Thomas smiled and shook his head. “No, you wouldn’t last very long in this business if you did. But some of the supplies came from Venezuela and Colombia. And because a significant part of WernComp’s business takes place in the United States, people tend to be extra careful. When someone drops a name like Colombia, the Americans instantly become paranoid and can only think of drugs. But it’s nothing for you to worry about.”
For someone who wasn’t worried, he was certainly startled by the doorbell when it rang again. For a moment, he thought the two men had returned. But then he spotted the Aruban police car in the driveway, through the window.
A moment later, Snellen and his younger colleague entered the living room.
“And?” Lilian’s mother asked with fear in her face.
“We didn’t find the Cheyenne lady or the other American guests that you met on Enlightenment Island,” Snellen reported. “They had already checked out; we’re trying to contact them through their American addresses. We put out a request through the hotel’s message service for anyone who was at the campfire the night in question. We will have to wait and see if that will produce any results.”
He stepped aside and motioned for his colleague to take over. “Andy finished the investigation of the security footage.”
“That’s correct,” said the young man. “We finished looking through all of the footage. On the night in question, as well as the following days, but, unfortunately, we didn’t find any new clues. As we reported earlier, all we found was that Dominique Werner and her American friend returned from the island. A half an hour later, we are talking about a quarter to twelve in the evening, the other American young man who had previously been with Lilian, also returned. But he returned alone.”
He looked at Lilian’s parents, almost apologetically. “We combed through all of the footage, up until the very last boat of the evening, or morning rather. Based on this, for now we have to conclude that your daughter did not leave the island by water taxi.”
“At the moment, twenty of our men are combing through every square inch of the area where her cell phone was found on Enlightenment Island,” Snellen reported.
“So, what you are really saying is that she should still be on the island somewhere,” Lilian’s father concluded with a very somber expression.
“That is a definite possibility,” Snellen said. “Another possibility is that she left the island in some other way.”
“With a boat you mean?” Lilian’s mother asked, still holding on to her husband’s arm with both hands.
Snellen nodded. “By boat, a helicopter, swimming—there are many ways. That is what we need to look into now.”
50
After Snellen and his colleague left, Lilian’s mother went to sleep, indicating that she had a pounding headache. Her husband and Thomas talked in the living room.
To break up the endless and painful wait, Dominique decided to go swimming. Slowly, she did some laps in the kidney-shaped pool. It didn’t take long before it felt completely pointless. But she didn’t dare sunbathe because of the seriousness of the situation and obviously out of respect for Lilian’s parents.
She pulled herself up out of the water and sat at the edge of the pool until she could feel the burning on her shoulders. Restlessly, she dropped back into the water. She closed her eyes and floated on her back while the sun warmed up the front of her body. Her thoughts went to Lilian again. Where could she be? What if something had happened to her? Or someone had done something to her? … No, she didn’t want to think about that. She took a deep breath, threw her body a half a turn, and dove to the bottom of the pool.
She had always loved swimming underwater during her swimming lessons. She felt as if she could leave the whole world behind her and enter into a different type of reality, one with strange noises and blurred vision. Everything was different under water. It was almost as if everything happening above water was not real. In the underwater world, little brothers didn’t die and your parents didn’t divorce. You could sit on the bottom and close off your airways, as if you didn’t need oxygen at all. As a child, she had vigorously practiced staying at the bottom for as long as possible. So long, in fact, that once her father and Uncle Thomas dove in the water because they were worried she had drowned. Even though it had been ages since Dominique practiced, she sat down on the bottom of the pool now, her back against one of the sloping walls. After Henri was killed in the car accident, she had done this many times as well. Usually, she went to the swimming pool with her friends, but during that period she went mostly to be alone. If you cry underwater no one, not even you, can tell, she had told herself. She allowed herself to cry now too. For Lilian. For Lilian’s parents. For the vacation that was supposed to only be good and fun. For herself. Still just a little bit for Henri. But most of all for Lilian. She stayed there until she no longer could, then she went back to the surface only to take a few deep breaths and went back down. Even though this was not why she had initially gone into the pool, she became a lot more relaxed by sitting underwater. When she came up for air for the umpteenth time, she saw the outline of a figure toward the sun and warmth.
Once she came up to the surface completely, she tossed her hair back and rubbed her eyes with her hands.
“I lost you for a moment,” Thomas said. “But I should have known you were underwater.”
“What’s the matter?”
Thomas made a back and forth motion with his head. “Snellen is on the phone. Henk is talking to him now. I thought you might want to know.”
She nodded, pulled herself out of the water, and wrapped a towel around herself.
While she wrapped a smaller towel around her hair and walked next to her uncle, he held his cell phone up and said, “Masurel called to say he stopped a man at the gate.”
She looked at him inquisitively. “Masurel?”
“The security guard.”
“Oh, Harry!” she said. “What kind of man?”
“A man he apparently doesn’t want walking around on his own here at the resort. According to him, this man was here before during the past few days—to talk to you. Together with another man. They were armed. What’s that about?”
His expression made her feel uncomfortable. “That is someone who helped me look for Lilian. Where is he now? Did Harry send him away?”
“I don’t know. But he definitely didn’t let him in.”
“Maybe he is still there,” Dominique said quickly. She slipped on her flip-flops, grabbed her wallet and phone, and raced toward the driveway.
“Do! Dominique!” Thomas called after her. “What are you doing?”
“I’ll be right back!” she yelled over her shoulder.
Without slowing down, she ran directly to the security gate, where she found Harry in a heated discussion with Pepe.
“It’s all right, Harry!” Dominique yelled from a distance. “He’s here for me again!”
“I’ve told him that twenty times already, but this fat ass won’t listen,” Pepe said, sneering.
“Now you really got to stop, or I will remove you from this property!” Harry answered, enraged.
“Oh yeah? You and what army? Shut up, man! You may be big, but it’s all fat.”
Harry reached for the gun behind the counter. “I only need one finger to …”
“Hey, guys, knock it off!” Dominique called out. “Harry, Pepe is only here to talk to me for a second, and then he’s leaving again. I’d really appreciate it if you left us alone for a moment.”
Cursing under his breath, Harry returned to his post, where he sat in a chair and purposely opened the newspaper wide. Dominique took Pepe with her, and, once they were out of earshot, she asked him, “Do you have news?”
Pepe looked around before he answered, “Fernandes says that your friend didn’t leave the island.”
“Yes, I’ve known that for a while now,” she responded, snippy.
“He also said that she will never leave the island a
gain,” Pepe continued, unaffected.
“What? What do you mean?”
“And that you should look for a Dutch man.”
She stared at the rugged man in disbelief for a moment, but it seemed to have no effect on him at all.
“You’re crazy!” she yelled, suddenly angry. “Fernandes is just bullshitting me! How does he come up with this shit? A Dutch man? Why doesn’t he just tell me who he is talking about?”
“That’s all I can tell you for now: a Dutch man.”
“Bullshit!”
“Fernandes also says you owe him two hundred dollars.” The rugged man held out his hand. “And then you guys are squared away.”
“What do you mean ‘squared away’?” Dominique asked, clearly irritated. “What is this?”
With his hand still out, Pepe said, “Fernandes will honor his end of the deal. He will tell you what you need to know. Now you need to honor your side of the deal. Two hundred dollars.”
She considered walking away for a moment. It was clear to her that Fernandes and his men saw her as an easy target for extorting money. But at the same time, she didn’t want to start a fight with these types of criminals. Besides, two hundred dollars was small change compared to her father credit card limit. Reluctantly, she took out her wallet and counted out two hundred dollars, placing the bills in Pepe’s hand.
“You tell Fernandes thanks for nothing!” she said viciously, after she put down the last bill.
The rugged man looked at her angrily, rolling up the money and placing it in his breast pocket. “Fernandes always does what he says. You have no right to insult him.”
She was about to let him have it, but realized just in time that it was pointless to keep fighting. So she put up her hand. “Okay, fine. I’ve had enough. Let’s leave it at that.”
“See you later,” Pepe said simply. He turned around, got in his car, which was parked a bit farther off in the shadow of a tree, and drove off calmly.
Dominique watched him leave and felt suspicious. When she turned around to walk back to the house, she almost ran straight into Thomas, who was standing right behind her.
“Who was that?” he asked sternly. “And why did you give him money?”
Dominique looked him straight in the eye. She didn’t want to lie anymore. “That was Pepe. And I owed him money. He came to collect it.”
Thomas kept looking at her in disbelief, but when she didn’t even blink, he said, “If I find out that you are throwing away your father’s money, I will cancel that credit card he gave you. Understood?
“Let’s go,” he said, turning around and putting up his hand to greet Harry, who peeked out curiously. “I want to know what Snellen had to say.”
Dominique followed him back to the house. She could barely keep up with him in her flip-flops.
They found Lilian’s parents embracing silently in the living room.
“What’s the matter?” Dominique asked, shocked. “What did the police say?”
Lilian’s father raised his head from his wife’s shoulder. His eyes were filled with tears.
“They searched the side of the island where they found her phone. They didn’t find anything on the beach. But did they did find something in the water. Her sunglasses.”
“How do they know they are her sunglasses?”
“Because her initials are scratched into them,” Lilian’s father said. “There’s no doubt about it, they are her sunglasses.”
51
Dominique was on her bed with her hands under her head, staring at the ceiling. She could no longer tolerate watching Lilian’s parents cry. When they looked at her it was as if they blamed her for Lilian’s disappearance.
Not that it was strange. She had been the one who’d brought Lilian to Aruba. She had convinced Lilian’s parents that it was safe. She had been here with Lilian and had taken her out. She had left Lilian alone on Enlightenment Island and left with Todd. And she had waited so long before alerting everyone.
Of course, she had fully expected Lilian to return. That she’d gone off with a boy for a while. If she would have called Lilian’s parents then and caused them to panic for no reason at all, then Lilian and she would have been in major trouble and their nice vacation would have ended abruptly.
Besides, she had taken real action. She had called the police. She had searched. She had gotten Fernandes involved, even if he had only cost her money and given her nothing useful in return.
Still, Dominique felt it was all her fault that they had ended up in this situation. Lilian had been gone three, no, four days, Lilian’s parents were inconsolable, her father was angry, and Uncle Thomas was wasting his valuable time on her instead of on his business.
She was actually still angry with Fernandes and Pepe. What did they mean by “Lilian will never make it off the island”? And by “search for a Dutch man”? They had barely met any Dutch people here. With the exception of the group of soccer boys—Niels and his friends Gerben and Rodney and the guy who called himself the Babe Master.
Could Fernandes be referring to one of those boys? Or maybe even the whole group? Should she inform the police? But what would she tell them? We had a few beers with a few Dutch soccer fans, and now Fernandes says we should look for a Dutch guy? Snellen would declare her insane.
No, she couldn’t take Fernandes seriously anymore; that was clear. But what should she do now? Go and search for those guys on her own and then interrogate them? Stay close to them and keep an eye on them? What if they were dangerous? She could hardly imagine it. Niels had totally saved her when she was assaulted!
What else could she do? There was nothing, only to wait and see if news would come about her best friend. She was beside herself with worry about her.
She felt the tears stream down her face again. This was too horrible for words! Things couldn’t get much worse.
There was a knock on her bedroom door. After Dominique called out “Yes?” Thomas came in, her phone buzzing in his hand.
“It’s ringing,” he said apologetically. “Maybe it’s important, so …”
“Yes, thank you.”
She sat up straight, wiped away her tears, and took her phone from him. From the display screen, she could see it was her mother calling.
“Oh, shit,” she said before she answered.
Thomas, who was just leaving the room, turned around for a moment, but closed the door quietly behind him.
“This is Do.”
“Hi, Dominique, it’s Mom. How are things with you?”
Dominique hesitated for a moment. Could her mother already know? Maybe through Lilian’s parents?
“Hey, Mom. Well, you know, I’m in Aruba,” she said carefully.
“I was just saying to Theo that we should go to the Caribbean one day. It looks so beautiful there. Your father never wanted to take me there.”
“Mom …”
“Yes, yes, I know—don’t speak badly about your father. But I am your mother, and I have the right to express my feelings. When it comes to your father, sadly, those feelings aren’t always positive. You’re just going to have to get used to that, Dominique.”
She doesn’t know, Dominique realized.
“Your father is no saint, and one day you will realize that. But, tell me: Are you having a good time?”
Dominique swallowed hard.
“You’re there with Lilian right? I haven’t seen her mother in ages. We used to be such good friends. Strange, how things can go.”
“Lilian’s parents are here, Mom.”
For a moment it was silent on the other end of the phone.
“Gerda and Henk are there too? On vacation?”
“No, Mom you’re not getting it. Uncle Thomas is also here. Dad arranged that.”
“Thomas Van Dorp? Dominique … What …”
Dominique closed her eyes and got up from the bed.
“Lilian has disappeared, Mom. She’s been gone for four days. The police are looking for her, but so far al
l they have found is her cell phone and her sunglasses. They found them on one of the islands we were visiting. We are all worried sick.”
After another short moment of silence her mother’s voice sounded icy. “What is this, Dominique? Why don’t I know anything about this?”
“It all went so fast. But for a long time I thought Lil would just come back on her own.”
“So then you called your father. And Gerda and Henk. But not me?”
“I told you—it all went so fast. At one point I had to take action and then everything went in fast forward.”
“So fast that you couldn’t take five minutes to call your mother? That’s says it all, Dominique. Very telling. That my own daughter …”
“Mom!” Dominique screamed. “This is not about you! The whole world doesn’t revolve around you! This is about Lilian! She’s gone, dammit!”
“But Dominique you could have …”
“Oh, just stop it! You don’t get it. You never get it!”
With a furious motion, she disconnected the call. When the phone began to ring again a few moments later, she turned it off completely. Crying from anger this time, she threw herself on her bed, burying her head in the pillow.
A few minutes later, there was another knock on her door. When she didn’t answer, the door opened slightly.
“Do, I just received a phone call from your mother. Can we talk about it for a moment?” Thomas asked.
She blew her nose in a tissue and took a deep breath. “No, I don’t want to talk about it. Not with you, not with Dad, not with her. This is about Lilian, okay?”
He tried to gauge her. “Okay, but we will have to talk about it sooner or later, little girl.”
“Fine, but not now.”
Thomas nodded, resigned, and asked, “Can I get you anything? Juice, tea, coffee?”
“No, just leave me alone for a while.”
After hesitating for a moment, he closed the door.
52
After she spent some time thinking on her bed, Dominique checked her phone to see if maybe there was a tweet from Lilian. Maybe wherever she is she has computer access, she told herself. Then she checked her friend’s Facebook page. She read a message from Marc on Lilian’s wall, but there was nothing from Lilian herself in four days. Just to be sure, she also checked her blog. But no changes there, either.
Bon Bini Beach: A Thriller Page 16
