by Tessa Kelly
“I don’t think it works like that,” I said gently.
He pressed his lips together, then exhaled softly. “Still, it haunts me. I wished for a death, and it happened. How? The questions are in my head all the time. They won’t let me sleep, not without the pills.”
I stared at him, uneasy. “Doctor, what happened after you left the pier?”
“I went to my room, not wanting to cause a scandal by alerting others of Timothy’s absence. This is Henry’s wedding weekend, I didn’t want to spoil that for him. But, once I was upstairs, I started thinking about it and the whole situation didn’t sit right with me. I decided to notify someone after all, so I went downstairs and told the clerk at the front desk.”
My hand made a move to grip his elbow. I stopped myself and made an effort to keep my voice calm. “What time was that?”
“Close to four a.m. I remember looking at the clock,” he said.
Around the time that I had been woken by all the running in the hallway. So that seemed to fit. “
Did you see anything else while you were down on the beach? Anyone near the dock, maybe?”
He looked regretful as he shook his head. “I’m afraid not.”
“Thank you,” I said, rising to my feet. “And sorry for taking you away from your painting.”
He looked at his canvas as if only just remembering it was there. “Uh...that’s all right. I think I’ll stay out here a little longer, see if I can finish this wave before breakfast.” Suddenly, he looked back at me and his watery eyes flashed with a piercing clearness. “I can tell you’re wondering about me, you know. Henry told us about your detective skills. He said you were very good. I hope you can believe I’m telling the truth. I didn’t kill him. I’ll swear on all my children’s lives, if you ask me to.”
I smiled. “That won’t be necessary, Doctor. Enjoy your painting.”
I walked to the hotel along the water’s edge, wondering. Jennings sounded sincere when he denied killing Timothy, and I didn’t doubt he believed it. But he was also tortured by guilt, thinking he caused a death simply by wishing it.
His nerves were unstable, anyone could see that, and something in his subconscious was troubling him. Could he have killed Timothy and forgotten it?
Remembering I had my phone on silent, I took it out to check if I had any missed calls.
Still nothing from Liam.
But my brother tried to reach me twice. He picked up on the first ring as I called him.
“About time.” He sounded grumpy. “Thought you said you needed that info.”
“I do. Just didn’t think you’d get back to me so quickly.”
“What can I say, we’re pretty efficient down here.”
“Or, maybe you have a new rookie who’s eager to impress his superiors.”
He chuckled. “That, too. Anyway, you want the stuff or not? Fair warning: it’s juicy.”
“I’m listening.”
“Okay. Get ready, cause I’m starting with the punch line. A year ago, your guy was diagnosed with brain cancer.”
Chapter 16
Brain cancer! I stopped in my tracks, shot through by a bolt of lightning. The information explained a lot.
“It must be the reason for Eric’s eccentric lifestyle lately,” I said.
“Exactly right. He refused chemo against doctors’ orders, sold his house and some other property he owned and bought a luxury sailboat. Guess he wanted to see the world before he died.”
“Hmm. How sick is he?” Something about the whole thing still didn’t seem right.
“He was given a year to live.”
“What?” I couldn’t help stopping again. “Will, that can’t be right. He’s here, at the hotel. I’ve talked to him. He doesn’t look like a guy on his last breath.”
“That’s because his health is getting better. Apparently, he’d heard of some guy in India. A healer, a guru, I don’t know. He went to him and about three months later, his health made a one-eighty. His tumor is almost gone now. The docs can’t explain it.”
I heard the skepticism in my own voice, thick as tar. “You’re saying it was a miracle healing?”
“Oh, who knows? I’m just telling you what’s in the guy’s medical records. I’m sending the info over, so you can see for yourself. They said he was finished, but he managed to bounce back in a big way. It happens, I guess. Anyway, medical records don’t lie.”
I chewed my lip, thinking. Miracles aside, things that had been murky before were finally making sense.
“Thanks, Will. You know you’re my fairy Godmother.”
There was a low growl on the other end. “Call me that again, and I’ll smash a rotting pumpkin over your head.”
I laughed. “All that does is remind me I haven’t had breakfast yet. Thanks again for all the help! I owe you one.”
“And don’t you forget it.”
After we hung up, I opened Will’s email. It contained more than just the information about Eric’s recent illness, but his actual medical history. My eyes skimmed through it. Low blood pressure, allergy to dust, flower pollen... neoprene. Allergy to wetsuits. The same one Geraldine had. I wondered if that meant anything. It probably didn’t.
And I was still hungry. I hurried on.
In the dining room, Geraldine, Henry, and John sat at a table by the window. Geraldine had a coffee and a large piece of carrot cake in front of her. None of the guests had come down yet.
At the far wall, a man in a pristine white chef’s hat was working an elaborate breakfast station. I took a quick look at the long menu and ordered a grilled egg sandwich with guacamole, tomatoes, and Gruyère. Then, balancing my tray, I made my way over to Geraldine’s table.
I grinned at her as I sat down. “Carrot cake for breakfast?”
“I deserve it,” she said primly. “Tragedy or not, this is still my wedding weekend.”
“You deserve it all, dear.” Henry smiled at her over a plateful of poached eggs in Hollandaise sauce. “The wedding is back on track,” he announced. “We’re having it this afternoon.”
“Glad to hear it,” I said. And I was. Though it did leave me with very little time. No doubt, once the ceremony was over, the guests wouldn’t stay around for long. I bent close to Geraldine’s ear. “Can we talk? Somewhere private.”
She nodded as she swallowed a forkful of cake. “We can take the food and go up to my room. Henry and John won’t mind.”
“Great idea.”
While she excused herself, I made another trip to the breakfast station and had the chef whip me up a chocolate stuffed crepe with the fresh strawberries. After all, this was Geraldine’s wedding weekend.
“I’ll work it off when I get home,” I told her as we took the stairs to her room. “I don’t care if I have to exercise twice as hard.”
As soon as the door closed behind us, Geraldine set her coffee on the nightstand and perched on the edge of the bed with her cake. She looked at me, expectant.
“Well, dear? What else did you find out?”
I set my tray on her vanity table and took a satisfyingly crunchy bite of my sandwich. Talking around it, I told her about my conversations with Dr. Jennings and Will.
Geraldine listened, nodding between forkfuls of cake.
“We had no idea Eric was ill,” she said quietly after a moment. “Poor man. He’s kept it from everyone.”
“Not everyone, I’m sure,” I said.
Her eyes flashed as she caught on to my meaning. “Of course, you’re right! Majandra had to know about it.” She thought for a moment, then added with a frown. “It’s a terrible thought, but Majandra might’ve counted on Eric’s death, if she wanted her and Timothy to be together. But, the way Timothy was with women...what if Majandra killed him after all? To get back at him for running around.”
“I haven’t discounted that possibility,” I said. Though, I was less inclined to believe it after seeing Majandra’s grief over Timothy’s death.
“It’s about
time we talked to her, don’t you think?” Geraldine said.
We finished our breakfast and headed to Majandra’s room, moving slower for all the rich food in our stomachs but feeling much more up to the tough conversation ahead.
Majandra sat alone in her room, still dressed in her robe.
“We wanted to stop by and see how you were,” Geraldine told her. “Will you come down to breakfast this morning?”
Majandra said she’d ordered breakfast in. It was out on the balcony.
As we followed her across the room, I noticed that only one side of the king-sized bed looked slept in. With a tap on Geraldine’s arm, I pointed it out with my eyes.
“Eric requested to be transferred into a guest bungalow last night,” Geraldine whispered.
Out on the balcony, the table was set with a coffee pot and a plate of pastries and fruit. Majandra sat down and poured herself coffee and cream, then took a croissant off the plate and kneaded it absentmindedly with her fingers.
“I wanted to stay up here, so people wouldn’t see me like this,” she explained.
It wasn’t hard to see why. Hair tied with an old rubber band instead of the usual hairspray job, she looked pale and puffy-eyed, a far cry from the stiletto-clad vixen we met on Friday.
“I still can’t believe any of this happened,” she said. “I know Eric didn’t like Timothy paying me all that attention, but I never thought he’d take it this far.”
Geraldine and I exchanged wide-eyed looks, unable to contain our surprise.
“Are you saying, Eric killed Timothy?” I asked.
Majandra gulped as if remembering herself. “Oh...no. Of course not. I didn’t mean that,” she spluttered. “I was just saying, I can’t believe Eric would be jealous of a harmless fling.” She cleared her throat.
Something in her expression and the tone of her voice rang false, though I couldn’t figure out what it was. I let it go for now.
“How long has Eric been sick?”
It was her turn to get wide-eyed. She said nothing for a few moments, then wiped her lips with a starched napkin, even though she hadn’t eaten anything. She carefully folded the napkin and set it next to her fork, arranging the two until they were perfectly perpendicular to each other. A delay tactic, to give herself time to think. Finally, she nodded.
“Yes, it’s true. He was diagnosed with cancer a little over a year ago. It was a very difficult period for us. And then, he went and sold the house and bought that sailboat.”
“You were against it?” Geraldine asked.
“Of course! I told him he needed to listen to his doctors and do the chemo and everything, but he wouldn’t listen. He said he wanted to do this before he died. So off we went, sailing around the world.” She started to roll her eyes, then caught herself and smiled instead. “Not that it turned out all that bad, mind you. Eric was even getting better...maybe he was right to do it. And, sure, we had some fun. Except when it was stormy. I didn’t like that at all.”
She didn’t like a lot of it, by the sound of it.
“And how did Leonie and Timothy come to work for you?” I asked.
She answered after a long pause, “Leonie’s father was a good friend of Eric’s. He died in a car accident two years ago, coming home from a party at our house. I guess he’d had a glass too many. Anyway, Eric blames himself for letting him get behind the wheel, and he feels responsible for the girl.” She shrugged. “He found out Leonie wanted to study marine biology and thought a sailing trip around the world would look good on a grad school application.”
“I see.” So, Leonie was more than just a hired hand. That explained the fondness she had for Eric. And her adamant insistence on his innocence.
“What about Timothy? Who hired him?”
Majandra’s chin trembled. She pressed her fingers around her coffee cup, brought it jerkily to her lips, and put it down again with a clang.
“Tim answered Eric’s ad,” she said quietly. “We posted on several of those sailing sites on the internet, where you can find sailing crew for hire. We had a lot of applicants, but Tim’s credentials were the best. Eric was very impressed with him. He invited Tim over to our house for an interview and hired him on the spot.”
Suddenly, she hid her face in her hands and burst into tears. “I can’t believe it...can’t believe he’s dead.”
Geraldine sprang from her chair and put an arm around the woman’s shoulders. “There, there. It’s going to be okay.”
I waited while Majandra’s sobs subsided. If it had been a tactic to play on our emotions, it worked like a charm. Though I had thoroughly disapproved of the woman’s behavior, it was impossible not to feel sympathy in the face of such open grief.
“I’m really sorry for making you talk about all this,” I said. “There’s just one more question Geraldine and I wanted to ask you, and then we won’t bother you anymore. Is that okay?”
She slowly raised her head and wiped her red eyes with the starched table napkin. “What did you want to know?”
“Geraldine’s friend, Nancy, said she left her room around one in the morning the night of the accident. She said she met you in the hallway and you were looking for Eric because he wasn’t in your room. Is that true?”
Majandra’s hand jerked, making the porcelain cup wobble and spill its contents onto the table. It dripped on the floor before Geraldine could stop it with a napkin. Impassive, Majandra watched her clean up the mess. When she looked up at me, I was surprised by the measure of calculation in her eyes.
“I woke up in the middle of the night and saw that Eric wasn’t there,” she said. “I don’t know when he left, I didn’t ask him. I thought he might’ve felt sick and went to the bathroom down the hall, so that he wouldn’t wake me.”
“Isn’t he getting better?” I asked.
“He is. But still not a hundred percent.”
“Did you check the bathroom down the hall?”
“I did. It was empty. I don’t think he’d tell me if I asked him where he was. Our relationship has been strained lately.”
I nodded. That, I could believe.
“Around what time did he come back to the room?” Geraldine asked.
Majandra shook her head. “I don’t know. I looked for him some more but didn’t find him. I thought he might’ve gone outside for some fresh air. I went back to the room to wait for him and fell asleep. I only woke up when they told us about the missing boat.” She stared down as she said it, then asked quietly, “Is that all? I want to be alone now.”
We left her sitting at that table and staring into her coffee cup. She never moved or looked up to watch us go.
Chapter 17
As soon as we were back in the hallway, Geraldine turned to me with eyes lit up like a Christmas tree.
“I know where Eric went the night of the accident. He was in the staff bathroom down the hallway!”
“Really?” I squinted at her. “Why there?”
She smiled as if the answer was so obvious it was unimaginable someone could fail to see it. “Because it’s the perfect hiding place! Eric has been keeping his illness secret from the rest of us, so obviously he wouldn’t want to be seen or heard while he was being sick. In the staff bathroom, in the middle of the night, he would’ve been left in peace.”
Could she be right? I glanced at the closed door down the hallway. I had to admit, Geraldine’s guess made sense.
“That would explain why Ashley had to fix the toilet the next morning,” I said, remembering the groundskeeper’s exasperation when I ran into her on the way to the service stairs. “She said there was vomit.”
“Should we talk to Ashley now?” Geraldine asked. “Maybe she knows something else?”
Before I could answer, rapid footsteps on the stairs announced the arrival of several people. The next moment, Pat and Nancy bustled up to us, looking extremely agitated. To my surprise, John and Jennifer followed close behind.
“Holy crickets, there you are!” Pat grabbed Ge
raldine by the elbow. “We’ve been looking all over the place.”
“Oh, dear. What happened this time?” Geraldine cried.
Nancy threw up her hands. “You’re asking us what happened? The wedding is in three hours, and you should be getting dressed. What are you thinking of?”
Jennifer stood behind them with her arms crossed, her eyes throwing me death rays for spiriting away her soon-to-be aunt-in-law. As Geraldine’s friends towed her to her room, she closed the procession, making sure the bride wouldn’t escape again. John leaned against the wall, staying out of their way, and watched the scene with an amused smile.
“Sandie?” Geraldine looked helplessly over her shoulder at me.
I smiled. “No, they’re right. Go ahead, you need to get ready.”
Turning around, I saw that John was still there.
“Were you looking for your uncle?” I asked.
“No. You, actually. I have some very good news. Rob, my friend who’s the editor, just wrote back to me about your novel.”
Despite my preoccupation with the murder, I was suddenly holding my breath. Luckily, John wasn’t the type to keep others in suspense.
“He said the book needs a few minor changes but, other than that, he really liked it. He’s ready to take it to the acquisitions board and, if they approve, he’d like to offer you a publishing contract.”
I blinked. “I thought all you were going to do is ask him to give me his opinion.”
“And that’s all I did, I promise. His opinion was that he liked it enough to want to publish it. I’ve already forwarded his email to you. He wants you to get in touch as soon as possible.” He waited for a beat, gauging my reaction, then spread his arms. “Isn’t that exciting?”
