Immortal Billionaire, page 15
Lucinda gave a stifled sob and Vega exclaimed, “Such wickedness! Whatever is going on?”
“I wish I knew.” Sylvester’s expression was grave. “From the sand on her clothing and in her hair, I would guess she was killed on a beach.”
Jonathan had been standing close to the window with his head bent. He looked up now, his green eyes glittering in a face that was too pale. “Someone in this room killed her and then thought it would be amusing to put her body in Lucinda’s room this morning. Whoever did this, I want you to know you won’t get away with it. I’m going to make you pay.”
“When we are able to contact the police, you can rest assured they will do everything they can.” Matt placed a hand on his shoulder but Jonathan flung furiously away from him.
“Don’t touch me.” Jonathan held up a shaking hand. “Don’t you understand? I don’t trust you. Any of you.” With a sound like a wounded animal, he threw himself out of the room.
Matt turned to Sylvester. “Shall I go after him?”
Sylvester shook his head. “Give him some time alone. What’s puzzling me is why Ellie was killed. Could she have seen or heard something she wasn’t supposed to?”
“My God, Sylvester.” Guthrie’s hand shook as he poured himself another drink. “It’s clear there’s a madman—” he cast a suspicious glance in Connie’s direction “—or woman in our midst, and you’re trying to apply reason to what he’s doing?”
“Mad or not, there has to be an explanation for all of this.” Sylvester frowned, clearly making an effort to concentrate. “When Ellie disappeared, we were still able to communicate with the world outside of this island, so whoever killed her went to great trouble to make it look like she had left so the police wouldn’t be called, even going to the trouble of hiding all of her belongings. To me, that suggests her death wasn’t planned. She had to be disposed of in a hurry.”
Matt nodded his head in agreement. “Now we can no longer contact the police, it doesn’t matter. Whoever killed her doesn’t care anymore. Displaying the body on Lucinda’s bed looks like a deliberate attempt to scare us.”
Lucinda gave a sob. “Or me. It could have been meant to frighten just me.” Tears spilled over and began to trickle down her cheeks. “And it worked.”
“She’s going to need to change rooms.” Connie spoke quietly to Vega. Although Sylvester and Roberto had covered Ellie’s body in a sheet and moved it into an empty meat locker, there was no way Lucinda could be expected to return to the room where she had sustained such a shock.
“I’ll see to it.” Vega left the room.
Guthrie took Lucinda’s arm. “Come with me. We’ll go to my room until yours is ready.” Slowly, with his arm around her shoulder, he led his sister from the room.
When they had gone, Sylvester sat at the table, his expression still deeply preoccupied. “I’m struggling to make any sense of this. I can’t believe whoever is doing these things came to Corazón with a plan. It seems to me the plan developed after he or she arrived here.”
“What makes you say that?” Connie came to sit opposite him.
“It’s hard to explain. It’s more a feeling than a certainty. If someone had come to Corazón with a plan to trap us all here, I just think he would have been better prepared. This feels like something that came into his mind once he was here.”
“I’m not following you, Sylvester.” Matt joined them at the table.
“I’m not sure I’m clear about it myself.” Sylvester shook his head in frustration. “If you had arrived on Corazón with the intention of imprisoning us all here, would you have waited almost three weeks to jam the phone signals?”
“No, I suppose not.” Matt looked surprised. “Or, for that matter, would I have waited and sabotaged all the means of transport at the same time? What you’re saying is it almost seems like an idea that came to him once he was here on Corazón. The curse strikes again.”
“Don’t say that,” Connie begged. Any mention of the curse sent cold fingers of dread trailing down her spine, reminding her of the malignant presence and grasping features of Sinapa, the woman who had blighted Cariña’s life.
“Why not? It’s true. We have a dead body, a maniac on the loose and no way of getting off this island.” Matt gave a bitter laugh. “Unless one of us decides to swim more than five miles to reach the next island.”
Connie gasped, raising a hand to cover her mouth. “That’s it. That’s why Ellie was killed.” Both men looked at her in confusion. “She was a long-distance swimmer. Ellie was the one person among us who could have swum to the next island.”
Chapter 12
Sylvester found Roberto working on the launch. “When you took the guests over to Charlotte Harbor the other day, what did they do?”
Roberto wiped his oily hands on a cloth. “They split up and went their separate ways. Lucinda went shopping, but she said she didn’t buy anything interesting. She complained the shops were provincial and boring. I think Guthrie found a bar. Jonathan and Matt both wandered around and did their own thing.”
“Did either of them mention what their own thing might have been?”
Roberto shook his head. “No. Jonathan never says much, anyway, but I did think he was even more quiet than usual that day. It was just after Ellie had gone missing, so it wasn’t surprising. On the way back, Matt was asking me about fishing. Neither of them mentioned what they’d been doing in Charlotte Harbor. Why?”
Roberto might be an employee, but he’d worked for Sylvester for long enough, and knew him well enough, to be able to ask that question. “Just wondering if any of them could have purchased a cell phone jammer in that time.”
He whistled. “I’m not sure it’s the sort of thing you could just walk into a store and pick up over the counter. Not a decent one, anyway. Not that I’ve ever tried. But if someone had ordered one in advance, by phone or internet, to be delivered to a specific address in Charlotte Harbor, then he or she could have collected it that day. It’s a small, portable item. I don’t imagine he or she would have had any trouble organizing it at short notice.”
“Was anyone carrying anything that could have been the jammer?”
“Sorry, boss. It could have been any one of them. They were all carrying bags with them on the way back, but I can’t remember the names of the stores they’d been to. What makes you think they bought it that day?”
“Maybe I’m wrong and whoever is using it had it with them all along, but the jammer has only been used since that trip to Charlotte Harbor. And the other things—the damage to the boats and the satellite dish—all happened at the same time. I’m working on the theory this is something that came to him while he was here, rather than something he intended to do all along.”
“And does that matter?” Roberto picked up a screwdriver, preparing to get back to work.
Sylvester shrugged. “Maybe not.”
In many ways, it didn’t matter. In any conventional sense, it made no difference at all. But this was Corazón, and Sylvester was a de León, so it mattered to him on a fundamental, primeval level. Because it meant whoever was doing this might have arrived on Corazón with no evil intentions. It meant that, over time, the curse had worked its dark magic yet again.
Corazón de Malicia. Heart of Malice.
As he walked back to the house, he drank in the tranquil beauty of his tropical island paradise. He didn’t see the white sands, turquoise seas and waving palms. Instead he saw the mother of the Calusa king, her face twisted into a mask of venom as she poured out her words of hatred all those years ago. Although the image was faint, like an old black-and-white movie, he saw Cariña facing her bravely, their child on her hip, pressing the baby’s face into her side so he couldn’t hear the words. He saw himself—Máximo—arm outstretched, banishing the old witch from these shores. Too late. All too late. The curse was laid. The shadow of the past lay forever over this idyllic place.
Which heart have you blackened? Which troubled soul have you preyed upon?
If he was right and Connie’s stalker had no idea about why he harbored feelings of rage and revenge toward her, then whoever it was would have been locked in his own special hell before he’d even arrived here. Tortured beyond belief and trying to make sense of what was going on inside his head. Bringing someone in that mental state to Corazón with all its potential for destruction... Sylvester’s lips thinned at the thought.
There were two sides to his Corazón. There was the side that kept him coming back. The place he loved. The home he and Cariña had built up all those years ago. His memories of that time weren’t clear, but he knew they were happy. That Corazón was a place of light and love. There had been great joy here, and there would be again when the cycle started once more. But there was also a dark underside. The bottomless darkness that opened over the pit of hell itself. It was this that had allowed the curse to thrive. This that had enabled the wreckers to take over his home and murder so many helpless souls, despite his attempts to stop them. It was this foul Corazón that, like a wild animal after prey, sensed weakness and hunted it down without mercy.
A muffled voice calling his name interrupted his thoughts. Turning his head, Sylvester looked away from the water toward the mangrove trees where he thought he had heard the sound. The noise came again, slightly louder this time. He made his way toward it just as a man stumbled out of the trees.
“Matt? My God, what the hell has happened?”
Although he said Matt’s name, his friend was barely recognizable in the bloodied and bedraggled figure who fell to his knees as he reached him. Matt’s clothes were torn and dirtied, his feet bare and his face and arms a mass of scratches. His left eye was swollen closed above a deep cut on his left cheekbone and his lip was split.
“Who did this to you?” Sylvester gripped Matt by his upper arm, supporting him to his feet.
“Didn’t see him.” The words came out stiffly through Matt’s injured lip. “He came at me from behind, but even when I did get a glimpse of him, he was wearing some sort of mask.”
Connie’s description of her attacker came back to Sylvester. He wore a mask. His grip on Matt’s arm must have tightened because the other man let out a yelp.
“Sorry. Why would anyone do this to you? What was the point of this attack?”
Matt attempted a laugh but it came out as a groan. “We didn’t exchange pleasantries. In fact, he never said a word the whole time he was smashing his fist into my face and whipping me with a palm branch.”
Sylvester still couldn’t make any sense of what Matt was telling him had happened. His brain whirled with questions, but Matt needed care, not interrogation. “Let’s get you back to the house. Can you walk?”
“I can try.”
Refusing Sylvester’s arm, Matt made his way slowly back to the house. Sylvester was pleased to observe he seemed more shaken up than badly injured. Nevertheless, as they entered the house through the open glass doors, his appearance was greeted with exclamations of horror by the other guests.
“It looks worse than it is,” Matt assured Connie, who hurried forward, wrapping an arm around his waist and assisting him to a chair.
In spite of the seriousness of the situation, and the fact that the madman who had them imprisoned had struck again, Sylvester couldn’t help noticing the look in Matt’s eyes as Connie smoothed his hair back from his brow. He’s in love with her. The thought struck him like a punch in the gut from a heavyweight fighter. What am I doing, screwing with her life when she has a chance at a future with one of the best men I know?
* * *
The clouds were like gray mountains looming large and mushroom-like on the horizon and the oppressive heat spiraled ever upward during the day. There was no breeze and the sea was unnaturally calm.
“Storm brewing,” Vega warned, shaking her head. “And it looks like a bad one.”
By late afternoon the sky was black and the wind had risen from nowhere. Lightning danced out from a dangerously low cloud and thunder was an ominous, continuous drumroll. When the rain came, it was almost horizontal, slapping against the palm trees, attempting to wash away the sand from the beach and bouncing straight up from the patio.
Watching from the sliding-glass door, Connie thought the sea appeared to be boiling. The pressure in the atmosphere was relentless, matching that inside the house. Nature seemed to be trying to do her best to replicate or even outdo the human drama. Somehow this wildness was more fitted to the mood than the brilliant sunshine and calm skies of the past few days.
Connie gazed at the lightning as it lit up the darkened heavens, revealing ghostly shapes within the rolling clouds. If only she could blame those imaginary beings for what was happening here on Corazón. It wouldn’t be as scary as believing someone inside this house was responsible for what was going on. That someone they sat and ate dinner with had killed Ellie and was plotting more deaths.
There was a certain inevitability about the moment when the electricity failed. Connie recalled Ellie’s comments about 1930s detective novels. Of course the lights have to go out. We need to be plunged into darkness. The mood isn’t eerie enough. Candlelight is exactly what is needed to add to the suspenseful ambience. Satire didn’t help. Like the lamps themselves, her thoughts refused to brighten.
She remained by the door until Vega bustled into the room carrying a lit candle and bearing several unlit ones. “This happens every time there is a storm,” the housekeeper said in a long-suffering voice, setting out candle holders around the room. “Roberto will be working on the generator already, I’m sure.”
Vega used the candle she was holding to light the others and a warm, flickering glow suffused the room. Connie wished she could have found it comforting. Her low mood had nothing to do with the storm or even the bizarre events of the last few days. She had the strangest feeling Sylvester was avoiding her. It wasn’t anything she could be specific about. Instead, it was a slight distance, a withdrawal from her that was more intuitive than physical. She was concerned that, with less than a week before his birthday, he was preparing for the time when he must leave her in reality. Her heart, already just about as heavy as it could get, was weighed down with grief and pain. Losing Sylvester before she needed to would turn it to lead.
A sound inside the room made her turn away from her contemplation of the turbulent view beyond the window to find Sylvester regarding her. His expression was inscrutable.
“Corazón knows how to throw a party.” He nodded as the skies lit up with another wild streak of lightning and thunder rumbled its ominous warning.
“It’s beautiful in a raw, savage way. Nature is showing us how insignificant we are.” He came to stand next to her and Connie leaned her head against his shoulder. Sylvester remained still, and fear struck her again. She was so in tune with him, she could sense his turmoil.
“Everyone else is taking refuge in their rooms.”
“How is he?” She knew he had been to check on Matt, even though his friend seemed to be fine. Matt had been right about his injuries looking worse than they were. Once he’d cleaned himself up and changed out of his ruined clothes, the marks on his body were mostly deep scratches to the left side. His face, although bruised and cut, had escaped any broken bones. He seemed reluctant to discuss the matter, something Connie put down to that unfathomable thing known as masculine pride.
Sylvester didn’t answer immediately. When he did, it was with another question. “Does anything about the attack on Matt strike you as strange, Connie?”
She lifted her head to look at him, but the light from the candles gave her only an outline of his features. “What do you mean?”
He lifted one shoulder in an impatient gesture. “Maybe I’m letting this whole thing get to me. It just doesn’t add up. Even masked, this attacker was taking a huge risk going after one of us in broad daylight. What if Matt had been able to fight him off or pull the mask off? The game would have been up immediately. And I can’t see why Matt couldn’t identify him even with the mask. Jonathan is tall and slim. I’m a similar height, but more muscular. Guthrie is short and stocky.”
“You think Matt could be lying?” Connie asked.
“I’m not going that far, but there are other things that puzzle me. What did the attacker gain from this? Matt isn’t seriously hurt. He’s not even particularly alarmed. I think his pride has taken more of a beating than anything else. What did the attacker hope to gain?”
Connie considered the question. “Maybe to warn us he can hurt any of us anytime he chooses?”
“If that’s the case, wouldn’t you think he has subtler and more effective means at his disposal?” They remained silent for a few moments, both trying to probe the mind of the man who had them at his mercy. Sylvester’s next words were murmured into Connie’s hair. “Matt is in love with you. Did you know that?”
“I know he is attracted to me. I’m not sure it’s love. He barely knows me.”
He slid his fingertips under her chin, tilting her face up to his. “It’s love. Could this attack have been his way of shifting your attention from me to him?”
She frowned. “You think he faked the attack to get my sympathy? That doesn’t sound like Matt.”
“You’re right. He’s not an attention seeker. This whole situation is making me crazy.”
Connie drew a breath. It was time to confront the real issue between them. “Is that why you’ve been so remote with me?”
His face was illuminated by a brilliant flash of lightning and she caught a glimpse of the anguish in his expression before the darkness engulfed him once more. “Connie, trying to remain remote from you would be like trying to keep myself apart from my own soul. But by being with you, am I being fair to you? I’ll be gone from here soon. Nothing can stop that happening. Maybe you should think about what happens after I’ve left.” The next words were wrenched from him. “Perhaps your future includes someone like Matt.”
