Roxanne St. Claire - Make Her Pay

Brianna smiled, moving some personal items on the dresser to make sure Gabby had room for the tray. “She seems like she might be…” A total bitch. “Tough to work for.”

The other woman shrugged. “I’m just stepping in for a few days because she’s desperate and I can gouge her for extra cash. Not that I’m trying to exploit the circumstances, but the opportunity was too good to pass up.”

“What circumstances?”

“She didn’t tell you? You haven’t heard?”

Brianna shook her head. “Heard what?”

“About her nurse, Ana. She liked to call her a housekeeper, but the whole island knew that Ana was a nurse hired by Mrs. B’s husband to keep an eye on her.”

Brianna looked up from the coffee she poured, intrigued. “What happened? And why does she need someone to keep an eye on her?”

Gabby pointed to her temple and made the universal twirl for nutso. “She’s a little…”

“Off her rocker?”

Gabby smiled. “That’d probably be the medical term for it.”

She didn’t strike Brianna as crazy, but who knew? “What happened to Ana?”

Gabby made a face. “It’s so sad. She killed herself.”

“That is sad.”

“Right there.” She pointed to the gray stone windmill perched at the cliff’s edge, the rotors circling rhythmically. “Threw herself right over the cliff.”

Brianna’s eyes flew open. “Oh my God. When?”

“A few days ago.”

“Seriously?” A chill shot the hairs on the back of her head to a stand. “How old was she?”

“Twenty-six.”

Brianna’s heart turned over. My age . She shifted her gaze to the windmill, suddenly more ominous than picturesque. “That is so, so tragic. Did you know her?”

“Everybody knows everybody in Corvo. There’re like three hundred and fifty people in the whole place, all of them related somehow, going back two centuries. The whole island is devastated.”

Brianna sipped, studying the sturdy woman who looked as though she belonged on a farm in Iowa. “How did you end up here?”

“Well, for one thing, I didn’t ‘end’ up here; I’m leaving as soon as this job for Mrs. B is over. I was about to leave when I heard about it. But to answer your question, I’ve been traveling around Europe for a year, after a miserable divorce from a cheating… Never mind, it’s a cliché. I’ve been here in Corvo for about two months, ’cause I think it’s one of the prettiest places I’ve ever seen. I was just about to head off to Spain when I heard about Ana, and figured I could scare up some cash working for this lady who apparently never made her own bed in her life.”

“Wow, it sounds like a fun adventure.”

Gabby laughed, fluffing the comforter into place. “I had to get out of Indiana, that’s for sure. When my husband left I was all weepy and miserable, with nothing but half of the cash from selling our split level. Then, one of my friends gave me this book about a lady who went and lived in Italy and India, trying to find herself after a divorce. I thought, why not? I’m fifty and I’ve never been east of Pittsburgh. So here I am.”

Brianna gave her a warm smile. “I love adventurous spirits.”

“How ’bout you? Is that research project the only thing that brings you to our lovely rock in the ocean?”

“Yes.”

“How is Mrs. B involved?”

“Her genealogy is involved, and I was hoping to have access to her library. She said there’s one in the house.”

“I don’t know if I’d exactly call it a library, but there is a room with some books.”

“How did Mrs. B end up here?” With a nurse, no less.

“There are a lot of rumors about that, but I’ve become friendly with a cousin of a friend of the man who was Ana’s fiancé…” She laughed at how that sounded. “Trust me, you live here long enough and you know everyone. Anyway, evidently her husband is some big-time Wall Street guy whose family has owned this property forever. She apparently tried to kill herself more than once, so he sent her here.”

“Like, he shipped her off and exiled her? Without offering psychiatric help or counseling?”

Gabby held out her hands in a “who knows?” gesture. “They’re off-the-charts rich and he’s got a big-time reputation. Maybe she preferred this to an institution.”

“She doesn’t strike me as that whacko.”

“She’s whacko enough to have tried to kill herself a couple of times since she got here.”

“Whoa.” What was this place, Suicide Island? “How?”

“I don’t know for sure, but I heard Ana was really good with her. That’s why it’s such a shame…”

Brianna nodded, a wisp of sadness curling through her. It was a shame. Life, whether you ended it yourself, or a broken regulator in a cave dive did it for you, could be short. “Gabby, do you know if there’s any Internet access here? I really need to e-mail somebody at home.”

“It’s tricky, but Sousa’s has a computer and they can get satellite Internet. That’s the one and only restaurant in town, and I’m living in one of two rooms above it. It’s spotty, but it’s your only chance without taking a ferry to a bigger island. Terceira has all that.”

Brianna stood and looked out the window, her gaze drawn to the three-bladed windmill. “Maybe I’ll go into the village later. I just want to see what Mrs. Bettencourt has planned for me.”

“Oh, honey, I wouldn’t go into town today. It’s Ana’s funeral and the place is completely shut down.”

“Oh, okay.” Brianna shook her head, imagining someone throwing herself into the water. “How bad could life be on this little island, that you’d want to end it?”

“That’s just it.” Gabby snapped the pillowcases tight and smoothed them as she followed Brianna’s gaze. “Nothing was wrong with her life. She had a nice young man, was going to get married, came from a wonderful family, seemed completely happy.”

Brianna turned, cold despite the warm sunshine. “Really? Did she leave a note?”

“No. But why else would someone climb up to that thing? She sure didn’t go up to work the machinery.”

“Does Mrs. Bettencourt know what happened to her? Maybe it was an accident.”

“She said the girl spent the day crying. And her mother did pass, but well over a year ago.”

“Oh. Grief can make people do very strange things,” Brianna said. She’d ached so badly when Dad died- but she’d never considered suicide. Of course, she had Lizzie.

Guilt twisted in her again. “Are you sure I can’t get into the restaurant today? I really want to send my sister a message.”

“Tell you what, I’ll send your message for you. What’s her e-mail?”

“That would be wonderful.” Brianna grabbed her handbag and a small notebook, tearing off a page to write down Lizzie’s e-mail. “Just tell her I’m fine and that I’m… working on Aramis. She’ll understand.”

“Aramis?”

She wrote the name on the paper. “Yeah. Just let her know I’m safe and that I’ll be in touch with her as soon as I can. And tell her I love her.”

Gabby took the paper and nodded. “Happy to help you.”

When she left, Brianna finished her coffee and stared at the windmill. Death that didn’t make sense was so hard to accept.

She closed her eyes and said a little prayer for the girl, then got dressed to go meet with eccentric, if nutso, Solange Bettencourt.

It would take a while for Con Xenakis to find her here. Safe in that knowledge, and in the fact that she could get the scepter to her safe-deposit box in just a few hours, Lizzie walked through the minuscule rooms that Dad had called his workplace. Less than a thousand square feet, the five-room beach house had survived numerous hurricanes. At his office door, she almost laughed. Hurricanes outside and in.