Death by Bikini

by Linda Gerber

  He laughed. “Afraid? Of what? I thought you were indestructible.”

  “I’m not joking.”

  “Neither am I. See?” He handed me my clothes and spread his hands. “I’m totally harmless.”

  I looked him square in the eye. “Then tell me your name.”

  He frowned, hesitating just a fraction too long. “You know my name. It’s Adam Smith.”

  Wrong answer. I turned and started to walk away. “Aphra, wait.”

  I waved good-bye with my shirt and kept walking. He ran ahead of me and blocked my path.

  “I don’t get it. What did I do?”

  “I know who you are, Seth.” I drew out his name and watched the shock register on his face. “I know about you and your dead family, so you can stop pretending.”

  His jaw dropped. “How . . . how could you know?”

  “It doesn’t matter. I—”

  He grabbed my shoulders and shook me. Hard. “It does matter,” he said. “How did you find out?”

  I tried to break away, but his fingers dug into my shoulders. Now I really was scared. I fumbled with my shorts, trying to get to the vial of pepper spray in the pocket. It wasn’t there. It must have fallen out. I searched the ground. It had to be there somewhere.

  Seth lowered his voice, though there was no one around to hear. “Did she tell you?”

  “What? Who?”

  “Natalie. Did she tell you our names? She promised not to tell anyone our names.”

  I felt like he’d just slammed me in the stomach. My world spun sideways. I couldn’t breathe.

  “How,” I whispered, “do you know my mom?”

  CHAPTER 7

  Seth made his face go blank, but not before I saw the “oh, crap” panic pass through his eyes.

  "Tell me how you know my mom!”

  He shook his head. “I can’t.”

  “Then I can’t tell you how I found out your names, either.” I twisted out of his grasp and took off down the hill.

  “Aphra, wait!”

  I could hear him crashing through the brush behind me, and I pushed myself harder. Tears blurred my vision and spilled onto my cheeks. This was a piece of the puzzle I couldn’t have seen coming.

  Seth caught up with me just past the taro bog. He grabbed my hand and pulled me to a stop. “Aphra, please. I need to know. It’s important.”

  “Yeah? Well, my mom is important to me.”

  “Please. You don’t understand.”

  “And neither do you.”

  All of a sudden Seth froze, his eyes darting about the bamboo and ferns.

  “What is it?”

  He yanked my hand and signaled to me to be quiet. Then I heard it. From just below the first ridge came a rustling noise. I didn’t know of any animals in the area big enough to make that kind of sound, which could mean only one thing. Someone else was in the forest. And obviously Seth didn’t want to be seen.

  The rustling grew louder, sending a flock of ‘i‘iwi finches into the air in a burst of scarlet and black. Seth flinched, and his grasp on my hand slackened. That was all I needed. I tore away from him and ran down the hill. Seth didn’t follow.

  I burst through the trees and stumbled to a stop. As if I hadn’t had enough surprises for the day, there in the clearing stood my dad and Hisako.

  They stared at me like I was some kind of apparition. I stared right back. Out of all of us, Dad recovered first. “Aphra! What’s going on?”

  I could ask them the same thing.

  Hisako bowed. “Jack-sama, thank you for showing me the plants of your rain forest. It is a great help for my thesis.” She tactfully took her leave.

  Without a word, Dad took my arm and steered me down the hill toward home. We’d made it about halfway there before he finally spoke.

  “You must be feeling better now.” It sounded like an accusation.

  Oh, yeah. I was supposed to be sick in my room. “Uh, right. I am. Much better. Thanks.”

  “You’ve been swimming?”

  I wished I could have come up with something better than, “Um . . . no?”

  In the long run it would have been easier just to admit I had been swimming, but I didn’t think Dad knew about my cove in the hills, and I wanted to keep it that way.

  “I see.” Dad folded his arms and walked away. I followed silently. Neither one of us spoke until we had nearly reached the Plantation House.

  “I don’t know what I’m going to do with you.” Dad’s voice sounded tired.

  “Do with me?” What was that supposed to mean?

  “Sneaking around. Lying. It’s not like you, Aphra.”

  “I’m not—”

  “I told you to stay away from them.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Don’t play games with me, young lady. You were with that Smith boy, weren’t you?”

  “No!” Hey, I was telling the truth. His name was not Smith.

  “Ever since they came to this island you haven’t been yourself. You don’t know the first thing about those people, Aphra. I want you to stay away.”

  I didn’t know about them? He didn’t even know their real names!

  “You’ve left me no choice. You are to stay in your room the rest of the afternoon.”

  “But—”

  “That’s final.”

  “Fine.” I turned and stomped up the stairs, making as much noise as I could to let him know I was just as mad as he was. It wasn’t until I reached the upstairs landing that I remembered one little hitch. My bedroom door was locked. From the inside.

  Now, I don’t do this sort of thing all the time, so don’t get the wrong idea. I’ve had to pick a few locks here and there, but nothing illegal, I swear. It’s just that in a business like ours, occasions do arise when locks have to be opened, and a key is not always readily available. I learned how to pick locks from our super the first year we were here. We still have the old pin-tumbler types on all the doors, so it really isn’t that hard. It just takes time, and I wasn’t sure how much I had.

  As long as I could hear my dad slamming around downstairs, I knew I was safe, but he could come up to check on me at any moment. I rushed into the bathroom to find something to work the lock. Nothing. Listening for more movement from below, I tiptoed to Dad’s bedroom.

  His door squeaked as I opened it, and I froze, cursing under my breath. I was supposed to have asked maintenance to oil the hinges weeks ago. The banging downstairs continued, so I slipped inside his room, stealthily crossing to his desk. Come on, come on. I rifled through the top drawer until I found two large paper clips. Good enough.

  Back out in the hallway, I straightened the paper clips. All I could hear from below was silence. Where was Dad? No time to find out. I tiptoed to my door and dropped to my knees. With a feather touch, I manipulated the paper clips, feeling for the pin stack inside the lock, gently lining them up. I could feel the plug turning. Almost there.

  “What are you doing?”

  I shot to my feet, palming my improvised tools as I spun around. Dad glowered at me.

  “Nothing.” I jiggled the handle of my door. Yes! I’d done it. I stepped inside and closed the door behind me.

  Trembling, I stumbled over to my bed. That was too close. Before the sweat on my palms even dried, Dad cracked open my door.

  “You are not to step one foot outside this room for the remainder of the day. Is that clear?”

  “Fine.”

  Beads of sweat stood out on his pale forehead, and he wiped them away with the back of his hand before closing the door. Okay, I knew he was mad, but come on. That was a little much.

  Besides, shouldn’t I be the one who was angry? I paced back and forth across the room. More pieces of the puzzle were falling into place, and I didn’t like what I saw. Thanks to Seth’s slipup, I now knew that the Mulos had some connection with my mom. What that connection was, I didn’t know, but I could bet my dad did. That night when they came—Papa Mulo probably told Dad abou
t the connection then. That was probably what he had whispered—how he got Dad to let them stay. And it was safe to guess that Dad learned the Mulos were on the run. That would be why he hid them in villa four, and why he thought they were dangerous.

  It all began to make sense, except . . . why didn’t my dad think he could tell me about it? The Mulos were the first connection we’d had with my mom in four years. Didn’t I deserve to know? And what about Bianca? What did any of this have to do with her?

  I sank down on the window seat. My chest felt heavy, as if I were buried under a ton of rocks. I stared out at the ocean, realizing, with the kind of clarity that comes with self-pity, that I was utterly and completely alone.

  When we first got here, I used to stand at the shore and imagine my mom standing on the other side of the water. I thought it connected us somehow. I was sure one day she would follow the water to where I was. But then the weeks and months and years passed, and I realized that Mom was never coming back to us. I’d never felt so lonely and isolated in my life.

  Until now.

  Outside, both sea and sky had gone gray. Storm clouds roiled and white caps frothed on the water—a fitting backdrop for my mood.

  Just then, I caught sight of my dad as he cut across the lawn and disappeared down one of the many paths into the trees. It was like a sign from God: I wasn’t supposed to just sit there and go all emo. For the next few minutes, my dad’s office would be empty. At least I could solve one piece of the puzzle. If the Mulos knew my mom, then they likely knew where my mom was. That meant that Dad probably knew where she was, too. And I was going to find out.

  Forgetting my promise—which, by the way, dealt with stepping one foot outside the room, but said nothing about two—I rushed downstairs, carrying my paper-clip tools just in case.

  As I figured it would be, Dad’s office door was locked. Crouching in front of the knob, I jiggled the paper clips into the key opening.

  “Excuse me, miss?”

  I whirled around so fast I nearly fell over. It was Mr. Watts. He looked at me with those cold, appraising eyes, and I nearly swallowed my tongue. Somehow I managed to make myself speak.

  "Good afternoon, Mr. Watts. I hope you’re feeling better.”

  “Much, thank you. Is your father in?”

  “No, I’m afraid he isn’t at the moment.”

  He frowned. “I need to speak with him. It’s a matter of some urgency. Do you know when he’ll be back?”

  I shook my head. Unfortunately, since I had no idea where Dad had gone off to, I also didn’t know when he might return. I glanced nervously at the door. Chances were, it would be any minute.

  Watts folded his arms. “I’ll wait.”

  No. That was the one thing he couldn’t do. I didn’t want him and his gun in the lobby, and I definitely didn’t want him talking to my dad. Not yet. I needed more time to sort things out. Besides, if he was there, how was I going to break into the office? “It may be a while.”

  “Oh? Where is he?”

  More important, where was he not? Because that’s the only place I could send Watts. “He had an emergency to attend to.”

  “Where?”

  “I could have him drop by your villa when he gets back.”

  He leaned an arm on the counter and glared at me with those cold shark eyes. “I’d like you to tell me where he is.”

  Suppressing a chill, I put on my most honest expression and gave Mr. Watts directions to the old lava tubes a few miles down the shoreline . . . only you can’t walk straight because there’s no road, so he had a little work-out ahead of him. I hoped it would keep him occupied for a couple of hours and buy me some time to figure out what was going on.

  I was afraid those sharp eyes would see right through my deception, but, fortunately, he believed me. “Thank you, miss.” He dipped his head. “You’ve been a great help.”

  As soon as he was gone, I returned to Dad’s office door. It wasn’t a difficult lock to pick; I made it through in less than a minute and flipped on the light.

  My dad borders on neurotic about his record keeping. He can’t not file things away. If he found out where my mom was, I knew beyond the smallest doubt that he would keep a record of some sort. Probably a paper file.

  Since I was all too familiar with the filing system, I knew where the information wasn’t—in any of the cabinets that lined the far wall of the office. So either the file was in his desk or in the fireproof metal box he kept in the floor under the desk to hold all the important documents like birth certificates, life insurance papers, and stuff. I’d always known the thing was there, but it’s not like I’ve ever had the opportunity to use my passport or anything. I’d never once gotten into the box.

  If he felt he needed to keep something hidden from me, it made sense that he’d put it in the firebox, since his desk didn’t lock. Just to be sure, I checked the desk anyway, and noticed with disappointment that the file on the Mulos was no longer in the top drawer. As I had suspected, there was also no information on my mom.

  Kneeling down behind the desk, I pushed back the rug to uncover the small two-foot-by-two-foot inset in the floor, which housed the firebox. I suppose it was meant to be really secret, but the square lid didn’t quite match up with the rest of the floor, so it was completely obvious if anyone cared to look under the rug. I used a letter opener to pry up the lid. It was too easy. Worse, the lock on the metal box inside was a wafer type that was even easier to pick than the door. When we were speaking again, I’d have to have a serious talk with my dad about security.

  I rifled through his files until I found a thick manila file folder with the heading NATALIE.

  My mom.

  My breath caught. I swear I could feel my heart pounding all the way down to my fingertips as I opened the file.

  There was no information on her whereabouts. Not that I could see through my tears, anyway. Just dozens of colorful envelopes, all addressed to me. I sorted through them. Each one was postmarked from a different place. The earliest was dated just weeks after Dad and I came to the island, when I was twelve years old. The latest was postmarked a couple of months ago. I tore open one envelope. It was a birthday card. I tore open another envelope and another and another. I could barely breathe. Birthday cards, Christmas cards, “just because” cards covering the past four years. They were all there.

  “What do you think you’re doing?”

  My dad stood at the open door, his hand grasping the doorknob so tightly that his knuckles were white. His ashen face contorted into a mask of anger, the veins standing out like pale crawling worms.

  I suddenly found my breath. As if he had the right to be angry at me after lying to me for all these years! I waved a handful of cards at him. “What is this?”

  When he saw what I was holding, his skin took on an even pastier shade than that of his knuckles. “Aphra—”

  I slapped the cards on the desk and sprang to my feet, chair banging against the wall behind me. “You told me she was off ‘finding’ herself! You said you didn’t know where she was! You lied to me!”

  “You don’t understand.”

  “No, I don’t. I will never understand how you could do this!”

  “Now, Aphra, calm down.”

  “I will not calm down!” I snatched up the folder and threw it at him. It didn’t quite have the effect I’d hoped for but sort of just wavered in the air before flopping at his feet. He stepped over it and came toward me. I backed away. “She didn’t leave us, did she? What did you do, send her away?”

  “It was for the best.”

  "Best for who? All these years I thought she left because she didn’t want me! How could you do that to me?”

  “I was protecting you.”

  “From what? What’s going on, Dad? Where is she?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I don’t believe you!”

  “It’s true. She moves around.”

  “Why? What are you not telling me? How does she know
the Mulos?”

  “The who?”

  “The Smiths. Their real name is Mulo. How does she know them? Is that what Mr. Mulo whispered to you the night they came? Is that why you let them stay?”

  He mopped his face again.

  “Come on, Dad. Out with it.”

  “You watch your tone with me, young lady.” His voice had an edge to it I had never heard before. It only served to make me angrier.

  “Or what? You’ll restrict me? Take away my privileges? No watching TV or going to the movies? No allowance? Or, wait—why don’t you ground me from hanging out with my friends? News flash, Dad: I don’t have any here. Do you know how it feels to read Cami’s e-mails and see what I’ve been missing, being stuck on the island with you? I haven’t seen a movie in four years! We’ve never once been on a family vacation. And while Cami’s off going to the prom, I’ve never even been on a date. You can’t possibly make my life any more miserable than you have already.”

  With that, I stormed out of the office and left him, white-faced and trembling, a defeated droop to his shoulders. He didn’t try to stop me, though he may have if he’d known where I was headed. If he wasn’t going to tell me what I wanted to know, I’d have to ask someone who would. I didn’t stop until I reached villa four.

  CHAPTER 8

  If Mrs. Mulo was surprised to see me, she didn’t show it. She stood at the door like the lady of the manor and invited me inside. I peered into the front room, which was still stripped down to the bare walls.

  “I need you to tell me about my mother,” I blurted. So much for social graces.

  She stepped cordially aside to allow me to enter and then closed the door behind me, shutting out the light. Her face held no expression as she looked me over, sizing me up—as if I’d been the one running around, hiding things. “Why don’t we step into the kitchen?”

  I followed her down a short, bare hallway. The kitchen was not quite as desolate as the front room, but it wasn’t exactly luxurious, either. A table and four chairs sat next to the shuttered window and a stainless steel refrigerator stood in the corner, but the makeshift counter consisted of a length of two-by-four stretched across a couple of sawhorses, and underfoot, the flooring had been pulled up to expose the plywood subfloor. No cabinets hung on the spackled walls.