Death by Deceit (Book #5 in the Caribbean Murder Series) (5 page)

Green Pebble Beach was located at the eastern
tip of the island, straight down a steep hill, wedged between two coral reefs.
Instead of sand, rocks covered with green algae and moss, spread over the area
that sloped down to the sea. The rocks were so small and glistening, they
looked like green pebbles, giving rise to the name, Green Pebble Beach. The water
down here was also calmer, greener and had a sweet, pungent aroma that
enveloped you the moment you came close.

As Cindy, Mattheus, Rodney and Alex carefully
climbed down the hill, Cindy could hear the ocean’s small waves lapping gently
up against the stones.

“Very few people come to this place,” Rodney
said as they came to the bottom of the hill. "It's out of the way, not
very restful.  Most don’t know about it.”

 “Shelly knew about it,” said Mattheus, looking
around. “She liked it here. We came a few times.  She even took some of these
pebbles home.”

Rodney stopped in his tracks.  “That’s
interesting,” he said. “I had no idea.”

“She loved exploring out of the way, hidden
places,” Mattheus went on.

“What did she do with the pebbles?” Rodney
asked.

Mattheus shrugged. “I have no idea. What
difference does it make?”

“None, I guess,” said Rodney, “but if she knew
and liked this place it could mean that she came here of her own volition. The
person who killed her might have known it and killed her here, rather than
somewhere else and dumped her.

Mattheus shivered. Cindy could see that he was
still processing everything, it really wasn’t sinking in.

“Anthony’s our main suspect right now,” Rodney
continued, “he knew everything about her, of course.”

Mattheus face grew darker. “This guy’s got a
record? He’s done something rotten and lousy before?”

“Nothing much, just a few DWI’s.  Some assorted
complaints.”

“There’s no way Shelly would have anything to
do with someone with DWI’s,” Mattheus said flatly. “She wouldn’t – she was
smart, sharp. She would never willingly choose a guy like that.”

“What are you saying?” asked Rodney.

Mattheus’s brow furled. “The bastard coerced
her, kidnapped her, maybe?” He was throwing things out, reaching for an answer,
something to hold onto. “Shelly’d been in the grip of a monster – she couldn’t
get out.”

Rodney and Alex glanced at one another.

Alex shook his head, “Farfetched,” he responded,
as they all proceeded carefully onto the pebbles that led down to the edge of
the shore.

“Sounds like your wife was an unusual woman,”
Rodney said as they continued to walk. 

Cindy’s heart clenched. She knew how painful
this had to be for Mattheus. All the coals getting raked up again and again.

“I never thought of her as unusual,” Mattheus
said succinctly. “She was great to be with, bright, vivacious, interested in
lots of things. She saw more than most people, too. When we came down here
sometimes she’d look at the pebbles so closely she could see different colors
in them. She’d comment on it. She was a sensitive person, aware of these
things. I used to tell her to become an artist, do watercolors of the pebbles
if she loved them so much. She just laughed it off.”

This was the first time Cindy had heard this
about Shelly. It was also the first time she directly realized how deeply
entwined the two of them had been, how alive Mattheus’s feelings for her still
were.

Rodney walked over to a coral reef and leaned
against it. Alex stepped closer to Mattheus, offering  support.

“This is where we found her,” Rodney said
solemnly.

 Mattheus looked down at ground, horrified.

Clearly Rodney was trying to rattle him up, get
him to spill something that would help close the case. Cindy wanted to go over
and put her arms around Mattheus, but knew she couldn’t now.

They all looked down at the spot where Shelly’s
body had been found. The place was clear now, water running over it lightly, no
sign left that a life had been lost right here. The running water washed
everything away.

“Was she killed here, or found here?”  Mattheus
asked, his voice was garbled.

“That’s still an open question,” said Rodney.
“There’s no direct evidence of where it happened. We’re just sure of the time.”

“No DNA, fingerprints, anything?” Mattheus
managed.

Cindy could hear him forcing himself to get a
grip, turn back into a detective.

“No direct evidence,” Rodney answered, “only
circumstantial. That’s why the case isn’t closed. Whoever did it knew what they
were doing. It wasn’t impulsive. They prepared carefully. My guess is they were
waiting to do this for a long time."

Mattheus’s fist clenched tight. All the years
he’d spent hunting down the killer had to be coming back to him now, the hate,
the helplessness, the obsession with finding him, with staring him down.

“I want to grill the guy you have in custody,
now!” Mattheus’s body was in a knot.

“You will,” said Rodney, “in a little while.”

 Rodney sat down on the reef and the rest of
them did the same. The sultry evening air drifted around all of them. It felt
like a warm blanket, to Cindy, holding them all in its arms.

“Tell me more about your wife,” Rodney said
slowly.

“She was a beautiful woman,” Mattheus said
mournfully, looking out into the sea. “Smart as hell, graduated first in her
class in college, loved to snorkel and dance.” He spoke slowly, savoring each
detail.

“You guys went dancing together a lot?” Rodney picked
up on that.

In the dim light, Cindy saw Mattheus smile,
probably remembering wonderful moments he and Shelly had shared.

“Sometimes,” said Mattheus, “not too much
though. I was a busy guy, ran my own company - court reporting. We were growing
fast.”

“So I heard,” said Rodney.

“Yeah, I liked it,” said Mattheus. “Had a bunch
of people working for me when she disappeared. Times were good. We didn’t have
any problems.”

All couples have some problems, thought Cindy.
Something had to have been wrong. She wondered if Mattheus really thought that
everything was as perfect as he was making it seem.

“We’d just bought a house,” Mattheus went on.
“Shelly loved fixing it up.”

“Did she work?” asked Rodney.

“Part time, as a counselor for runaway kids who’d
been found and returned home.  It was a great job for her. She loved the kids.
They loved her.”

“You guys were planning to have a family of
your own?” Rodney asked.

“Yeah, of course we were,” said Mattheus. “What
has that got to do with anything?”

“Don’t know,” said Rodney, “not sure. Just want
to keep looking for something to pop out at me.”

Mattheus made a movement to stand up then.
“Nothing’s gonna pop out,” he said. “I haven’t got the faintest idea of why she
went missing. There was no reason for it. She could have been drugged and
kidnapped and afraid to let me know.”

“That’s a strange theory,” said Rodney.

“What else could it be?” Mattheus sounded
forlorn.

“Why would she be afraid to let you know?”
Rodney pressed further.

“No reason,” said Mattheus, his voice dipping
into gloom. “Shelly always wanted me to think the best of her, was very
sensitive about that.”

“And did you?” asked Rodney.

“Of course I did. I told her that over and
over. Sometimes she believed me, sometimes she did not.”

“Why didn’t? Were you rough on her?"
Rodney wasn’t letting up.

“Never,” said Mattheus, “give me a break! We
had a great relationship, you can ask anyone who knew us. It’s all on record.
The police up in New Orleans investigated this back and forth. They interviewed
everyone we knew. Everyone told them we were the ideal couple. They loved being
with us.”

“So, infidelity was never suspected?” Rodney
looked Mattheus straight in the eye. “You never thought she played around with
anyone else?”

“Never!” Mattheus’s voice got louder.

“It’s not so unusual,” Rodney spoke very
calmly.

“I never thought it!” Mattheus refused to even
entertain the possibility. “I told you we were happy. She was beautiful, we
were satisfied. Why would either of us need anyone else?”

Cindy felt a swift pang in her heart. His
feelings for her were still so intense. She could never have filled the place
Shelly held for Mattheus. It was good that Cindy had left when she did.

“What did you end up believing about your
wife’s disappearance?” Rodney finally asked.

"First I believed one thing and then
something else,” said Mattheus. “It was never settled.  That's why it was so
hard.”

Mattheus got up from the rocks and began
walking back and forth on the green pebbles slowly, his shadow moving against
the sky. Rodney got up and walked besides him.

“For years some new piece of information about
her would float up,” Mattheus went on, “someone thought they saw her, or they
found a letter she wrote. We’d track down each lead and it would amount to
nothing. It was impossible for me to put the whole thing to rest.  It was
starting to drive me really crazy.”

“I can understand that,” said Rodney.”

“I finally decided that she must have been
taken by transient who killed her and then disappeared. Lots of those types
drift down to New Orleans, and you never see or hear from them again.”

“You could live with that?” asked Rodney.

“Not really,” said Mattheus, his face taut.
“But life doesn’t always give you things you can live with. You have to anyway.
Finally, I made a break, left the states, moved to Grenada, became a cop,
started a new life.”

“That’s a big change,” Rodney noted.

“It was a good thing to do,” said Mattheus. “I
like tracking down killers. And, it was incredible when I actually found one,
locked them up, closed the case. It was the least I could do.”

“For Shelly?”

“Yeah, I did it for her, for myself, and for
all those others out there who were left devastated when someone they loved was
lost.”

Cindy took a deep breath.  How well she
understood his decision.  It hadn't so different for her and Clint. But one
thing was tremendously different. She knew that Clint was dead. Mattheus never
really had that closure. How could any of this have ever been settled for him?

 Rodney tossed a look at Cindy then. “When did
you meet Cindy?” he said off handedly.

“About a year and a half ago,” Mattheus said.
“Why?”

“Just wondering,” said Rodney.

“Cindy came down to Grenada to work on a case
and we met at the police station. I helped her with it. We became friends, then
partners.”

Rodney raised his eyebrows and glanced at Cindy
appreciatively. “She’s a beautiful woman,” he said.

Mattheus didn’t like that. “You’re not
insinuating anything?” he said.

“No, I’m not,” said Rodney. “Actually, we’ve
already checked all your records, the story bears out.”

“Cindy’s husband was also killed,” said
Mattheus. “On her honeymoon.”

The cops looked over at her again. “Yes, we
heard,” they said quietly. “We’ve also heard that she’s a terrific detective.”

“Exceptional,” said Mattheus, "a natural
talent."

Cindy felt warm inside. It was good to be
recognized and acknowledged. It was also good to know that the police had taken
the time to carefully check both of their backgrounds. They cared about what
they were doing.

“We’ve also heard that the two of you are an
item,” said Rodney, off handedly again. He wasn’t letting Mattheus off the hook
so easily.

Cindy flushed.

“We
were
an item,” said Mattheus,
definitively. “We broke up last week.”

Rodney looked surprised. “What happened?” It
seemed like nothing was off limits for him. He wasn’t leaving any stoned
unturned.
“It was too soon for us to get together,” Cindy broke in, calmly. 

“Natural that you guys would want to though,”
Rodney kept prodding. “It’s understandable.”

“There’s a time for everything,” said Cindy, as
Mattheus looked at her closely.

“And this wasn’t it?” asked Rodney.

“We’re great working partners,” said Cindy,
“have done very well on the cases we’ve handled.”

“You broke up and can still work together?
“That’s usually pretty difficult.” Alex interrupted. Neither of them were leaving
a stone unturned, they were determined to dig beneath Cindy and Mattheus’s
surface composure.

“Mattheus called me down to help with this
case,” said Cindy evenly. “It’s his
wife
we’re talking about. I care
about his well being. How could I not help?”