On the Rocks Page 5

  “I’m American, a foreigner. I mean, I have lots of friends here but for people I don’t know, there’s still that barrier.”

  Elaine shook her head. “That can be an advantage. You don’t have a vested interest in this place like a local private investigator would. From what I’ve heard, private investigators have to stay in good graces with the police. They play ball, and that means they’ll nail you.”

  Ruby tensed. “What do you mean?”

  Elaine gave a sad smile. “Isn’t it obvious? The police are lazy. They want a quick solution to a bad crime. I’ve spent a lot of time in the Caribbean. On holiday, of course, not working like you, but I’ve seen it time and again. All the police care about is keeping the tourist trade flowing smoothly. Once when I was in the Dominican Republic a friend had her room ransacked. The police took away the chambermaid, although I knew for a fact that the poor woman was cleaning another person’s room when the robbery happened. I told them that, but they wouldn’t listen to me. They needed a quick arrest, and so they took the most obvious suspect.”

  “That’s insane,” Ruby said, her voice rising in pitch. “I was the one who called it in!”

  Elaine leaned closer to her, fixing her with her eyes and whispering. “You should have heard them talk. They kept asking about you. If we knew you, or if we had ever been to the bar before. All sorts of questions. They asked more questions about you than anything else. They’ve already half made up their minds. If we don’t find the real person quickly, you’ll go to jail and poor Richard will never see justice.”

  Ruby remembered the suspicious looks the police officer had given her. She remembered her stumbling answers, and how stupid and false they sounded. Looking at her through their eyes, she looked suspicious as hell.

  “All right,” she said with a sigh. “It’s just that I’m not sure where to begin. How long have you been in the Bahamas?”

  “A week. It’s our honeymoon. Was our honeymoon.” Elaine gazed out at the harbor for a moment before speaking again. “We had booked three weeks here. In the winter we planned to go skiing in France. He loved to ski.” She dabbed her eyes with a sodden handkerchief.

  Ruby had no idea how much three weeks in this place cost, but she was pretty sure it was more than she made in a year. A lot more.

  “So what did you do while you were here? Where did you go?”

  “The usual things, I suppose. Lazed by the pool or the beach mostly. We hired a helicopter to take us on a flying tour of the island. Ate at the restaurants. The resort has five.”

  “Did you meet anyone?”

  “Lots of people, but only superficially. We spent all our time with each other.”

  “Did Richard ever go out on his own?”

  Elaine shook her head. “No. I don’t think he was out of my sight for more than fifteen minutes at a stretch any time in the past week. At night we’d dine and take a stroll on the beach and then go back to our room. I’ve always been one to go to bed early. So I’d be asleep by ten.”

  “He’d go to sleep that early too?”

  “No. I know I’m unusual. He’d read or watch television in another room of our suite so he wouldn’t disturb me. He was a night owl. He usually wouldn’t come to bed until two or three, I guess.”

  “You guess?”

  “I’m a heavy sleeper. I wouldn’t notice him coming to bed. Then he wouldn’t be up until nine or ten in the morning. I didn’t mind. I’d just snuggle up to him and watch him sleep.” Elaine sniffed and dried her eyes. She managed a weak smile. “Looks like you’ve already started your investigation. I need to send you that ten thousand. Give me your bank details.”

  Ruby shifted in her seat as Elaine pulled out her phone.

  “Actually, um, I don’t have a bank account here.”

  “Then give you your American account then.”

  “Oh, it’s closed. Um, I mean …”

  “Never mind, I know all about avoiding the tax man. I’m afraid the ATM will only allow me to take out a thousand at a time. Can I give you a thousand now and the rest in installments?”

  “Yes, that will be fine.”

  “One moment.” Elaine got up and headed inside.

  In the few minutes she was gone, Ruby finished her Morning Glory and her breakfast, feeling ten times better. The waiter brought the second Morning Glory and she began to sip it. Her mind was clearer now, but no less confused. This woman was obviously loaded, and not just from Richard’s money. Why didn’t she hire a private detective? She could probably get the best in the States and fly him down.

  Ruby pulled out her phone and checked how much a suite cost at Coast of Dreams. Her eyes almost bugged out of their sockets. All those zeros. When she had been riding high in her MMA career she’d been making good money, but nothing like this. The Coast of Dreams was a whole other world.

  And she didn’t belong here. The security guard by the pool who was pretending not to watch her was a sure sign of that.

  So Elaine went to bed early and Richard liked to stay up late. He’d go to a separate room so as not to disturb her. Innocent enough, but maybe that was just a dodge so he could wait until she was asleep and creep out. If she was a heavy sleeper who went to bed at ten and he stayed up until two or three, that was at least four hours a night for a week where his whereabouts were unknown.

  Unknown for the moment.

  Ruby needed to find out what he was doing during those hours. Her gut told her he wasn’t just sitting quietly in the suite reading and watching TV.

  Hotel security would know. The cops would know too. The first thing they’d do would be to check the hotel security cameras to see if he had left.

  Elaine returned and handed Ruby a wad of Bahamian dollars. A thousand, to be precise, since the local currency was pegged to the U.S. dollar. Ruby’s eyes widened at having more money in her hand than she had held since she had fled the States. She put it in her wallet, so stunned that she temporarily forgot the question on her mind.

  Elaine reminded her.

  “There’s something strange about all this,” she said. “Hotel security said they don’t have any footage of him leaving the resort, but they have cameras everywhere. He must have left, but how? And why?”

  Ruby thought for a minute. Yes, she had seen cameras everywhere, hidden discreetly as little black globes high up on the ceilings. A place like this probably had a few dozen millionaires on any given night, plus all the rich-but-not-loaded people. Security would be tight. Any entrance would have a camera covering it. The grounds would too.

  “What floor are you on?”

  “The seventh, overlooking the sea.”

  Ruby looked up at the side of the hotel, with its terraces and smooth walls. It would take a world-class rock climber to get down the side of that building, and they’d still get picked up by any cameras as he left the property.

  “But they must have picked him up,” Ruby said.

  Elaine shook his head. “The camera in our hallway last saw the both of us going into our suite at a quarter to ten the night before last. The night Richard disappeared. It never picked him coming out again.”

  “That’s impossible.”

  “Security thinks there might be a glitch in the system.” Elaine shuddered. “I’m sorry, I really need to lie down. I’m going to take one of those sleeping pills. Call me this afternoon, will you?”

  “I will, I promise.”

  Elaine put her hand on Ruby’s. It felt cold and trembled a little.

  “Thank you. There’s something strange going on, I can feel it.” She glanced around her and lowered her voice. “How could the cameras not see him leave the hotel? Or if someone kidnapped him, why wasn’t that picked up? It doesn’t make any sense.”

  “No, it doesn’t,” Ruby agreed.

  Elaine took out her phone and tapped on the screen. “I’m sending you a couple of photos of Richard.”

  “All right. Could you tell me a bit about him? Age, that sort of thing?”


  “He’s thirty-three. Five foot nine. Works … worked as a stockbroker in New York. That’s where we live.”

  “What do you do for a living?”

  “Real estate. Manhattan apartments. Houses in the Hamptons.”

  Ruby nodded. She didn’t know much about New York, but she knew those names meant money.

  “Did he have any enemies? The stock market can be a pretty c—” Ruby stopped herself before she could say cutthroat business—“competitive world.”

  “No. I mean, yes. It’s a tough job and everyone is trying to scramble to the top, but he was completely different at home. Such a sweetheart. Never a bad word to anybody. Everybody loved him.” Elaine got unsteadily to her feet. “I really have to go. It’s been all too much. Thank you. I know I can count on you. Don’t forget to call.”

  Elaine hurried away, her gait stiff, jerky. Ruby watched her go, pity rising in her heart.

  Poor woman.

  She must be really desperate to put her faith in me. I have no idea what I’m doing.

  Ruby took a deep breath.

  Take some responsibility. You’ve done lots of impossible things in your life. First you thought running a marathon would be impossible, and you did that. You thought doing the Iron Man would be impossible, and you did that. Then you thought getting high up in the MMA rankings would be impossible, and you did that too. Make this another impossible task.

  Dad was behind me for all of that. He isn’t here now.

  Your own damn fault. Get to work. Your freedom is on the line.

  The question was, where to start? If hotel security was giving Elaine the runaround, they sure weren’t going to give Ruby any information. And the lump of Bahamian brawn by the pool was now being more obvious in his staring, as if to signal that now that the meeting had finished, it was time for her to get her shabby self out of there.

  Ruby obliged. Slowly.

  She wanted to take a closer look at the security systems in this place.

  As she suspected, those little black camera globes were everywhere—above each door, at regular intervals along the outside of the building, on the staircase and above the elevators, and at the entrance to every hallway. She saw no way to get in or out of this place without showing up on at least one camera. And passing from an upstairs suite through one of the doors would take someone past several.

  But obviously Richard Wainwright had managed it.

  Unless the hotel was hiding evidence.

  But why do that?

  As she got to the front drive, she stopped, wondering where to go next.

  If he left on his own and didn’t want to be spotted, what would he do?

  A staff member came up. “Would you like a taxi, madam?”

  “No, thank you.”

  Assuming he wanted to sneak out, he would have walked. No driver means one less witness.

  But did he care about witnesses? If he was just going out for some illicit fun he wouldn’t. But maybe he was here for more serious reasons.

  Reasons that got him killed.

  This part of the Bahamas was lined with chic resorts. There was one half a mile away in each direction, an easy walk on a warm, pleasant morning.

  The resort to her left was famous for its casino, so she headed there first.

  If you want to find trouble, she reasoned, follow the sin.

  As a bartender on the wrong side of town, she knew this island offered plenty of sin.

  That meant she was in for a lot of walking.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Ruby scored a hit on her first try—the very first place she visited, the resort with the casino right next to the Coast of Dreams. A croupier—a short, bald American with a gray beard and a Chicago accent, remembered him.

  “Yeah, he came in four, five nights ago. That’s when I usually work. I’m just filling in today. Big spender. He sat at my table playing blackjack for a few hands. Lost a fair amount. Sorry, I can’t remember how much. Didn’t seem to care, though. We have lots of people like him come through here. What made me remember him was that we had to kick him out.”

  “Really? Why?”

  “He was drunk.”

  “Drunk?” Elaine said Richard didn’t drink. He might have even been in AA. Ruby had wanted to ask that but hadn’t wanted to reveal she had seen that token.

  “Came in that way and drank at least a couple more cocktails while he was at my table. Sucked them down like Morning Glories after a bad night out. There was some young chick, sorry, I mean lady, sitting at the next seat. He flirted with her but didn’t get anywhere. Then he grabbed her ass.”

  “Charming.”

  “You’re telling me. Just went ahead and grabbed it like it was 1960. Well, she sure didn’t think it was 1960. No, she was 2020 all the way. Let out a big scream and started yelling about the patriarchy.”

  Ruby felt a rising anger. Poor Elaine was sitting in her resort, her life wrecked during what was supposed to be the happiest time of her life, and it turned out her husband had been lying and trying to cheat on her.

  “She should have punched him in the balls,” Ruby growled.

  The croupier nodded. “That’s what I would have done, but no one’s grabbed my ass since Clinton was president. Nah, she was more the righteously indignant type. She demanded to know his name so she could out him on Twitter. Security eighty-sixed him.”

  “Did he put up a struggle?”

  The croupier laughed. “Have you seen our security? He wasn’t that drunk. Just called the girl all sorts of names as he was being led out. Management took ages to calm her down. Practically buried her in vouchers. At least we didn’t end up on Twitter.”

  “Did you ever see him after that?”

  “No. When you get kicked out of our place, you get kicked out for good.”

  Ruby left the casino stunned. While she had discovered something significant, she now knew less about Richard than she had before. Nothing Elaine told her about him could be trusted. The woman had been blind.

  Eight hours, two sore feet, and a thousand questions later, she had found out nothing more. Exhausted, Ruby took a cab downtown. Usually she took the bus because money was tight. For the moment, money was the one thing she didn’t need to worry about.

  If she had learned one thing in that long day, it was that the movies lied. Being a private detective was deadly boring. She had gone to every resort within easy walking distance, and all the bars and clubs in between. She showed Richard’s picture to everyone. The majority of them were sure they hadn’t seen him. Others replied with a helpless shrug. “We get so many people in here, they become a blur after a time. He might have been here, but he didn’t stand out.”

  Ruby understood. Working at a bar she had developed a good memory for faces. Even so, if someone just quietly came in and drank a few drinks and didn’t cause trouble, she wouldn’t remember him for long, and all these bars were a lot bigger and busier than the Pirate’s Cove. The nightclubs were even worse.

  She also learned that it was remarkably easy to ask people questions if you asked them right. All she had to do was take on an air of concerned authority, explain she was helping a friend find her missing husband, and people opened up. It’s hard for someone to turn their back when a stranger asks a reasonable question. Ruby wondered if all those TV and movie scenes where someone shows a picture around asking, “Have you seen this man?” had trained the public to answer.

  That still didn’t get her many results. Most people simply shook their heads. “Lots of people come in here, sorry.” “Yeah, he kinda looks familiar, but he looks like a lot of guys.” “You should ask the night shift.”

  Ruby reminded herself to come back at night. That’s when he had been sneaking around, after all.

  It was now afternoon and Ruby was dead tired. Although she had recovered from her hangover thanks to the miracle of Morning Glory—she reminded herself to get a hold of that recipe—she felt exhausted from walking around all day and not having slept the night bef
ore.

  And now she had another hurdle to get over—her meeting with Detective Anderson. She had an appointment at five. Ruby wondered why they hadn’t scheduled it earlier. Had they wanted time to look into her background?

  She had sensed during their brief initial interview that he was a cut above the other police officers in the intelligence department. The regular cops hadn’t been impressed with her poorly constructed story, and now she wondered just how much Detective Anderson would pick apart her B.S.

  ***

  The police station was a surprise. Located in downtown Nassau, it was a lime green colonial building with white facings that looked more suited to be the home of some well-to-do real estate developer. No, more like some wealthy professional. Real estate developers didn’t have that much taste, although the developer would have been reassured by the more utilitarian modern extension that loomed behind it.

  She walked up the steps to the columned porch and through the front door. A female police officer took her name, passed a metal detector wand over her, and gave her directions. It was in the extension where she met her detective.

  Ruby had been so stunned the night she called in the murder that she hadn’t really registered how strange Detective Knowles Anderson was. Knowles was a common Bahamian last name, not a first name. Anderson wasn’t a Bahamian last name at all.

  She figured the answer lay in his heritage. He was lighter skinned, obviously mixed race, although he spoke with the lyrical tones of a native. Dressed in a white suit that showed off his muscles and the beginnings of a middle-aged paunch, he gave her a disarming smile when she knocked on the open door of his office.

  Well, at least it was supposed to be a disarming smile. Ruby was not disarmed.

  “Thank you for coming, Ms. Steele. Do sit down.” He indicated a metal folding chair in front of the desk. He settled back on his own chair, one of padded leather.

  Ruby relaxed a little. He had addressed her by her fake last name. That meant he hadn’t discovered her true identity.

  “Would you like a coffee?” he asked. “You look tired.”

  “I haven’t slept well,” Ruby said, putting on a bit of a Scared, Shocked Woman act. “I keep seeing that poor man …”