Joanna Wayne - A Clandestine Affair

The pause lasted so long she feared they’d been disconnected. When Mac Lowell finally answered, his tone seemed almost fearful. “What the hell are you doing there?”

“I just wanted to see the scene of the crime for myself.”

“Does Carlos Lazario know why you’re there?”

“No.”

“Keep it that way. And if I were you, I’d get off that island tonight. Get off and stay off.”

“Why? Is Carlos dangerous? Was he involved in the crime?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Ten minutes of your time. That’s all I’m asking.”

The phone crackled like crazy, causing her to miss half of what he said next.

“Did you say Slinky’s Bar?” she asked, trying to verify what she thought he’d said.

“Tomorrow at two. Take a seat at the back of the bar and don’t tell anyone why you’re there.”

“How will I find Slinky’s Bar?”

The connection splintered or else Mac Lowell broke it. He obviously didn’t want to talk to her. He might not even show, but she’d find Slinky’s Bar and be waiting at two.

Grabbing a pen, she checked her caller ID for the number he’d phoned from, then scribbled it on a pad of paper, along with his name and Slinky’s Bar at two.

It wasn’t until she’d picked up her orange and taken a big bite that Mac’s warning started echoing in her head. He seemed to believe that staying on the island put her at risk. But from whom?

Surely not Carlos. He couldn’t go around murdering tenants like a character in a grade B horror movie. Someone would have noticed long before now. And not Alma. She was strange, but much too frail and pathetic to be a real threat.

Still, Jaci checked the locks on the door before she crawled back into bed. This time when she slid beneath the covers, she fell into a troubled sleep where nightmarish bodies entwined with the roots of mangrove trees.

And Raoul Lazario swam naked in a murky pool.

RAOUL LEANED AGAINST THE DOCK’S end post and took a long drink from the bottle of cold beer Carlos had just handed him. A few clouds had blown over earlier, but the sky was clear now. Heaven’s bejeweled curtain, Allison used to call it when the sky sparkled with stars the way it did tonight.

“You brought in any interesting treasures lately?”

Raoul pulled his thoughts from the past and turned to Carlos. “We uncovered a couple of ancient Greek statues on a ship in the Aegean Sea. I’m not exactly sure of their historic or archeological significance, but the man who financed the dive was excited.”

“Ancient Greek statues. It must have been an old ship.”

“Sank in the sixteen hundreds.” Old ships had always held more interest for Raoul than their cargo. Not that anything held much interest for him these days.

He watched a stingray as it swam out from beneath the dock. “I’m thinking of taking a couple of years off.”

“To do what?” Carlos asked.

“I don’t know, just something besides dive for lost treasure.”

Tamale joined them, carrying a worn tennis ball that he dropped next to Carlos. It started to roll, but Carlos grabbed it before it reached the edge of the dock. He picked it up and threw it without saying a word to the dog.

“It wasn’t your fault, you know.”

Funny. Raoul hadn’t mentioned Allison once since he’d arrived on the island, but he knew that was what Carlos was talking about now, the same way Carlos knew it was why he’d lost his zeal for diving.

Carlos was insightful. He was also wrong. “It was my fault.”

“I don’t see how you figure that.”

“I’d rather not get into that tonight.”

Carlos reached down to wrestle the ball from Tamale and toss it again. “You remind me a lot of Emilio. You’re smarter than either of us, but as stubborn as the rest of the Lazarios.”

“Grandpa was smart. You are, too.”

“We never did much with it. Not like you. You went out there and made a name for yourself. You even got a movie made about you.”

“The movie never mentioned me.”

“But you inspired it. You brought up that ship off the coast of Argentina and recovered a wealth of Spanish history with it. Emilio was so proud when the movie came out, he couldn’t quit talking about it long enough to drink a beer with me. Guy let two Coronas get plumb hot.”

“That doesn’t sound like Grandpa.”

Carlos chuckled. “We had some good times, Emilio and me. Guess we could have had more, but I was stuck out here on Cape Diablo, and he didn’t like coming out here.”

Now they were getting somewhere. “Why did you stay all those years?”

“It seemed the right thing to do.”

“Does it still seem right?”

“We need another beer,” Carlos said, avoiding the question.

“I’ll get it.”

“No, you stay put,” he insisted. “I’ve got to take a bathroom break, anyway. Bladder don’t work any better than the rest of me these days.”

Tamale jumped back on the deck as Carlos headed toward the house. Only this time it wasn’t the ball that was clutched in his teeth.

“What you got there, boy?” Raoul clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth a few times and Tamale crept over with his tail tucked between his legs, as if he thought he might be in trouble for returning without the ball.

“It’s all right, boy. I just want to see what you found.”

Tamale dropped the object at Raoul’s feet. He stooped and retrieved it. A bone. Human. Much too small to have belonged to an adult.

And suddenly Raoul was taken back to when he was a kid and dropped into the scariest night of his life.

Carlos and Emilio were sitting on the dock having a beer. Raoul had been playing in the sand, making a fort, with twigs for toy soldiers. He’d gone inside to go to the bathroom, and he guessed they hadn’t heard him come back out.

If they had known he was around, his grandfather would have never repeated the horrible things he’d told Carlos about what he thought had happened to Pilar and Reyna.

Raoul had been only six at the time, but his grandfather’s words had frightened him so badly that he’d spent the entire night hiding under Carlos’s bed. If something so terrible could happen to Pilar and Reyna, then it could happen to anyone on the island—even him.

He hadn’t returned to Cape Diablo until he was eleven. Even then he hadn’t ventured far from his grandfather’s side.

“What you got there?” Carlos asked now as he ambled back toward the dock.

Raoul pushed the memories to the back of his mind. “Looks like a leg bone.”

“Probably driftwood. Let me see it.”

Carlos’s hand shook as he exchanged the beer he’d brought Raoul for the bone. The tremors were new, a reminder of how important it was that Raoul succeed in his mission.

“It’s a bone,” Raoul assured him, “and human. I’ve scavenged enough sunken ships to know one when I see it.”

“Guess you’re right,” Carlos said, turning the object over so that he could see it from every angle. “Never know what will wash up out here.” He tossed the bone into the waves before Raoul could stop him.

Raoul decided thirty years was long enough to avoid a subject. “I’m surprised no one ever found the bodies of the Santiago family.”

Carlos stuffed his hands into his pockets and stared out at the water, though there was not much to see in the dark. “No one’s ever proved they’re dead.”

“Or that they’re alive.”

“Right,” Carlos agreed, “so any theory on what happened to them is just groundless speculation.”

“But you must have one. Do you think Andres staged his family’s disappearance?”

Carlos slapped at a mosquito, stepping backward as he did, and almost tripping over Tamale, who was crouched at his heels. “Guess a man might do anything if he had reason enough.”