by Liv Spector
“What do you mean, Daniel?” Elise asked, to which her husband shot her a withering look. Lila felt like this might’ve been the very first time she’d seen Jack even so much as lay eyes on his wife. Elise returned his look with a deadly scowl of her own.
“I just got off the phone with my gallery,” Poe snarled. “It seems that your sick, fucking husband has been slandering me to everyone who’ll listen. I just found out that two major commissions have already been canceled. And all those dumb fucks at the Guggenheim are meeting this afternoon to discuss if they still want to go forward with an already-confirmed retrospective of my goddamn fucking work.”
Jack finally looked up at Daniel, giving him a playful wink. “Wasn’t me, pal. But can’t say I’m too sad to hear the news.”
“That’s fucking it,” Poe said as he started to rush toward Jack, but he tripped over his own feet, crashing into Thiago.
“Easy,” Thiago said, putting his hands out to break Poe’s fall. “Get a hold of yourself.”
Poe leaned around Thiago and spit right in Jack’s face. Jack jumped up out of his seat and lunged toward the artist. “Get off my goddamn boat, you freak!” he screamed. Now Paul was forced to join the melee, restraining the enraged billionaire.
Lila pressed herself against the wall to avoid coming into contact with any errant fists or bodily fluids. As the madness swirled around her, she observed all the women still sitting at the table. Josie looked delighted, like she was watching an exciting wrestling match. Esperanza appeared bored, as always. Charity had a worried glint in her eye. But it was Elise who really took Lila by surprise. She sat there utterly serene, with the first real smile Lila had ever seen on her face, as if nothing could give her more pleasure than seeing her husband angry and humiliated, with another man’s spit dripping down his cheek.
CHAPTER 15
WHEN THE SUPERYACHT docked on a tiny island in Turks and Caicos, Daniel Poe was the first one to stumble off in a state of drunken, drugged mania, vowing to burn everything Jack Warren owned to the ground. As she watched him leave a tsunami of vengeful promises in his wake, Lila was certain: Poe was now a suspect. Yet with his magnificently destructive drug habit, she thought he seemed just as likely to kill himself as murder Jack.
But she couldn’t keep tabs on him anyway, now that he was leaving, which was itself a cause of great consternation for Lila. After all, she knew for certain that Poe was on the yacht at the time of Jack’s murder. He’d given his account of the night to police just like all the others. But here he was, storming off and highly unlikely to return, considering the bad feelings shared by everybody.
Would he, eventually, return to the yacht? Or, she worried, was there another explanation? As much as she hated to admit it, it was possible that Lila had caused a rupture in the space-time continuum, and inadvertently created an alternate reality. What if Lila’s very presence, no matter how unobtrusive she attempted to be, had been disruptive enough to change the past and somehow send Daniel Poe off the boat? Did that mean that the 2008 she thought she knew no longer existed?
Another time-travel mindfuck, she thought, shaking her head as she watched Poe piss on the side of the yacht before taking his final exit. Nothing she could do about it now.
The Daniel Poe incident had left everyone kind of shell-shocked. Once he was off the boat, people retreated to their private corners to recover. Sam and Lila were quietly having their breakfast in the galley with Asher and Ben as the remaining guests prepared to leave the yacht for the day. Mrs. Slaughter walked into the kitchen, looking very pleased with herself, which Sam and Lila knew meant only trouble. Immediately, they were on edge.
“Ladies, there’s been a change of plans. Nicky, I’ve got some good news.” At that, Sam and Lila gave each other a questioning look out of the corners of their eyes. Mrs. Slaughter wasn’t what anyone would call a bringer of good tidings. Edna continued, “I’m going to give you the day off to enjoy Turks and Caicos.”
“Really?” Lila asked warily. She was wondering if this was some kind of terrible trick. Her first impulse was to jump up out of her seat and rush off the boat so she could find and trail Daniel Poe.
“Absolutely,” Edna replied. Then she turned to Sam. “That means you’ll have to do all of Nicky’s work, plus your own today. And you should probably start in Mr. Poe’s old room. But, just a warning,” she said as a smile spread across her face, “it seems he defecated and vomited several times in his stateroom, so be prepared.”
Sam audibly groaned. “Of course he did,” she said with pure beleaguered exasperation.
Mrs. Slaughter turned back to Lila, “Nicky, be back on the yacht by four P.M. at the latest.” Then, looking quite pleased with herself at a job well done, Edna left the room.
“Sucks to be you,” Asher said to a pouting Sam. As he stood there relaxed and cheerful, smelling of coconut oil and wearing only his Rolex and surf shorts, it was clear that Asher Lydon was not a man capable of profound empathy.
“Shut up, Asher,” Sam said, giving him a flirty slap on his muscled shoulder.
“It doesn’t seem fair,” Ben said.
“That’s for sure,” Lila agreed, trying to look sympathetically at Sam while her mind was focused on her next move. She thought about where she’d look for Poe first. She’d start with the bars.
“Well . . .” Sam sighed. “That ugly bitch is a goddamn revenge specialist. And I knew she was going to zing me, I just didn’t know how or when.”
“Why?” Asher asked. “What’d you do?”
“Oh, nothing,” Sam said, avoiding Ben and Asher’s eyes by looking down at the ground. Lila kept her mouth shut.
“I guess I better get started,” Sam said as she downed her cup of coffee. “Oh, lucky me! I’m in Turks and Caicos, just living the dream! I think I’ll wear rubber gloves on top of my rubber gloves. God only knows what diseases that freak has.”
When she left the room, Asher sat down to watch TV, and Ben turned to Lila. “If you don’t have any plans today, you can tag along with me if you’d like.” He looked at her hopefully.
“Actually, I was thinking I’d spend the day in town.” When she said this, Ben’s face fell with disappointment. “But . . . what are you going to do?” she asked, despite herself.
“Remember when I told you the new boat Jack’s building for the America’s Cup?”
“Sure,” Lila said, already losing interest. She finally had an opportunity to do some good legwork on her case and she couldn’t afford to waste a second of it.
“Well, this is the island where the boat is being built, so Jack and I are going to check out how construction is going and review some new design ideas.”
“You and Jack?” Lila perked up immediately. If Jack was going, she’d go in a second.
Ben nodded and continued, “Jack’s so excited about it. It’s really something to see. You should come along.”
“I’m game,” Lila said.
They made plans to meet on the dock in fifteen minutes. Lila hustled to get ready. She knew this was an invaluable opportunity to spend some one-on-one time with Jack. Before this, the only time she’d been around him was when she was serving him meals, which wasn’t an environment conducive to finding out much of anything about him except how rare he liked his steak.
But when she walked down the gangway to meet Jack and Ben, only Ben was standing there waiting for her.
“Where’s Jack?”
“Oh, he decided to do something else. I think he was able to get on a golf course he wanted to check out. He told me I could handle the boat stuff on my own, which is true,” Ben said, somewhat proudly. “I mean, this boat’s as much mine as it is his. He’ll look over the blueprints tonight.”
Lila noticed that Ben talked about Jack as if they were equals. It was a dangerous thing to forget one’s place in this land of haves and have-nots, a
nd Lila guessed that Ben’s tenuous position between both worlds might cause him trouble somewhere down the line.
Ben wrapped his arm around Lila’s shoulders. “It’s better this way, right? Now it’s just the two of us.”
“Great,” Lila said with a weak smile. She was trying to mask her disappointment. Her chance to spend some real time with Jack was gone and so was her other plan to trail Poe. Now she was stuck looking at ships with Ben. But, she thought, trying to look on the bright side, it could be worse. Ben was close to Jack, and seeing this boat still might reveal something. If she’d learned anything about working a case, it was that you never knew where you would find the key that unlocked the whole mystery.
Still, she had reservations about spending time alone with Ben. She had fallen in love once while undercover, and it led to the most profound heartbreak she’d ever experienced outside of the death of her mother and the loss of her sister. This time, she was going to keep her distance.
It had been five whole days since Lila set foot on land, and the moment she walked on the marina’s wooden dock, she felt both relieved to be ashore and terribly discombobulated. It seemed that the tumult of the ocean waters had, amazingly enough, become the new normal for her body. The ground swayed beneath her feet causing her to stumble slightly and fall sideways into Ben.
“I think you may have a slight case of land sickness,” Ben said pulling her close so that she wouldn’t lose her footing again.
“I’ve got what?” she said. She felt light-headed, making it hard to take everything in.
“Land sickness. Do you feel unsteady, like you’re rocking a little?”
Lila nodded.
“It just means that your body has become used to being at sea. It’s no big deal, happens to all of us. I’ll make sure you’re okay.”
They walked toward a rental stand for scooters, which was set up under a cluster of coconut palms next to a riotous bush of eye-popping purple bougainvillea. Ben selected a mint-green Vespa, threw a helmet at Lila, and both of them climbed on, Lila in back, Ben in front.
“Hold on to me,” Ben said. Lila hesitated, not wanting to cross into the physical intimacy of wrapping her arms around him, but she had no choice. She slipped her bare arms under his and lightly pressed herself into his strong back, feeling the muscled contours of his chest with her hands. The heat she felt off his body was as dizzying as her land sickness. Not giving in to this temptation might be harder than Lila thought.
They sped through the narrow streets of Provo, hugging the road that curved along the island’s endless oceanfront. Lila placed her cheek against Ben’s back and watched the white sands and turquoise waters whiz by. She saw osprey and pelicans dive into the Caribbean waters for fish as the kite surfers competed for their share of the sky, flying high into the air on their colorful sails. They drove past grand, pastel-colored resorts with their acres of clipped green lawns and perfectly manicured palm trees behind tall, wrought-iron gates. Then they zipped through local neighborhoods made up of rows of tiny run-down shacks constructed out of weather-beaten wood slats and corrugated steel. Ben dodged errant roosters, one meandering cow, a group of uniformed schoolchildren, and an elderly British couple wearing matching Princess Cruises T-shirts. The air smelled like the salty ocean, burning trash, and jasmine flowers warming under the hot sun.
After about a twenty-minute ride, they pulled into a small parking lot in front of a hangar-size building. A small sign that read DAEDALUS BUILDERS swayed above the glass door. As Lila and Ben walked into the cavernous shop, a short black man with a trim, white beard and a powder-blue suit quickly came over to greet them. Ben embraced the man warmly.
“Good to see you, son,” the man said to Ben in a thick West Indian accent.
“Nicky, I’d like to introduce you to Kingston S. Duxbury, one of the true geniuses working today in boat design.”
Kingston tried to suppress a smile of pride, but didn’t quite manage it. His face relaxed into a wide grin as he clasped both of his hands around Lila’s hand. “How do you do?” he said, with a small, chivalrous bow.
“Nicky here is working on Mr. Warren’s yacht with me. I thought I’d let her tag along.” Ben gave Lila a playful nudge before turning back to Kingston. “So, do you have those new sketches for me? Jack’s anxious to see them.”
While Kingston brought Ben into his office on the other side of the building, Lila wandered around the workshop, watching a dozen or so men in hard hats laboring over a large black carbon structure that looked like an alien bird wing. Careful to keep to the periphery of the workshop, Lila meandered to the other side of the room to check out some framed pictures on the far wall. There were six dusty photos dating back all the way to 1989—each with Jack Warren, Kingston S. Duxbury, and various sailing crews triumphantly posed in front of a series of racing yachts that became bigger and sleeker over the years. In every photo, Jack held a shiny trophy aloft, his face in a state of beatific joyousness. This happy, smiling man seemed to be a different person entirely from the controlling jerk Lila knew from the yacht. Maybe the only thing that made Jack Warren truly happy was sailing. Or maybe it was the winning that he enjoyed even more.
A few minutes later, Ben and Kingston emerged from the back with Ben carrying a poster tube stuffed with blueprints. As he walked toward Lila, he ran his hand delicately along the black carbon wing propped up a couple feet off the ground.
“Kingston, my man, you’ve outdone yourself this time.”
“What is it?” Lila asked when the men joined her.
“It’s a sail, if you can believe it,” Kingston said with pride. Lila didn’t understand. She’d seen sails before, but this looked more like an airplane wing.
“I know,” Ben said, seeing the confusion on Lila’s face. “It seems crazy, right? It’s not like any sail made before. It was Jack’s idea, actually. He thought that if Kingston could create a carbon-fiber mainsail, it would make us the fastest boat on water. We’ll soon see if he’s right. Win or die trying. Huh, Kingston?”
“Exactly,” the boat builder replied.
Kingston then gave Ben a full tour of the new construction while Lila tagged along, wondering where Jack’s passion for yachting fit into her case. She knew that it put Jack in hot water with Liss, Paul, Thiago, and his shareholders for choosing boats over running his company. But did winning the America’s Cup really mean more to Jack than the business he’d built into one of the most successful software companies of all time?
After a warm good-bye, Ben and Lila were back on the Vespa heading to the boat. “We’ve got a couple hours before you’re supposed to be back. And I know this fantastic place that’s a few minutes from here. Right on the water. Amazing food. Great drinks. Any interest in getting lunch?” Ben asked Lila as he maneuvered the scooter down a dirt road lined with locustberry shrubs and sea-grape trees.
“Perfect,” Lila said. The prospect of getting a drink and digging her toes into some of this perfect white sand was impossible to pass up. Plus, she rationalized, there was a chance that Daniel Poe could be there. It was a small island and the number of tourist bars wasn’t large enough to make such a possibility out of the question.
A few minutes later, Ben parked the scooter at a wooden archway that was painted white with bright pink lettering spelling out DA CONCH SHACK.
“This is one of my favorite places in the world,” Ben said as he led her down a white sand pathway out into one of the sweetest restaurants she’d ever seen. The kitchen and bar were housed in tiny open-air buildings fitted with turquoise shutters and shingled roofs. White-and-yellow picnic tables were arranged in the sand, all sheltered by palm trees. Lila saw a pyramid of discarded conch shells piled up by the rum bar, which was her first stop. She ordered two rum punches and brought them over to Ben, who was busy ordering everything off the menu.
“Two conch fritters
. One conch salad. A plate of curry shrimp. Jerk chicken wings. And a side of plantains,” Ben said, almost drooling.
“Think you ordered enough food?” Lila said as she handed Ben his rum punch.
“I know. It’s too much. But I never get here as much as I’d like. And their conch is mind-blowing. Trust me.”
As they sat down with their feast, Lila quickly realized that Ben was totally right. The conch was divine and so was the setting. It was the first time since she’d gone undercover that she felt even remotely relaxed and at ease.
“God, it’s so nice to be away from the boat,” Lila said, as she took the first sip of her second rum punch.
“Tell me about it,” Ben said as he stretched out his long legs and dug his bare feet into the soft sand.
After a long moment of contented silence, Lila asked, “You’re pretty close to the Warrens, right?”
“Sure, I guess.” He shrugged, keeping his eyes out on the ocean.
“Is every trip this . . . colorful?”
“What do you mean?”
“Are you kidding? The screaming, the smashing of glasses, the golden phallus tossed overboard? It’s insane. I feel like we’re all part of some psychological experiment where a bunch of people who hate each other are forced to spend time together in a totally isolated environment.” Lila felt relieved to actually say out loud how surreal and ludicrous this whole trip had been.
Ben laughed and nodded in agreement. “You know, I’m so used to the madness that I don’t even notice it as much anymore. And you’re the one who bears the brunt of it. I’m up on the bridge with the captain, so I don’t have to deal with it as much. You’re down in the trenches.”
“Let me tell you,” Lila said, “it isn’t pretty. I feel like an hour doesn’t pass without some major problem.”
