Bermuda Heat (19 page)

mother… well I wouldn’t count on her, not with my grandmother behind her.”

“So if the prosecution calls on one to testify, we must ensure the other one speaks for us.”

“Great, pit the family against each other. I ought to be real popular then.”

“If it will mean the difference between freedom and imprisonment it would be worth it.” Aidan was sardonic.

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“I believe Christopher wants to visit you. I’ll talk to the sergeant in charge of the case and facilitate his meeting if you like.”

“Yes, please.” David knew he gave away his feelings for Chris, but Aidan didn’t seem surprised. Knowing Chris, he’d already told the man. “Just so you know,” he said. “My parents also hate the fact that I’m gay. Again, not my stepfather, he’s fine with it, but my mother and her mother…”

“Understood.”

“Are they likely to bring that up at the trial?”

Aidan sighed. “I wouldn’t be surprised. They’ll use it to color your interaction with the deceased. They expect the jurors to assume Mr. Cameron shared the usual distaste for the lifestyle.”

He looked shrewd. “Did he?”

“No, I don’t think so. At least he never gave any indication—

he defended us pretty vigorously to his sons.”

“What about the daughter?”

David smiled at his memory of Imani. “She’s a sweet kid. It definitely didn’t bother her.”

“Perhaps we can use her to refute the prosecution’s arguments. She hardly has any reason to speak against her own brothers unless she’s telling the truth.”

It made sense. “Just get me out of here.”

“Consider it done.”

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“You’re that good?”

“I’m that good.”

Wednesday, 3:50pm Aunt Nea’s, Nea’s Alley, St. George’s Parish,
Bermuda

“I’ve got some things to take care of so I’ll be going then.”

Imani brushed his cheek with her lips and trotted down the steps.

Chris followed. “I’ll be back in a bit.”

He waited until she climbed on her bike and flew down the drive, disappearing toward Devonshire Parish.

Then he went back upstairs and called Randall Harding, the American consul.

Harding was a gravel-voiced man who Chris pegged as mid-fifties and a heavy smoker. “Tell me the whole story,” he said.

Chris did. Harding stopped him a few times to clarify or expand on certain points. When Chris told him about hiring Aidan, Harding made a low sound.

“Something wrong?”

“No, no. I’m familiar with Mr. Pitt.”

“Is he as good as he thinks?”

If Harding had a sense of humor the next sound might have been a snort. “He might be better. What can I do to help you, Mr. Bellamere?”

“David’s an American citizen. He’s being railroaded by the Bermudian police. Isn’t that reason enough to get involved?”

“Our normal policy is not to interfere with local law enforcement. Do you have any proof of David’s innocence?”

“He’s a homicide detective, for God’s sake. There’s nothing on his record to say he’s ever done anything illegal before. He’s clean. He’s the most honest man I know.”

“The absence of wrong doing doesn’t mean there isn’t wrong
148 P.A. Brown

doing.”

Chris closed his eyes and rubbed the bridge of his nose.

“Please, Mr. Harding. I swear David didn’t do this. You have to help us.”

He heard the rustle of paper. Harding came back on the line.

“I’ll do what I can, Mr. Bellamere. Give me your contact information.”

Chris gave him his BlackBerry number. Then he grabbed his board shorts and went for a swim, punishing himself through the light surf until his arms and legs ached. Back in the apartment, he showered and dressed, then thought about food and decided he’d eat later. Instead he poured himself another coffee and sat on the veranda.

Before he finished the second coffee, Imani rode back up on her scooter and climbed the stairs, where he met her at the door and let her in. She dropped her bag on the veranda and settled into a chair opposite him. She handed him a carry-out bag from some place called Swizzle Inn. It was a burger and fries.

“I figured you probably didn’t have the sense to eat, so I grabbed this.”

The burger was good, not as good as the Frog and Onion, but still tasty. Suddenly finding himself ravenous, he scarfed it down in several bites, sipping the ice tea she had included.

“You hear anything?” she asked.

“I called the American consul. He’s going to, quote ‘Look into it,’ unquote.”

“Well that’s good, isn’t it?”

His BlackBerry vibrated against his leg. He stood up and unclipped the device. It was Aidan. Chris held up a finger to forestall Imani’s next words.

“Good news.” Aidan didn’t waste time on niceties. “David will be out soon.”

“Thank God,” Chris whispered, sinking back into the padded BeRMudA heAt
149

lawn chair. Imani stepped forward in alarm. Chris signaled her to keep waiting. Then, “It’s okay. It’s the lawyer.”

She sat beside him, her expression torn between somberness and delight. “David?”

He nodded.

Aidan was still talking. Chris tamped down his elation and focused on the lawyer’s words.

“You may want to start thinking about how you’re going to secure the necessary bond. I wouldn’t be surprised if they request a million on David’s own bond, plus an independent surety in the same amount. Is that likely to be a problem?”

Chris sagged into the chair. He felt the blood leave his face.

The hamburger he had recently consumed threatened to come back up. “Do you mean cash?”

“No, it’s just an irrevocable promise to pay if the accused doesn’t show up for court.”

Chris’s mind raced. He had money, but even he couldn’t come up with two million on short notice. He had to find that second million. Des immediately came to mind.

“Let me make a phone call,” he said, all too aware of how hollow his voice sounded. “I’ll get back to you as soon as I learn anything.”

He hung up and pressed his face into his hands. Beside him Imani grew alarmed. She pressed her nails into his arm.

“What is it? What’s wrong?”

He told her and she gaped at him.

“Two million? How can you come up with that?”

“I guess I don’t really need to produce the cash, just a guarantee that I can pay it. I need to make a call.”

He slipped into the room and dialed Des’s number. Trevor answered. This time there was no bantering. “I need to talk to Des. It’s important.”

Des’s voice was subdued when he came on. “What’s wrong,
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baby? Is it David—?”

“Yes and no,” Chris said. He explained what had happened to date and what the lawyer had just told him.

“I can’t believe you didn’t tell me,” Des said. “How could you not call and tell me? You knew I’d be pissed, didn’t you? Well I am. This isn’t like you, Chris.”

Actually, it was exactly like Chris. He couldn’t count the number of times he’d tried to protect Des from his actions. Des had a bad habit of overreacting to the littlest thing. And Chris had the equally bad habit of doing things to make Des overreact.

Everyone protected Des.

“Believe me,” Chris said. “I had other things on my mind. Up till now there wasn’t anything you or anyone else could do. I had to concentrate on David.”

Barely mollified Des said, “I can understand, but you still could give a guy a head’s up. Poor David. Poor Chris!”

That was exactly why he hadn’t called. Des’s pity-fest dug at his gut, bringing a fresh round of tears. He avoided looking at Imani. “Please, don’t.” He rubbed his eyes and swore he wouldn’t cry. Not yet, not until David was safe. “I can come up with some of it—I can put the house up as collateral, but the other million is just a bit beyond me.”

“Don’t you worry about a thing. I’ll take care of it. I can call my accountant right now and set it up. I’ll get back to you.”

Chris couldn’t help it; he felt tears well up. He dabbed at his eyes with the sleeve of his T-shirt and took a deep, ragged breath.

“Thank you. You have no idea what this means, hon.”

“Hey,” Des sounded teary-eyed too. “What else are friends for? Even friends who forget to let me know what’s going on.”

Chris waited for Des’s call that things were in the works.

Then he called Aidan back.

“You’ll need to come down to the courthouse to sign some papers,” Aidan said. “But once that’s done, David can be released.

When can you get down here?”

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Chris glanced at Imani standing in the doorway. She met his gaze, her eyes full of sympathy and glazed over with her own tears. “I need to get into Hamilton,” he said to her.

“And bring David’s passport,” Aidan said. “They’ll want to hold onto that until this matter is cleared up.”

“Tell him we’ll be there in fifty minutes,” Imani said.

Chris relayed the news. They broke the connection. “Give me a minute to get changed.”

He emerged five minutes later in his Brooks Brothers suit.

They climbed back onto Imani’s bike and headed into Hamilton, where they met Aidan and the police, and signed the necessary papers to secure David’s release. In return, Chris handed over David’s passport and the officer wrote up a receipt for the document.

Once they were outside again, Aidan shook his hand. “I’ll see that David’s processed as quickly as possible, probably within four or five hours. It’s best if you get a cab to pick him up. The local cabbies will deny it, but many of them won’t pick up fares from the prison.”

Four hours. That would give him time to hit the nearest grocery store and grab at least enough for dinner. He thanked Aidan again before they said goodbye, then turned to Imani.

“One more stop. I need to pick up some grub.”

Her scooter had a wire basket on the back. It would hold all the groceries he needed for the next few days. He climbed onto the bike behind her and she shot out onto Front Street, heading east to the SuperMart. There he grabbed a cross-section of food and scooped up a
Royal Gazette
, the island’s daily paper, when he saw the headline in bold words: AMERICAN CHARGED

WITH FOURTH MURDER OF THE YEAR.

Once he’d loaded all the groceries into the apartment, he turned to Imani. “You have no idea how much I owe you. I think you literally saved my life. We’ll find who did this to your father, I promise—”

“Don’t.” Imani put her finger to his mouth. “If you start
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talking about Dad I’ll cry, and I swore I wouldn’t cry anymore.

Just promise you won’t leave the island without saying goodbye.”

She rubbed her bare arms. “There’s one good thing that came out of this. Daryl finally asked me out. He feels so bad about Dad he wants to help me get over it. Isn’t that sweet?”

“Yeah.” Chris was too distracted to really hear Imani’s words.

He nodded, knowing he had to say something. “I’m happy for you. He seems like a good guy.”

Chris watched her roar away and, before the emotions could overtake him, he slipped back into the room and set about arranging the groceries, deciding what they would eat tonight. He prepped a marinade for some chicken and stuck it in the fridge to work its miracle. Then he grabbed a shower and threw on more casual clothes. He glanced at the queen-sized bed in the middle of the room and shivered in anticipation.

David was coming home.

He knew just how to welcome back his big bear. He smoothed his hand over the flowered comforter. They were going to rock tonight.

He sat outside on the veranda and skimmed the paper. It was light on international news. The local stuff was pretty smalltime.

None of the gory headlines that marked a major US paper.

Bermudians were big on local sports teams. Cricket and soccer seemed to get the most coverage. The cricket cup match Joel had mentioned to David was big news. But it was David who had made the front page. He stared at the horrible picture of David captured by some insensitive photographer whose only interest was in generating fear and loathing. The article read like David had already been tried and found guilty, but Chris was inured to the press’s hackneyed recipe for instant readership. Forget fact-checking in favor of the lurid and shocking. Another front page report seemed to bear that out, giving a skimpy report of a vicious rape that had occurred the same day Chris and David had arrived in Bermuda. A woman had been accosted in a Hamilton park at night, beaten and raped. Police had no suspects, but the paper hinted it might have been carried out by a tourist. The BeRMudA heAt
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woman had described the man as “good looking. He didn’t look like he would rape anyone,” which Chris knew was so bogus.

Rapists never
looked
like rapists, whatever that look was. He’d learned that one the hard way.

In L.A. rape was rarely even covered unless it was particularly gruesome or happened to someone from ritzy Bel Aire or Hancock Park, and then it was always blamed on outside elements. Most rapes were just too common to titillate jaded and tragedy-weary Angelenos.

A quick Google search online yielded the local crime stats—

four homicides for the entire previous year. L.A. would have more than that in a day. Chris wondered what it would be like to live in a place like that. Would he really feel a lot safer or was it a matter of perception? He clicked on a link on world crime stats and Bermuda came up as having more murders per capita than even New York. Whoa, now that changed
his
perception. Maybe it was a lot more dangerous here than he thought.

He turned his attention to Aidan Pitt. Several hits came up, including a Bermudian
Who’s Who
web site of local hotshots.

He’d been right; David’s lawyer had graduated from Oxford, with honors no less. He had taken the British bar ten years ago, then moved to Bermuda, when he married a Bermudian woman.

He’d established his private practice two years ago. Since then, he’d handled some high profile cases. Maybe he was worth the money he charged.