Sweetheart Deal (9 page)

eleven

Unfortunately, I'd all but
come to expect attending unexpected funerals for people I'd just met. Somehow though, willing away the rubbery feeling in my legs while we entered the candle-and flower-filled church to view Alejandro in his final resting position was not at all how I'd anticipated spending this particular south-of-the-­border Sunday.

“I feel so awkward being here,” I said, watching Frank wipe away a showy tear while we made our way past the cameraman lurking behind a carved wooden pillar in the simple but stunning local church.

“It's good public relations all around.”

“I guess,” I said. “Everything feels like it's happening so fast.”

“Here in Mexico, we bury loved ones as quickly as possible,” Felipe, our
ever-informative
driver and guide said from behind us. “When someone dies, we gather everyone immediately, and the body goes into the ground within
forty-eight
hours.”

“I don't know about this …” Eloise said approaching the open casket. She was initially pleased at the prospect of clandestine screen time in the
sexy-yet
-
somehow-appropriate
black
cap-sleeved
,
v-back
dress that wardrobe had shown up with for her to wear. But as soon as she neared the body, she squeezed her eyes shut, paid her respects, and disappeared.

I couldn't say I blamed her. I could barely force myself to look at the ghoulish,
gray-skinned
remains of the vibrant and handsome man who'd been sending me flirty notes not two days earlier.

More difficult was the idea that my mere presence in his world might have been the cause of his untimely demise.

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

Or so much worse.

“Can you believe people are taking pictures of him?” FJ whispered from beside me.

“It's our way of remembering the departed,” Felipe explained as a couple other mourners followed suit. “The photographs are considered a tribute to the rite of passage.”

“Kinda cool when you think about it,” Trent said, eyeing the body as well as the rosaries, books, poems, and assorted belongings surrounding him in the casket.

The crowd, already speaking in low tones, fell completely silent as a woman dressed in black appeared in the central doorway of the church sanctuary, her face concealed by a sheer black veil. A moment later, she was joined by Enrique, who was looking more ashen than he had when he'd addressed the wedding guests at yesterday's brunch.

As they strode together to the front of the church, our eyes met for the briefest of moments. I realized I hadn't recognized who she also was because her beautiful brown hair tumbled past her shoulders instead of being slicked back in a tight French twist.

Elena, the wedding planner.

I was about to ask Felipe if she and Enrique were a couple when the crowd parted and Elena reached the coffin. She tucked a photo underneath his folded hands, touched his undoubtedly cold, waxy cheek, and her legs buckled beneath her.

Felipe, along with a couple of other mourners, rushed to her aid.

The next thing I knew we were being guided to VIP seats in view of the camera and away from anyone who could have answered my latest in a growing list of questions.

The ceremony was something of a blur as Elena was revived and seated between Enrique and the town mayor in the front row along with family, key members of the Hacienda de la Fortuna staff, and other local dignitaries. The padre made his way toward the front of the sanctuary with the usual pomp and circumstance. I knelt when everyone else knelt, stood when everyone else stood, and said amen when I was supposed to. I even sang along, to the extent I could, with the Spanish versions of some familiar hymns. As the service continued, I noted that everyone I'd met since arriving was in attendance, from the yoga instructor to a
doe-eyed
Ivan, who kept stealing gazes at Eloise. I also spotted familiar faces from our afternoon in town, including the manager of the cantina and two or three shop owners.

As the padre spoke about the fullness of Alejandro's life and his success as a sales manager, and quoted beautiful and hopeful passages from the bible in both Spanish and English, the giant lump that was lodged in my throat threatened to choke me. I scanned the pews, trying to make eye contact with the numerous women who matched the description of Sombrero Lady (short, stocky, and of indeterminate age) in the hopes one of them would return my eye contact and meet up with me later for a detailed explanation of her suspicions.

No such luck.

The mass concluded with the sprinkling of holy water on the coffin. Before there was time to get up and stretch our legs, a Mariachi band appeared to accompany us, our
ever-discreet
camera crew, and the rest of the mourners to the burial site.

It wasn't until we'd arrived at the cemetery and assorted family members were in the process of saying their final
good-byes
that I caught a glimpse of the photo tucked under Alejandro's crossed hands.

A photo of Alejandro and Elena standing together, his arm draped around her shoulder.

I stepped back over to Felipe, who happened to be standing not far from Frank.

“So tragic,” I whispered, my eyes on a
once-again
sobbing Elena.

“Incredibly,” Felipe agreed.

“Were Alejandro and Elena a couple?” I finally managed to ask.

He nodded. “But it was complicated.”

Somehow, whatever
so-called
complications there were did nothing to make me feel better about his passes at me. Particularly given the realities of the situation.

Before I could mull that over much, the coffin was closed and the burial got underway. Individual prayers were said, the padre led the group in a communal rosary, and relatives went up to throw handfuls of dirt on the coffin. Even the lead police officer on the case shuffled up and tossed in his own handful of dirt.

“Is it customary for the police to come to the funerals of the victims they investigate?” I asked.

“It's best not to question these kind of things too much,” Felipe said in the most hushed of tones.

“Because?”

I expected a
long-winded
response about tradition and
small-town
life in Mexico.

“
A lo hecho, pecho
,” Felipe said instead, dabbing a tear from his eye. “What's done is done.”

twelve

“I think Felipe is
suspicious about Alejandro's drowning too,” I whispered to Frank as he led me back toward the hotel SUV that had taken us into town for the funeral.

“Why? What did he say?”

“I asked why the policeman was at the funeral, and he told me it was best not to question things. And then he said, ‘what's done is done.'”

“Interesting,” Frank said. “Definitely.”

But before I could elaborate on just how definitely interesting I thought it was, Geo rushed over to us from the rented equipment van parked behind the SUV.

“Who's going to explain to me why neither of you bothered to fill me in on this
fue asesinado
business?”

“How did you …?” Frank asked, his smooth newscaster voice cracking and trailing off.

Geo glanced in the direction of my stepdaughter, who stood a little too close to Ivan under a nearby tree. “The appearance of a mysterious lady with sobering information does tend to leave one's children understandably concerned.”

“Eloise …” I heard myself say.

“Eloise doesn't even speak Spanish,” Frank added.

“Apparently she remembered the word
asesinado
from a skit she did in high school,” Geo said.

Of all the things for Eloise, who wasn't necessarily known for her acute mind or
elephant-like
memory, to remember, the Spanish word for
murdered
had to stick with her?

“Seriously.” Geo folded his arms across his chest. “Why didn't one of you two tell me about this right away?”

“I—
we
—thought we'd ask a few questions and see why someone would say such a thing before getting everyone else all up in arms,” I said quickly and making confirmatory eye contact with Frank. “Particularly the kids.”

“Hard to get much past your brood,” Geo said far too meaningfully for my taste.

The rubbery feeling in my legs travelled throughout my body.

“So, what did you find out when you started asking questions?” Geo asked.

“Uh, I …” I stammered.

“We haven't heard much of anything,” Frank interjected, not mentioning my recent interchange with Felipe.

“Well, I'm sure the woman was trying to get on TV,” Geo said definitively. “They always are.”

“Exactly,” Frank agreed.

“But maybe you should look into things a little further,” Geo went on.

“What?” Frank and I asked in unison.

“Make a few inquiries,” he said, with what could only be described as a smirk.

“But—”

“What will viewers think knowing Alejandro died and we simply packed up and left without looking into any unanswered questions?
”

“They'll think it was an accident, since that's what's on the official report,” I said, still wondering if I was really hearing what I thought I was hearing.

“Maddie …” Geo took my hand and held it in his slightly damp palms. “These days you're almost as much a sleuth as you are a savvy shopper.”

Desperate as I was to gauge his reaction, I didn't dare glance over at Frank. “I doubt we'll be able to find out much before we leave tomorrow,” I said. “Most of the people we'd probably want to talk to will still be at the wake.”

“But not all,” Geo said.

As Felipe—who was just out of earshot but well within collusion range—flashed what should have been a comforting smile, I looked into the open back door of the van and spotted the camera.

With its red light staring right at us.

Geo handed us yet another revised schedule. “What do you say we kick things off with a visit to the timeshare sales office?”

thirteen

The resort was, as
I suspected (and for lack of a better word), dead. A skeleton crew was all that remained to attend to guests while most everyone on staff still seemed to be at Alejandro's postfuneral wake. The notable exception was the resort sales office, which was not only very much open for business, but suddenly the site of our
2:00: Console grieving staff members and finalize timeshare paperwork
shoot.

“I don't find it entirely surprising that Geo wants us to look into things,” Frank said as soon as the makeup artist finished touching us up, leaving us alone for the first moment since we'd been handed our afternoon schedule. “He's right that viewers will want to see us do something about Alejandro's death.”

“Like ask a few cursory questions while we sign timeshare paperwork?” I said doubtfully.

“As long as we have to fulfill our obligation to the resort to promote their properties, we might as well.”

“Which I assume was
pre-negotiated
into whatever deal Anastasia cooked up?”

“There's always a
trade-off
.”

“Alejandro certainly paid quite a price.” Any hopes I'd had, however wishful, that Alejandro really had gotten plastered and innocently drowned in the pool were suddenly circling the drain.

“If only I'd signed when I was supposed to. He'd probably still be—”

“Maddie, the timing of the signing didn't have anything to do with Alejandro's death.”

“How could it not?”

“I'm one of the creators of the show. I honestly don't believe anyone associated with
The Family Frugalicious
would go so far as to—”

“Create a plot angle that had me falling for a tall, dark, and handsome timeshare salesman?”

“So you
did
find him handsome!”

“Frank.” I resisted a sigh. “The point is, I refuse to sign the contract, and the next thing I know, I'm getting secret notes from a man who ends up dead at exactly the time he proposed we meet. A man whose death we are now investigating.”

“This whole
sign-and
-snoop scenario is—”

“A setup?”

“Exactly,” Frank said. “Why on earth would anyone from the show have us look into things if they were somehow involved?”

“This is going to be great!” Geo said, popping his head through the door. “We've got cue cards, but we're going for authentic here, especially where the sympathy is concerned.”

“Ratings maybe?” I whispered in answer to Frank's question.

“The ratings are going to be thru the roof for this episode,” Geo said, confirming my worst suspicions.

“May I help you?” asked the receptionist. She had the wooden tone of an on-camera first-timer, but the fake eyelashes, glossy lipstick, and heavy-handed eye shadow job of a true professional like Esmeralda, the Hacienda de la Fortuna makeup artist.

“We're here to finalize our resort ownership paperwork,” Frank said.

“And your name is?” the receptionist asked.

“Maddie,” I said. “Maddie Michaels.”

“As in Mrs. Frugalicious?” she read with enthusiasm, but straight off the cue card.

“And her husband, Mr. Frugalicious,” Frank added.

“I'm Beti,” she said, and picked up the phone to let someone in the back know we were there. “Welcome to the vacation sales office.”

“We're so sorry for your loss, Beti,” Frank said the moment she'd hung up from announcing our arrival.

“Thank you,” she said and reached for a tissue.

In the awkward silence that followed, I looked around the sales office. Unlike the upbeat enthusiasm of a few days earlier, a stifling pall permeated the place. Behind the glass walls of the nearby children's lounge, however, a bumper crop of kids seemed to be gorging on treats, toys, and video games.

“You're busy today,” I said, ad libbing as instructed.

Beti nodded.

“I'm surprised you're even open.”

“Saturdays and Sundays are always our busiest days of the week,” she said. “And we were closed this morning for the funeral, so everything got pushed back to this afternoon.”

Geo cued the cameraman, who turned the camera toward the door to the sales floor just in time to capture the Alejandro lookalike assistant manager emerge with a solemn smile.

“The show must go on,” Beti whispered. “Or so our new manager says.”

“Is he Alejandro's replacement?”

“Antonio's been the assistant manager for almost as long as Alejandro's been here.”

And, voil
à
, I'd been fed my first bona fide name for my not so bona fide suspect list.

Antonio.

And he even had a textbook motive as a
long-suffering
second fiddle.

“Welcome,” Antonio said, still looking more slick and slightly lower rent than Alejandro. His smile was nowhere close to reaching his eyes, which held both sadness and something I couldn't quite read. He shook hands, first with Frank, then me, and summoned us to follow him back.

While I expected prospective timeshare buyers to be peppered throughout the room as he led us across the sales floor, every conversation cluster was, once again, filled. But unlike Friday's festive atmosphere, the sales associates all looked dour and slightly sweaty, and the prospective owners looked tense and resigned to endure their presentations for whatever freebies they'd been offered in exchange.

Only Hair (Susan), who was there along with her husband, seemed to be enjoying the presentation.

“The paperwork is really just a formality,” Antonio said, leading us toward the corner office he'd already commandeered from Alejandro. “This shouldn't take long.”

I couldn't help but think about another type of
formality-only
paperwork: the signed, sealed, but not delivered divorce document locked in our home safe.

Home
and
safe
suddenly felt like keywords.

“I'm sorry to have to bother you with this today in the midst of what has to be unimaginable grief,” I said.

“Having you here is a good distraction,” he said thickly, bidding us to sit in the very same chairs and handing over what had to have been the very pen Alejandro had offered.

As Frank started to sign on the variety of dotted lines with his usual flourish on the
F
and
M
, I found myself gazing at photos of what I presumed were Antonio's wife and three kids already gracing the credenza behind him.

“Did Alejandro leave behind a family?” I asked.

“Just Elena,” he said, sending a jolt of guilt through me, despite any wrongdoing on my part. “Rest assured his portion of this and all commissions due to him will go directly to her.”

“I'm so glad,” I said, not pointing out that our particular timeshare deal was gratis, and thus unlikely to result in much of a boon for her or whoever else might be named in his will. “Poor dear.”

“I'm sure she'll land on her feet,” he said, with a touch of what seemed like contempt. Before I could figure out a polite way to ask what he meant, he added, “Enrique's been waiting for an opportunity like this his whole life.”

“Um, that”—I searched for a way to keep the conversation going so I could get more information—“sounds complicated.”

Antonio wiped away a tear. “Not anymore.”

Geo gave the thumbs up.

“I suppose not,” I said, taking what I assumed was a hint that Elena and Enrique belonged on my suspect list.

With that, it was my turn to sign the paperwork.

“Do you have any other questions?” Antonio asked as I dotted my i's and crossed my t's.

So many
, I didn't say.
Starting with, What in the world is really going on here and who, exactly, put you up to whatever it is you are and aren't telling us?

“I can't think of anything specific right now,” I said instead, feeling somewhat sorry for Alejandro now as well, but following my cue.

“If you do, you know where to find us,” Antonio said, motioning for an assistant to bring in the champagne I felt certain none of us felt like sipping in celebration.

“Thank you,” I said.

“Yes. Thank you,” Frank said, slipping an arm around me. “We're looking forward to many happy years here as vacation property owners.” He pulled me in close for a kiss. “Aren't we, hon?”

“Next!” Geo called out and tucked his hair behind his ears. He offered a smile that made me think of cats and canaries. “We're setting up for a poolside powwow.”

“A powwow?”

“You, Frank, and the boys.”

“I thought the call sheet said—”

“Whatever,” he said, whisking both Frank and me out the door of the timeshare office. “The boys unearthed some extremely interesting information.”

“The boys did?” I asked.

Geo directed us to the camera set up beside two chaises in a remote corner of one of the smaller pools. As soon as we arrived, a waiter handed us drinks with umbrellas and disappeared.

“Sit and look like you're relaxing, but deep in thought.”

“Okay,” I said, settling in next to Frank, anything but relaxed.

“And action,” he said.

With that, the boys came barreling over to where we
contemplating both the beauty of our surroundings and the tragic situation,
per the cue card that had suddenly appeared beside the camera.

“You're not going to believe what we found out,” Trent said with the enthusiasm of a
sixteen-year
-old who believed he might become a legitimate investigative journalist.

“What's that?” Frank asked.

“Alejandro didn't drink,” FJ announced.

“Who told you that?” I asked, sitting up, startled the boys had stumbled upon actual information that hadn't somehow been fed to them.

“A waiter at the poolside restaurant,” Trent said, puffing out his chest with satisfaction over his first official sleuthing mission accomplished.

“But I saw him drink,” I said. “We had margaritas together.”

“How many?” FJ asked. “Apparently he only drank when he was entertaining potential clients and kept to a strict
one-drink
maximum when he did.”

I thought back to our poolside lunch and realized that while the waiter had ensured my bottomless margarita remained that way, Alejandro had consumed only one glass before switching to water.

“Which leads to the second big bit of information,” FJ said.

Trent smiled. “Alejandro was supposedly a champion swimmer.”

“By champion, you mean …?”

“I mean Olympic hopeful, or something, back in the day.”

“First we have
chapulines
,” Chef Benito said, greeting us with the appetizer course.
“Prepared with garlic, salt, lime juice, and a hint of red chili powder.”

“
Chapulines
?” Frank asked.

“Crickets,” Benito said with smug satisfaction.

Eloise's eyes widened with horror.

“They're quite the delicacy down here.”

“Seriously?” FJ asked.

“The small ones in particular,” Benito said. “They're harder to catch.”

“Cool!” Trent said, stabbing a couple tiny crickets with his fork and doing the honors while we watched him chew.

“Delicious,” Benito said. “No?”

“Hmmm,” Trent said. “Interesting.”

“Cut,” Geo said. “Can you do another take please? This time with the rest of you looking just a little more horrified.”

“Fine by me,” Trent said.

“So they're not as disgusting as they look?” FJ asked.

“They're pretty crunchy.”

“I'll guess I'll try one,” FJ said.

“If the boys are man enough, so am I,” Frank said, giving FJ a meaningful pat on the back and holding his breath.

As the boys dug into the plate of chapulines, Eloise and I watched on in earnest revulsion.

“Now it's your turn, ladies,” Geo said, satisfied with his shot of the boys gobbling down insects.

“No can do,” Eloise said, looking as green as I felt. “That's not in my contract.”

“Be brave,” Benito said with a smile as he offered the platter to Eloise. “Señora Frugalicious certainly is.”

“I am?” I asked, dreading the thought of crunchy exoskeleton.

Benito nodded. “So much more brave than anyone else around here.”

I had to assume Benito had been coached to let me know he was a team player and that we could and should be open when talking to him.

“I understand Alejandro wasn't much of a drinker,” I said, taking the bait.

“No,” Benito said, definitively. “And he swam in the ocean almost every day.”

“So you think his death was unusual?”

He looked around and lowered his voice to a whisper. “No more than his life.”

Without further elaboration, the camera was back on and I was being served a spicy cricket, which, for the record, tasted nothing like chicken.

Geo was apparently pleased with my ability to feign a swallow and sent Benito back to the kitchen. Within minutes we were working our way through an unusual but delicious multicourse feast that included everything from green tomato pozole to seafood cooked in a mixture of citrus, radish, roasted cherries, onion, and coriander. Our dinner conversation, however, felt like a smorgasbord of obvious questions:

What was the story surrounding Elena, Alejandro, and Enrique?

What was truth behind Alejandro's drinking?

How did a champion swimmer simply drown?

Who was Sombrero Lady, and how did she know anything about Alejandro's death?

Why didn't almost anyone care to question what happened?