Permanent Sunset (2 page)

“We’d better get going. We’ve only got a few hours to find her and set this right,” Sabrina said.

“If it can be,” said Sean.

“Wait, you can’t be seen in yesterday’s clothes on your wedding day; everyone will know something is wrong.” Henry sent him off to freshen up before the search for the missing bride began.

Sabrina knew Henry was waiting for her to scold him. She said nothing.

“What, don’t you want to tell me it was incredibly stupid to go and talk to Elena before we left last night? I knew you’d think so. That’s why I didn’t mention it before.”

Sabrina looked up from the checklist for the brunch after ticking off three items.

“You already know it was dumb. You don’t need me to tell you that, especially not with six of the waitstaff about to enter the kitchen door.”

She couldn’t help but enjoy this. He had been so adamant about getting the contract for Nirvana, never really listening to her objections. Why had he been so bull-headed? And now their first function, the wedding of the villa owner, a young entrepreneur who was considered one of the most eligible bachelors in the country, was about to tank.

Sabrina knew Henry wanted to show his former fellow employees that he had rebounded from Allied Air’s grossly unfair treatment of him—they had fired him for sexual harassment rather than confront the married pilot who had been pursuing him. Henry Whitman had been humiliated by an airline that he had considered family. His own father had been an Allied pilot and his mother worked as a stewardess, as they were then called, until she had Henry.

Now he had climbed out from under the rubble of disgrace and had created a little gem of a business on his own, rubbing elbows with powerful business executives who would attract media attention. She wondered whether Henry wasn’t secretly trying to show his ex-lover, David, how misguided he’d been not to choose Henry over a wife he didn’t love. Maybe he saw Villa Nirvana as his redemption. Instead, he was going to be associated with one of the biggest social debacles of the year.

“Okay, I’m ready. What are we going to say to people?” Sean returned to the kitchen looking as if he’d just swallowed eight hours of sleep. His deep tan contrasted with a cream-colored silk shirt and khaki shorts. He wore a pair of Sperry boat shoes with just enough scuffs to show he really did own a boat. Sean was the picture of island living. With the help of a pair of Ray Bans, no one would know he’d had a sleepless night.

“You just leave that to me,” Sabrina said, opening the door for the brunch truck crew.

Sabrina led Sean out of the kitchen into an open corridor with arched windows that looked out at the sea, giving the impression that if you jumped out of one of them, you’d cannonball into the Caribbean. The truth was there were jagged cliffs beneath the windows, so steep you could only see them if you approached the edge of the property and peered directly down.

They almost collided with Jack Keating, Sean’s father and the CEO of Keating Construction, the leading parking garage construction firm in the country. Tall and lean, Jack was a wrinkled version of his handsome son, except that his hair was thick silver. Sabrina marveled at how some people just looked rich.

“There you are. Did Elena sign the damn prenup? She should know this isn’t personal. I’m thrilled she’s joining the family, and she’s been a great asset to the business, but we can’t be stupid about things now, can we?”

Sure we can
, Sabrina thought, waiting to hear whether Sean would stand up to his father.

“No, she didn’t sign, at least not that I know. And it’s okay, Dad, because I’m going to marry her anyway. We’re not going to get divorced, and even if we do years from now, you know Elena will bring in more money to the business than she could ever cost. Look what’s she’s already done, having us move the company headquarters to St. Thomas,” Sean said.

“Well, yes, but then there’s your brother and Lisa.”

“Lisa chose to sign a prenup fifteen years ago, and she’s never been associated with the business. Elena isn’t going to be a housewife. You know that.”

“Well, what about your mother? She signed one too, you know,” Jack said, but Sabrina could hear his heart wasn’t in the argument.

“Of course she did. She saw how much Gavin’s mother skinned you for in the divorce. She knew how much you had sacrificed to marry her. Mom has never been about money. Isn’t that part of what made you fall for her?”

“You should have gone to law school. You’d have made a helluva courtroom lawyer.”

“What, and not be here to shift the company from building parking garages to luxury residences in the Caribbean? Dad, you are going to love seeing the company grow with the plans Elena and I have. You may even change your mind about retiring in three years.”

Sabrina shifted forward a small step to remind the Keating men she was there.

“Sir, did you happen to see Elena this morning? They’ve moved up her hair appointment and we need to let her know.” She was pleased by how smoothly she fibbed. Henry would be proud.

Jack looked at Sabrina as if he just noticed her.

“Nope. The only person I’ve seen was the backside of my wife slipping out the door of our room at dawn with her easel. Off to capture the Caribbean at dawn
en plein air
, she said.”

“Okay, well the Triple B brunch truck will be serving brunch shortly. There are lots of Ten Villa servers here to help you if you don’t want to go out to the truck to place your order,” Sabrina said, wanting to move on and search for Elena.

“Truck food? I love it. I’m an old construction worker. Great idea. For once, I think I am really going to enjoy a wedding.”

Sabrina suggested that they check with Sean’s half brother, Gavin, next. She knocked on the door, stepping aside so Sean would take the stage. Gavin opened the door with a jerk.

“I hope you’re here to tell me you’ve got that woman under control and she signed the goddamn prenup,” Gavin Keating said.

Sabrina noticed Gavin was already up, dressed in slacks and a golf shirt, and had CNN on the forty-eight-inch flat-screen television that each of the bedrooms was equipped with.

“We’re just here to remind you that Triple B will begin serving brunch at eight, but there are beverages available in the great room right now,” Sabrina said.

Gavin looked at Sabrina and ignored her. Sabrina felt her jaw tighten as Gavin silently dismissed her. She’d had plenty of men at the television station where she had been a meteorologist treat her as if she were invisible. Sexism in the television industry had been rampant, but Gavin
Keating’s condescending attitude went beyond that. Sabrina smelled a misogynist.

“Well, did she?”

Sean said nothing. Sabrina watched him stare directly into the pale-blue eyes of his half brother, who was equally handsome but in a fair, Scandinavian way. Gavin had gelled the front of his hair in what she guessed was an effort to seem hipper and younger than his actual midforties. That was usually a sign that a guy had or was about to stray, something she’d come to realize too late after her own husband had started slicking his hair into a greasy tuft. Men were just so obvious.

“Are you kidding me? You need to get control over that woman or your marriage is going to feel like a life sentence without parole. She can’t become a part of this family and stay in this company without a friggin’ prenup.” Gavin sounded more authoritative and angry than his father had.

“Sure she can. Watch,” Sean said, turning away.

“Is your wife around or shall I go find her to make sure she knows brunch is about to be served?” Sabrina asked.

“What? Oh, she must be in the girls’ room.”

But Lisa Keating wasn’t. The girls—Gavin and Lisa’s daughters—refused to open their door until Sean explained he was just telling them about breakfast.

Emma, the oldest, finally opened the door partway. She was a nine-year-old version of her lovely mother—blue-eyed with silky, straight blonde hair. She explained that
they hadn’t seen their mother and couldn’t go to breakfast until they did because she had made them promise not to leave the room without her.

“And I need her ’cause I’m scared,” said a little voice behind Emma.

“Zoey, is that you, honey? It’s Uncle Sean.”

Zoey scooted out from behind Emma and ran to Sean, who picked her up into his arms.

“Why are you scared?” Sabrina asked, afraid that something else might be wrong but figuring she’d better find out.

“I heard screaming. First, I thought it was Mommy fighting with Daddy, but then I could hear it outside the window. It woked me up.”

“It woked me up, too,” said a third blonde beauty, who seemed to be older than Zoey but younger than Emma.

“Oh Victoria, you poor thing. Let Uncle Sean give you a big hug.”

Sabrina suggested that the girls go and get dressed while she and Uncle Sean find their mom.

“She probably went for a run. Hey, maybe Elena went with her,” Sean said, turning to Sabrina.

“Do you think that’s where she is?” she asked once the girls had closed the door, picturing a runaway bride in her gown wearing running shoes.

“Could be. Lisa’s kind of an exercise fanatic, really conscious about her weight. Gavin has a thing about fat women.”

“Well, maybe they’re together. Are they good friends?” Sabrina began opening the doors of the unoccupied guest rooms, which were reserved for guests staying over after the wedding. From the little Sabrina had seen of both women, Lisa was as warm and natural as Elena was cold and superficial. But Elena had been so passionate about not signing the prenup that Sabrina wondered if she had misjudged her. There was a reason Sabrina didn’t have a lot of female friends. She didn’t trust herself to be able to reliably distinguish the Lisas from the Elenas. That was why Henry had given her a chocolate lab puppy named Girlfriend. He’d told her that she had to start somewhere.

“They’re cordial, but basically have nothing in common. Lisa’s a wife and mother but hasn’t worked since Emma was born. Gavin can be pretty demanding and makes sure she keeps the home front running as efficiently as he likes to think he runs the business. But I suppose they could have struck up a conversation if Elena was looking for another woman to talk to,” Sean said, pulling the last of the empty doors shut with no sign of either woman.

Sabrina suggested that Sean check the bridal suite once more to see if Elena had returned. She doubted it but needed to find Henry to regroup. What she no longer doubted was that an eleventh villa had been a very bad idea.

Sabrina joined Henry in the great room, where he was supervising the waitstaff. While the great room at Nirvana was larger and grander than any other Sabrina had seen, it lacked charm and felt more like a hotel lobby. Classic Caribbean great rooms were comfortable living rooms in which the natural environment of the outdoors was brought inside and incorporated in the design: small palm trees, stone walls, indoor fountains, flowering plants, and large open windows inviting in the sunshine and trade winds.

Most of the guests seemed to enjoy going out to the truck, where Amy and Erin bantered with them as they made their selections. The Sammy, with two eggs, bacon or sausage, and a cheese of the guest’s choice on a homemade biscuit, seemed to be the biggest hit, followed by the Breakfast BLT.

“Any luck?” Henry asked.

Sabrina motioned for Henry to follow her into the kitchen, where guests wouldn’t hear their conversation.

“Not unless you mean bad luck. Now we can’t seem to find the sister-in-law either.”

“Do you mean Lisa or Heather? Heather’s in the great room having brunch with her father and the company CFO. I wouldn’t blame Lisa for taking off from that bore for a husband, Gavin. What an egomaniac. But she’s got those three girls, so she’s probably just off for a morning walk.”

“Run. Sean says she runs. Remind me, who’s Heather?” Sabrina asked as she admired how professional the Ten Villas’ waitstaff looked in their new party shoes. Sabrina had been horrified when her entire waitstaff showed up for the dry run of the wedding event in flip-flops in varying degrees of decay.

“You can’t wear those to serve at a wedding. Come in shoes for the event,” she’d told them. Except they didn’t own shoes, which was common on St. John, where fancy flip-flops were as dressed up as people got. Ten Villas had to spring for twelve pairs of black Tevas at full price.

“Heather’s Sean’s half sister,” Henry said, as if Sabrina should know this information. Sabrina could never keep the names of the guests coming to and leaving from Ten Villas straight without her notebook, although she remembered the details of everything else like Rain Man. Henry kept names all in his head like the manifests from his days as a flight attendant. Before things became so tense
between them, they would joke that between the two of them they had a whole brain.

“Heather’s a chiropractor from San Francisco. She’s Kate Keating’s daughter from marriage numero uno. Seems nice. Must look like her father,” Henry said, diplomatically omitting the fact that Heather was not as attractive as her mother or half brother. Tall with broad shoulders and narrow hips, she had a masculine look, which was only underscored by her short, frizzy salt-and-pepper hair.

“No. No sign of Elena,” Sean said, dashing into the kitchen, almost out of breath. Sabrina felt her sense of urgency growing. Two women missing. The prenup and the wedding seemed less important now.

“Henry, why don’t you and Sean check downstairs and then meet me back here,” Sabrina said, needing time to think. She knew Henry was counting on her to come up with Plan B if they couldn’t locate Elena and, now, Lisa. He knew she was a survivor who always had an alternative plan in her back pocket. If Plan A didn’t work, on to Plan B and down through the alphabet. Somehow, it didn’t seem fair that Henry had insisted they add this eleventh villa to Ten Villas but expected her to bail him out now that the event seemed to be going up in flames. Even after their interview with Sean and Elena, when Sabrina had cautioned Henry that she had an immediate sense that Elena would be difficult to work for, he wouldn’t listen. Then he had done worse. He had accused her of being jealous.

“Are you sure you’re not just reacting to having to answer to a powerful woman because that’s what you once were?”

He could have slapped her across the face and she would have been less shocked. But she also wondered if he was right. She had fallen off a skyscraper of disgrace.

Sabrina checked the clock on the kitchen wall. It was still early, she told herself. There was plenty of time to find Elena and Lisa and keep the wedding plans on track. And so far, other than the missing bride and her future sister-in-law, things were going well. Guests who were staying at either the Westin or Caneel Bay, the two island hotels, had begun to arrive for breakfast. The sound of jovial chatter came from the great room, where Sabrina returned to make certain things stayed on track.

Out of the corner of her eye, Sabrina saw Sean’s mother, Kate Keating, practically power walking up the slight incline from the front drive. Kate was a wiry, thin woman in her sixties. Her thick, short white hair accented a tan face with just enough wrinkles to suggest she’d been smart enough to wear sunscreen. Kate looked older as she drew closer, almost sprinting toward Sabrina, who rushed forward to meet her.

“Mrs. Keating, are you all right?”

“Something is wrong. Really wrong. In the water.”

Sabrina wondered if the next challenge of her day might be giving CPR to Kate Keating, who looked ready to faint. What could be wrong in the water that she would
be so upset? She obviously hadn’t been in the water. Her skirt and blouse were bone-dry other than what looked like little splattered drops of paint.

“What do you mean?”

“Come see for yourself.” Kate pulled Sabrina by the hand, dragging her down the small hill at the bottom of the driveway, in the direction of Ditleff Point Beach. The small beach bordered a tiny cove, which was the only place to swim, launch a small boat, or paddleboard in the area. Arriving at the beach, Sabrina could see an easel sitting on the bluff above them.

Kate pointed out at the water to the right where waves rolled in, crashing against the jagged rocks that rose up from the sea in a gentle rhythm.

“I’ve been painting the waves all morning. I love how they slide in and over the rocks. They break into these white foamy lines that look like lace curtains blowing in a breeze,” Kate said.

Sabrina nodded. That was exactly what she thought of when she watched those waves breaking. They reminded her of the white Irish lace curtains in Ruth’s motel cottages back in Allerton, the coastal Massachusetts town where she’d grown up. Distracted by how uncanny it felt to hear someone else share the same impression, Sabrina was jarred back by the urgency in Kate’s voice.

“Look. Can you see that the symmetry is off at the nearest point where the waves are breaking? There’s something white moving with the waves but not in line with
them. It doesn’t break into foam like the rest of the waves do. Something’s not right.”

Sabrina scanned the area, looking from left to right and back again several times. She had watched the waves in this cove a thousand times, in the distance, from her tiny cottage up above on a hill in Fish Bay. It was Sabrina’s form of meditation. Kate was right. Something was very wrong.

“Has it moved at all?” she asked.

“Just a little when a wave comes. I didn’t notice it at first. I was filling in the clouds and sky when I started. Do you think it’s a person? Maybe a dead shark?”

She was grateful Kate didn’t know there were two women missing from Villa Nirvana. She knew once again she had the misfortune to stumble upon a situation that at the very least called for action. Oh, she could wait and send for help, but if that really was a person, people would want to know why she hadn’t just done what needed to be done.

“I’m going to go out on the paddleboard and find out,” Sabrina said, grateful that her boyfriend, Neil Perry, had given her one for her birthday the month before and that she had mastered it enough to at least not fall over much.

She kicked off her flip-flops, placed her cell phone and keys on top of one, and picked up the yellow paddleboard that was sitting on its side in a rack on the sand. She brought it down to the edge of the water.

“Kate, please hold the board so it doesn’t float away,” Sabrina said as she went back to the rack and grabbed a paddle.

The shallow water, having already been heated by the sun, felt warm on her feet. She pushed the board in until she was waist deep and climbed on, placing one knee down at a time. She moved to the center of the board and placed her hands in front of her, gradually raising her body to a standing position. She tucked her pelvis and gave a slight bend to her knees and reminded herself to breathe, just as if she were in mountain pose during yoga.

Normally, Sabrina would have moved toward the right where there were fewer rocks, but what she needed to explore was to the left. She hoped there was enough water between the rocks and coral that the board wouldn’t scrape against them and topple her over. She paddled out, keeping her eyes on the surface of the water. Reaching the area where the waves were breaking, the paddleboard began to rock. No, standing was not going to work. She was going to have to use the board on her belly.

Sabrina bent at the waist, placed her hands back on the board and lowered herself onto her abdomen. Placing the paddle next to her, she began paddling with her hands toward what she could now see was a white object undulating with the surf about thirty feet away. Checking the depth of the water for clearance, she moved toward the object.

Sabrina could see the white lace moving on the top of the water, back and forth as the waves moved in and out. No one had to tell her she had found the missing bride.