants were putting up the yellow umbrellas.

  Rex pointed to the island in the mouth of the bay. “What’s out there?” he asked Winslow.

  “Just piles of shells and a couple of half-sunken wrecks. You can snorkel across.”

  “What about sharks?”

  “Mostly blacknose and reef sharks. A big barracuda may skim the sand alongside you. He’s just curious. Barracuda won’t bite humans in clear water unless you’re wearing something shiny or swimming in a school of fish. Then they might strike by mistake, same as a shark.”

  Shielding his eyes from the sun, Rex turned to face the direction in which they had come. “What about on the other side, beyond the promontory?”

  “I wouldn’t go out there unless you’re a good swimmer. There’s a strong undertow. Looked calm enough this morning, but the waters around the island can get quite rough, which limits visibility for diving.”

  “Do you dive?”

  “Occasionally. Brook’s my scuba partner. Penny and Sabine used to pair up. We’d go on shark dives where you feed them and they swim between your legs.”

  Rex shuddered. “You’d never catch me doing that.”

  “It does take nerve.”

  “I worry about my son surfing in Florida.”

  “Shark attacks are pretty rare,” Winslow consoled him, unsuccessfully.

  After agreeing to get together later in the day, they diverged in front of the cabanas. As Rex entered his living room through the sliding glass door, Brooklyn was just leaving by the main entrance, dressed in a lightweight suit.

  “I left a couple of croissants in the oven for you and some coffee in the pot.”

  “Thanks. Off to town?”

  “I have a meeting in Philipsburg. Catch you later.”

  Rex took his breakfast to the patio table where the previous day’s Daily Mail was anchored by a conch shell in case of a sudden gust. Ordinarily, he took exception to the tsk-tsk style of the Daily Mail, but today he viewed it as a friend from home and eagerly turned to the Sudoku puzzle, which he completed in eight minutes flat. He wished the mystery of the missing actress were as easy to solve.

  The full sun on the bay gave the effect of a blue mica mosaic. It looked inviting now, beckoning him for a swim. He prepared for the beach. His concession was to wear a white towel about his waist as though partaking of the Turkish baths. He did not feel comfortable conducting an investigation in his birthday suit, although the public nakedness of others bothered him less than he would have thought.

  “The Pillsbury Dough Boy,” Duke Farley joked as Rex passed him on the way to the beach. The Texan said it with a pleasant laugh, and Rex didn’t take offense.

  “You should have seen me before I got to Miami.”

  Farley, in nothing but flip-flops, clapped him on the shoulder. “Don’t forget the sunscreen,” he advised. “You don’t wanna get fried.”

  Rex assured him he would do just that and went to find an unclaimed umbrella. The slabs of flesh on the lounge-chairs arranged along the beach reminded him of bodies at a morgue. The women had not gone so far as to discard their jewelry. Mrs. Winslow wore a heavy gold necklace in a Greek key pattern design that must get uncomfortably hot in the sun.

  Sabine Durand’s ankle bracelet had been found beyond the outcrop of rocks. Rex pondered the significance of that. The blood on the torn strip of pareo, discovered in the same location, had proved to belong to her too. Something had happened out there. But what?

  The absence of a body was not necessarily a bar to a murder charge, at least not in English law. St. Martin, part of the Department of Guadeloupe, was subject to French law. What he needed to ascertain was whether Sabine Durand had been murdered and who had killed her. The French authorities could take it from there.

  Spotting a vacant lounge-chair next to Pam Farley, he asked if he might ask a few questions.

  Pam flashed him a toothy smile. “Go right ahead,” she said in a welcoming Southern twang. Winslow had told him not to be taken in by her dazzling blonde looks. She had graduated magna cum laude from an Ivy League college and been clever enough to snag an oil and cattle tycoon.

  Rex perched on the chair. “Your statement pretty much fits with the others. What I wanted to ask you was about Sabine herself.”

  “What about her?” Pam settled more comfortably on her saffron-colored towel.

  Like the other women he had seen au naturel, she was shaved to within an inch of her life. He concentrated instead on the attractively proportioned features of her face.

  “Your personal recollections, how she behaved the last time you saw her, that sort of thing.”

  “The last time I saw her was a week ago Tuesday at Happy Hour. We were at l’Apéritif, that tiki bar over there. It must have been around eleven a.m. We were drinking piña coladas—the usual crowd, except for the Irvings who had gone to St. Barts for the day. There’s not much to see on that island, so we declined their invitation to join them. After drinks, the von Muellers went to pick up their daughter from the airport and stayed on the
Dutch side for dinner. Sabine, Toni, Nora, and Elizabeth went into Philipsburg for lunch. I had booked a session at the resort spa at three so I didn’t go with them.”

  “And then?”

  “After my massage and facial, I stayed in my cabana to wash and set my hair, and didn’t see my friends, all but Sabine, until dinner. I can’t remember exactly what time Duke got back from his dive, but he was already showered and changed when I was through getting ready.”

  “How did Sabine seem that day?”

  “Much the same as usual. I mean, when you talked to her, you always wondered if she was listening to a word you said. Her aquamarine eyes would just drift away and then, just when you thought you’d lost her, she would smile vaguely and say something apt.” She waved to a bronzed couple at the water’s edge.

  “So, you weren’t exactly close?” Rex prompted, drawing her attention back to him.

  She inspected her immaculate manicure. “This is the third year I’ve been coming to the Plage d’Azur and I can’t say I ever figured her out. Sabine was private about her past life. I believe she came from a well-to-do family of bankers in Paris, but fell out with her mother and had not seen her father in years. In any case, that’s what she told me. I think she was close to her father, and that may explain her air of tragedy. Unless that too was an act.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “I thought her a bit of an actress, even outside of work. She was my least favorite woman friend of the group, to tell the truth—which, of course, I’m duty bound to do.” Pam beamed him another brilliant smile. “You are, after all, investigating her disappearance in a semi-official capacity. Still,” she added, “I couldn’t help but admire her, just as you would have to admire a Lalique statuette.”

  It was becoming apparent to Rex that Sabine did not have many fans among the female guests. He wondered what other reactions he might receive. Across the beach he could make out a tall form reclining on a lounge chair beneath an umbrella, a bejeweled right hand clasping a tall drink, the straw hat bobbing as the owner chatted to a neighbor.