Heaven Is High (19 page)

No matter what, she told herself sternly, she was going to be on that plane Tuesday morning. There was nothing more she could do here. No matter what.

She persevered as long as she could sit still, then she strolled some more, until she could feel sweat gluing her shirt to her back. A gift shop would most likely have air-conditioning, she thought, and started back on the winding paths to find it. All tourist attractions had gift shops, she reassured herself, and in a climate like this, those shops would have air-conditioning.

But when she found it, tacked on to a tea shop, the air-conditioning chilled her thoroughly. She took a cup of coffee out to a covered area and sat down again, in full recognition of her failure as the typical American tourist.

She had known Sunday would be a long day, as would Monday until she had the Anaia papers in her hands, and a chance to go through them, to see if Anaia had left out anything, or had failed to sign anything, or whether anything else untoward popped up. She couldn't even plan her course of action concerning Binnie's status until she was sure of what documents she possessed and if she had enough to make a convincing case.

She was worried about Binnie and Martin. Would they stay put? If they began to feel that their presence was becoming too awkward for them to remain with Tawna and James, would they take it on themselves to relocate? Would they, like Anaia, find it necessary to go home, however briefly, and run into someone watching for them? She also had started to worry more about what Martin had said, that he would shoot Binnie and then himself before he'd let her go back. She would have been willing to bet any amount available that he had a handgun.

She told herself to stop borrowing trouble, but that never had worked in the past and it didn't work that day. She decided to have lunch at the tea shop and then go to the open-air market to kill a few more hours, if she could bear doing it.

*   *   *

Flea market, she thought several hours later. Giant garage sale. Open-air market. It was all the same, a place for local artisans and craftspeople to show their work, where farmers could sell some of their produce, although by the time she arrived little produce was left. Fortune-tellers had booths, countless shops displayed sandals, huaraches, thongs, boots. She even found a blouse that she immediately bought. Not her usual style, but a Belize-style blouse, ecru, made of a gauzy cotton, scoop-neck, not meant to be neatly tucked in and belted. It made her want to strip on the spot and put it on. There were cages crowded with live and unhappy chickens, booths and vendors without booths with food from all over Central America—tacos, enchiladas, tamales, ice cream, fish and chips, sausages on sticks, and even American-style hamburgers.… Everywhere, it seemed, there was music, guitars, pipes, horns, a steel drum band, accordionist.…

She walked up and down the loosely arranged aisles and rows of stalls and booths, crowded with shoppers and teenaged boys and girls laughing, flirting. Abruptly she stopped moving. Ahead, David was snapping pictures of young girls dancing, their wildly printed skirts flying.

He lowered his camera and turned at the same moment she decided to go back the way she had come. “Barbara! Wow, isn't this something!” he said, coming to her.

“For the brochure?” she asked, pointing to the camera.

“Maybe a few shots. Mostly for me, though. I'm ready to call it quits for the day. Look, there's a pavilion over that way with fish and chips that smelled great when I passed it a few minutes ago. Join me? Something cold to drink and the specialty of the house, fish and chips.”

He looked almost as hot as she was, and she hesitated only a moment, then nodded. “Something cold to drink did it,” she said. “I have water, but it's just about hot enough to make tea by now.”

The pavilion was crowded, but they found a table and David flagged a passing waiter to place their order.

“What's a Belize cooler?” Barbara asked.

“Juices,” David said. “I think whatever fruit is available, at least the ones I've had were all slightly different, all tangy and good.”

She ordered it and he said beer, fish and chips. “You have to make sure you differentiate between a Belize cooler and Belize Breeze, by the way. Order Belize Breeze and someone could call the cops, or else direct you to a bong shop, depending on who you asked.” He grinned. “I suspect the food and drinks will take a few minutes. No one seems in a hurry on Sundays here. Or any other day as far as that goes. It's a paradox. Belize, I mean. An overlay of British on pure Latino. And here, a place like this, the Brits lose.” He gestured generally at the market. “The boys asked me to be their official photographer and I jumped at the chance to see another country and be paid for it. I'm glad I did. What made you decide to come to Belize?”

“No language barrier,” she said. “Away from endless rain and cold. I thought there wouldn't be hordes of American tourists, and I was right about that. If the broncos have their way that might change.”

He laughed. “Broncos is exactly right. Gabe's word for us. You chastised him thoroughly, by the way. Good for you. He keeps taunting us one way or another, and no one seems to notice.”

“Apparently you do,” she said.

“Nothing he says really applies to me. I work for a living. He may not see it that way. God knows my folks don't. They think I just run around the world and take pictures for the fun of it. They would have gone crazy for joy if I had become an attorney. What made you go that route?”

“My father. He was a good defense attorney. I used to watch him in court and I knew that's what I wanted to do.”

“Was an attorney? No longer?”

“He's semiretired.”

“I've been trying to think of what I know about defense attorneys,” he said with a grin. “My info comes from movies and television, the tabloids, and so on. They take cases involving fraud, larceny, assaults, murder, drugs, divorces, immigration squabbles, the underbelly of society. Any truth to that?”

“I don't do divorces,” she said. “Too messy.”

They both laughed. Their waiter brought the drinks and food and she found the Belize cooler just right, tangy and exotic, and cold.

“Gabe is dying from curiosity about you,” David said a little later. “He's one of the nosiest guys I've met, and makes no pretense about it. He asked me point-blank what we'd been talking about yesterday. I told him what you said.”

Startled, she tried to recall anything she had told him.

“You said, ‘Yum,' ” he reminded her.

“And I say it again. Yum. That's good fish. What is it? Do you know?”

“Grouper. Gabe,” he said, “is sure you're here on a secret mission of your own. Are you?”

She laughed. “I bought a blouse a while ago. Mission enough? Is he going to hang around long enough to ferret out anything else I might have on my mind? Will his skipper shanghai him, drag him aboard the yacht, and take off?”

“He comes and goes when it suits him, apparently. After the boys leave in a few days, I'm going to hang around for a time. Still things I want to see and shoot, like stumbling across the market here today. Who knows what lurks around the next corner? Maybe we can get together. Lunch, dinner, something like that. When do you leave?”

“In a day or two. I'll have to check my ticket when I get back to the hotel. Who knows how many murderers, assaulters, larcenists, et cetera, are lining up at my door back home?”

She realized that the archetypical American tourist had left, and she was again the attorney from Eugene, wary and alerted to something that had gone unnoticed until that moment. Subtly, carefully, and very cleverly David was quizzing her. And he had explained in advance that he would still be around after his employers left. She looked past him at a strolling guitarist, singing about his beautiful Isadora.

“I wonder why the term ‘Latino' got attached to Central America,” David said. “No Latin here. No Rome.”

“There are a lot of phrases that bothered me along the way,” she said. “Be that as it may. As it may what? As it may be another that? Why two?”

“No reference, no context,” he said. “You'd have to know what the first that referred to.”

She finished her Belize cooler and looked at her watch. Twenty minutes before five. She had managed to kill most of the day, after all. “Split the tab?” she asked.

“Of course not. Are you leaving already?”

“Yes. Time for another shower. I'm averaging two a day. If I keep it up I'll start growing moss. Thanks for the high tea.” He was standing by the table as she walked away.

She left the market by a different entrance than she had used entering, and found herself on a mostly deserted street without a chance of finding a taxi. Vexed, she started to walk toward the corner where she could see a traffic flow passing.

He had not been following her all day, she felt certain, but how likely was it for them to have met accidentally at the market? And on the day before, when she stopped to make sure the broncos were not on the terrace, how likely was it to have had him appear suddenly at her side and suggest a small table for two? But he had not questioned her then. Just a holding pattern, waiting for Gabe to come along? She shook her head. Don't weave conspiracy theories out of thin air, she cautioned herself. Gabe had been the one to suggest that no one was to be trusted. How right that was, she thought then. No one at all. Almost instantly it occurred to her that if either Gabe or David was allied with Julius, he would already know that she was in Belize on Binnie's account.

Was a third party involved? Someone she was totally unaware of? She was frowning when she reached the corner and, to her relief, saw a taxi near the market entrance. Trust no one, she repeated to herself emphatically as she waved to the taxi driver.

18

She walked, window-shopped, entered shops and browsed when the sun was too hot to bear another minute, then remembered nothing of what she had seen. She sat in a café with a Belize cooler until it became warm, then walked some more. She was staying in tourist areas where there were others walking and shopping, where she felt that many people about afforded more safety and cover than other places would. The morning was interminable. Sleep had been elusive on Sunday night, and she had come wide-awake at some ungodly hour and was unable to go back to sleep. By noon she felt as if she had been up for at least twenty-four hours.

Lunch, she decided, not because she was hungry, but because it would take up another hour, and then she would return to the hotel and wait. Papa Pat had said late afternoon, she reminded herself, but what had he literally meant by late? Three? Five? Two? She should have asked. Wait where? Her hotel room was too prisonlike, the balcony too sunny until late in the day, the lobby too exposed, too likely a place to encounter Gabe or even David, although she assumed he was out with the broncos. It was a working day for him. She envied that, a working day, a day of purpose, with things to get to, to get done.

At one thirty, back in her room, she packed her suitcase, leaving out only what she would need for the flight home: jeans, a T-shirt, sweater, jacket, sneakers.… She emptied the big bag and put what she needed in her purse. She planned to leave the beach bag and matching hat in the room, to be tossed out, or, more likely, for the maid to take. Neither would be of any use to her once she was back home. There was nothing else she could do in the room. Taking her purse and her Eliot, she went to claim a comfortable chair in the lobby and stay in it until a courier arrived with Anaia's papers. If Gabe, David, or anyone else came to talk to her, she'd tell him to buzz off.

When she walked into the lobby the desk clerk stepped out from behind the counter and said, “Miss Holloway, your driver is waiting for you in front of the hotel.”

She thanked him and kept going through and out the front where she saw Philip standing by his Jeep.

“See the waterfall,” he said, holding up a folder.

She nodded and went to the Jeep, where he was holding open the back door. Not the smiling, open-faced boy she had ridden with before, today he looked nervous, and did not meet her gaze.

Something's gone wrong,
she thought with alarm.

She got inside the Jeep. He closed the door and got in front, drove away from the hotel without a word. There was no point in questioning him. He was a messenger, a driver, a useful for-hire kid. They were not likely to have told him anything more than to go get her.

She couldn't stop the scenarios of possible disastrous incidents from playing in her mind, overlapping one another, repeating with variations: Anaia had been captured, killed, had had an accident.… Papa Pat had lost the papers, had been stopped in Belmopan, had found it impossible to take part in this charade, had changed sides.… Robert had been compromised.… They had all been arrested.…

Philip was driving on the Western Highway, out of town, past the mangrove swamps, past the shantytown, driving faster than he had driven before, driving in silence, both hands tight on the steering wheel.

Were they going all the way to Belmopan? Possibly meet Anaia or Robert there? That meant going past the finca. Her unease was becoming dread and fear. “Philip, where are we going?”

He shook his head and did not answer.

She bit her lip and tried to relax, told herself that he worked for Robert, that he was just an innocent, gullible boy without an ounce of harm in him. But where was he taking her?

At last he slowed down and turned onto one of the narrow dirt roads into the jungle. After a minute or two he stopped. Ahead on the road was a black sedan, and by it were three men Barbara had never seen before. They walked to the Jeep and one of them pulled open the front door and yanked Philip out. He held a handgun. Another one opened the back and said, “Get out.”

When she hesitated, he reached in, grabbed her by the arm, and pulled her out. Philip said something she didn't catch, and the man who had yanked him out of the Jeep hit him in the head with the butt of his gun. Barbara screamed and started to run toward Philip, but the one holding her arm jerked her around and to the sedan. He shoved her into the backseat. The third man got in on the other side, and both doors slammed shut. The one who had pushed her inside walked around the car to get behind the wheel. He turned on the engine and the locks on the back doors clicked into place as the Jeep began to back out the way it had come in. There was no sign of Philip.