Saving Grace (Katie & Annalise Book 1) (22 page)

“We have to go!” Ava shouted as she ran into her bedroom.

“Where? What?” I said.

She emerged seconds later holding sandals, a skirt, a shirt, and underclothing. She dived for her purse and ignored the ruins of her phone on the tile floor. She grabbed my pocketbook and handed it to me.

“I tell you in the truck. Please, hurry.”

And then she was running out the door, barefoot and naked except for her towel. I sprinted after her, still wearing my sundress-over-bathing-suit ensemble, calling for Oso outside. He reached the truck at the same time as me, and I let him in. He scrambled to attention in the middle of the seat, ears forward. Ava was already in. I couldn’t move any faster, especially belting in over my sunburn, but she kept saying, “Hurry, Katie. You got to hurry.”

I threw the truck into reverse and pressed the accelerator. The tires threw dirt and rocks in the air behind us as I whipped the truck into a turn, then stopped, shifted into drive, and accelerated again. “Where are we going?”

“The Pelican’s Nest. You know where it is?”

I did. I had eaten there on a night when Ava was with Guy, on the trip that seemed like a lifetime ago, but was only a month. The restaurant occupied one side of a clubhouse and overlooked through plate-glass windows all along one side the largest marina—and most expensive boats—on the island.

“Now, Ava, tell me what’s going on. Please.”

Ava drew in a ragged breath and put her hand on her chest. Then she dropped her towel and put on her bra. I hoped she wasn’t giving any passing drivers a heart attack. When she had clasped the hook in the back, she spoke.

“That bitch Lisa kill Guy.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa. I’m not following. Who’s Lisa?”

“Lisa Guy’s wife.”

“Oh, my.” I struggled to keep my attention on the road. “How do you know that?”

“You know who Eduardo is? Guy’s assistant?” she asked, pulling a pink scooped-neck t-shirt over her head.

“Yeah, the one who sold you out to the police, according to the seriously pissed off and jealous Jacoby.”

“Right. Guy, well, Guy flipped Jacoby’s switch.” She bit a fingernail, something I’d never seen her do. I looked at her hands. All her nails were quick-short. “This not about Jacoby, though. That Eduardo on the phone. He said Lisa meeting her boyfriend at the Pelican’s Nest any minute now, and we should follow her if we want to know who killed Guy.”

Ava had me so confused. “I thought Lisa killed Guy?”

“Well, not her personally, maybe, but she involved.” Ava scooched off her towel and stuck one foot and then the other through the leg of her satin thong panties.

“I’m not following you again.”

“Eduardo set up my meetings with Guy. You know that. And he set up my last one, too. So, today he call to tell me he overheard Lisa on the phone talking lover-talk, making plans to meet a boyfriend. Well, Eduardo thought that
he
Lisa’s boyfriend.” Ava shimmied into her stretchy white miniskirt.

Mrs. Guy had dumped Eduardo. Nothing turns a witness faster than getting dumped. The St. Marcos prosecutor was the one whose case had fleas this time. My pulse double-timed in the hollow of my throat.

“Holy moly.”

“Yeah, and Eduardo say he told Lisa about me a long time ago, the asshole. Pillow talk. He say she didn’t care. But for some reason, two weeks after Guy’s murder, Lisa ‘confess’ to the police about how she just found out Guy had a girlfriend. She tell them she confront him the day he die, and that he told her he dump his good-for-nothing tramp to save their marriage. Lisa tell the police she didn’t know who the girlfriend was. She make up some story about how she hadn’t told the cops up front because she want to protect Guy’s legacy, and that because he had a lot of enemies, she thought it could be anyone. But that she afraid that the girlfriend kill Guy and come after her, too.” Now Ava’s white gladiator sandals were buckled around each ankle.

I hit the steering wheel with the palm of my hand. Pay dirt. “Did Eduardo tell her who you were?”

“He say he did. He say Lisa made the whole thing up. In fact, he say that Guy and Lisa fight big the same day he die, but it over some bank records Guy find at their house.”

“Did Guy catch Lisa spending money she shouldn’t or something?

Ava removed a big-toothed green comb from her purse and started untangling her hair. “I don’t know. So, after Lisa tell the police about Guy having a girlfriend, the police re-question Eduardo. They pissed at him because he hadn’t told them about Guy meeting with me. He said they threaten to pull his phone records. So he tell them the truth. He say he told them that he would do anything to protect Guy’s reputation, and that he certain I didn’t kill Guy.”

“Well, at least now we know why it took them so long to find you,” I said.

“Yeah. That and because we talking about the St. Marcos police.” Ava put her comb back in her purse and pulled out her makeup bag. “True.”

As we left town heading east, I accelerated. We flew past mangrove-filled saltwater ponds on either side of the road. The vegetation was short and sparse here, the salty ground untenable for most plants. Large stucco houses crowned the hills, but we’d left the Danish architecture behind in Town. We were almost there.

Ava bronzed her cheeks like a housepainter on methamphetamines. “So after all that with the police, Eduardo suspicious of Lisa. And even more so when he hear her cooing on the phone. He confront her about it, all of it, and she fire him. He pack a bag and go straight to the airport to buy a ticket home to Guatemala. And he call me on the way.” She shoved the makeup and brush back in her bag.

“So he doesn’t
know
that Lisa is involved.”

“No, I guess not. But why she tell the police those lies if she not involved?” Ava leaned close to the mirror on the sun visor and quickly penciled black onto the lower rims of her eyes.

And why would she wait two weeks to do it? I had a idea. “Did Lisa know Guy was meeting with you that night?”

“Eduardo didn’t say. But why he tell her?” Hot-pink lipstick in hand, Ava slashed color across her lips.

“People in love do strange things.”

We pulled into the Pelican’s Nest’s parking lot, which surrounded the clubhouse and restaurant on three sides. The far side looked onto rows of docked luxury yachts in the marina. I parked on the broad side of the building, out of view of the front entrance. The parking lot was mostly empty, but to anyone familiar with the ebb and flow of this place, my big dirty truck was bound to be conspicuous.

I asked, “What time was Lisa meeting her mystery man here?”

“Three o’clock.” Now that my truck was still, Ava was applying mascara. No time for false eyelashes today.

I glanced at my watch. Five minutes until three. “What an odd time to meet at a restaurant. I’ll bet they aren’t even open.”

A shiny-clean late-model black Tahoe with tinted windows pulled into the lot and parked in front of the entrance. Its driver’s side door slammed and a petite woman with perfectly styled short hair came around the front of the car to the sidewalk, her black slingback sandals clicking on the pavement. She wore a blue knit suit with a short skirt and a short-sleeved top with gold piping around the hem and round neckline. She dropped her clutch purse and spun around to retrieve it from the ground. There was a decorative gold button adorning the kick slit in the back of her skirt. As she got closer, I recognized her as the woman who’d handled the Annalise closing. Ms. Nesbitt from the Bank of St. Marcos.

“There she is!” Ava said.

“Where?” I asked.

Ava pointed at Ms. Nesbitt. “That’s Lisa.”

The wife of the dead senator was Ms. Nesbitt. Bank officer. Sister of Junior. Lisa. Lisa Nesbitt was Mrs. Guy Edwards. Now I got it. It was a very small island. I didn’t waste time explaining the connection to Ava.

Lisa walked past the sidewalk leading to the entrance of the Pelican’s Nest, and came around the side of the building, headed straight toward us.

“Crap. Lower your head like we’re looking for something on the floor,” I said. Ava and I both leaned forward and pretended we were searching. I grabbed Oso’s collar and pulled him to the floor with us. He whined and struggled against me. “Shhh, boy, want a treat?” I handed him a piece of banana chip from the floorboard, disgusted that it was in my car and satisfied that Oso was cleaning it up for me. To Ava I said, “Don’t raise up yet. Keep searching.”

“Do you think she saw us?” Ava asked, looking at me from her folded-over position.

Oso was now down on the floor hoovering for more banana chips. He couldn’t find anything, so he looked up and licked my face. I pushed him back and resolved to break him of his germy love habit.

“Only if she’s standing outside our window staring in. Otherwise, she has no reason to know my truck, or that you and I are connected. OK, let’s sit up, slowly, and face each other. Up, Oso,” I said, and patted the seat. He complied immediately. The dog was learning fast.

We straightened, and I saw Lisa from the rear as she stepped off the curb at the back edge of the restaurant. She looked all around her, then walked up to a car that was pulling to a stop. Aha. I activated the camera on my iPhone and snapped pictures as fast as I could. “You can look now,” I told Ava.

She pivoted, and we watched Lisa get in the back seat of an older-model brown Lincoln Continental. Again, tinted windows. Tinting was technically illegal on St. Marcos, unless you worked for the government or were a thug. Or at least every thug that I saw had them, and they were never pulled over on the side of the road by a cop handing them a ticket. The Continental started forward.

“We’re going to have to follow them, Ava.”

“Yes, yes, follow them,” she said, her eyes glued to the car.

I’d never tailed a car before. I’d read a lot of Sue Grafton novels when I was in college, though. “What would Kinsey Millhone do?” I asked myself, and almost laughed, but not quite.

The Continental swung around and passed behind us, heading out of the parking lot. I backed out and pulled onto Tamarind Road behind them, away from Town.

“They getting away,” Ava cried.

“There’s no one else on the road. I have to stay pretty far back or they’ll see us,” I said. I established a position about two hundred yards behind them.

“OK,” Ava said, but she gripped the hand rest and leaned forward. Oso studied her, then leaned forward, too.

The salt ponds gave way to treeless green fields. I knew from Rashidi’s lecture aboard the shuttle to his rainforest tour that these were salt marshes, and the greenery obscuring the watery ground was more mangrove, yucca, and sea grape, mixed in with Guinea grass. One mile later, the Continental turned left into a gated community. It stopped at a white wooden guard booth, then the gate’s arm rose, and the sedan continued on. I pulled up to the guard booth.

Ava leaned across Oso and me and smiled. “Good day, Bob, how you doing?”

The guard was clad in an official-looking white button-front short-sleeved shirt and khaki shorts. He lit up like a Christmas tree when he saw Ava. “Good day, Miss Ava. I doing well. And how your family?”

“Mom and Dad doing great, thank you for asking. I here today to see Elizabeth Anderson.”

“She expecting you?” he asked, picking up his clipboard and a pen.

“Yes. I picking up a costume to be fitted for the community theater musical next month. We doing
Jesus Christ Superstar
.”

While she worked Bob, I kept my eyes on the Continental, which had turned up a hill to the left.

“You always a star, Ava. I be sure to come see you in it.” He scribbled on his paper, then hit a button, and the gate opened.

“Thanks, Bob. Goodbye, now!” She waved cheerily.

The Continental was moving into rarefied air now. This hill was one of the most exclusive pieces of property on St. Marcos. There were only three houses at the top, and one of them hogged a section twice as big as the other two. The Continental pulled through the massive iron gate of the compound, a white structure with a giant B in the center. Coconut palms lined the driveway leading up to an oversized traditional West Indian house. Two-story  “welcoming arms” bannisters bordered the front staircase, the arms curving down and outward to meet the ground. Arches set into the exterior walls created a breezeway that encircled the entire main house. The stucco was a subdued peach with white accents around the doors and windows, also a nod to tradition.

“Ho, ho, ho,” Ava chortled. “If she ain’t going to visit the high and mighty Mr. Gregory Bonds himself.”

I’d heard the name. “Who’s he?” I asked.

“St. Marcos’ wealthiest citizen, although not a bahn yah native. He from New York, I think. He made his money in offshore gambling and already a gazillionaire by the time he moved on-island. He own the casino we sang at when you visited, the phone company, and he trying to buy the power company away from the government, too.”

“Your future husband,” I said. “His limo nearly hit me in Town, once.”

“That’s him.”

I took more pictures and wished I had a better camera than my iPhone. They wouldn’t be great, but we’d at least be able to see the car and its license plate number, the house, and, now that she was getting out of the car, Lisa Nesbitt. I managed a few more snaps of her as she walked up to the house and was escorted in.

“That’s not him,” Ava said.

“What?”

“The guy that let her in a black local. Gregory white. A big beefy white guy with an afro of blond hair, who wear fuddy duddy glasses. Not a good-looking man. Although if he ask me to the prom, I go, since he my future husband,” she said.

I kept taking pictures.

“I’m trying to get a shot of the driver, but I can’t see him through the window tinting. It looks like he’s going to stick around and wait for her. Maybe he’ll get out to visit the loo or something, “ I said.

“Can we get any closer?” she asked.

“I don’t think so. Besides, I think we’d need to be inside the compound to get any better shots than we’re already getting from here.”

A rap on the glass by my face startled me. Ava and I both gasped. Oso barked.

It was a security guard, although he wasn’t dressed the same as the gate guard. This guy was in pressed navy-blue shorts and a navy button-front shirt with a badge on it. Embroidered in white below the badge was “Bonds Enterprises.”

I rolled down my window and smiled in what I hoped was a fetching manner. “Good day, sir.”

“You got a reason to be here, ladies?” All business. Maybe my fetching wasn’t. I didn’t go for fetching often. I could have accidentally used my “guilty as hell” smile.

Since fetching hadn’t worked, I went for clueless tourist. “No, sir. We accidentally turned up this road and then we saw this beautiful house. I stopped to take a few pictures. It’s gorgeous. Someone important must live here. Do you work here?”

Ava didn’t say anything, so I assumed this was one of the small handful of men on the island she hadn’t dated or who didn’t want to date her. Yet.

“You need to move along. This road private property. Get going, now.”

He double-tapped the roof of my truck. I looked at Ava. She shrugged.

“Yes, sir. Good day.” I didn’t bother rolling my window up, just put the truck in drive and did a U-turn.

“Crap,” Ava said.

“We have what we came for. Enough to give the police another suspect.”

“Not with Eduardo gone,” she cried.

“Between the fact that they turned up nothing in their search of your place and these pictures, it’s a good start. If they won’t act on it, Duke can. Or he can hire an investigator.”

And that’s when I remembered that Walker was meeting me out at Annalise. And Rashidi, with Crazy Grove. I needed to hurry.

“Let’s stop by the Packin’ Male and make some printouts of these pictures. Then we have to meet Rashidi out at Annalise. He’s introducing me to the new contractor. And Walker is bringing me his final report.”

“Final report? Did he find anything?”

I tried a chuptz. It was pitiful and Ava rolled her eyes and shook her head.

I said, “No, although I’m not so sure he tried. I’m not sure of anything on this island anymore, to be truthful.”

Too late, I realized that probably sounded like I wasn’t sure of Ava, either. Ava, who was accused of killing her lover. Ava, who two days ago had infuriated me with her behavior toward Bart. Ava stared out the window for a moment while I searched for the right apology. It didn’t come.

She whipped her head back to me and in an overly bright voice said, “The Packin’ Male it be, then.”