I was sitting at the pool, reading a book. I was trying to put the investigation out of my head. Maybe Charlotte was right. Maybe I was becoming obsessed.
I’d borrowed a book from Sabrina. No more murder mysteries for me on this trip. She was thrilled when I had asked, glad to share one of the many romance novels she had brought with her.
A noise startled me out of the sickly sweet romance. How did she read this stuff?
I couldn’t place the noise. It was high-pitched and an odd tune. Sabrina struggled with her bag and pulled out the ringing cell phone.
Had I been on vacation that long that I didn’t recognize cell phone rings anymore?
“Caden?” she answered. “Caden, is that you?” She peered at the phone and then got up. “Caden? Can you hear me?” She got up and walked over to the edge of the pool area and leaned against the wood fencing. She frantically searched for a better signal, walking up and down its length. She would shout “Caden” at the phone and then recheck the signal strength if she didn’t get a reply.
The odd dance stopped, two steps away from the farthest end of the fence. I could no longer hear her but it seemed Caden could. She began nodding and talking, now with a good connection and able to have a conversation with the caller.
“Who was that?” I asked Zaden. “Your mom looked a little panicked.”
“That’s my dad,” he answered, not looking up from his tablet. He was playing some type of game, where no internet connection was required. “We’ve been trying to reach him for days. Service out here sucks.”
I silently agreed. “Oh, that’s nice that you guys’ dad was finally able to reach you.”
“Just my dad,” he corrected me. “It’s Zonah’s stepdad.” He mumbled a profanity. I wanted to rebuke him. I couldn’t imagine his mother being pleased at the language but held my tongue. He had already called me old once. I didn’t need to hear it again.
“Oh…” I answered. I reopened the romance. Would Dominique find her way back to Andre? I didn’t think I was going out on a limb by answering yes. Really, how did Sabrina read this stuff? I closed the novel again and looked back at Sabrina. The connection had lasted and she appeared to be having an intense conversation with her husband, Caden. “But wait, she called him Caden.”
“Yeah, my dad, Caden.”
In the days we’d been here I’d never once heard the name Caden. I racked my brain for what she had called him. “I…I thought his name was C.K.”
“Did you think that was his real name? It’s initials.” He said it with enough teenager attitude that I felt I had been slapped. “Caden Kristoff.”
“Oh, thanks, Zaden.”
He mumbled, “You’re welcome,” and continued his game. I looked over his shoulder. It seemed pretty violent.
I returned my attention to Sabrina. She remained frozen at the fence, not wanting to lose the signal. Things must be bad if she was using his full name. I know it was in my house. A shiver ran down my spine, recalling the last time my mother referred to me by my full name, Naomi Violet Hanley. I wish I had been thousands of miles away from my mother during that conversation.
As I left the pool area, I spotted Hazel at the end of the walkway. She was looking around desperately and waved when she saw me. She was crying. Again. “Can you help me, dear?”
“What wrong?”
She ignored me and motioned for me to follow her into their room.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, as I followed her.
Colin was on the floor, leaning up against the couch. His eyes were closed and pasty white, and I thought he was dead. “What’s wrong?” I asked. She had found the wrong sister. She really needed Charlotte.
“It’s all the stress.”
“What stress?” I asked, softly. I held my breath. In the sanctuary of her own room, I envisioned her confession, that Colin had murdered Dr. Higgins in a PTSD-fueled rage and the two of them had been covering up the murder since.
Colin stirred and opened his eyes. “Hazel?” he called out.
“Yes, my love.”
“What happened?” he asked. He looked around, and appeared to be surprised to be on the floor. “What’s she doing here?” he asked it with less vitriol than I expected.
“You…you had an episode, dear. She came to help.”
“That’s nice,” he answered and closed his eyes.
I went to the minibar and grabbed a bottle of water. Hazel thanked me and opened it for her husband. “Here, Colin. Have some of this.”
“Maybe I should go get Charlotte?” I asked.
“No, it happens.” She leaned in and whispered. “It’s the cancer. The doctor said—” She wasn’t able to continue. She cleared her throat and told me, “This trip…this trip is our last.” She wiped away tears.
Was that why I had overheard them talking about death? They weren’t talking about Dr. Higgins but Colin’s impending demise.
“Just help me get him up,” Hazel told me.
He was a big man and, even together, Hazel and I were only a fraction of his weight. I didn’t think we’d be able to do it. “You think we can?” I asked.
“My daughter and I have before. You and I can.”
“Oh, Anna,” he mumbled. “Can you get her on the…the thing?”
“The iPad,” she mouthed to me. I went to get it for her. “Internet isn’t working, dear.”
“Oh,” he responded, meekly.
He took a long sip of water and perked up.
“Ready?” Hazel asked. He nodded. We helped him up, with not as much of a struggle as I feared.
We held his hands and guided him to the bed. He looked so much smaller, so much less threatening as he quietly let her tuck him into bed.
“What kind of episode did you have, sir? Something to do with the PTSD?”
He shook his head. “Oh no, nothing to do with that. I haven’t had a PTSD episode in years.”
“Well…” Hazel interrupted.
“Oh, yeah, the other night, but it was minor.”
“We should have never tried to stay out at the treehouse. I have no idea how you stayed out there all by yourself! We only lasted a few hours. Had to call Sonny to get us. I think poor Sonny was scared but Colin was more scared than any of us.” She patted him on his arm. “Once we got back, he settled right down. He’d never hurt anyone, dear.”
“I get scared, not violent,” Colin added.
“But you were in Vietnam, surely you had to hurt someone during the war.”
“I was a radio guy. Never in combat, thank God.”
I looked over at Hazel. Dressed in a tank top, her bruised arms were in full view. “And you’ve never hit Hazel?”
If anything was going to set this man off, it would be accusing him of hurting his wife. I expected him to be angry but he wasn’t. He had gentle eyes and looked at Hazel with such love I couldn’t imagine him hurting anyone.
But that, my inner detective told me, was not proof.
“Never,” he said and took her hand to kiss it.
“Oh, my Colin! Do you remember what happened when we got back from the treehouse?”
I didn’t answer, knowing what had happened—Dr. Higgins had been murdered.
She pulled out her phone and pulled up a video. Part of me hoped it was video of the murder and I could put this investigation to rest. Maybe being a private investigator was my next job.
A larger part of me knew it wouldn’t be. These two were too nice.
“Georgie said his first word!” She went over to the counter and opened the iPad. “Talking to his daughter always helps when he’s scared. Lucky with the time difference she was up,” she said. She clicked on the photo icon. Before hitting play, she said, “This is the cutest!” She started what looked like a video of a Skype conversation of them talking to a young woman who held a small child.
The young boy, Georgie, said “Pa-Pa” when he saw him on the screen. The women squealed and the baby and Colin laughed. “I gotta get his baby book!” their daughter yelled.
This wasn’t a man fueled by rage, minutes from killing a fellow guest.
I checked the time and date tag in the corner. Their daughter confirmed it when she wrote down the time in the baby book, in both Pacific Time Zone back in the US and in the African time zone we were in.
I had officially crossed these two off my suspect list.
And I was reminded the lodge had internet before the murder.