twenty-two

One blood-soaked, scream-laden take later, we—cast, crew, and our homegrown police escorts—regrouped in the small tourist village just outside the archeological site.

“Quite a scene,” I commented to Anastasia, my eyes on the traditional dancers, acrobats, and various barkers hawking everything from made-in-China commemorative shot glasses to the much more authentic leather sandals. “Of course, it’s hard to follow up the last one at the ruins.”

“I really should have had the crew set up here too, but the sacrifice went longer than I expected,” Anastasia said, watching Body and Dave transfer stray smears of blue paint as they flirted, kissed, and fed each other tacos from the hole-in-the-wall stand where half of us had been served and the other half awaited our order. “Plus, everyone was starved and needed a breather.”

Out of concern for Ivan’s well-being, I didn’t tell anyone what he had told me, other than to share what we all knew: that he’d been to the police station, confirmed the threat had been meant for him, and that he had no idea why. My bigger concern, at least for the moment, was an answer to the question he’d asked about how my family had gotten tangled up in these increasingly sinister south-of-the-border dealings in the first place.

Did Anastasia contact the Hacienda de la Fortuna and offer them the chance to host her televised wedding, or was it the other way around? he’d asked.

“I had no idea you were planning something so involved today,” I said to Anastasia as Frank grabbed a tray filled with tacos. “I didn’t see anything about it on the call sheet.”

“I didn’t want to get anyone’s hopes up, mainly my own, until I was sure we’d be able to pull it off,” Anastasia said.

“I’d say you killed it with that second take,” Frank said as we neared the picnic bench where Face and Hair were already seated. “You’ve gotta get the sacrifice in the promos—it’ll make a perfect teaser for the real murders.”

“Don’t you mean murder, singular?” I asked.

“Murder,” Frank said, putting the tray on the table. “Of course.”

“The sacrifice scene is only going to end up as a promo?” Body said from the next table, not breaking eye contact with Dave.

“Stasia …” Face, sitting at our table, was suddenly the face of consternation. “I thought you said this scene was going to be key to the overall story line?”

The sacrifice scene, which no one had mentioned but everyone but me seemed prepared for, was key to the overarching story line?

“No worries,” Anastasia said.

Hair looked almost as worried as I felt. “When was this story line devel—”

“We’re done eating,” FJ said, appearing at our table with Trent, Eloise, and Liam. “We’re going to check out the shops.”

“But you’ll stick together?” I asked. “Right?”

“They’ll be fine,” Frank said, reaching for a bottle of hot sauce from the center of the table.

“That stuff is muy caliente, Mr. Michaels,” Liam said. “I almost couldn’t take it.”

“Just how I like it,” Frank said, unscrewing the cap and dousing his taco.

“Check out the souvenir shop down the way and off to the right,” Anastasia suggested, pointing to the intersection of the two streets that made up the town. “They’ve extended locals pricing to all of us for today.”

“Cool, because I’m totally getting a bunch of those Mexican masks,” Trent said.

“How in the world did you get a discount arranged in the midst of everything else going on today?” I asked her as the kids headed off.

Anastasia winked. “Connections.”

“Connections?” I managed before Frank emitted a sound that could only be described as a hyena choking on a chicken bone. He grabbed the nearest beverage, which happened to be a beer one of the cameramen was bringing to his seat at a nearby table. He took a huge, dramatic gulp and chased it down with a handful of chips.

“If Liam says something is spicy, you’d better beware,” Face said.

“Holy mother of …” Frank dabbed his eyes and then his tongue with a napkin. “I didn’t expect that kind of heat.”

“Unexpected seems to be the theme of this whole shoot, I’d say.” While I needed to be more than a little subtle, I also needed answers to have any hope of figuring out what was going on, and what, if anything, I could do about it. “What are you planning to call this episode? ‘Marriage, Murder, and the Mayans’?”

“Not bad,” Anastasia said. “Not bad at all.”

“Seriously,” I said. “How are you planning to feature a simulated sacrifice as part of a bargain-shopping show?”

“The way I see it, local color and custom is part and parcel of getting married out of the country,” Anastasia said. “Right?”

Two out of the three sisters nodded in agreement. The third, Body, was mid-smooch.

“Plus, it adds a kind of bridge between what we originally came to do in terms of the bargain destination wedding and the turn of events that have kept us here,” she said with that unsettling, telltale gleam. “Don’t you think?”

“Stasia,” I asked, emboldened by her zeal for capitalizing on the unexpected. “How did we end up here in the first place?”

“The ruins tour was part of the overall package.”

“I’m not talking about the ruins,” I said. “I’m mean the package overall.”

She looked at me as though I was asking the most obvious question ever. “We brought the show down to the Hacienda de la Fortuna in return for an all-inclusive wedding, lodging for the crew and select guests, and complimentary attendance to any and all attractions we deemed necessary for the shoot.”

“Not to mention the timeshare incentives,” Frank said.

This time, all three sisters managed an enthusiastic nod.

“Add a bonus murder to investigate as part of the deal and I suppose it was a can’t-lose proposition,” I said.

“Maddie!” Frank said sternly.

“I’m just trying to figure out the connection, if there is one, between Alejandro’s murder, whatever it was that happened to Geo in the cave, and why we happen to be here in the middle of it all.”

“Makes sense,” Anastasia said, but wrinkled her pert little nose.

“So whose idea was it to come down to Mexico in the first place?” I asked.

“We wanted to have a destination wedding and it just happened to be a perfect concept for an episode of the show.”

“We?”

“Me,” she said with none of the hemming and hawing I might have expected. “And Philip, of course.”

“So you researched resorts in Mexico and settled on Hacienda de la Fortuna?”

“I knew almost right away this was the place where I’d be able to have my cake and eat it too.” As she flashed a smile I couldn’t quite call entirely genuine, yet another scream pierced the air.

An authentic and too-familiar scream.

“Eloise!” Frank and I shouted in unison, both of us already up from the picnic table and running in the direction where the kids had gone off to shop.

The screamer was Eloise, and her distress was definitely real.

Theoretically, anyway.

We rushed over to the kids, all four of whom were standing in front of the mask display outside the store. Eloise, horror-stricken, pointed at the shoulder of an older man standing far too close to her for comfort. More specifically, the enormous creature perched on the man’s shoulder. “It’s—”

“Just an iguana,” Trent said.

“Jeez, El,” FJ added. “You didn’t even flinch over any of the geckos we saw around the ruins today.”

“Ivan was there, and they weren’t so …” she faltered. “Huge.”

The reptile in question was admittedly quadruple the size of anything I’d ever seen. It was also staring directly at my stepdaughter.

“It lunged at me.”

“Lo siento,” the owner of the iguana said with a smile. “Arturo is very friendly, and he does have a weakness for the ladies.”

Arturo leered.

Eloise shuddered.

“Arturo,” Liam said, tickling the wobbly skin under Arturo’s chin. “What a cutie.”

“You want to hold him?” the man asked.

“Ugh …” Eloise mumbled, backing away.

“I’d love to!” Liam said.

“Fifteen pesos,” the man said.

“I don’t have any more money,” he said.

“I’ve got it,” FJ said.

As he was reaching into his pocket to pay for Liam, Frank rolled his eyes. “This is more than I can take. I’m heading back to the table to finish my food.”

I quickly paid for all three boys to hold Arturo, warned them to wash their hands after, and caught up with Frank.

“Ridiculous,” he said, under his breath.

Unsure whether he was referring to Eloise’s overreaction, Liam’s effusiveness, the man’s shameless hustling, FJ’s attempt to pay for his friend, or some combination of the above, I simply said, “No more ridiculous than anything else that’s going on around here.”

“I suppose,” he said, looking over his shoulder at FJ and Liam huddled together and fawning over Arturo the iguana.

“Liam really is a nice kid.”

Frank shrugged. “I guess.”

“He’s a lot more clean cut than, say, Ivan.”

“Ivan’s a hero.”

“Yes,” I said. “A hero with a nose ring, dreadlocks, and a tattoo, not to mention a penchant for patchouli and your daughter.”

“Whatever,” he said.

“You’re not usually so cavalier about suitors with less-than-corporate career paths.”

“This is different,” he said.

“Why’s that?” I asked.

“We’re on vacation,” he finally said.

“It’s definitely different than any vacation I’ve ever been on,” I said. “You know, Frank. You really need to accept that FJ—”

“Holy moly, that really scared me,” Anastasia said, catching up to us.

“I don’t even want to think about it,” Frank said, definitively.

I shook my head at Frank’s level of denial. “Thank goodness it was nothing to get frightened over.”

“I’m headed back to finish my lunch,” Frank mumbled.

“You know,” Anastasia said with a sigh as we followed behind him. “I have to admit I’m all but ready to head out of Mexico.”

Hell, yes, I almost said, but then thought about the implications of what she was saying for her personally. “You’re ready to leave your own honeymoon?”

“Not from a director/producer standpoint. But from a newlywed standpoint, and given that Geo’s in a hospital bed, this whole business has been something of a win, lose, and draw.” She blew an uncharacteristically stray hair from her eyes. “Not necessarily in that order.”

With her candor, I almost started to tell her that the bad guys, whoever they were, weren’t after her or Philip, and that they would be perfectly safe to resume their honeymoon as soon as we were gone. I wanted to recount my conversation with Ivan so she was assured that everything could still become a peaceful and bliss-filled memory for the two of them. I wanted to let her know that despite Ivan’s warning otherwise, the fact that she’d contacted the hotel and not vice versa meant that our shoot really did just happen to coincide with a lot of wheeling and dealing of a different variety.

I almost did.

That was, until I noticed a cameraman slink out a back door that corresponded to the shop where Anastasia had directed the kids. Where he’d apparently been taping the whole “spontaneous” iguana incident in secret.

Instead of saying anything, I returned to the picnic table, slid into my spot, stared at my half-eaten taco, and listened to Frank chew.

Not only was my appetite gone, so was my ability to believe anything—at least where my current reality was concerned.