A Widow in Paradise & Suburban Secrets Read online

  “I don’t know. But thank God we only have carry-on,” Lyle said. “Did you see the line at the baggage claim?” He grabbed Dannie’s hand. “Come on. We don’t want to miss the shuttle bus to the hotel.”

  “Where are you staying?” Guy asked, his long strides keeping him effortlessly beside them.

  Lyle glared at him. “El Pelícano. Not that it’s any of your business.”

  “Hey, that’s where I’m staying, too. I guess we’ll be on the same shuttle.”

  “Great,” Dannie said in a tone that clearly indicated it wasn’t.

  “Maybe we can hook up tonight. Compare notes,” Guy said.

  “I don’t think so,” Lyle said. “Come on, Dano. Let’s find a taxi instead.”

  “See you around.” Guy headed toward the shuttle desk.

  “There’s something about that guy that gets under my skin,” Lyle said.

  “Mine, too.” Dannie watched him walk away, loath to admit she enjoyed the view. And not only because he was moving away from her.

  She and Lyle reached the far end of the terminal, stepping out onto a tiny slab of cracked cement. A breeze had kicked up, swirling gritty dust around their ankles.

  A native Cuatro Blancan, a dark-haired, brown-eyed Antonio Banderas look-alike, stood at a small wooden stand near the street.

  “Can we get a taxi?” Lyle asked.

  “A taxi. Sí. In one hour.”

  “In an hour? Why will it take an hour?”

  “It is siesta now.”

  “Jesus,” Lyle muttered.

  The man at the taxi stand grinned. “Do you know our saying on Cuatro Blanco? ‘Take it easy, amigo!’”

  Lyle turned red. He wasn’t the kind to take it easy.

  “Why don’t we just get the shuttle bus?” Dannie suggested.

  They wheeled their luggage back to the shuttle desk, where dozens of tourists snaked through a rope maze, fanning themselves with brochures, sitting on their suitcases. There was no one behind the desk.

  “Siesta time,” said the guy in front of them, nodding his head knowingly. He wore a blue-and-red Hawaiian shirt. Sweat poured from his forehead, soaking the brim of his khaki fishing hat.

  “What do they do, sleep behind the counter?” Lyle said.

  “I don’t know if they actually sleep,” the guy said. “I think it’s more like a long coffee break.”

  “You’d think if they drank that much coffee, things would move a little quicker around here.” Lyle dropped his luggage in disgust.

  Dannie grabbed a hair band out of her giant purse, raked the curls off the back of her neck and twisted them into a small bun. Then she pulled out two bottles of water and handed one to Lyle.

  “I can’t believe the stuff you’ve got in there,” he said.

  Dannie took a swig of her water. “Look. There’s Guy, over by the waiting area.”

  He spotted her and motioned her over.

  She pretended not to see him, until he started shouting her name.

  “I’ll be right back.” She left Lyle and her luggage in line and went over to Guy.

  “Bad news,” he said. “The lady at the shuttle desk told me that tropical storm just got upgraded to a category 1 hurricane.”

  “So?”

  “So it was tracking to the north, but it took a sudden turn about an hour ago. Right now it’s heading straight for Cuatro Blanco.”

  BY THE TIME THEY BOARDED the hotel shuttle—a dented, rust-eaten blue school bus with a cross-eyed pelican painted on the hood—the wind had kicked up.

  Palm trees bent low across the unpaved roads, the green fronds brushing the roof of the bus as they bumped toward the hotel. Dust swirled up around them, making it almost impossible to see the surrounding countryside. Just as the bus rolled up to El Pelícano, fat raindrops pelted the windows, picking up frequency as their group disembarked.

  Two men carrying a large sheet of plywood disappeared around the corner of the hotel. Dannie held her suitcase over her head and ran for the door, Guy and Lyle trailing behind her. They’d almost made it to the wide blue doors when the skies opened up.

  Guy shook the rain from his hair. Lyle shed his sport jacket and flung it over his shoulder.

  “Is this the hurricane?” Dannie asked.

  “Not yet,” said Guy. “It’s still a few hours away. This is just a pop-up storm. They have them all the time in tropical climates.”

  The lobby of El Pelícano looked much like the terminal at the airport—crowded, noisy and chaotic. Bellhops in red uniforms pushed carts piled with luggage through knots of people. Everyone seemed to be discussing the same thing—the hurricane.

  “Maybe we can get something accomplished before the storm hits,” Lyle said. “Why don’t you go see what you can find out while I check us in?”

  Dannie worked her way to the concierge desk. A pretty young woman, her dark hair piled into a thick ponytail on top of her head, smiled at her from behind the counter. “Welcome to Cuatro Blanco!”

  “Thanks. Listen, I need to get to a town called El Cuello. What would be the best way to get there?”

  “The ferry would be fastest, but you just missed the last one. It won’t run again until the storm passes.”

  “What about a taxi, or a bus?”

  The young woman shook her head. “I’m afraid you won’t be able to get anywhere very easily until the threat of the hurricane has gone.”

  “Okay. Thank you.”

  “Take it easy, amiga!”

  On her way back to Lyle and Guy, a sleepy-looking teenager in cutoff denim shorts and a red shirt, sporting a hotel name tag, handed Dannie a flyer.

  “Hurricane party in the Playa Lounge! Complimentary food, Cuatro coladas and dancing! Take it easy, amiga!”

  “Shouldn’t we stay in our rooms during the storm? I mean, won’t it be dangerous?” Dannie asked.

  “Our lounge is the safest place in the hotel, señora. Very sturdy. Besides, it’s going to be a great party!”

  “Wonderful,” Dannie muttered. She crossed the lobby to where Lyle still waited in the check-in line, which hadn’t moved an inch. He looked even more aggravated than when she’d left.

  “The concierge said public transportation has stopped running for today. I don’t think we’re going to make it.” She handed the flyer to Lyle. “Look at this.”

  “Where are you trying to go?” Guy asked.

  “None of your business,” Dannie said.

  Guy’s face was carefully neutral.

  “He isn’t alive,” she said.

  Guy shrugged. “Okay. He isn’t alive.”

  Lyle gave Guy a dark look and picked up Dannie’s suitcase. “Come on. Let’s go up to our rooms.”

  After letting themselves in, Lyle set Dannie’s suitcase down next to the bed in her room. They looked out the window, which faced the ocean. The rain had already stopped, but the water looked as if it were starting to churn. Even so, the scenery was spectacular. Until two men climbed a rickety scaffolding and nailed a piece of plywood over the window.

  “Nice view,” Lyle said.

  “Very funny.”

  Someone had spray painted a semi-lewd picture on the side of wood that was visible through her window.

  Dannie flopped onto the bed. “I just wish we could get something done. Maybe we should call the police in El Cuello.”

  “I don’t know. Seems to me they might respond better if they saw you in person.”

  “Why?”

  He raised an eyebrow.

  “What?”

  “Come on. Cute blonde woman in distress?”

  “I’m cute?”

  “You know you are. You’re more than cute. You’re adorable.”

  “Please. Koala bears are cute. Babies with chocolate cake on their faces are adorable. I’m a thirty-nine-year-old widow who just wants all of this to end, so she can maybe get on with her life.”

  Lyle sat down beside her on the bed. “Do you really want to get on with your life?”


  “Yes! I’ve spent the last eight and a half months trying to hold it all together, and now I find out that Roger was cheating on me with some fitness instructor, and he had a bag of counterfeit money in the garage, and he was involved in God knows what. And meanwhile I can’t even get the insurance check so I can get a new hot water heater.”

  Lyle hooked a finger under her chin. “I’m sorry Roger was such a jerk.”

  “It’s not your fault,” Dannie said.

  Lyle closed his eyes, touching his lips to hers.

  Dannie kept her eyes open, staring at a freckle on Lyle’s cheek, surprised that she felt so little when he kissed her.

  Scratch that. She felt absolutely nothing when he kissed her. Like when she was twelve, and had practiced kissing on a pillow, or a balloon with a face drawn on it. Lyle was a kiss-test dummy.

  He slid an arm around her waist and deepened the kiss. She wriggled out of his grasp and sprang from the bed.

  “I…ah…I really could use some time to freshen up,” she said.

  “Of course.” If he was embarrassed, or if he felt rejected, he gave no indication. Then again, maybe he thought she wanted to freshen up for him.

  On his way to the door, Lyle said, “I’ll stop by in an hour or so, and we can go grab something to eat and figure out what we’re going to do tomorrow. We’ll have to get back to the airport by five tomorrow afternoon, so we’ll only have a few hours.”

  “Sure. Sounds good.” She closed the door behind him, sliding the safety chain into place.

  Maybe it had been a mistake to come here with Lyle. But the thought of coming by herself—or worse, with Guy—was just plain scary. She wasn’t usually the fragile type, but the chance that she might learn the gory details about Roger’s death without having a friend to lean on made her glad to have Lyle there.

  Besides, he had loved Roger like a brother. If anyone wanted to get to the truth as much as she did, it was Lyle.

  So she’d simply have to avoid being alone with him, and when they got back to Pennsylvania they would have to have a serious talk about the state of their friendship.

  ALTHOUGH IT WAS ONLY four o’clock in the afternoon, the Playa Lounge was packed with hotel guests in varying states of inebriation. A group of college-aged kids were bent backward over the bar while the bartender poured tequila and lime juice into their mouths, creating instant margaritas.

  On stage the house band, Los Cangrejos, had just finished up an Elvis medley. A disorderly table of fiftysomething ladies yelled out drunken requests from the rear of the lounge.

  A waitress walked by and offered them drinks with little umbrellas speared through chunks of pineapple. “Cuatro colada?”

  “Why not?” Dannie took one from the tray. It wasn’t as if they were going to get anything accomplished during a hurricane, anyway.

  Lyle took one, too, and they touched glasses before they drank.

  “To Roger,” he said.

  “To Roger.” Dannie took a sip. “These are delicious.”

  Lyle scanned the bar. “I guess everybody wants to party through the hurricane.”

  “Guess so.”

  They squeezed into a small table for two just as another couple vacated it.

  “You hungry?” Lyle asked.

  “Is that a rhetorical question?”

  Lyle smiled. “There’s a buffet over in the corner, if we can get through the crowd.”

  “That’s not a crowd, it’s a feeding frenzy. Let’s just listen to the band for a while, until the line gets a little shorter.”

  They were working on their third Cuatro colada when Lyle pointed to the door. “Great. Look who’s here.”

  Chapter Six

  GUY LOUGHRAN STOOD in the doorway, filling it up like a big pink door. The red-haired flight attendant clung to his arm.

  “Doesn’t he own a shirt that isn’t pink?” Lyle said. “What a girl.”

  Dannie took a chug of her Cuatro colada. Guy definitely was not a girl, as evidenced by the lustful stares he was getting from every female in the place. Though she couldn’t see them from where she sat, Dannie knew his sexy, ocean-green eyes were analyzing hair, makeup, nails, skin.

  And there was a lot of skin.

  Dannie became suddenly self-conscious of the conservative blouse and skirt she’d worn. She unbuttoned the bottom three buttons on her blouse, tying it into a knot just beneath her bra.

  Lyle gave her a look.

  “What? It’s hot in here.”

  Lyle sucked down the rest of his drink, waved the waitress over and took two more Cuatro coladas from the tray.

  “Maybe we should slow down a little,” Dannie said. “We haven’t eaten all day, and you’re not much of a drinker.”

  “I can handle it.” Lyle slurped down half of his fresh drink.

  “Well, I’m starting to feel a little drunk. I’m going to get some food,” she said. “Are you coming?”

  “I’ll hold the table.”

  “I’m sure nobody will take it—”

  “Go ahead. I’ll get something when you get back.”

  Dannie watched Guy out of the corner of her eye as she made her way through the buffet line.

  The flight attendant had disappeared. Guy stopped to talk to the group of ladies who were yelling at the band, and pretty soon they were all having their pictures taken with him, in poses that could have been on the covers of romance novels.

  After that he chatted up a couple of waitresses, admiring their jewelry, looking at their nails.

  What a jerk.

  When he spotted Dannie, he smiled that sexy smile—the one he presumed would send any woman to her knees.

  Well, not her.

  Dannie braced herself against the buffet table. Man, was it hot.

  “Hey! What are you doing here?” Guy said.

  “Not that it’s any of your business, but Lyle and I are having a few drinks, and something to eat.”

  “No kidding. Where is good ol’ Lyle?”

  Dannie jabbed a thumb over her shoulder. “He’s holding the table.”

  Guy laughed. “Looks more like the table is holding him.”

  Dannie turned around. Lyle was slumped over, passed out with an empty Cuatro colada glass in his hand.

  “Great.”

  “Here,” Guy said, taking the plate—piled high with tostadas, enchiladas and tamales—from her hand. “I’ll run this back to the table for you. You get something for him to eat.”

  “How do you know this plate isn’t for him?”

  Guy looked at her with raised eyebrows. “We had breakfast together, remember?”

  Muttering, she shoveled more food onto another plate and worked her way back to the tiny table, which now seemed even smaller with Lyle’s head on it.

  “Looks like he’s out cold.” Guy grabbed Lyle by the hair and picked up his head, letting it fall back onto the table with a thump.

  “Lyle.” Dannie shook his shoulder. “Lyle!”

  Nothing.

  Dannie put the plate of food on the table. Guy was sitting in her seat.

  “Do you mind?” she said.

  “Not at all.” He leaned over and grabbed an empty chair from the next table, squeezing it between his and Lyle’s. “How’s that?”

  “Great.”

  The sarcasm was lost on him.

  “I guess he won’t be needing this.” Guy took the extra plate of food.

  “Please. Help yourself.” She pushed Lyle’s head out of the way and began to eat.

  Guy poked the food around on his plate with a fork. “There’s nothing good here. How do you eat this crap?”

  “It’s delicious.”

  “It’s full of sodium and fat.”

  “That’s what makes it good.” Dannie shoveled refried beans and cheese into a tortilla and rolled it up. “Hey, don’t you have a stewardess to harass?”

  “Flight attendant. And she hooked up with a pilot.”

  “Aww. Too bad.”

  “
Not really. She wasn’t my type.”

  Before Dannie could ask him what his type was, Guy waved a waitress over, speaking to her in perfect Spanish.

  “You speak Spanish?” Dannie said.

  Guy shrugged. “There are a lot of Spanish-speaking clients at the salon I work for. Besides, I think everyone should speak a second language.”

  Dannie agreed, but she wasn’t about to tell Guy that. She’d taken French in college, but could remember only about enough to order a meal.

  “Let me ask you a question,” Dannie said. “Why are you so sure Roger is still alive?”

  Guy leaned back in his seat. “I have my reasons.”

  “Would you mind sharing?”

  For a minute she wasn’t sure he was going to tell her. But then he said, “For one, my friend at the Main Street Gym said Lisa had training appointments with Roger almost every day for the two weeks before she left.”

  “That’s hardly a reason,” said Dannie. “She was his trainer.”

  “She was his lover.”

  Dannie couldn’t deny that one. “So they saw each other a lot. That doesn’t prove they ran off together.”

  “Listen, I know Lisa. It would never occur to her to run away to a tropical island by herself. It would never occur to her to run away to the Jersey shore by herself. She’s never been able to do anything without a man, and Roger was the man of the moment.”

  Dannie mulled this over, and dismissed it for what it was. A man’s homegrown psychoanalysis of a wife who’d realized she didn’t have what she wanted at home, so she ran away.

  “Maybe Roger told her he was coming to Cuatro Blanco for a business trip, and it sounded good to her. Maybe she came down to meet him, and then he had his accident.”

  “Maybe,” Guy acquiesced. “But let me ask you something now. Why are you so sure he didn’t fake his death?”

  Dannie opened her mouth to speak. Guy held up a hand. “Save the stuff about him being Super Dad, and about how he loved you too much. Give me a theory. Give me something solid.”

  “Okay,” she said. “You really want to know what I think?”

  Guy nodded.

  “I think Roger was murdered.” There, she’d said it.

  Guy looked at her as if he expected her to go on.

  She twisted her napkin around her finger. “I don’t think the accounting firm he worked for was completely ethical.”