Death by Engagement (8 page)

Despite
Mattheus’s protestations, Cindy insisted on going down to Amaneuten Cove alone
the next morning. Even though he offered to accompany her, she felt strongly she
should go herself.

“I
promise I’ll be fine,” she said, “and if I’m not, or anything happens, I’ll
call you first thing.”

“You’re
being stubborn,” Mattheus insisted. “Really, believe me, I want to come.”

Cindy
believed him, but also didn’t want him feeling the pressure to jump in. “It
will be a routine visit, I promise,” said Cindy. “I just want to hear the word
on the street about the killing of those two other women, and what people think
happened to the suspect. I doubt there’s a connection between that and Shari’s
death, though.”

“But
you never know,” Mattheus conceded.

“It’s
very unlikely,” Cindy mused.

“Whether
I go down to Amaneuten Cove with you or not, I’m jumping in anyway,” Mattheus
insisted. “While you’re down there, I’ll check on what else I can find out
about Doug and also about those two women.”

“Mattheus,
it’s not necessary,” said Cindy, going over and put her arms around him. She
didn’t want him to do this to make up for last night. That wasn’t a reason to
start investigating.

“Of
course it’s necessary.” Mattheus grinned. “Once I’m working this with you,
things will go twice as fast and we’ll be back on track that much sooner
looking at wedding venues. Then our main concern will be what kind of champagne
we should offer our guests and whether we should place the watermelon slices
near the wedding cake.”

Cindy
couldn’t help but smile at Mattheus’s boyish charm.

“Once
we’re worrying about wedding venues, we won’t be dealing with hidden snakes and
iguanas that creep all over this gorgeous island.” Mattheus was on a roll. “By
the way did you happen to notice that iguanas are everywhere down here,
especially on rooftops? Their colors change, too, depending on where you happen
to find them.”

Mattheus
was playing with her and Cindy enjoyed it.

“Okay,
check Doug further if you want to,” Cindy conceded, “but he seems perfectly
fine to me. And besides, he has a flawless alibi.”

“Did
I ever tell you that I absolutely hate flawless alibis?” Mattheus quipped as he
hugged her. “Nothing is ever flawless, except for you, naturally. Go take your
trip and come back fast, no more than a couple of hours. I’ll be waiting here
to fill you in on what I find out.”

*

Amaneuten
Cove was at the edge of a small neighborhood couched behind a narrow road which
was dug out deep behind a cluster of
divi-divi
[cl5]
 
trees. Cindy knew she was getting
close as she followed the path of the
divi-divi
[cl6]
 
trees, which were a natural compass
in Aruba, always pointing in a southwesterly direction. Cindy had been
fascinated by these trees even before she’d arrived on the island. She’d heard
that attempts to plant
divi-divis
[cl7]
 
in other parts of the world had
proved futile, but they prospered here. These trees created a strange kind of
sloping shade that made Amaneuten Cove a perfect spot for drug dealers and
other criminals to hide in.

As
she walked onto Amaneuten Cove, Cindy saw a group of rickety shops, little
houses and one or two places to eat. She stopped at the first shop she passed,
a makeshift grocery, opened the shaky door, went inside. The store was empty at
the moment. Cindy looked around and then leaned against the counter, waiting
for someone to come out from the back.

In
a few moments a huge, fat woman in a red cotton dress and ripped apron came out
of the swinging doors in the back, got behind the counter, and greeted Cindy.

 “Yeah?”
she asked, her eyes half closed, as if they had seen everything and it was more
than enough.

“I’m
down here investigating the Townsend murders.” Cindy got right to the point,
hoping to jar the woman into giving her some information.

It
worked. The woman’s eyes opened wide. “Why are you down here now for?” she
asked nervously. “Those killings happened months ago.”

“Why
not now?” Cindy responded, half sprawling herself along the counter.

“Who
the hell are you anyway, honey?” the fat woman drawled.

“Cindy
Blaine, private detective,” Cindy replied without stopping a second. “Don’t
know if you heard, but there’s been a third killing, up at a fancy hotel.”

“Dear
Lord, no!” The news didn’t sit well. “I hadn’t heard that.” The woman’s big
chin shook like jelly. “Thought it was all finished and done with.”

“Nothing
is finished and done when a killer’s on the loose.” Cindy looked up at her as
if they’d known each other forever, were old-time drinking buddies.

“Don’t
know nothing about that killing, nothing!” the woman exclaimed.

Her
sudden answer gave Cindy hope. The woman didn’t say she didn’t know anything
about the killings that happened a few months ago, though.

“Who
did they think killed those two girls a few months ago?” Cindy pressed forward
confidentially.

“Billy
Sears,” the woman mumbled without thinking, “everybody knows that. Of course,
no one can pin it on him. They never will, either, if you ask me.”

“Where’s
Billy now?” Cindy asked, straightening up a bit and looking right into the
woman’s eyes.

“Long
gone, honey, that’s the word on the street. Some say he’s down in Venezuela,
hanging with the bobcat boys, if you know what I mean.”

Cindy
didn’t know what she meant, but pretended as if she did. “Umm, hum,” she said.

“Those
girls who died were in the wrong place at the wrong time, looking for trouble.”
The heavy woman leaned closer to Cindy. “But don’t get me wrong, either. No one
down here really thinks the killings are done. People down here are still edgy about
what Billy will be up to next.”

“Sounds
like you’re all sick and tired of him,” Cindy ventured.

“You
got that right, anyway,” the fat woman agreed, rubbing her wrinkled forehead
with the back of her hand.

“How
about the police? You talk to them about it?” Cindy took another tack.

At
that the fat woman grinned. “What do you take us for, idiots? We talk to the
cops and before you know it, we’re gone, too.”

“You’re
talking to me, though,” Cindy said in a muted tone.

“Yeah,
but you’re not a cop. From the looks of it, you’re a tourist down here in these
parts.”

Cindy
didn’t know if she should be offended. “I’m a detective,” she repeated.

The
fat woman just laughed. “Call yourself anything you want, honey. Down here in
Amaneuten, you’re a school girl who hasn’t even had her first lesson.”

Cindy
couldn’t help but smile back at that. “What’s the lesson?” she asked,
intrigued.

“You
got to learn that if you come down here alone, and step on the wrong toes, or
talk to the wrong people, you’ll go back up home in a body bag. Now I think
you’re cute and I like you, so I’m saying, just turn around, forget Billy
Sears. And don’t tell anyone else he killed another woman up at a fancy hotel.
People down here might laugh at you, but it’s not funny, because everyone’s scared
he’s gonna come back and make it bad for all of us.”

“There’s
no one down here who can stop him?” Cindy asked plainly.

“Can
you stop the ocean when high tide’s coming in?” The woman’s eyes started to
close again and her voice took on a grisly tone. “Who’s the woman you think he
killed up there, recently?”

“She
was a young woman down here with her fiancé looking for places to get married
in,” Cindy said.

The
big woman laughed at that. “Ah, the destination wedding crowd,” she mumbled.

“Is
that what you call them?” Cindy felt uneasy.

“What
a bunch!” The fat woman laughed louder and then shook her head, tossing away
the possibility that Billy had anything to do with that one. “Nah.” Her voice
became more emphatic. “That kind’s not Billy’s type. He doesn’t wrassle with
the gals who have guys with them anyway, just the desperate ones who come down
alone, looking for a good time.”

The
door of the shop opened then and two local guys sauntered in, looking at Cindy
strangely.

“She’s
just a tourist who came in to get my blueberry jelly,” the fat woman quickly
explained, protecting Cindy and turning to a shelf behind the counter. Then she
grabbed two jars of blueberry jelly off the shelves and dumped them into a
paper bag. “No problem.”

The
guys gave Cindy a long, slow look, anyway.

“So,
come back next week,” the fat woman continued to Cindy, “I’ll have the
raspberry jam for you then.”

Cindy
took the bag thankfully and looked over at the guys, who began closing in on
her slowly, inspecting her more carefully.

“Step
back,” the big woman ordered them, “you got to know who’s who.”

The
guys decided to take the fat woman at her word then and moved away, making room
for Cindy to leave.

Cindy
walked quickly to the door then, thinking that it made more sense to come back
later with Mattheus, if they found any connection between Billy Sears and
Shari’s death.

*

Once
she was outside, Cindy walked down the block, turned a corner and hailed a cab
that was parked at the curb. Cindy knew her trip to Amaneuten had been short,
but she was eager to get back and see Mattheus again. As she drove back to the
hotel Cindy wondered whether Mattheus had contacted the police and let them
know he was on the case now. Was he checking on Doug down at the station or
using his computer in their room?

Just
as he’d promised, Mattheus was in their hotel room waiting for Cindy when she
walked in.

“That
was quick,” he said, looking up from his computer, surprised. The table he was
working on was strewn with papers. It looked like he’d gotten a lot done since
she’d left.

“The
people down in Amaneuten know who the killer of those other two women is,”
Cindy started, putting the bags of jelly down on the table.

“Who?”
Mattheus was taken aback.

 “A
guy named Billy Sears. A big woman at the grocery down there told me she
thought he was down in Venezuela right now.”

“Wow,”
Mattheus mused, “the guy’s probably cooling his heels.”

“People
down there feel nervous about him,” Cindy went on.

“Wait
a minute.” Mattheus lifted his hand as if to stop an oncoming train in its tracks.
“It’s all very interesting, but as of now, that’s a completely different case.
If we can’t find a connection between him and Shari, we leave that to the
authorities.”

Cindy
was about to say that the authorities had declared the case cold and had no
real interest in warming it up now, but she decided to hold back. She knew that
she and Mattheus couldn’t launch into two cases at the same time, especially
not in Mattheus’s current frame of mind.

“I
guess there’s a lot of cases that stay open, like low-hanging fruit on trees
that never get ripe,” Cindy mused out loud.

“That’s
a good way of putting it.” Mattheus got up from the table he was working at and
stretched his legs. “You’re getting the point.”

Cindy
wasn’t sure what point she was getting exactly.

“You’re
realizing that we can’t solve every single case that comes out way.” Mattheus
went over to her. “Sometimes there’s a nest of cases tucked into one another,”
he said as he put his arms around her lovingly. “I’m happy you’re back so
quickly.”

They
hugged for a few minutes and then, satisfied, Mattheus returned to the table he
was working at.

“Find
anything interesting so far?” Cindy asked.

“I
talked to the police,” Mattheus started filling her in, “and did some of my own
footwork, called some contacts and dug into the computer. Looks like Doug’s a
rising star at work. He gets in early, works late hours, driven to be the top
of the heap.”

Cindy
wasn’t surprised to hear that. It was the sense she had about him. “What else?”
She wanted more.

“Turns
out that Shari wasn’t his only love interest since college,” Mattheus
continued. “The two of them broke up now and then and kept getting back
together. The longest breakup lasted about six months, when he saw a woman
named Cayenne.”

“That’s
an unusual name.” Cindy was struck by it.

“Yes,
it is, but there was nothing particularly unusual about the woman, though.
She’s someone he met through work, a paralegal for a firm a few blocks away,”
Mattheus continued.

“How
did Shari feel about that relationship?” It was interesting information and
Cindy wondered about it.

“I
have no idea about that,” said Mattheus, “but the person who told me about it
said that Doug wasn’t really himself when he was seeing Cayenne. He seemed
better and happier when he and Shari got back together again.”