by Tom Savage
Your constant presence, subtle as it was, was too much to be a coincidence. I began to wonder what interest you and your husband could possibly have in me, but I soon realized that you wanted to help me. You must have wondered about my friend, the woman who briefly joined me at El Morro and arrived again here in the hotel last night. She is a cousin of mine, and she is helping me to make a clean break from my husband.
You were in Pointe-à-Pitre the other day. You followed me from the ship to the main square in town, and then you followed me when I left the square. I had no idea that man was behind me, or that he had been sent to kill me, but you did. I didn’t see what happened, but I think you intervened on my behalf. I understand that pepper spray was involved, but you mustn’t blame yourself for his accident. I believe that man was hired by my husband to get me out of the way so he can marry Mrs. Dunstan without having to pay me alimony.
When you actually left the voyage and followed me here, to this hotel, I decided to learn more about you than just your name. My cousin found a rather unsavory local man and set him to follow you this morning. You led him to a private detective agency, which didn’t surprise me. The pretty woman you dined with last night is apparently a detective. She watched me in the spa this afternoon—she even chose the same shade of nail varnish! I think you have hired her to watch over me here while you return to the Tropic Star and continue your voyage, yes?
As you must have guessed by now, I have left my husband. He is a liar and a violent bully, and his indiscretions are legion. I will give him the divorce he seeks—he has no need to have me killed by hired assassins. He will be free to marry Mrs. Dunstan, and he will not bother me again, so your concern for me can be discontinued. I am also returning the homing device you, or perhaps your husband, placed in my luggage. I will be fine.
You went out of your way to not attract my attention, so I honored that by never acknowledging your presence. But I must thank you for everything you have done, and I hope I have not caused you too much inconvenience in your holiday. Perhaps we will meet somewhere, someday, when all of this is behind me. My regards to your husband, and to you. Again, thank you.
Sincerely,
Carmen Lamont
Nora returned the pages to the envelope. “I think I’ll keep this as a souvenir. I might even frame it.”
“Wow,” Ellie said. “I’ve heard of some cold-blooded stunts in my day, but this lady is in a class by herself!”
“That she is,” Nora said. “Before we go down to dinner, I need to make a call.” She picked up her new phone, opened her address list, and clicked on the appropriate name. It was answered immediately.
“What’s going on down there?” Hamilton Green bellowed the moment he picked up. “I can’t reach Jeff, and I don’t know where the hell Johnson is! What’s gotten into everybody? What’s happening with Diablo?”
Nora winced and forged ahead. “Hello, Ham. I’m afraid I have some bad news—lots of bad news. Claude Lamont is dead, and I think he was murdered; Jeff is being detained by the police in Barbados; Diablo is in the wind; and I let the mastermind behind this whole thing walk right out of here. She even left me a lovely note, just to rub it in. Oh, and it’s raining cats and dogs—this island looks like act one of The Tempest. How are you this evening?”
There was silence at the other end of the line. When Ham Green spoke again, his voice was low and measured. If Nora hadn’t known better, she’d have said he was contrite.
“Forgive me, Nora. I shouldn’t have been so curt with you. I’m sorry. I knew about Claude Lamont—I spoke with Sam Friedman an hour ago. But I can’t reach Jeff. Do you know where he’s being detained?”
“You have to call Detective Chief Inspector Hobbs in Barbados. Jeff is at a police station there, assisting with enquiries. You need to decide how much to tell them about him, about us, because he doesn’t want to screw up the mission—well, he’s too late on that, thanks to me. But you need to pull rank, or whatever you call it, with the authorities there.”
“Okay,” Ham said. “But first, what’s all this about a ‘mastermind’?”
Nora winced again. “Carmen Lamont—she’s the liaison with Diablo. They’ve just been using Claude as a human ATM. We had the wrong CL in the messages—it’s Carmen, not Claude. I think she poisoned her husband, probably with a packet of coffee she gave him as a gift. I think the poison was given to her by the woman in Puerto Rico, whose name is also Carmen Mendoza. I’d swear in a court of law that it was Carmen Lamont who set up her husband in the drug-and-terror-financing business.”
“So, why would she kill him now?” Ham asked.
“Because he was about to toss her aside for another woman, and the gravy train was going to stop. This way, she’s the merry widow who inherits all his money. By the way, that other woman has now vanished as well—Melanie Dunstan and her husband disappeared from a beach in Barbados this afternoon. The police there are looking for them.”
Ham said, “I hope they find them soon. What was in the letter you mentioned?”
Nora quickly read it to him over the phone. When she was finished, she said, “So you see, she knows all about us.”
“Yes,” Ham said, “but she doesn’t know you’re Company—she thinks you’re busybodies trying to save her from an abusive husband.”
“No, Ham, she’s smarter than that. She found the tracker and left it for me. Random busybodies don’t have professional tracking equipment on a luxury cruise. She knows who we are.”
“So, why didn’t she try to get rid of you?”
Nora thought about that. “I think I got a free pass when I saved her life in Guadeloupe. She obviously witnessed that—the police and media never mentioned the pepper spray, but she knows about it. She knew I was following her, but she didn’t know about the man until she saw me confront him. She was watching for me from that little shopping square she turned in to from the sidewalk. The man with the knife was a surprise to her, and she guessed he was sent by her husband.”
Ham was silent again, but Nora could almost hear him thinking. At last he said, “Well, that’s that. We’ve lost her, and we’ve lost Diablo. What can we do now?”
Nora smiled over at Ellie, who’d been listening to their conversation. She said, “You can call Barbados and get Jeff cleared. I’m having a late dinner with Ellie Singer, and then we’re all going to get a good night’s sleep. Tomorrow, I’m going to hunt down Carmen Lamont and her friend Diablo.”
“But they’re gone,” Ham said. “You don’t know where to look for them.”
Nora stood up from the table and reached for her shoulder bag. “Actually, I have a fairly good idea where to start. Now, please get my husband out of custody. Tell him to have the Barbados police analyze the coffee cup and look for a brown packet of Guadeloupe coffee in Claude Lamont’s suite. And have the coroner look for a hard-to-detect poison in his system that can simulate a heart attack. That ought to keep them busy. Good night, Ham.” She dropped the phone in her bag and headed for the door. “Come on, Ellie. I’m starving!”
Chapter 28
The bright red Audi coupe sped along the wet highway, barely making a sound. The rainstorm of last night had stopped, at least temporarily, but the sky above Martinique was dull and cloudy. The news report they’d just heard on the car radio predicted more rain showers throughout the day and into the night.
Nora sat in the passenger seat, gazing out at the verdant foliage as Ellie drove them north. This central highway didn’t have the stunning Atlantic view of the coastal road taken by the tour bus two days ago, but it was a shorter route from Fort-de-France to their destination, practically a straight line. Thirty-seven kilometers: That was—Nora did the math in her head—twenty-three miles. They’d be there in half an hour.
The lead story in the noon top-of-the-hour newscast had been the troubles on the Tropic Star. Nora had follo
wed the brisk French well enough to gather that the death of French businessman Claude Lamont was now being treated by Barbados authorities as a possible homicide. Madame Lamont, who had disembarked in Martinique, was being sought for questioning. Tropic Cruise Line had issued a statement conveying the shock, dismay, and deepest sympathies of Captain Lindstrom, his crew, and the entire Tropic Cruise Line family. The ship was being held in port while police investigated, and it was unclear when the voyage would resume.
There was good news, too: The missing passengers, British hotel executive Brian Dunstan, thirty-four, and his wife, Melanie, thirty-one, had contacted the cruise line this morning, informing the company that they’d been called back to London on a family emergency. They’d joined the flight at the last minute, and their names hadn’t appeared on the passenger manifest immediately, which explained the mix-up. They apologized for any inconvenience their abrupt departure might have caused.
Nora wondered about the exact nature of the Dunstans’ “family emergency,” but she was relieved that a certain other passenger—Jeffrey Baron, fifty-three, of the U. S. Central Intelligence Agency—had not been mentioned. She’d spoken with Jeff at midnight last night, and he’d been in a bad mood. Despite Hamilton Green’s best efforts at hands-across-the-sea diplomacy, her husband had indeed spent the night in jail. Well, that had been his version of it; in fact, he’d been placed in a perfectly nice hotel near police headquarters overnight, paid for by the Barbados PD, after Ham Green had revealed his CIA status and DCI Hobbs had requested that Jeff assist them in the investigation into Claude Lamont’s death.
She’d spoken with Jeff again this morning. He’d been filling out forms and answering questions at headquarters over coffee and crullers with Hobbs. Jeff had only nice things to say about Hobbs and his team, despite the inconvenience. But he was now involved in the case, and his tip on a possible poisoning was being followed up. He’d be spending another night in Barbados, and tomorrow he planned to join Nora wherever she was.
Wherever she was: Nora had frowned at that. She wasn’t sure exactly where she’d be twenty-four hours from now. She’d assured her husband on the phone that the search for Carmen Lamont and Diablo might be officially over, but she still had a couple of leads to follow. When Jeff had asked her what those leads were, she’d changed the subject.
The case was indeed over, according to Hamilton Green. He’d called back this morning, but Nora had decided to keep him in the dark about her plans, just as she had been vague with her husband—and for the same reason. She wasn’t at all sure that her ideas would lead to anything, and she was tired of failure.
So far, she’d cast everyone in this operation in the wrong roles—Claude Lamont had been the nefarious villain, his wife the innocent victim, and her cousin the feminist dynamo who’d swept in to save her from her abuser. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Her one consolation was her new certainty that the phantom known as Diablo really existed.
Nora smiled as Ellie slowed for the turnoff just ahead on their right. Ken Nelson, the CIA’s man in Martinique, had found Diablo, photographed him, and gone off in pursuit of him. Nora thought she might have a good idea where Ken had gone. She might know where Diablo was hiding…
“Okay,” Ellie said as she made the turn. “We take this road straight down the hill to the beach, and we turn left on the waterfront road. Lester said the guesthouse where his aunt works is along that road, at the farthest end of the beach.”
Nora smiled. “I suppose that’s why the guesthouse is called Bout de la Plage.”
Ellie laughed. “That’s a good guess. You wanted inconspicuous, and I think we got it. The place is run by an old hippie couple, American expatriates. There are four guest rooms, and we have two of them. Lester’s aunt Violet lives and works there with her husband, Saul, and their twelve-year-old grandson, Ebenezer.”
“Ebenezer?” Nora said. “The poor kid—he must hate that!”
Ste-Marie looked exactly as it had two days ago. The car passed the big church where Nora’s group had begun its tour of the town, and descended the hill to the bay. The left turn took them past the row of shops and restaurants she remembered, including the one where they’d had coffee before continuing to St-Pierre. They drove on for quite a stretch until they neared the peninsula that separated this inlet from the next one to the north.
There, at the end of the road, in the shadow of the hill and nestled under two huge tamarind trees, stood a big, three-story stone house with a railed wooden porch. The building was painted sky blue, the corrugated tin roof was a deep red, and the porch rail and shutters at all the windows were emerald green. A sky blue sign swung from a post at the edge of the road in front of the property, announcing in beautiful white calligraphy that this was indeed Bout de la Plage.
The flowery front garden was dwarfed by the massive trunks of the two trees, and the drive next to the signpost led to a small parking lot beside the building. The gray volcanic sand was directly across the road from the guesthouse, with the breakers of the Atlantic a short walk away. A lone fishing boat was beached there, safely above the tide line.
Ellie parked in the lot with three other cars and a huge motorcycle, and they grabbed their shoulder bags and Nora’s suitcase from the space behind the seats. They didn’t get far: They were a few steps onto the lawn, heading for the porch, when they heard a high-pitched shout from the beach behind them.
“Non, mesdames! Non, non! Arretez-vous! Un moment!”
They turned to see a small, slight, barefoot native boy in a red-and-white-striped T-shirt and blue shorts racing toward them on the sand, frantically waving his arms in the air as he shouted. He bounded across the road, leaped over a patch of flowers, and shuddered to a halt before them. Nora saw a mass of shaggy hair, enormous dark eyes, and a dazzling set of white teeth as he grinned up at them.
“Hallo!” he piped in a high, clear voice. “You American ladies come to stay, yes? I take these. My job!” Before they could protest, he had both shoulder bags and the suitcase in his hands. He slung the bags over his frail shoulders, hoisted the suitcase, and marched up the walkway to the porch. “Come, ladies, come! You are welcome into the End of the Beach!” He threw open the green front door and stood aside, waving them in with a dramatic sweep of his free arm. “You are here, ladies!”
Nora and Ellie exchanged a glance, then hurried to catch up with their energetic bellboy. Nora led the way into a big yellow room that took up the entire front half of the ground floor. A motley assortment of couches, armchairs, low tables, and area rugs dotted the shiny wood floor, and vivid paintings of island scenes vibrated on every wall. Multicolored glass Tiffany lamps hung from the high ceiling, joining several standing lamps, table lamps, and track spotlights aimed at the bigger paintings to fill the space with a warm glow. A big mahogany table at the back served as a hotel desk, and a wooden staircase along one wall led to the upper floors.
In the center of all this magnificence stood a tall, willowy, older Caucasian woman in a flowing, flowery muumuu and sandals. Her white hair was piled high on her head in a loose bun that reminded Nora of statues she’d seen of Greek goddesses. Nora guessed that she was about seventy, but her lovely face and youthful demeanor made it hard to tell. She smiled beatifically at the new arrivals as she glided forward to greet them.
“Welcome!” she said in a low, beautiful voice. “You must be Mrs. Baron and Ms. Singer. I am Chloe. I see you have met Eb. Eb, please take the bags to rooms two and three.”
“Oui, madame!” With a grin, Eb launched himself up the stairs and vanished.
“Hello, Chloe. I’m Nora, and this is Ellie, and you have the most wonderful place I’ve seen on this island. It’s spectacular!”
“Absolutely!” Ellie added. “Is that Ebenezer, Violet’s grandson? I must tell him that his cousin Les says hi.”
“Ah, Les,” Chloe said, and she smiled some more. “One of my favori
te people, a warrior spirit. Yes, that is his cousin, but you must never call him Ebenezer. He hates it, as well he should—I don’t know what his parents were thinking. Then again, we have no idea where his parents are, so we can’t ask them. Ah, well, come in, come in. Sit, relax. Have you had lunch? No? Good—Violet is making something in the kitchen, and she loves to feed new friends. But first, let me get you drinks. Iced Constant Comment—how does that sound? Then I will show you to your rooms.”
She waved them into armchairs and wafted off through an archway at the back of the room. They sank into the chairs, staring around them.
“Wow,” Ellie said. “I’m in love with that woman. What do you bet she was at Woodstock?”
Nora laughed. “Honey, she was Woodstock! What do you bet she and her husband painted all these pictures?”
“They probably made everything in this room!” Ellie said. “And I might just kidnap that kid—he’s amazing.”
As if on cue, Eb arrived down the stairs. “Ladies, your bags are in your rooms. If you need for anything, ask for Eb. That is me. I go now, down to the beach, but I be back later.”
“Thank you, Eb,” Nora said.
With another grin, he was out the door and away. Nora watched him go, remembering that she’d seen him and an old man, identically dressed in striped T-shirts and shorts, working on a fishing boat two days ago. That must be Saul, she reasoned. They have a boat…
This thought reminded her of her true purpose here in Ste-Marie, and her good mood flagged. She stood up and went over to look out through a front window, gazing off across the Atlantic. Then she shut her eyes.
