One Way or Another: A Novel (3 page)

Marco bet he didn’t or there wouldn’t be many people able to walk out of there. He signaled for coffee, and a ham sandwich, which he gave to the dog. He took his cell phone from his wet bathing shorts pocket. It was ruined, of course. There was no phone at his cottage and he eyed Costas’s landline instrument and asked if he might use it. Costas pushed it toward him, then watched, alarmed, as Marco dialed many numbers.

“
Where
you call?”

“Oh, just New York.” Marco smiled at him. “My girlfriend is there.”

“New York?
U-S of A
?” Costas was stunned.

Marco nodded then heaved a sigh of relief as Martha picked up.

“
Sweetie,
” she said in that soft husky Brit accent he so enjoyed, “I was just thinking about you.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” he said, his mind still on the red-haired girl who had drowned, and his memories. “I’m in trouble,” he said, and then explained what had happened. “And I think it’s murder,” he finished.

There was a long silence while she thought about it. Then, “I’ll be right there,” she said, as though she was just next door and not thousands of miles away.

3

When Marco called her from Turkey, Martha Patron was in her pajamas in New York. She thanked God he couldn’t see her. The pajamas were flannel because she was always cold when alone in bed; blue and white stripes like a prison uniform, and she wore red bed socks. Added to which, taking advantage of a night alone, she had lathered her face in Vaseline, something she did once or twice a month and which she believed gave her skin a soft glow. In fact she often used it all over her body, of course only when there was no one to see her. She had just washed her hair and was letting it dry, skipping a comb through it and giving her head an upside-down shake every now and then. Martha’s hair was quite beautiful, a natural light honey blond, dead straight and blunt cut to just below her shoulders, something she maintained every three weeks. Expensive, but worth it, and anyhow she offset the cost against the pricey face creams she did not buy. It worked for her.

If you analyzed her looks, something Martha did critically every night before bed and in the morning when she first got up, she was definitely not beautiful: her jaw was too square and her chin too determined; her cheekbones were good though, for which she was grateful because, after all, that’s what held up the rest of her face. Her eyes were her best feature, rounded and endearingly childlike, a beautiful pale blue color that in some lights looked almost transparent.

In fact Martha was far from childlike; she was practical, competent, and determined. She was good at her job, which you might have expected to be something in fashion and, in a way, it was. Martha was an interior designer, not of the plush sofa, fluffy pillow variety, more of the clean, spare, industrial type—what Marco called her “concrete bunker look.” Needless to say she’d had a go at doing over Marco’s Paris studio, a one-room place, large though, and with a gallery sleeping loft where the mattress still rested on the floor, as it had since the day Marco moved in, and the chairs were threadbare green Eames worn practically to the frame. He had allowed Martha to do over his bathroom, though, which he described as cool—all steel and white tile, not a hint of granite in sight because Marco hated granite. The kitchen had rubbed concrete counters and gray slate floors.

The work part of the studio itself remained as it was when Marco had bought it with money earned from his first decent commission, a portrait of a French fashion icon that made him famous and sought after. Then he’d bought the tiny slab of a one-room house on the Turkish coast, with the small wooden boat, the gulet, with its pointed prow and wide painted eyes, which Marco said always seemed to be showing him the way, and which he had not allowed Martha to touch.

One look at that small boat and Martha knew there was nothing she could do with it. No cushions were ever going to turn it into the yacht she’d been expecting when Marco invited her to stay with him in Turkey. It had not mattered, they were so enamored of each other they hardly noticed their surroundings, until they came up for air and gazed, glasses of cool white wine in hand, at the beauty all around them.

Love, Martha decided, was what made her world go round. She had been content with her work, enjoyed what she did, had a busy social life, friends, a big family who mostly lived together, sharing the ancient country home in England, somewhat ramshackle now, but still beautiful, all mellow golden Cotswold stone and dark beams, as well as her own small and very charming New York apartment. Of course she had been in love before, madly, horribly, but he’d been too attractive, too smooth, too popular with women. He’d flirted and he’d cheated and he’d caste her into despair. She met Marco on the rebound in an antique store, both of them examining a strange brass ram’s-head lamp which she said was Egyptian and which he told her was certainly French.

They’d checked it out on Google over cups of coffee and bacon-and-egg sandwiches on kaiser rolls in the café around the corner. Martha could still remember clearly what she was wearing that day. It was a Saturday and under her coat she had on retro flared jeans and a skinny black cashmere sweater with pearl buttons. Her hair was held back with an elastic and she wore no makeup. She liked makeup-free weekends, when she had the time to herself; it gave her skin, and her, time to breathe, not to have to think about appearance, not to be “on,” or to be charming to please her clients. With only herself to please that afternoon she was not charming to Marco.

“Excuse me, but I saw that lamp first,” she’d said frostily. Marco already held it in his hands and was examining it.

He glanced up at her, taking her quickly in, the painter in him finding her bone structure interesting, the man in him finding her coldness irritating.

“Is that so? Then I wonder how I managed to pick it up and contemplate purchasing it. If it was already taken, if you see what I mean.”

“I do not see what you mean.” Martha reached out for the lamp.

Marco hefted it teasingly from one hand to the other, pretending to drop it.

“Jesus,” she exclaimed, snatching it from him. “You might have broken it.”

“But I didn’t.”

They stopped looking at the lamp and took a long look at each other.

“I was thinking of getting a coffee,” she said, making the first move.

And that was the beginning of that.

4

Through her job, Martha knew everybody. She had worked with many of them on their various homes, and now she was able to make a few calls and hitch a lift on a private Learjet to Paris. From there she accompanied a fashion shoot on their plane to Istanbul, then on to the small local airfield where Marco was waiting to meet her.

It was very hot and dark clouds pushed the blue from the sky, portending another storm. Marco knew the long journey must have been rough and Martha must be tired, yet she walked down the steps off the small plane immaculate as ever, in a white shirt, sleeves rolled, black skinny jeans, and red canvas espadrilles. An oversized white tote hung from her shoulder, stuffed with magazines and the goodies she knew Marco liked, including four Snickers bars; two slightly stale New York bagels that would be okay toasted; six giant sticks of red licorice, which she liked too; and a bottle of the Jim Beam she thought would make a change from the arak or whatever they drank in places like Turkey and Greece. She also carried the dog-eared trade paperback of
War and Peace
which for twenty years she had been promising herself to read. It was that or
Pride and Prejudice,
but she found Jane Austen incredibly slow and anyhow much preferred finding her way through all those Russian names. She was still on page thirty-five, but had hope.

She looked wonderful, Marco thought, dazzled anew by her wide blue eyes and swinging blond hair and the curvy body he knew so well. Martha was exactly the right height to fit under his arm when they walked along together, as they did now, out of the airport to Marco’s battered Jeep Safari with its rattling canvas top. He carried the heavy tote, demanding to know what was in there, then shoved Em from the passenger seat into the back, while Martha took the dog’s place.

“I feel badly,” she said, turning to caress Em’s snout, hanging over her shoulder. “Throwing her out of her rightful place.”

“Em’s good at sharing.”

Their eyes linked and there was a long silence. “I’m glad you came,” he said finally.

“Me too.”

Nothing more was said as Marco made his way through the suburban sprawl and out onto the sea road where the colors of the water changed in stripes of pale turquoise to greenish blue to cobalt. The sun sparked off the tiny wavelets in diamond points of light. Small pastel houses clung to rocky hillsides and white villas overlooked the sea, half hidden under swathes of fuchsia bougainvillea. The road narrowed and the countryside became more rural. They drove through a couple of seaside villages where fishing boats rested until they would sail into the moonlight and not be back until dawn.

Martha said suddenly, “Nothing bad could happen here, it’s too simple, too peaceful. I feel it in my heart.”

Marco glanced sideways at her. “That’s why I came here,” he said. “And why I didn’t want to believe what I saw with my own eyes.”

Em rested her head on Martha’s shoulder, drooling all over her pristine white shirt. Martha stroked the dog absently. “But you have no proof,” she said.

He shook his head. “Not even a body.”

“Marco, did you ever think she might simply have gone in for a swim? I know you said the storm was coming, but girls can be impulsive, a spur-of-the-moment thing, perhaps she’d had a row with her boyfriend.…”

“Perhaps she had, and maybe he was the one that bashed her head in.
Martha!
That girl’s head was covered in blood. I could see the white of her skull! Someone hit her. And hit her with something hard.” He shrugged. “Anyhow, I believe she was murdered. And I want to find her, and who did it.”

Martha was silent. She wondered what she was doing here. Marco seemed set on this idea; he did not seem to want to escape from it and simply enjoy a vacation.

They drove through the village, past the harbor crammed with holiday rental boats and the happy sound of English voices having a good time. At the end of the long, cobbled street an illuminated red sign blinked on and off.
COSTAS BAR AND GRILL
. Marco pulled up and Em immediately leapt out and headed, tail waving, through the beaded curtain.

“Come on in,” a man called from inside, as a shy maiden swept back the jangling curtain and stood, frowning uncertainly at them. The young woman’s brown eyes widened as she took in Martha’s appearance, then she stepped back and said, coolly, “Welcome, Marco’s fiancée. We know all about you.”

Martha threw a questioning glance at Marco, who lifted a shoulder. “I said you were my girl and you were coming to stay.”

Martha followed the dog into the cool, dark bar. She stood for a minute, adjusting to the dim interior after the sunlight, hearing a distant peal of thunder.

Costas, haggard and mustached, eyes blazing a welcome, took her hand and dropped a whiskery kiss on it. Suddenly exhausted—after all, she had been traveling forever, what with the connections and the delays—Martha sank into a woven leather chair and accepted a pink drink, clinking with ice, brought to her by the shy maiden with the curtain of black hair and the sexy body.

“My wife, Artemis,” Costas introduced her proudly.

Artemis kissed Martha three times on her cheeks and said something in Turkish. “She says you smell good,” Costas told Martha, who dove into her huge white bag and found amongst the accumulated junk, buried beneath
War and Peace,
the small freebie vial of Chanel, which she presented to the girl. “So she will smell good too,” she told Costas.

But Marco was looking at the gold chain Artemis was wearing: a thin rope linked with a tiny gold panther. Also dangling from the chain were the initials
AM
. He wondered, out loud, where Costas had found such a charming piece.

“The police had it,” Costas explained.

Martha recognized the signature panther and said, surprised, “But it’s Cartier. How lovely.”

Artemis lifted the initialed chain and inspected it. “Cartier?” she said doubtfully. “I found it on the beach, washed up by the waves. I thought it simply some pretty trinket lost by a tourist while swimming. It happens all the time.”

“Once,” Costas added, “someone found a diamond ring. Three stones in gold. Of course he gave it to the police and it was claimed by an engaged couple; they’d had a fight and she threw it in the sea, but they reconciled. It’s the only thing of value ever found on our beach.”

“Well, now there’s something else.” Marco remembered the girl in the blue dress whose body had not been found, and had the sudden gut feeling it belonged to her. He asked Artemis if he might take a look. She lifted her heavy black hair and unfastened the lobster clasp, sliding the chain reluctantly through her fingers as she handed it to Marco.

“Martha was right,” he said, pointing out the tiny Cartier signature, making Artemis sigh because she realized she could not keep it if it was expensive.

“Then we must hand it back to the police,” Costas said. He felt sorry for Artemis, losing her chain. “I’ll buy you a new one,” he promised.

Marco paid for their drinks and he and Martha held hands as they walked back to his cabin, with Em darting ahead, seeking out interesting scents.

“You’re thinking it belonged to the girl who fell off the boat,” Martha said, tripping on the stony path so Marco had to grab her. He put an arm around her waist. It felt good and they smiled at each other, pausing to kiss.

“Like teenagers,” Martha whispered, burying her face in his neck. It smelled of clean air and sea salt and fresh sweat and faintly of the citrusy cologne he used, a combination that was uniquely his. But Marco had other things on his mind, and he looked away, staring out to sea, obviously thinking about what had been said, about the gold chain and the initials.