“How about I buy everyone dinner? You all must be famished after such a long day. I can get us a quiet table at Zeus, if you’d like.” Neil stood up.
Sabrina knew he was uncomfortable with the level of emotion in the room, and she couldn’t blame him. Unfortunately, she felt like she might add to it by bursting into tears herself any minute. Elena’s story just hit too close to home for her. Sabrina made it a practice to shoo away thoughts of her own mother whenever one popped up in her mind, but Carmen Pagan’s sacrifice for her daughter was a strong reminder that Sabrina hadn’t been the kind of child who inspired such selfless devotion.
“Thanks, Neil, but I think I’m going take Carmen home to meet my family. I’d like to learn more about Angelica. I can understand why she tried to escape her childhood, but I don’t get why we couldn’t have finally included her mother in our lives. I tried so hard to get her to open up, but it was impossible,” Sean said.
“And I want to learn about Elena, the woman Angelica grew to be. I need to hear as much as I can so maybe I can make sense of it in my mind and in my heart. I would love to meet the family Angelica had become a part of, Sean.” Carmen took his hands in hers.
Sabrina gave her blessing for Carmen to stay at Bella Vista with the Keatings and offered anything she might need from the lost-and-found bags, but Neil had planned ahead and had her pack for a short stay. Within minutes, Sean and Carmen were off to Bella Vista. Sabrina thought about calling Kate to offer a “guess who’s coming to dinner” warning, but decided she had done enough for the family. She needed time to herself to recuperate.
“How about you two? Can I buy you dinner?” Neil asked Sabrina and Henry.
“Thanks, but I’m going to pass. I think I need some quiet time alone, to be honest,” Henry said, giving an uncharacteristically direct hint for Sabrina and Neil to leave.
Sabrina dragged herself up off the couch.
“I’ll take a rain check. I’m too tired to eat,” she said.
“I don’t know what I was thinking. You know what you need, Salty? Water, not food. Salt water. You need your nightly swim with Girlfriend and then we’ll check out your place and see if that reporter got tired of waiting for you to come back,” Neil suggested.
“She probably did. INN has been all over a breaking story in Arkansas about a woman who fed her husband a casserole containing chopped up pieces of his dirty socks,” Henry added.
“There you go, Salty. You’ve been trumped by a pair of dirty socks.”
Sabrina chuckled. It felt wonderful to laugh after listening to Carmen’s story and watching Sean’s reaction to more revelations about Elena, who was becoming more mysterious, rather than less.
She handed the keys to the jeep to Neil.
“Here, you be the hero and drive,” she said, letting Girlfriend into the backseat, making sure she had her spare tote bag with a swim suit and a couple of towels packed in the car. “Are you going to swim, too?”
“No, I’ll pass.” When Sabrina and Girlfriend went for their nightly swim, Neil would float in the water, sometimes falling asleep, to Sabrina’s amazement.
“Good. You can be in charge of the diamond necklace,” she told him. She pulled the baggie out of her pocket, where she had almost forgotten it had been sitting since Heather pulled her stunt that morning.
They glided down into the narrow streets of Cruz Bay as the sun began to set over St. Thomas in the distance. She still marveled that no sunset was ever the same and that she never grew indifferent to them.
Buoyed at the prospect of a swim, Sabrina explained why she still had the cursed necklace. She skipped the part about her conversation with Sean and his admission that he and Elena were apparently waiting until after the wedding to consummate their relationship, which Sabrina felt he’d disclosed unintentionally. It felt like a confidence she didn’t need to reveal.
Instead, she babbled on about her meeting with Lucy Detree and how the skinny-dippers may have left their signature in the pool at Villa Nirvana the night Elena was murdered, making them possible suspects.
“Why would a couple of chubby skinny-dippers want to kill Elena?” Neil asked.
“Why would they want to go skinny-dipping in strangers’ pools?” Sabrina countered.
She went on to tell Neil how Gavin had returned to Villa Nirvana and had tried to fire her and how Lucy Detree had actually defended her.
“That’s encouraging,” Neil said as they passed Mongoose Junction, lights beginning to twinkle from restaurants and shops against the fading light.
Sabrina finished the tale of her full day with the story about Anneka Lund acknowledging witnessing the prenup after Lucy Detree convinced her witnessing a document wasn’t a crime.
“See, that’s how someone like Hodge is counter-productive in an investigation. Why bully someone who’s got information you need when you can get it by simply explaining you need their help and cooperation? Lee Janquar would never alienate a witness, and it looks like Lucy is taking a page from his manual.”
“I just don’t get the part about Elena saying the prenup was actually to her advantage when she had been wailing for hours because she said she didn’t want to sign it. What exactly does it say?”
“I’ll show it to you later and explain,” Neil said. He pulled the jeep into the nearly empty parking lot at Hawksnest Beach, where Sabrina noticed two other jeeps were parked at opposite ends of the parking lot.
“Busy place,” she said, letting Girlfriend out of the backseat while she grabbed her tote bag. She led the dog onto the path toward the pavilion, hearing Neil’s footsteps behind her. Usually he would just hold a towel up as a screen so she could change, but if the interlopers from the parking lot were too close, Sabrina thought she might have to duck behind some trees to change into her suit.
She smelled the familiar scent of a mosquito coil burning before she saw the couple sitting at the same picnic table where she had shared lunch with Jack and Paul earlier in the afternoon. Something about the silhouettes of the couple prompted Sabrina to slow down and pause. There was just enough light left for her to see Paul Blanchard had returned to the picnic table. He was leaning in toward a woman and holding her hand on top of the table. She raised a glass and sipped what Sabrina guessed was wine.
Sabrina pivoted and placed her index finger over her lips, signaling for Neil to be silent, then pointed back to the car. Girlfriend retreated with her, resisting just a tad as Sabrina gently tugged at her leash.
“What was that all about?” Neil asked once inside the car with the doors shut and the engine running.
“I’m not sure, but that was Paul Blanchard having a rendezvous with Anneka Lund.”