I sucked in a huge breath and blew it out slowly. Then I patted Mike’s knee and said, “I’m going to shower and get dressed for dinner. Get some rest. Then meet me on the deck when you’re ready. Okay?” Like it or not, he was here now. If I left him alone, maybe he would figure that out for himself.
He dropped back onto his side and slept.
Forty minutes later, I tiptoed up onto the rear deck in my strappy sandals. I was wearing one of Karen’s dresses, a floor-length, blue and white print sundress that, on me, exceeded the boundaries of cleavage decency. If the Roitmans had any doubts about my relationship with Mike, the dress, or lack thereof, would erase them.
Father Frank’s eyes graciously swept past me to his wife, who pretended not to see me at all. The corner of their son’s lip lifted and his eyes narrowed. Blonde trash seemed to be his verdict, although he had no problem enjoying the view.
“What would you like, Miss?” inquired a ropy middle-aged guy with leather skin. He wore white shorts, a faded blue cotton shirt rolled halfway up his forearms, and deck shoes. Had to be the captain manning the bar, another svelte table with storage just off-center of the social area. A breeze lifted his sun-bleached hair and ruffled my dress. Above us the softening sky displayed pastel shadows on swollen early evening clouds.
“It’s Lori,” I introduced myself. “How about a gin and tonic?” Easier to switch to plain tonic later, assuming I got the chance to ask.
“George, at your service. Lime?”
“Sure.”
Mike bounded up the stairs just then, and everyone glanced his way. “Fell asleep. Hope I’m not late.”
“I don’t think they have that word down here,” Frank offered with a generous smile. “Please tell George here what you’d like to drink.”
“What’re you having, uh, Lori?”
He could see the ice and clear bubbles through my tall plastic tumbler, never glass on a boat I would soon realize.
“Um. No, thanks. Got beer?”
“One Presidente, coming up. Local favorite.”
Mike and I lounged side by side on the seating that followed the curve of the yacht’s railing. Frank and Marsha were to our right, Chantal and her brother Gavin across from us facing the Caribbean.
Before we could get a conversation going, a willowy woman with a gray streak in her straight, dark ponytail, offered us little puff-pastries filled with lobster and a mango dipping sauce.
“I’m Anna” she told us all, reconfirming my perception that this was not the Roitman’s yacht. Making eye contact with each of us individually, she added, “Please let me know if you need anything. Anything at all.”
The last person to say that to me had been the nurse administering my chemo, and she obviously meant “within reason.” There on the hundred-foot deck of The Constitution the options appeared to stretch as far as the horizon, a heady notion that literally froze my brain. I couldn’t think of one thing to request, not even in jest.
Frank leaned his elbows on his thighs. “What do you do, my dear?” he inquired. The family had met Mike before. I was completely unknown, and that must be addressed.
I told them I was a bartender, “at the moment.”
“Oh?” Marsha responded instantly. “I’d have thought a dancer or model or maybe even an actress.”
“Mother was an actress,” Chantal supplied.
Gavin reacted a drumbeat slower. “At the moment?” he repeated, then, “I’ll have another.” He drained his plastic cup and held it toward me. Not an endearing guy, Gavin. I looked forward to digging through his baggage.
While I offered Gavin my blankest smile, George, the captain, deftly intercepted the empty cup, freshened the ice, and covered it with an ample amount of top-shelf bourbon. I was familiar with the label.
“An actress. How interesting,” I prompted Marsha like the good guest I was pretending to be. “Have you been in anything I might have seen?”
“Oh, no. You’re what? Twenty-five?”
“Thirty,” I confessed.
“Still too young. No. I left the theater behind when I met Frank.” She adored him with her eyes. He beamed in return.
In my head I invented the scenario. B-minus actress attracts ambitious young admirer, wisely chooses that fork in the road and doesn’t look back.
Anna waved to her husband, who announced that dinner was ready inside. A half dozen beautiful salads waited at yet another sleek table attached to the floor. I tried to imagine this high-end hotel being tossed by fifteen-foot waves and failed. Surely, the weather wouldn’t dare.
Throughout dinner Mike’s mental absence became even more apparent. Rather than getting the Roitmans to talk about themselves, he was answering Frank’s questions with one and two word answers. “You’re in the insurance business, aren’t you?” prompted during the gazpacho. Yes. “Couldn’t help noticing your Mustang. Fun drive, is it?” over the steak. Yes. “Where did you two meet?” as our desserts arrived.
“Charlottesville,” I supplied when Mike hesitated too long. Then I deliberately addressed Marsha. When one’s boobs are on display, one does not speak to anybody’s husband until the missus signals her permission, a slight smile perhaps, or a softening around the eyes. Marsha and I were not there yet. “So,” I asked, “how did you and Frank meet?”
Either I finally said something right, or whatever she was drinking was having an effect. She tilted her head and leaned in.
“Come Blow Your Horn at a small Philadelphia theater,” she opened with the panache of a well-rehearsed story. “I played the love interest and Frank’s date’s brother had the lead.” Several gold bracelets clattered down her arm as she indicated her husband with a perfect pink nail.
“They were seated in the third row,” she continued, “and when I glanced at the audience all I saw was Frank’s mouth opened wide enough to catch flies.”
Both her children delivered the catch-flies line with her, igniting Marsha’s face and pressing her lips into a flat line. Neither Chantal nor Gavin noticed their mother’s displeasure, but Frank did.
“That was the last of the date,” he said, “and the beginning of this.” He took her hand and gave it a kiss.
Mouth still drawn, Marsha stared at the fork on her plate.
Gavin stood. “I’m going over to the club,” he announced.
“Nowhere else?” Frank inquired, and my cop instincts applauded.
“No, Dad. I’m not that dumb.”
Mike sensed an opportunity to escape and seized it. “Sorry, folk. If you don’t mind, I’m going to turn in.” Not a glance my way, and most revealing of all, no Lori and I are going to turn in.
“Be down soon,” I told his back, but it didn’t help. Marsha and Chantal had fixed their attention entirely on me. Had we been friends, they’d have quizzed me about my relationship with Mike as soon as he disappeared.
I smiled benignly, and it was Marsha who blinked. Pushing away from the table, she mumbled something about speaking to Anna about tomorrow. Frank left to confirm the morning’s plans with George.
Meanwhile, Chantal stared at me the way cops watch a suspect through a one-way mirror, and if I hoped to remain “undercover,” that would not do. Also, she was the only Roitman openly mourning the deceased, so I needed whatever she knew. Getting that required her trust.
“This must be so hard for you,” I sympathized.
“Yes, thanks.” But neither of us knew what to say after that.
Social decorum eventually forced her to look off at the water and the sky, which were rapidly becoming one.
I grabbed two straws from the table, quickly stuffed them up my nose, puckered my mouth like a fish, and crossed my eyes.
Chantal glanced back and barked out a loud laugh.
So loud that her parents peeked around the corner to see what the hell was going on.
Chapter 11
Still chuckling, Chantal’s eyes glittered like the stars gradually dotting the twilight sky. Until then I might have pas
sed her without notice on the sidewalk, in the mall, at the grocery store, but laughter revealed a subtle beauty that I suspect grew on you over time. For men, the appeal would be as a foil or an anchor rather than a trophy or, God-forbid, a competitor. It had been mourning that transformed her into a well-kept secret.
Turning away from the elder Roitmans, I snatched the straws from my nose and put on an innocent face. Swiveling back around, I caught them dancing around the moment as if it were broken glass. After mumbling their good-nights, they disappeared down the stairs.
Chantal slapped her cheek and laughed again. “Ohmigod,” she said pounding her fists on her thighs. “That was the last thing I expected you to do.”
I joked that the devil made me do it.
“The hell you say. Who are you anyway? I can’t see you with Mike. I mean, he’s a nice guy and all, but that’s just it. He’s too nice to screw around on his wife.”
“Used to be childhood friends,” I lied easily. “Then…we really do love each other, but...it’s complicated, you know? Really complicated,” I allowed my voice to trail off.
“If you say so.”
“How about you? Who is Chantal Stoddard? What gets you up in the morning?”
She snorted. “Tomorrow? Scattering my late husband’s ashes into the Caribbean. After that…?”
Fatigue had blurred her edges a bit. Considering the direction our conversation just took, it was a good thing I’d nursed my one drink until it was nothing but ice water.
“Tell me about Toby,” I prompted. Behind her a distant outcrop of land sparkled with the shoreline lights of hotels and garden pathways. The backdrop made Chantal look like a bronze mermaid with fireflies in her hair.
“Toby was a good man,” she began. “Funny. I loved his laugh. Honest. Handsome,” a brief, girlish smile. “Smart. Very smart, a genius at crunching numbers. He was one of the few people Dad really listened to.”
“What do you mean, listened to?”
“He was Dad’s CFO. You didn’t know that?”
Chief Financial Officer. No, I did not know that, and my pulse regarded that little detail as rather huge. With Toby responsible for significant amounts of money, a business motive for his murder sounded even more likely than a personal one.
“Sorry,” I apologized to his widow. “Mike never mentioned that.” And I hadn’t asked. We’d been too focused on setting up our deception.
Chantal’s sniff alerted me that she was silently crying.
“Did you have any idea…?”
“…that he was suicidal?” She huffed sarcastically then lifted her chin to consult the sky. “Nope. Not a clue, and that’s what’s driving me crazy.” She swiped her nose with a crumpled tissue.
“He didn’t leave a note?”
A barely perceptible wave of her head.
Since the silence between us began to grow, I decided that asking more tonight would resemble prying more than sympathy. I looked out at the sea to indicate a change of subject. Then I suggested we should probably get some sleep.
“Yes,” Chantal seemed to agree gratefully. “Yes. Sunrise comes early.”
We both rose and headed toward the stairs.
“Sunrise?” I asked.
“We’re scattering Toby’s ashes at sunrise. Something else you didn’t know?”
Since missing the entire purpose of the trip would be worse than inexcusable, I asked if Chantal would mind knocking on our door to wake us in the morning.
The stairwell light revealed her confusion. “Just leave Anna a message,” she replied.
“Oh! Oh, sure.” A mental palm to the forehead. Wake-up calls were included in the anything the captain’s wife offered. So fast we forget.
Mike was sprawled on the bed in his clothes, his cell phone lying next to his hand.
I let him sleep while I dug his charger out of his dop kit and plugged it in. The last text message was still visible, imagine that, and I’m afraid the professional snoop in me couldn’t resist.
“Cramps turned out to be nothing. Not to worry. Love, Mary.”
No wonder the guy turned into a zombie. He was afraid he was going to miss the birth of his first child, or worse, that something might be going horribly, horribly wrong.
He woke up when I took off his shoes. “Whaaa…?”
“Lori, your lover,” I provided. “Punta Cana. You’re on a small ship. Yacht. Whatever…”
A glimmer of recognition, then alarm. “My phone. Where’s my phone?” He felt around with his right hand.
“Charging in the bathroom,” I answered. “Pardon me: head. I’m going to change into a t-shirt or something.” Anything but the short lacy thing Karen had packed for sleeping. “You may want to do the same?”
“Uh, okay.”
The fact that Toby Stoddard had controlled the Roitman conglomerate’s finances still made the hairs on my arms stand on end, so now that Mike was mostly coherent, I told him to listen up. “First chance we get I need more information about your brother. First chance! It’s important, okay?”
Urgent would have been a better word, but the guy was already stressed to the max. He didn’t need to know that what began as an unfounded theory, most likely an invention of grief, showed signs of becoming a bona fide murder investigation. I would tell him, of course, just not today.
“Sure. If we get the chance,” was the lukewarm response.
Meanwhile, Mike was shedding clothes as if I wasn’t there. Modesty, the least of our problems: solved.
Chapter 12
I woke up because my world was rocking and I knew I wasn’t having sex. Confusing because someone a third larger than me was also under the covers.
Clutching the sheet with my fists, I attempted to look around.
A loud rap on the door shocked me into lunging for my gun.
No gun. In place of my old maple night table with the wobbly drawer was a puny rounded shelf that wouldn’t hold anything larger than a paperback.
Details began to fill in. Engine noise and splashing sounds confirmed that I was inside a boat that was moving. My Glock was in my suitcase where it wouldn’t slide around and attract attention. And Mike. The man’s name was Mike. His reaction to the hammering on our door was to cuss and roll over.
“That’s our wake-up call. Get out of bed, you big lug,” I said, thumping his back and nearly pushing him to the floor.
“Okay, okay,” he whined, laughing as he stumbled into the bathroom.
Only the tiny nightlight next to the sink saved him from broken toes. He flipped on a better light and the close quarters were revealed to be a beige and white, lived-in mess. The pitch black outside our two portholes seemed to be brightening toward charcoal gray.
Mike had said so little last night that to get him talking, I inquired, “Everything okay at home?”
“Uh, sure. Why do you ask?”
“Because you started this trip taking the possibility of Toby being murdered seriously, but now you’re pretty cavalier about it. Have you forgotten that one slip-up might put us both in danger?”
Mike stopped lathering his face to glare at me. “What is all this to you anyway?” he sniped. “You never even met my brother.”
Getting through to him was so crucial that I knew my answer had to be perfect. I could say I loved Karen and loathed murderers, but would that be convincing enough?
I told him I believed he and his family deserved to know whether Toby took his own life or if someone else was to blame.
Mike moved in so close to the bed that he loomed over me. “And…?”
What else did he need?
“And I also swore an oath to uphold the law.”
That earned me a disgusted look. “If I’m not mistaken, you’re not a cop anymore.”
“I swore an oath,” I snapped back with a vehemence that surprised me, “and I owe Karen big time. If you don’t want to help me learn the truth about Toby’s death, just look me in the eye and say it.”
The air went o
ut of him. He retreated to the sink, eyed himself in the mirror, then dropped his head and waved it. “Exactly what am I supposed to do?”
Finally.
“Maintain the fiction,” I said. “Put your arm around me. Look into my eyes. Make like we’re a real couple. You said you could do that, but you haven’t even tried.”
“Why not just tell the truth?”
“Because a killer who feel threatened will kill again in a heartbeat. Kill us in a heartbeat, Mike. We can’t let anybody know we suspect Toby might have been murdered.”
Mike rolled his eyes. “Okay. I’ll put my arm around you and look into your eyes. Is that all?”
“No. Quit grunting one-word answers—yesterday you sounded like Frankenstein. And please please please leave your cell phone in your pocket. Checking it every other minute is rude.”
“So now you’re my mother, too?”
“I know this isn’t easy for you. Just do the best you can, okay?”
He widened his hands and exhaled. “You can’t seriously believe that one of the Roitmans killed Toby.”
“Correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t he in an isolated location, and, as far as we know, his wife’s relatives were the only other people there. Bottom line, I don’t know what happened yet, and neither do you. That’s pretty much the point.”
“The Roitmans are as normal as you and me, Lauren. Now that you met them, surely you can see that.”
The statement was so ridiculous I had to laugh. “Oh, do tell. What does a murderer look like? I’ve always wanted to know.”
Mike circled his head toward the ceiling then flicked a blob of shaving cream at me.
I assumed we were a team again. What else could that possibly mean?
The next pressing problem was what to wear for a final farewell at sea. Karen’s cropped pants, bare feet and a long white shirt seemed to be the best of my choices. Mike opted for jeans and a cotton sweater over an undershirt. He had deck shoes his wife must have packed, so he wore them.
Guilt Trip Page 5
