Heaven Is High (9 page)

“Hey, Gabe!” one of them called out before they came into sight. “You'll never guess what.”

“So it would be futile to try,” he said.

They came to the table. Two of them looked to be under thirty, one a blond with intense blue eyes, and tanned to a deep, rich mahogany color. The second young man, equally tanned, had dark brown hair and dark eyes. They both were muscular, athletes to all appearances. The third man looked a few years older, dark-haired with dark blue eyes, and heavier than the other two without being overweight, just more filled out. They all looked her over with interest as Gabe Newhouse made the introductions.

“Bobby Tyson,” he said, indicating the blond man. “Ben Bollinger and David Grinwald. Barbara Holloway. She arrived today,” he added.

Without waiting for an invitation, the three newcomers pulled chairs up to the table and sat down. “Henry's bringing beer,” Bobby said. “May I?” He picked up a shrimp as he asked.

“Barbara, do you scuba dive?” Ben asked, leaning toward her.

“No. Never have.”

“We could teach you in a couple of hours. You have to see that reef out there. It's fantastic, second only to the Great Barrier Reef in Australia. Fish like out of Disneyland. It's an underwater fairyland.”

“Would you be interested in getting in on the ground floor of our enterprise to develop a world-class playland?” Bobby asked, picking up another shrimp.

“No,” she said. Gabe Newhouse was smiling faintly, leaning back in his chair.

“It's the chance of a lifetime,” Bobby said. “Charter member, all that kind of thing. Wait till you see what we have in mind. Mayan ruins for day tours. A stupendous waterfall, where we were today,” he said in an aside to Gabe. “Botanical gardens, monkeys in the wild, jaguars, also for guided day tours. We'll have glass-bottomed boats, windsurfing, fishing trips, the best beaches on earth, scuba diving and snorkeling…”

Gabe's mouth was twitching, but he suppressed the smile and gazed out at the water.

Barbara held up her hand. “If I upended my piggy bank I might be able to come up with two dollars and some cents. So I'm out of it.” She glanced at her watch, prepared to return to her room.

“What was it that I could never guess?” Gabe asked then.

“Oh, yeah,” Ben said. “We get to go see the orchids tomorrow. Santos said okay, since his brother gave permission, he would honor that decision.” He turned to Barbara again. “Come with us. It's the world's best and biggest collection of orchids. At the Santos estate. Julius Santos agreed to let us photograph the flowers for the brochure David's going to put together.” He nodded toward David Grinwald, who had not said a word.

Barbara picked up her wineglass, more to have something to do than because she wanted more wine. Julius Santos, Uncle Julius, Mrs. Thurston hiding in the wilderness, a murdered father.… She felt almost light-headed as the pieces fell into place. The Santos Shipping Company closed temporarily. Because Augustus Santos had been murdered? Anaia's father murdered? Anaia Santos Thurston? Her uncle searching for her? She put the glass down again without taking a sip.

As Henry approached with a pitcher of beer and steins, she reached into her purse for her room key, with her room number visible on a plastic tag. Gabe shook his head at Henry, motioned toward the shrimp and wine, and then toward himself.

“Barbara,” he said, “it has been delightful chatting with you for even this short a time. It will go on my tab.”

He was regarding her with the same amusement he had shown toward the broncos, but also with an intensity that had not been evident before.

“I'd rather not,” she said, holding up her room key, but Henry was already walking away. “Thanks,” she said to Gabe. She looked over the three younger men and nodded to them. “Good luck with your project.”

“David, how long will it take to get out to the Santos plantation?” Ben asked.

“Hour and a half probably,” David said. “Maybe a little longer. It's not clear how far off the highway the place really is.”

“Barbara, if you decide to come along, we'll meet in the lobby at around noon,” Ben said. “How can you resist? A fabulous collection of orchids!”

“You should go, Barbara,” Gabe said. “A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Something to tell your friends about back home.”

“I'll decide after a good night's sleep,” she said as lightly as she could.

She thought she could feel Gabe's eyes on her as she left the terrace and the bar. She stopped at the front desk where she asked the clerk if there was a telephone directory for outlying areas.

“It's all in one directory,” the clerk said with a smile. “There should be one in your room. The areas are separated by districts, but it's easy to navigate. If you want an outside line, just dial nine first.”

She thanked him and went up to her room, telling herself it couldn't be this easy. There was a catch. She was kidding herself thinking pieces could fall from the sky for free. “Like manna,” she muttered as she unlocked her door and entered her room. The problem was that she didn't believe in manna, or any other miracle, she added to herself.

She found the directory in a drawer, sat at a table by the wide sliding door to a balcony, and started searching. In a place called Belmopan, Anaia S. Thurston was listed. Belmopan, she repeated to herself, then remembered it was now the capital of the country, in the western area, nearly to the border with Guatemala.

She pulled the telephone close enough to dial. She felt almost dazed by this development, unbelieving, waiting for the catch to blindside her.

She got an answering machine, and after hesitating only a moment, she said, “Mrs. Thurston, my name is Barbara Holloway. I'm from Eugene, Oregon, in the United States, and I must talk to you about the death of your sister Shala. She died three years ago in Haiti.”

She added the hotel name and her room telephone number. “I'll wait here for your call,” she said and hung up.

It was a long wait. She ordered a pot of coffee and sat on her balcony for a short time as it became dark. Lights reflected in water, lights in windows, advertisements, another hotel canopy, traffic, everywhere lights began to come on. She felt too exposed on the balcony and went inside again.

The room that had seemed almost spacious on her arrival seemed to be shrinking minute by minute as she paced from the sliding door to the bathroom by the opposite wall and back, over and over. And she might not even call back, she told herself many times. Wait all night? All the following day? She emptied the coffee carafe into her cup and drank cool coffee.

It could even be the wrong person, she told herself. For all she knew Thurston was not that uncommon a name here, and Anaia might be every third girl's name. She was too prone to leap to conclusions. Hasty decisions were too often wrong decisions. The phone rang. It was ten minutes past nine.

“Hello. Barbara Holloway speaking,” she said, sinking onto the side of the bed.

“Who are you? How do you dare talk about my sister? Tell a lie about my sister? What do you want?”

The voice was low-pitched, not quite a whisper, and it had a mixture of indignation, hostility, outrage, possibly even fear.

“Mrs. Thurston, please listen. Your sister did not die on that freighter twenty-one years ago. She was taken to Haiti where she lived as a captive until her death. When you both were very young, after the death of your mother, you were sent to a convent boarding school where you remained until you were seventeen, when you came into an inheritance and could live independently. You attended the university, and two years later your sister also attended. You married Lawrence Thurston, and your sister fell in love with Juan Hernandez, and fled with him to Jamaica to go to his parents. Please, Mrs. Thurston, I can offer proof of what I'm telling you.”

“Stop!” Anaia said, and now it was a whisper. “No more on the telephone. Yes, we must talk. Stay where you are. I'll call back in a few minutes.” Without waiting for a response she hung up.

Barbara felt weak as she replaced the phone in the cradle. She could sense warning flags waving all around her. Too easy. Too fast. There was a catch. It couldn't be this easy to find a stranger in a foreign country, to have falling manna practically bury her.

When the phone rang again, she snatched it up. “Holloway.”

“Listen carefully. On Saturday morning leave your hotel and turn left. Walk to the intersection and keep going to the next block. Enter a shop called Mary's Clothing. Be sure to come out at ten o'clock. A young man will be leaning against a Jeep. He'll be holding a tourist folder advertising Mayan ruins, and he will ask if you want to see them. You ask him his name and he'll say Philip. You ask how much, and he'll say ten dollars American. Take the folder and put it in your handbag and get in the Jeep. Then follow his instructions. Do you have all that?”

“I have it,” Barbara said.

“Unless it goes exactly the way I've outlined, don't get in the Jeep,” Anaia Thurston said, and she hung up without another word.

Bailey's words of warning arose in Barbara's head as she replaced her phone.
You don't have a clue about what you're stepping into.

9

Barbara had a short list of necessities to buy on Friday morning. First, a hat. Just nine o'clock and the sun was already fierce. Almost as important was a bag of some sort large enough to carry the manila clasp envelope locked in her suitcase with Binnie's material ready to take to Anaia. She had planned on spending days in official buildings, talking to businesspeople, dressed for business, in places where such an envelope would not have been unseemly. But as a casual tourist such an envelope would be out of place. She also wanted sandals, and to get out of the damned panty hose that had her itching from crotch to toes. She walked from the hotel toward the shore, window-shopping.

Souvenirs. Toys, kites … and finally a beach accessory shop. She entered and was satisfied that she had found the right place. A profusion of wide-brimmed hats was on display.

Half an hour later she left, wearing a lightweight hat and carrying a matching beach bag, both made of linen decorated with embroidered orchids in rainbow colors. That seemed appropriate since she had decided to go with the broncos to see the orchids, and to meet the man who might or might not be a killer, who might or might not be Anaia Santos Thurston's uncle Julius.

A short walk later, she found a shoe store. She added sandals to her purchases, and moved on. Sunscreen and sunglasses would complete her list, and a notions store provided both. A few souvenirs would be appropriate in her role as a tourist, she decided, and wandered through several shops before she settled on a jaguar and a monkey carved in a lustrous green serpentine stone.

She examined the blouses, skirts, and shorts on display in the window of Mary's Clothing shop, but did not enter. “Tomorrow,” she said under her breath, and turned to go back to her hotel.

At twelve o'clock when the broncos showed up in the lobby she was standing before the display of tourist attractions, reading about the zoo. She stuffed the folder into her big bag along with the others already there, and turned to say hello. David was carrying two camera bags, and under his arm a tripod and something white rolled up.

“Hey!” Bobby said. “Great, you're coming with us? Add a little class to our act.”

“If you're sure Mr. Santos won't consider it an imposition, since I haven't been invited as you guys have been.”

“I'll say you're my assistant,” David said. “And you can start now, if you will. Want to carry the screen and tripod for me?”

She put on her hat and took the tripod and screen. “Now I'm official, I guess.”

“I'll bring the Jeep around,” Ben said, and trotted off.

“We have to use a Jeep,” Bobby said. “You wouldn't believe some of the so-called roads we've been on. They don't believe in guardrails here, or in paving roads, either. You should have seen the one we were on yesterday, going to the waterfall. It's a sixteen-hundred-foot drop and that so-called road is without guardrails, or even a shoulder. Just the road and straight down. And some of those ruins don't even have roads going to them, just a little clearing of jungle and a track.”

He was still talking about the roads or lack of them when Ben drove to the hotel entrance and blew the horn.

“Barbara, why don't you sit up front with me,” David said after stashing his equipment in the Jeep. The camera bags were in the front. “I think your feet will have room enough.”

There was little traffic, and Barbara recalled that Belize City, the only real city in the country apparently, had fewer than fifty thousand residents.

“We'll make one stop at a grocery store down the road a bit,” David said. “Bottles of water. It can get pretty hot out in the countryside.”

“And this is the cool season,” Bobby said. “But the people who come for the water fun won't care how hot it gets in the jungle. We'll tell them it's part of the adventure, jungles, heat, a cooler with drinks with every guided tour…”

“Trekking through the jungle to the ruins will be another part of the adventure,” Ben said. “Something to write home about. We've been to three so far and not through yet. More trekking, more jungle. Way it goes.”

David evidently paid no attention whatsoever to anything Bobby or Ben said. And he also did not volunteer much of anything. A hired hand, Barbara thought. Neither of the other two had offered to help with the camera gear, and his taking the wheel had been accepted without question.

They stopped for the water, and soon were on the road again. The commercial sections were left behind, giving way to residential areas with blooming trees and bushes along with more varieties of palm trees than Barbara had known existed. The neat gardens and yards were replaced by shantytowns, shacks and huts, and then mangrove swamps and wetlands with low-growing grasses and scrub palmettos.