No Hiding Behind the Potted Palms! A Dance with Danger Mystery #7 (41 page)

“Why?” I asked. If I was
going to die tonight, I had to know. “Why are you doing this? What
have I ever done to you?”

“Nothing personal. I get
paid to do this. Now, why don’t you be a good girl and make this
easy on yourself?”

“I have a better idea,” said
another voice, appearing in the bedroom doorway. “You get your
stinking hands in the air before I lose my head and shoot your
sorry ass to bits.”

“No, said another voice,
coming from the verandah. “Let me take a shot at the
bastard.”

“Better still, let’s all
take a whack at the bastard!” Angelo growled, entering from the
corridor. I was stunned to see all of the security people from the
Beauty of the Seas pouring into the suite. The man in black was on
his belly, hands behind his back, with little resistance. Bob gave
me a big grin as he walked through the door.

“I told you I’d take care of
you, Mariem!”

“Joe, you okay?” Angelo bent
over the butler and cut him loose.

“No biggie,” said Joseph,
standing up. He came over to me, extended his hand, and introduced
himself. “Joe Sulunge, U. S. Department of the
Treasury.”

“You’re not a butler?” I was
confused. “But what about the domestic incident?”

“We needed to flush out Tom
Terrific here.” Bob walked over to the man on the floor and removed
the black hood. “Let me introduce Juan Tomas Jiménez Gomez, gun for
hire.”

“I’m not talking! I want a
lawyer.”

“Good luck with that, buddy.
We’re at sea, in case you hadn’t noticed,” Tony sneered.

“I’m not going to be
extradited!”

“How right you are. That’s
because you’re not leaving this ship until we dock, three days from
now.”

“You can’t keep me locked
up! That’s illegal!”

“Are you sure about that,
Sherlock? You boarded this boat in New York. You menaced an
American citizen in international waters. You assaulted a federal
agent. And you’re wanted for the murders of several people. You’re
in the system for a long, long time, pal.”

The man in black was taken
away, escorted by several security people, with Joe in
charge.

“What did I miss?” I sat
down on the sofa, stunned. “This was all planned? It was some kind
of Treasury sting?”

“Not exactly,” Bob
explained. “I told you the truth when I said that Assistant United
States Attorney Megan Plourde wasn’t interested in you. She’s not.
Declan Dowd, on the other hand, is under investigation. He’s
suspected of hiring the guy who murdered Maura Trelawney and also
hiring Jiménez to kill you.”

“But why? Why would Declan
want me dead?”

Bob came over to the sofa
and sat down next to me. He reached out a hand and patted my
knee.

“Be prepared for another
shock, Mariem.”

“What kind of
shock?”

“Henri isn’t dead. He’s
alive and living in Senegal with his mistress, Lorena del Gatos,
also known as Maria Velez Suerto.”

“The woman who took over
Maura’s accounts at Oracle?”

I sat there for several
minutes without saying another word. My thoughts swirled around my
head with no place to go. Henri was not dead. I was not a widow. I
was a victim.

“The Treasury Department has
had Declan under surveillance for seven months now. When he hired
Jiménez to kill you, it was all recorded on tape. We knew you were
in danger, so we came along for the ride.”

“Meaning what? You’re still
a Treasury agent?” I glanced at Bob and saw him nod.

“You got me to open up about
Henri. Why? Was I a suspect?”

He looked down at his hands
as he put them on his knees and then he took a measured
breath.

“Mariem, you’re married to
Henri Dufours. When your husband came up on our radar screen three
years ago, after that trip to Myanmar, it was because we had solid
intel that he was laundering millions of dollars with his partner
at Grenois, Louis Givernette. They had set up several international
corporations that were raking in the bucks, legitimately and
illegitimately. We’ve never brought you in for questioning because
we didn’t want to tip our hand. But we did need to know whether you
were aware of Henri’s business dealings.”

“And now?” My voice sounded
bitter, defeated.

“Now comes the fun part,”
said Bob cheerfully. “We’re going to bump you off.”

“What?”

“Once you’re dead, Henri and
his friends won’t look for you any more.”

“But the killer will know he
didn’t kill me!”

“Actually, he thinks you’re
a Treasury agent, posing as the woman he was hired to kill. We
supposedly hid you in Cabin 734A, where a second contract killer
succeeded in killing you.”

“There was a second contract
killer?”

“Nice touch, right? We’ve
floated the story that someone from the cartel sent a hit man after
you because the Justice Department was launching an investigation
into Grenois Financial. Two bodies are about to wash up, yours and
the non-existent hit man, and they’ll be retrieved by the United
States Navy, who just happen to be conducting maneuvers in the area
as part of a training exercise.”

“Very convenient,” I told
him sardonically. I wasn’t really sure how I felt about all this.
Everything was upside down and nothing was right side up. But
somewhere inside of me, there was a little piece of hope growing.
Maybe I could finally put the ghost of Henri to rest, even if he
was still alive.

“It is, isn’t it?” Bob
responded jovially. “Care to watch the action? The Navy should be
arriving any moment.”

The Beauty of the Seas was
lit up like the Fourth of July, all her lights aimed at the water,
as a frigate arrived on the scene. We watched as teams of divers
were dispatched in six Zodiac inflatable boats. They spread out
across the sea in search of the non-existent bodies.

“The Navy gets a chance to
run a real training mission, we have eyewitnesses who see the
recovery of the bodies, and you get a new life.”

Chapter Eight
--

“What will happen to Henri
and that woman?”

“We want to watch what
Declan does after he finds out you’re dead. You see, the reason
that he got involved with you was because Henri wanted that two
million dollars. It was Declan’s job to get the insurance payment
away from you. What’s more, what you don’t know, is that Declan
insured your life for two million dollars, just before you two
supposedly got married.”

“Which we
didn’t.”

“This was all about Henri
needing money, Mariem. He faked his own death to convince the
cartel to stop looking for him. And he had Declan hire a hit man so
that, Declan could get your estate as your heir, which he’ll turn
over to Henri when things cool down, through a series of shell
companies. There’s a will on file that you supposedly made out just
before you married Declan. Henri didn’t have time to put any money
away before the Justice Department started investigating his
connections to drug traffickers in Asia and Mexico, so he’s
strapped for cash. The cartels were starting to look for him, as a
pre-emptive strike, to prevent him from flipping on them. He needs
your money.”

“Which actually isn’t my
money, because Henri isn’t dead,” I pointed out.

“Well, that’s partly true.
You’re not entitled to the insurance money, but you are entitled to
everything else.”

“I don’t want it if it’s
money made from drug trafficking.”

“You want the part that was
legitimate?” Bob gave me a smile.

“Actually, yes.”

“Oh, look.” Bob pointed to
the television, where an excited crowd was gathered. “You’ve
officially kicked the bucket.”

“What happens to me now?” I
asked, sitting next to Bob as he was transfixed, his eyes glued to
the action on the ship’s television feed. The Navy put on a big
show of retrieving my supposed body.

“We’ll move you to a new
location, get you set up in a new life.”

“Oh.”

“Not what you wanted to
hear?” he inquired. I shrugged him off, still trying to process the
many changes piled at my feet. I went from being a widow who made
bad investments to being the wife of an international criminal to
being a nobody without a life, all in the space of two and a half
days.

“Mariem, look at me.” Bob
took my hands in his. “I know it’s not going to be easy, but you’re
going to get through all this. You’re going to be fine. You’ll
start a new life, a happy life.”

“A secret life.” Maybe
that’s what was bothering me most. When I married Henri, I gave up
my family because he didn’t want to be inconvenienced. I gave up my
friends because they interfered with Henri’s plans. I gave up my
art, because it took me away from Henri. I gave up my heart,
because I knew somewhere deep inside of me, my husband never loved
me. And now, as the shattered pieces of my life lay all around me,
I was supposed to pick up my life and reinvent myself. I didn’t
think I had it in me. There was too much debris in the way, and I
couldn’t see the road ahead. I turned to Bob.

“Can I ask you
something?”

“Sure.”

“Why did he marry me? Why
me? It’s not like he loved me.”

“He needed a wife. He needed
an image that made him seem legitimate.”

“But he was legitimate when
I met him.”

“Was he?” Bob scratched the
back of his neck, trying to find the right words. I knew from the
expression on his face that there was more bad news to come. “Henri
Dufours is actually Jean-Paul Bardot. He comes from a family of
French profiteers who built their fortune during World War II as
smugglers in Calais. They operated a well-known black market. His
family has been in the heroin business for at least forty years.
You only met a handful of his relatives, am I right?”

I nodded. Now I was
beginning to understand. He kept my family at arm’s length just as
he kept his own. But what about all the business trips he took?
What about all of the meetings he had in the city?

“You were his entry into
respectable society, Mariem. Weren’t you involved in a lot of
charity work? And you were a painter who exhibited a couple of
times a year. You gave him cover for his nefarious business
dealings.”

“That’s terrible!” A tear
slipped down my cheek. Frustration and disappointment collided on
my cheeks as I began to sob. Bob wrapped me in his big, strong
arms. He didn’t try to talk me out of my feelings. He just let me
cry it out. And when I was done, he took my face in his hands and
peered into my eyes.

“Mariem, you are stronger
and smarter than you know. You will get through this. You will
become the woman you always should have been. You will start a new
life that is yours for the taking, and you will decide how you will
live it. No pity. No regrets. Understand? We have people who will
help you. We’ll be your family for now. And once you’re settled and
safe in your new life, we’ll find a way to reconnect you to your
own family. Can you trust me on this?”

I looked at those mahogany
eyes, with all the secrets they held, and I knew instantly that he
meant what he said. And in that moment, I began to dream of my new
life.

I remained sequestered for
the remainder of the cruise, separate from the other passengers.
When the time came to exit the ship, I wore a wig and a nurse’s
uniform, wheeling Mary, the little old lady down the gang plank. It
turned out that my breakfast companion, the late Bernie’s widow,
was one of Bob’s operatives. She took occasional stints as part of
the support team.

The first thing she did when
she arrived in the suite was to apologize for having deceived me
about her real purpose in sitting down with me. The second was to
tell me Bob was a good man. The third was to tell me not to give up
on love.

“My Bernie really was a
prince,” she insisted. “Don’t ever give up hope.”

An hour before disembarking
in New York, with both of us playing our new roles of mother and
daughter, we made our way through U.S. Customs. It was my first
time using my new identity. My hands shook slightly as I handed
over my new passport. It had stamps from Canada and Bermuda, as if
I had been there recently.

“You’re just Lucie
Fairweather from Habersham, South Carolina, traveling with your
mother, Mary McCaffrey. You’re both widows,” Bob informed me, as he
handed the document to me half an hour earlier. Now I waited,
barely breathing, as the customs officer examined the
booklet.

“Did you enjoy your trip?”
the woman asked me, as she peered at me through her glasses. I
remembered what Bob told me. I should be as honest as possible,
especially about my emotions, because otherwise they could give me
away, but I shouldn’t volunteer too much information.

“Actually, no. We spent most
of our time in the cabin. My mother is a new widow, and she misses
my dad a lot.” I forced myself to recall Mary’s talk of her late
husband as I spoke. The customs officer peered down at the morose
Mary, sitting in the wheelchair, and nodded
sympathetically.