Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine 03/01/11 (16 page)

“No, no, I’m not,” Brandon answered, the message light flickering redly at the edge of his vision. “She’s out of town and won’t be back until tomorrow. What’s this all about?”

“We’re trying to locate her next of kin. Would you know how to do that?”

Brandon felt as if the room was growing darker yet, as if the rain outside was only the prelude to a greater storm. He shook his head and whispered, “No, I don’t.” His ignorance made him feel sick and selfish. “She’s from upstate New York . . . I think.”

The State Department official appeared to give this some consideration, then said, “We have her out at the airport, I’m afraid. We’d like to take her home, if we could.”

“The airport,” Brandon repeated. They had her at the airport, he thought, struggling to regain the surface he was sinking beneath. Did they think she was a drug runner—a smuggler of some kind? “Why do you have her at the airport? What’s she done?”

“Done?” the official repeated. “She hasn’t done anything, Mr. . . . ?”

“Highsmith,” Brandon answered with some attempt at bravado. “Brandon Highsmith.”

“We have her because she’s . . . she’s dead, Mr. Highsmith. She died in Belize, and it’s one of our jobs to return Americans to their homes in circumstances like these. We were hoping you could help.”

Brandon seized the edge of Julia’s desk to keep from sinking to his knees, and stared up at the older man through bloodshot, brimming eyes. He was unsure whether he would be sick or pass out, but he was certain that he could be of no help.

The resort appeared exactly as Julia had written and as was depicted on the postcard Brandon had received several days after her funeral. It was the only personal item he had been given by her in their brief, secret relationship and he carried it in the pocket over his heart like a talisman. The words scribbled on it gave no recognizable clue as to why she would hang herself no matter how many times he read it. Even so, as the porter left him to get unpacked, he retrieved it once more in the hope that the setting it was written in might aid him in deciphering its meaning. The cottages in the foreground were as charming as depicted, but the mountains looming in the near distance, undoubtedly meant to be alluring and mysterious, appeared brooding and shadowed to Brandon’s eyes.

He sat wearily on the edge of the bed and read the cramped, tiny words: “Don’t know when this will get to you—weeks, probably. Went into the mountains you see on the front. On the way we hit a traffic jam! You’ll never guess why—the driver tells me that there’s a haunted spot on the road and when the ghost (a mysterious woman, he says) is seen, no one will travel through for a while. She’s a warning, he said. It’s a bad curve and a far fall. Can you believe it? Ghost crossing! We stop for the dead! The driver laughed like it was superstition, but we didn’t go around the other cars, either. Soon, Julia.”

Soon . . . the word stood out from the soiled white of the card, scribbled and sweat-stained, and Brandon’s eyes kept returning to it. Soon. Had she meant simply that she would see him again before too long, or was its real meaning concealed within her own intentions? Her death, he knew, had occurred mere hours after her return from the mountains.

He had not seen the police photos taken of Julia, but they had been described to him by the man from the State Department. He had not known of Brandon’s connection to Julia and Brandon had chosen to remain silent on the subject. The agent knew only that they were friends and coworkers and appeared to accept that this explained Brandon’s reactions sufficiently. Fortunately, his secret remained just that. Otherwise, it would have been unlikely that his boss, Donna, and the Philadelphia head office, would have agreed to his completing Julia’s assignment. He had five days, and no more, to follow up on her impressions and recommend a decision to advance or withdraw from the tentative deal.

Julia’s choice of death had been simple and effective, in fact, a method quite popular in jails and holding cells, he had learned. Utilizing the terrycloth belt that had been provided by the lodge with her complimentary bathrobe, she had secured one end to the clothes hook on the bathroom door. The other end she had fastened around her neck in a simple slip knot. The length of the belt allowed her to kneel on the cool tiles of the bathroom (she had used the bath mat to cushion her knees) and simply lean forward. After a few moments, Brandon was assured, the lack of oxygen would have rendered her unconscious, allowing gravity to accomplish the rest. There would not have been much discomfort, the kindly official had assured Brandon. She had left no note of explanation or goodbye. Presumably, her last words were those scribbled on the resort postcard.

The local police had summoned the U.S. Embassy shortly after they had determined the nationality of their victim, but her body had been removed from the scene prior to their arrival. The autopsy, however, had been witnessed by one of their investigators, the official had told Brandon in his kindly, factual manner, and no evidence contrary to the police investigation was obtained. The results of a rape kit had been negative. There was no apparent reason to disbelieve the
in situ
photographs the Belizean police had taken. “Suicide,” the older man had assured him, “often happens in situations like these . . . when people who are disturbed and vulnerable find themselves in strange places, uprooted, if you will. I can’t tell you how many situations like your coworker’s I’ve had to look into over the years. It’s not good to travel alone, in my opinion, and believe me, I’ve done enough of it to know—you have to be strong.”

Repeated knocking drew Brandon from his reverie, and he hurried from the bathroom to answer the door. The man who had driven him from the Dangriga airport and who had carried his suitcase to his room smiled up at him. He was slightly pudgy, and yellowish in color, with carefully combed and lacquered grey hair. His smile was large, the teeth as yellowish as the man himself. Brandon could not readily assign him a race or ethnic group. “Hello, again,” he chortled. “I hope I have not awakened you, Mr. Highsmith?”

Brandon shook his head, even as the man thrust a bottle into his hands. “Compliments of management, sah,” he continued, the vestiges of a British accent buried deep within his own patois. “Our very own national rum. It is very good, if I must say so . . . but, please, you are the judge.”

Brandon turned the brown bottle in his hands and studied its cheap paper label and foil cap. “Thank you . . . and thank the management. It really wasn’t necessary. I’m sure that I’ll enjoy it.”

The yellow man bowed slightly and turned to go. “I was wondering,” Brandon blurted out, “if you knew which room Ms. Catesby stayed in? Was it this one, by any chance?”

The driver stopped and turned, his smile dimmed by a slight creasing of his round face. “I was not her driver, I’m afraid. Management will best answer such a question, Mr. Highsmith; they will surely know.” With a wave he resumed his short journey along the boarded path to the main lobby building, where, presumably, management dwelled.

The sun was settling into the molten bay as Brandon made to retreat into his room, but as he closed the door against the heat and the glare of the sea, he noticed a lone silhouette floating on the reddening horizon. Just as Julia had described, a fisherman, as still as a heron hunting the shallows, stood poised within his pirogue some fifty yards from shore. Brandon could not guess his intended quarry, and did not really care, because for a brief moment the sight afforded him an image as sharp as the image of the man on the water itself—a picture of Julia sitting with her laptop, perhaps on this very veranda, seeing exactly what he was seeing and sending that image to him across the ether.

He did not answer the knocking on his door—the combination of several tots of the sweetish local rum and his own physical and emotional exhaustion had rendered him almost senseless. In the event, though the knocking was insistent and loud enough to rouse him, he was unable to answer its brief summons and fell back into a deep slumber before its echoes faded into the inky darkness where jungle met sea.

Management revealed itself the following morning at breakfast. Brandon had just seated himself near one of the wall-length open windows in the dining room when he was joined by Paige and Fuentes.

“Well, you don’t look much the worse for wear,” Paige declared happily while completely blocking Brandon’s view of the gently undulating sea mere yards away. “That is the great beauty of being young—so much stamina!” He seized one of Brandon’s hands in his great paw. “So glad you have joined us, Mr. Highsmith. I am Claudell Paige and this,” he stepped aside slightly to reveal his much smaller partner, “is Hernando Fuentes. I hope your journey was pleasant. How is the breakfast . . . hmmm?”

Brandon hastily swallowed his mouthful of scrambled eggs and attempted to rise. “Glad to meet you,” he managed.

“No, no, please sit, I insist,” Paige said. The partners pulled out chairs and did so as well. Paige signaled a waitress and shouted across the nearly empty room, “Coffees, Brenda . . . please, dear girl.” Brandon noticed Fuentes wincing at the larger man’s volume.

Paige surveyed Brandon’s plate with scepticism. “You did not have the chef prepare you one of our delicious omelets?” He shook his great head sadly. “That is a shame . . . a great shame. You are really missing out, I assure you.”

“Yes, I’ve heard the food here is good,” Brandon lied, then added, when he saw Paige’s dark face crease in disappointment, “excellent, actually . . . Julia wrote and told me.”

Paige’s smile grew in wattage, then dimmed by degrees as the name of the dead girl floated, ghostlike, between them all. Brandon thought the sallow Fuentes appeared to grow queasy, though whether it was over the conjured name or perhaps from his previous evening’s drinking, he could not know. The coffees appeared at the men’s elbows.

“Oh dear,” Paige intoned. “Yes, that poor girl.” He stirred several spoonfuls of brown sugar dispiritedly into his cup. “We’ve never had anything like that happen here before,” he assured Brandon.

Brandon noticed Fuentes cross himself and whisper, “
Madre de Dios
.” When he saw that Brandon was watching him, he smiled in a sickly manner and said in perfect English, “My wife and I pray for her, Mr. Highsmith. We have lit candles in our church for her soul; perhaps it will help.”

“Help?” Brandon asked. “What do you mean?”

Paige looked down on his diminutive partner as if he were contemplating knocking him over. “Suicide,” Fuentes murmured, “it’s a bad thing, is it not . . . the sin of despair?”

“What do you mean?” Brandon repeated a little more loudly. A middle-aged couple several tables over glanced nervously at them and then hastily away again.

“Her soul,” Fuentes continued, oblivious to the heat in Brandon’s voice. “It is lost to God. Was she Catholic?” he inquired gently.

“Drink your coffee and be quiet, man,” Paige calmly commanded Fuentes. “You are upsetting our guest.”

Brandon recalled drops of water, cold and unexpected, splashing his face as the priest blessed the coffin that concealed his lover. “Yes,” he whispered, “she was a Catholic.”

“Well,” Fuentes continued, as unaware of his partner’s disapproval as he was of the depth of Brandon’s feelings, “there are exceptions, of course—insanity . . . an altered state of consciousness . . . the Church understands these things.” He rose unsteadily to his feet and said, “I’ll be back presently. Please continue in my absence.” Brandon watched the disheveled little man shuffle off towards the far end of the restaurant, his pace picking up as he drew near the double doors that concealed the bar.

Brandon turned back to find Paige regarding him solemnly, small beads of sweat dewing his hairline. “Do forgive him,” he said. “He is not a well man and this . . . this business . . . Ms. Catesby, I mean, has upset him very much. It has upset us all, of course; you as well, I suspect.”

“Yes,” Brandon admitted. “Yes, it has.”

“Did you know the young woman well?” Paige asked.

Brandon hesitated, stirring his forgotten eggs with his fork. He hadn’t known her, he thought; hardly at all, he realized now. “Did she seem unhappy here?” he asked in return, evading Paige’s question.

“No, not at all,” Paige boomed once more. “Quite the contrary. She appeared very interested in our resort here . . . our culture, as well . . . very inquisitive. No one could have been more surprised than me.”

Outside, Brandon saw a huge frigate bird lofting in the thermals made by the rapidly heating beach. It hung in the air like a kite over the few sunbathers who languished beneath it, rocking to and fro with the feigned indifference of the predator. “Someone was bothering her at night, Mr. Paige . . . someone kept coming to her door. Were the police told of this?”

“Please call me Claudell,” Paige responded. “Oh yes, of course I heard of her complaint and we did look into it. I had the security guard posted just yards from her door. But it was to no avail. The following morning she complained of someone knocking at her door once again. My man saw nothing.” He let this last piece of news hang between them for a few moments. “He’s a very reliable man . . . Brandon, isn’t it? May I call you Brandon?”

“Yes,” Brandon agreed. “Was there any other way to her door?”

Paige regarded the younger man for a moment. “Brandon, if you look out you will notice that we rake the sand each evening.” He made a sweeping gesture meant to include the entire grounds. “Whenever anyone strays from the walkways they must leave behind their prints . . . yes? My security man placed his chair on the walkway that led to Ms. Catesby’s door and saw nothing. But, even had he fallen asleep, the . . . visitor, shall we say, could not have passed him without stepping into the sands. So you see, unless our culprit is an angel . . . or a ghost, he must have left footprints in his wake.”

“Then what did happen?” Brandon asked hoarsely.

“Why did anything have to happen?” Paige replied, sitting up a little taller. “She did what she did, and I must say, Brandon, that she did us little good in the act. Have you considered that? It is clear to me that you have considerable feeling for the young woman and I am wondering now why you have come here. Can we expect you to be objective about us, Mr. Highsmith? Will we receive a ‘fair shake,’ as you say in the States, with your investors? We had nothing to do with this young woman’s death.”