Sweetheart Deal (19 page)

“Everyone in Pool Maintenance knew the cameras were down that night,” Tito said as he dipped me. “Not to mention some of Food Services.”

“Why's that?”

“We closed down the snack bar there because there was no way to monitor the cash register, or the pool, or anything else.”

“I see,” I said.

“I was on duty and with the technician the whole time he was trying to get everything back online. I'll give you his name and number if you need to confirm we were together when Alejandro died.”

“What about Ivan's incident?”

“I was working that day too,” he said. “I'm thankful he wasn't hurt, but between us, I'm sort of glad that guy was under water for a while.”

“Why's that?”

Tito smiled. “I figure he can always use a bath.”

My next dance partner was supposed to be Dave the groomsman, but since Body was unwilling to separate from him, I moved on to Cesar, the recreational equipment manager.

“Sure, I was mad when Ivan got the activities director job instead of me,” he said. “I don't have anything against him personally, though.”

“And Alejandro?”

“I can't say I'll miss him taking equipment without signing it out and just leaving it anywhere and everywhere.”

“That had to be annoying.”

“Not to mention a threat to me and my job,” he said. “The police questioned me because there were weights near the pool where he died that hadn't been checked out by anyone.”

“Why would Alejandro—”

“Who knows, but they sure wanted an answer from me.”

“And what did you tell them?”

“That he annoyed me, but they should talk to the people that hated him the most if they wanted to find his killer.”

“And who hated him the most?”

Before he passed me along to the gentleman next to me, he whispered, “I'd put my money on someone from Food Services.”

“We'd have never paid one cent for that condo if we hadn't had so many margaritas before the presentation.”

My next dance partner was the husband of the woman who'd come into the timeshare office complaining.

And now he was also complaining.

And also drinking.

“I continued to demand a refund,” he said, with a slur. “But unlike their timeshares, which supposedly have a
twenty-four
-hour refund period, this Sampler nonsense we signed up for is completely nonrefundable.”

“So what are you doing about it?”

“What can we do?” he asked in whiny voice. “Can't say I'm surprised or sorry someone bumped off the manager over there, though.”

“Alejandro never missed a napkin with a spot, food on a utensil, or anything to do with the meal itself,” Carlos, the head waiter said. “Sometimes, it seemed like there was nothing we could do right.”

“It sounds like he was a real stickler,” I said.

“I was okay with it because I figured he was just trying to make us an even better resort than we already are.”

“It had to bother you sometimes, though.”

“Not as much as it bothered the kitchen staff,” he said. “They kept a dartboard with a photo of him in the breakroom.”

After admitting that salsa dancing was
kinda fun, in a way
, Trent reported that Aracelli, who was friends with Jesus the sous chef, always knew when Alejandro was in the restaurant because plates started coming back to be remade.

Eloise managed to set aside her disappointment about Ivan's absence and find out that Pablo the lifeguard dreaded Alejandro's morning swims because he made the pool staff check the temperature before he got in, and they had to raise or lower it to his liking. The snack bar staff paid him back on behalf of the pool staff by “boosting” his morning smoothie with regular grass instead of wheatgrass. More important, Pablo thought Eloise was pretty. Too pretty for a hippie like Ivan, apparently.

FJ filled us in on Marisol, who, as it turned out, had a whirlwind love affair with a young, handsome, and not nearly so tyrannical Alejandro as soon as she moved to the area and began to work at the resort. While she still hadn't entirely forgiven him for neglecting to tell her he was
duty-bound
to marry someone else by year's end, she'd gotten over the old heartbreak through yoga, higher spirituality, and staying ten pounds thinner than Elena.

Frank's information seemed to top all. He whispered it only to me, directly from Ana Suarez, who worked in the spa as a masseuse: “The spa staff feel they all got the happy ending Alejandro
jokingly
asked for at the end of each and every one of his massages.”

“She can't be serious,” Eloise said as we read over the karaoke song choices provided us by a production assistant.

“Frank Sinatra?” Trent said.

“No
can-do
on the Neil Diamond,” FJ said.

“There are plenty of options,” Anastasia said, “We're trying to appeal to viewers of all ages.”

“I guess so,” FJ said as Frank ran up to the stage and began to belt out the first bars of “Margaritaville.” Hopefully, the accompanying pitchers of margaritas adequately numbed the crowd in time for my
off-key
version of “I Love Rock and Roll,” the boys' spirited interpretation of Journey's “Don't Stop Believin',” and Eloise's grudging “Holiday.”

As we took turns singing, a steady stream of employees chanced by our table with increasingly interesting bits and pieces of information:

“Seeing as Alejandro had me pour vodka into a water glass on more than once occasion, it wouldn't have killed him to be appreciative,” Tito the bartender said.

“You should talk to Raul,” Octavio the groundskeeper said. “He thinks he might have seen something interesting near the pool area the night of the murder.”

“Benito was fighting with his girlfriend, Carmen, by the bridge,” Raul said. “She was begging him not to do something, but he said he had no choice.”

“One of the other ladies from the salon told me Benito and Carmen are madly in love and never argue,” Eloise said as Anastasia collected us for a quick
note-comparing
shot. “So they certainly weren't breaking up.”

“According to Victor in food services, Benito was obsessed with how Alejandro constantly got away with bad behavior toward the employees in general, the food service workers in particular, and most of all, his sister Elena.”

“Could it be that Benito …?”

We all looked at each other meaningfully.

“Has anyone spoken with Carmen?” I asked.

“We heard she's not here tonight,” FJ said.

“She went home just before the dance lessons with a headache,” Trent added.

We all looked at each other meaningfully again.

“Did Benito have a grudge against Ivan, though?” I asked. “I mean, wouldn't he have to hate Ivan too for us to consider him a suspect?”

“Victor said that Benito considered Ivan's dreadlocks a health violation,” Frank said.

“But that doesn't seem like a motive for murder,” I said. “Besides, almost everyone mentioned Ivan's appearance in some way or another.”

“Seriously?” Ivan said, appearing from behind a scrim.

“They obviously just don't get style down here,” Eloise said with a sweet smile as he joined us on camera. “But they all like you. A lot.”

“Cut!” Anastasia said. “That was great.”

She handed Ivan her personal copy of the suspect list we'd all been working from. “This is what everyone is talking about.”

“Wow!” he said looking at the list as though it were for the first time. “This is heavy.”

“No one say another word until we're rolling, then I want all of you to fill Ivan in on what you've found out this evening.”

The moment she yelled
action
we did our part by recounting the various details, from Alejandro's misdeeds and flirtations to the mounting evidence that the killer hailed from Food Services and might well be Benito.

“Whoa,” Ivan said when we were all finished. “I guess I'm not entirely surprised to find out that Alejandro didn't limit himself to one drink.”

“What do you think about this Benito business?” Frank asked.

“Benito is a great guy,” Ivan said. “Although he does have a temper.”

“And more than one motive, according to Victor and pretty much everyone else.”

“I know Benito was protective of Elena, but I never would have thought he could be capable of murder,” Ivan said, clearly still processing everything. “I can't deny that he seems like a strong suspect, though.” He shook his head. “Really strong …”

“Let me guess,” I said to Ivan the moment Eloise ran into the pool house to change into her bathing suit for the moonlight swim. “Beti thinks Benito did it too.”

“It's like everything's getting wrapped up in a nice bow.”

“I don't believe this could really be happening.”

“It's scary stuff.”

“Do
you
think Benito had something to do with Alejandro's death?”

“I'm sure he resented him for all the reasons you've heard, but Benito got his job as head chef because of Alejandro in the first place.”

“So you don't think Benito did it?”

“I think he's got a problem on his hands.” Ivan looked as distraught as I felt. “But there could be bigger problems for all of us if everyone else doesn't go along with what's going on.”

“Did Beti tell you all of this?”

“She didn't have to.” He took a deep breath. “She did tell me something surprising though.”

“Which is?”

He took a deep breath. “So, the thing is, it's no secret that Alejandro had been trying to annex some adjacent land that would have made the Hacienda de la Fortuna the only resort with a
full-service
marina and waterfront shopping complex.”

“That sounds pretty amazing.”

“And that much more attractive to potential timeshare owners. The problem is, it's theoretically impossible because the land is public and can only be purchased and owned by a Mexican business.”

“Doesn't the Hacienda de la Fortuna qualify?”

“Yes, but they don't have enough capital to make it happen.”

“So what you overheard was part of a financial transaction with a potential American investor or something?”

“I figured it had to be. I mean, it wouldn't be the first time an international company funneled money into this area through an established local business. Especially if the right people are paid off.”

“Like the mayor?”

“Exactly,” he said. “I also figured someone wanted that deal to be dead and buried badly enough to kill Alejandro over it.”

“But now you don't?”

“The situation might be a little more complicated than that.”

“Do you think the mayor's in danger?”

“As long as the deal is over, any risk has passed for him—at least, I hope.”

“What about the American?”

“I asked Beti to try and find out who he is.” Ivan sighed. “In the meantime, she told me that when Alejandro got back from sailing that day, he was in a really good mood and bragged to her that he was about to be a big star. ‘In more ways than one.'”

“This boat trip—was it right before we arrived?”

“The weekend before anyone showed up from your crew.”

“Then that's not entirely surprising,” I said. “I know from Frank that they decided to fold in the whole timeshare element as part of the show in exchange for promotional consideration.”

“Apparently, the plan was a bit more involved,” Ivan said.

I felt my blood pressure tick upwards. “How much more involved?”

“He confided in Beti that he'd all but inked a deal for his own reality show about the resort and the world of timeshare sales—starring him, of course.”

“That's the first I've heard of it,” I said.

But was it?

Thank you for bringing your show down here to our resort
, he'd said to me.
If everything continues to go this well, the payoff will be even better than I imagined …

“So you think the conversation you weren't supposed to overhear was related to that instead?” I asked, more queasy than I wanted to admit.

“It certainly seems to put an interesting wrinkle into things.”

Anastasia had called me a total pro, but I hadn't come close to flexing my acting muscles until I had to do three takes of kissy-face with Frank in the moonlit water and then transition directly into poker face while Philip debriefed us:

“We've had someone positively ID Benito as being in the area where Alejandro was found at approximately the time of the incident, and we've discovered that he may not have been in the kitchen overseeing prep work as scheduled during the time Geo was attacked at the water park.”

It took all my strength not to say,
Of course you have.

Or, more appropriately
Oh, what kind of tangled web did you weave?

“Sure sounds like a slam dunk to me,” Frank said.

“Nothing's a slam dunk if you don't cross your t's and dot your i's,” Philip said, already sounding so much like a TV detective, I had to wonder if he'd been promised a show of his own too. “Which means we have legwork to do before we can bring him in.”

“What kind of legwork?” FJ asked.

“The local authorities are going to locate Benito and keep tabs on him so he doesn't venture too far from here. While he's under surveillance, we want Frank and you boys to spend tomorrow morning continuing to question anyone and everyone you can about possible motives for killing Alejandro and for the water park incident.”