“Yes. It’s just me.” I slipped the pistol into the back of my pants.
“I don’t think I’ve ever been so glad to see anyone in my life.” The girl ran the last few steps, and let me swing her off the ground as we hugged. She laughed, smiled… her smile faded.
“Beryl told you about Corey?”
“Yes. Was it a blood clot?”
“That’s what the doctors finally decided. But what really killed her was this island. What happened here. Feels real strange to be back. Feels like it was five years ago, not just a few weeks.”
I noticed that remnants of her Southern accent had returned. Ds softened or changed to Ts; the nasal emphasis on strange.
“Ritchie showed up tonight. They tell you?”
I said patiently, “Yes. That’s why I keep asking where he is.”
“I’m trying to tell you, okay? Beryl had this plan, a way to get revenge. At first, it seemed… I don’t know, exciting. When we talked about it, it was like we were actresses, seeing it on a movie screen. But that’s not how it was. It got real. Then it got too real. We decided, screw it, we’re leaving tonight. But then they showed up. Ritchie and the other guy. While we were packing.” Shay cleared her throat. “Doc? You mind if we walk along the beach? It’s nice by the water.”
I said, “Okay,” watching her pull a pack of cigarettes from her back pocket, then light one. She hadn’t smoked since she was a teen, living in Dexter Money’s home.
Shay tossed the match away and said, “That’s how it started. Beryl wanted to even the score, after all the hurt they caused us. Plus, for her, I think it was a way to get back at the man who kidnapped her when she was a girl. I’m guessing. She never really said. Does that make sense?”
I nodded, thinking about Beryl back there with Clovis, his hands belted behind him. What would Senegal do if Beryl asked for the gun?
Shay said, “When Corey died, that made up my mind. Revenge, hell yes. I asked Eddie, the Italian guy at Dinkin’s Bay, if he’d fly me down. He’s always had a thing for me. When we told him we were pulling out tonight, staying on Saint Lucia, he went to get the plane ready. That’s where he is now, waiting for us.”
I looked at my wrist-no watch-and hoped that Eddie would get Sir James to the hospital in time to save his hand. Maybe save his life.
I told her, “Forget about revenge. There’s no need for it now. I have your video. The original. I stole it-along with the money you paid out. You can get on with your life now, so stop worrying-”
“You got our money back? Doc, that’s great! How’d you manage… ? No, tell me later when we have more time. My God, I can certainly use it. All hundred and nine thousand?”
I said, “Plus interest. And something extra for Corey’s family.”
Odd. The video no longer seemed important to her.
The girl clapped her hands together. “You are the most amazing man I’ve ever met! I knew my luck had to change. Beryl probably couldn’t wait to tell you what happened between Michael and me. We ended it for good, the day after Corey died. Getting our money back-that’s the best news I’ve heard for a while.”
“Beryl didn’t tell me. The wedding’s off?”
“Yes, thank God.”
“Why?”
“I found out the damn truth, that’s why. Monday afternoon, Michael calls me and says Ida-you remember his witch of a mother?-he tells me Ida has somehow gotten ahold of photos of me with that slimeball, Ritchie. I tell him bullshit, his mother’s making it up. I tell him it’s impossible-and it should’ve been impossible. I still had four days to pay the people here. And you had the only other copy of the video.”
But it was possible, Shay told me. To prove it, Michael brought the photos to her apartment. Graphic shots lifted from the video.
I said, “So he ended it.”
“No!” she said, offended I’d made the assumption. “He thought the pictures were sexy-that’s how freaky he is. I ended it! I ended it because I thought it through logically, just like you’d do. I even went to your lab and sat on the dock. Plus, I got your e-mail with those questions. Did Michael’s family have other business connections in the Caribbean? Who recommended Saint Arc? What’s Ida’s maiden name?
“So I started asking Michael questions even before he pulled out the pictures. He got very nervous, because he knew. That witch set me up, and the whole time, he knew. Fucking Ritchie sent her those prints- Ritchie or some other contact she has down here. Ruining my life wasn’t enough for his mother. She wanted to bleed my bank account dry, too.
“I’m going to have children one day, Doc. You think I want Michael’s blood in my babies? His sick genes? No way.”
Shay didn’t know about Michael’s aunt, Isabelle Toussaint. That was okay. Shay had already made her decision. She’d figured it out on her own. I smiled. I admired the girl’s unemotional approach. I’d assembled her caricature to mirror my own conceits.
Shay reached, pressed her breasts against my arm… then was amused when I jumped at what sounded like a distant gunshot.
“It’s only fireworks,” she told me. “Must be a holiday or something.” She released my arm, and walked to the water’s edge where the sand looked gray at the lagoon’s black rim and where, two days before, I’d seen jellyfish adrift, and wrestled lobsters from a cave.
I watched her. I could see the glow of her cigarette. It strobed a nervous rhythm, out of place on this dark night with stars, and the steady percussion of waves beaching themselves outside the lagoon. After taking a last drag, she tossed the butt away without looking to see where it fell.
I joined her, and Shay turned to face me. Maybe it was the way she was dressed-jeans, shirt knotted at the belly button-or maybe it was the deceptive properties of tropical starlight, but Shay looked less like a business exec and more like the plain-faced teen I’d met years before. She stood looking up at me, her cheek still swollen from the accident, nose a little too thick, lips too thin, and a body that, at another time and place, might have radiated a buxom, Southern, pheromone sensuality. But not tonight.
I said, “You were going to tell me about Ritchie.”
Shay looked at the sand, nodded. “He killed Corey. That’s the way I’m thinking of it. And he did things to me that night in the swimming pool I didn’t tell you. Things he kept doing even when I told him to stop.”
I said, “You have every right to be mad. But we’re talking about tonight. How mad did you get?”
“I was telling you about this plan Beryl had-”
“Shay!” I took her hand and squeezed. “Stop evading. What happened? I know Ritchie tried to force you, I know you pretended to be interested, I know you two came here, to the beach. So, for the last time, where’s-”
“I brought a gun,” Shay interrupted, pulling away. She turned her back to me and looked at the sky where there were stars… and also a plane climbing skyward, green and white lights blinking.
“Hey,” she said. “Hey! That’s Eddie’s plane. I’m supposed to fly back to Saint Lucia with-”
“I’m taking you by boat,” I said. “You were telling me about the gun.”
“Oh. Yeah. That’s one of the good things about flying with Eddie. You can carry anything you want on a private plane. The gun, it made me feel safe when I was out here with Ritchie. He probably wondered where I got all the courage when I started screaming at him about Corey. I told him he was nothing but low-life trash, and how much I hate bullies. Then…”
I waited for a few seconds before I pressed, “And then…?” wondering if she was editing her story. She often did.
“And then I took out the gun and pointed it at Ritchie’s smug damn face. He tried to bullshit his way out of it. But when I pulled the hammer back, I wish you could’ve seen his expression. He was like, Jesus Christ, this woman’s got the balls to really do it. I told him, ‘Ritchie, you little prick, you’ve got five seconds to run.’ Then I started counting. And… that’s all that happened.”
I said, “What do you mean?” It was like we were in her convertible again, returning from the airport, the stories slippery in her mouth.