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Chapter Four

Willa’s heart began to pound a little harder. Someone had cut the tape to look inside the box. Odell? Was it possible he had a knife in the pocket of his shorts? A lot of men in South Dakota carried pocket knives. But in Florida?

Or could it have been someone else? The box had been on the dock unattended for some time while Odell had brought her suitcases up to her room. But who else was there?

She glanced toward the third floor. The music had stopped again. She recalled it stopping before, a break between songs before she saw the elderly woman dancing once again. Was it possible the woman had gone down to the dock to look in Willa’s belongings?

What harm could a curious old woman do anyway? Willa liked that theory better than thinking Odell had purposely cut the tape to see what was in the box. The man was nosy, but whoever had cut the box was looking for something. Looking for her?

But if whoever had looked in the box was here to kill her, then that person already knew she painted. And not even her changed appearance would fool him.

She tried to put the incident out of her mind as she unloaded her painting supplies and set up an easel by the window.

Painting relaxed her, let her escape for a while from the reality of her life, the reality that Landry Jones was still out there on the loose and she was the only witness to the murder.

Until the police captured him, she wasn’t safe. Even when he was caught, she wasn’t sure she would feel safe, possibly ever again.

She stacked up all of her art supplies on the top of the chest of drawers, hoping they would last until she got to leave here. Eventually she would run out of rent money and be forced to leave and get a job.

She moved to the window by the bed and peered out. Through the palms she could see the Gulf of Mexico. It looked endless. How odd not to be able to see land on the horizon. Just water as far as the eye could see. No wonder early man feared sailing to the edge and falling off.

Turning back to the room, she considered making the bed and taking a nap. She’d been running on fear for so long, she felt drained. She needed her life back. All she had to do, she told herself, was stay alive until Landry was caught.

She stared at the empty canvas on her easel. She had to paint. It had been days since she’d gotten the opportunity. She itched to pick up a brush.

Painting had always been her survival. When her father was killed in a tractor accident. When her first love married someone else. When her mother remarried and sold the farm, hacking away the roots that had held Willa in South Dakota.

Willa hurried to catch the last of the day’s light coming in through the palms. She never knew what she was going to paint until she had a brush in her hand and the white empty canvas in front of her.

To her, painting was exploration. A voyage to an unknown part of herself. Her work was a combination of what she saw and what she didn’t. It was a feeling captured like a thought out of thin air.

She set up her paints and went to work, the evening light fading until she was forced to turn on a lamp. It wasn’t until then that she really looked at what she’d been working on—and felt a start.

What had begun as an old building along a narrow street had turned into the street where she’d witnessed the murder. A thin slice of pale light at the back illuminated what could have been a bundle of old rags but what she knew was a body slumped against a stucco wall, the dark BMW sitting at the curb.

She stepped back from the canvas. She’d been so lost in the physical joy of painting, she hadn’t even realized that she’d been reliving the murder.

From this distance, she saw the face behind the windshield of the BMW. It was subtle, almost ghostlike, but definitely a face. Landry Jones’s face. The same one she’d drawn for the police. She remembered the investigators’ strange reactions. When she’d asked if they knew who he was, the detective who’d been questioning her assured her they knew Landry Jones only too well.

Just her luck that a known criminal had taken an interest in her. She had wanted to ask what other crimes he’d committed but didn’t want to know. Wasn’t murdering a man in cold blood on a St. Pete Beach street enough?

In the painting, Landry was peering out of the darkness not at the body of the man he’d just killed—but at her. She could almost feel the heat of his dark eyes.

She stumbled back from the painting, bumping into the sagging double bed and sitting down on the bare mattress, suddenly exhausted and near tears.

Had she been foolish to think she would be safe anywhere—let alone on this island? She would always be haunted by what had happened that night, would always see Landry Jones’s face, if not in her paintings then in her nightmares.

A tap at the door startled her. She didn’t want to answer it but knew she couldn’t pretend she’d gone out. Another tap.

“Cara? Willie?”

Odell. She groaned. Where had she come up with Cara? “Just a minute.” She glanced around the room as if there might be something lying around that would give away her true identity, but didn’t see anything. She couldn’t help the feeling that she’d already made a mistake that was going to get her in trouble. She couldn’t keep living like this.

She opened the door. “Odell,” she said as if seeing him was a surprise.

“Hi. Sorry to bother you, but I noticed you didn’t bring any food,” he said, looking sheepish. He held out a sandwich wrapped in plastic. “If you don’t want it now, you can eat it later. Turkey and cheese.”

She took the sandwich. “Thank you. It looks…great.” She actually smiled and he seemed to relax. A part of her felt bad about being so unfriendly. Back home in South Dakota her behavior would have been outright rude.

The whisper of fabric made them both turn. All Willa caught was a blur of white.

“She sneaks around here all the time like that, I guess,” Odell said of the elderly woman who passed on the third-floor balcony overhead. “Her name’s Alma Garcia. She was the nanny.”

“The nanny?”

“You don’t know the story of Cape Diablo?” he asked, sounding surprised. “The island is cursed. At least according to local legend. There have always been reports of strange happenings out here, including storms that wash up all kinds of interesting things. For decades it was home to pirates and treasure seekers who looted ships that sank or were sunk just off shore, smugglers and drug runners.”

“Who built the villa?” she asked, unable not to. The place had drawn her from the first glimpse.

“Andres Santiago, a rather notorious pirate and smuggler, and this is where it gets interesting,” Odell said, warming to his story. “Back in the late sixties, early seventies, Andres smuggled guns, drugs, anything profitable in from Central America. The Ten Thousand Islands have always been home to smugglers of all kinds because it is so remote and easy to get lost in.”

She nodded remembering how quickly she’d become lost among the mangrove islands on the way here. “You said he had a nanny?”

Odell nodded. “He lived here with his wife, Medina, and three small children from his first marriage. That wife died in childbirth. Medina was the daughter of a Central American dictator. During a revolt, her father was killed but Andres managed to rescue Medina and a devoted lieutenant named Carlos Lazarro. He brought them both to the island. Carlos still lives in that old boathouse by the pier.” Odell paused. “Do you really want to hear this?”

He didn’t give her time to answer. But she would have said yes even if he had.

“The woman up there, Alma Garcia? She was the nanny for Andres’s children.” He glanced toward the third floor. Only a faint light glowed overhead. “She went crazy after what happened.”

Willa felt a chill. “What happened?”

“First, Andres’s only son drowned in the pool. Then the whole family went missing. No one ever knew what happened to them. Alma and Carlos had been inland that night. When they came home some time after midnight, they discovered everyone gone. There was blood… The authorities suspected foul play, of course, but the case was never solved. That was thirty years ago.”

“How awful.”

“There are lots of theories. Some say Medina’s father’s enemies came and killed the whole family. Others say Andres made it look as if they’d all been killed so he could disappear with his family. In Andres’s will he made provisions for both Alma and Carlos to live on the island for the rest of their lives. That’s why the villa was divided into apartments since the money Andres left has long since run out. A lawyer friend of the family handles everything.”

Willa saw the woman sneak back into her apartment. The front of her white gown was covered with what appeared to be dirt.

“When I got here, I saw her digging,” Odell said. “Local legend has it that Andres Santiago hid a small fortune on this island.”

She felt her eyes widen.

Odell laughed. “If it were true, fortune hunters would have found it over the last thirty years.”

“I’m surprised Alma and Carlos would want to stay here after what happened,” Willa said, seeing the villa so differently now.

“I guess they had nowhere else to go. Alma spends her days creeping around here like some kind of ghost. Carlos is the caretaker but most of the time from what I can tell, he’s on the other side of the island in his boat fishing.” He seemed to notice that she was still holding her sandwich. “You probably want to get that in the fridge and I’ve talked your ear off again. Sorry.”

“No, I enjoyed hearing the story, and thank you for the sandwich.”

He smiled. “Holler if you need anything. And don’t worry about Alma and Carlos. They seem harmless enough.”

“Thanks.” Willa stepped back into her apartment and closed the door. She waited a few moments, until she heard Odell’s footfalls retreat, before she locked the door.

After she put the sandwich in the fridge, she dragged her suitcase over to the marred old chest of drawers and unpacked. At the bottom of her suitcase, she found the sheets and towels she’d brought. She made the bed and hung up the towels in the bathroom, surprised to see there was a huge clawfoot tub.

Some of her fatigue evaporated at the thought of sinking neck-deep into a tub of hot water scented with her favorite bath soap. She popped in the plug and turned on the water. The old pipes groaned and complained but after a few moments, wonderfully warm water began to fill the tub.

Quickly she checked to make sure she’d locked the door before she went back to the bathroom and stripped off her clothing and stepped into the tub.

Everything was going to be all right, she told herself as she immersed herself in the warm water and began to soap her body in the rich lather. From somewhere she heard music again, the song older than the woman on the third floor. Past the music, she heard voices, though too faint to make out the words.

She couldn’t help but think about the story Odell had told her. The history of Cape Diablo and the Santiago family fascinated her. She’d felt something when she’d stepped off the boat and looked up at the crumbling old villa. A sense of mystery. A story unfolding. Or had she sensed something else? The spirits of the lost souls? Or a sense of foreboding as if she’d been drawn to this island for another purpose?

She shivered, wondering again what could have happened to the family and even more intrigued by the woman who’d stayed on upstairs.

Odell certainly was knowledgeable about Cape Diablo. She felt foolish for suspecting him of having other motives for being on the island. And yet, anyone could learn the history of the place. And pretending to be a writer gave him the perfect cover.

She shook her head at the path her mind had taken. She hated that she was suspicious of everyone now.

Finishing her bath, she toweled dry and dressed in a sleeveless nightshirt. She felt better, calmer, back in control somewhat, she thought as she started to wipe the steam from the mirror and was momentarily startled by her own unfamiliar image in the glass.

Her hand went to her short curly auburn hair. It did make her eyes seem larger. Or that could have been the fear.

She picked up the glasses from where she’d left them on the sink. The lenses were clear, but the plastic frames distracted from her face enough to make her look entirely different from the woman she’d been just weeks before.

She touched her hair again, missing the feel of her long, naturally straight blond hair inherited from her Swedish ancestors.

But she would let her hair grow out again. After Landry was caught, after the trial—when it was safe to go back to her life, she told herself, trying hard to believe she could ever reclaim it.

Glancing around the apartment, she decided the first item of business would be to make this place more her own. What little furniture there was had been shoved against each wall.

She grabbed the end of the couch and pulled it away from the wall and saw at once why it had been pushed against the wall as it had been.

There was a sizable hole in the wall behind it.

On closer inspection, she saw that the hole—four inches wide, a good foot high and seemingly endless in depth—had been chipped into the adobe wall. She couldn’t tell how deep it ran. Not without a flashlight.

As she straightened she noticed a scrap of paper on the floor near the hole. She picked it up and saw that it was a piece of a torn photograph. The piece appeared to be part of a face covered with something like a gauzy veil or a film of some kind.

She peered into the hole and thought she saw another piece of the torn photograph. How odd.

Vaulting over the couch she dug in her purse for the penlight on her key ring. In the kitchen she found a butter knife and returned to behind the couch.

Shining the tiny light into the hole, she began to dig out the pieces of the photo with the butter knife. She still couldn’t tell how deep the hole was—obviously too deep for her dim light. But there were more pieces of the photograph in there, as if they’d fallen down from the floor above.

Diligently she worked the pieces out until she couldn’t reach any more.

Just as she was starting to collect the scraps, a sliver of light sliced down through the top of the hole. Willa angled her gaze upward into the opening and saw light coming through what appeared to be a crack in floorboards upstairs.

She’d thought no one lived directly above her. She heard the creak of footsteps on the floor overhead. The light went out. She listened, but heard nothing more.

Taking the pieces of the photograph over to the small kitchen table, she pulled up a chair and began to fit the pieces together like a puzzle, curious after seeing the veiled face in the first piece.

The graphic artist who’d mentioned Cape Diablo had also been an avid photographer. Was it possible this was one of her photos? Or maybe that she’d even stayed in this very room?

The photograph began to take shape. Several of the edge pieces were missing but she was starting to see an image. What was it she was looking at?

She laid down the last piece and felt a jolt. It was a photo of the pool in the courtyard, the water murky and dark.

Funny, but the face that had spurred her curiosity enough to put the photograph back together in the first place seemed to have disappeared.

That was strange.

Carefully she turned the pieces of the photograph a hundred and eighty degrees and gasped.

A boy of about four was lying on the bottom of the pool in the deep end, the dark water like a mask over his face. There was no doubt that the child was dead.

Chapter Five

Abruptly Willa shoved back her chair and stumbled to her feet. Odell had said Andres Santiago’s only son had died here. Drowned in the pool? But that had been more than thirty years ago.

Her hands were shaking. How long had this photo been in the wall? If the shot had been taken by her friend, then it would have been just weeks ago.

Suddenly scared, Willa looked at the photograph again.

The body on the bottom of the pool was gone. So was the little boy’s terrified face.

She stared down at the photograph. Had she just imagined seeing the little boy? Could it have been a trick of the light? Or just her imagination after the terrible story Odell had told her?

She glanced toward the hole in the wall. But if it had just been a photograph of the murky pool, then why had someone torn the photograph into tiny pieces then hidden them in the wall?

Unable to suppress a shudder, Willa thought of the woman on the third floor and the light that had bled down from overhead as the woman moved around up there. Alma Garcia. She’d been the child’s nanny, Willa thought as her stomach knotted. Had she been caring for the little boy the day he drowned?

Willa glanced again at the photo, telling herself it was just a photograph of the pool. Nothing more.

Shivering from a nonexistent cold breeze that seemed to have crept into the room, Willa scooped up the pieces of photograph and dumped them into the trash can. She couldn’t keep seeing death everywhere she looked.

The curtains billowed in at the window, startling her. The tropical breeze was warm. The chill gone from the room again.

She stepped to the window, surprised how quickly it had gotten dark. Through the palms, she could see the lights of a boat far out on the dark horizon. Below her, shadows moved restlessly across the courtyard. She could smell salt in the air coming in from the Gulf, hear the breeze rustling the palm fronds.

The music had stopped. She realized the voices she’d heard were coming from the other side of the villa behind her. Moving to the back of her small apartment, she opened the window as quietly as possible.

Two people were talking beneath the window in a low murmur. She couldn’t make out their words. As her eyes adjusted to the darkness she could however make out two figures in the shadow of the house.

As they moved, Willa saw that one was wearing an old-fashioned white gown like she’d seen the nanny wearing earlier while dancing. The other figure was that of a man. He too was older, his voice sounding gravelly.

He appeared to be trying to persuade the woman to go with him somewhere. After a moment they parted, the woman slipping through an archway back into the villa. The elderly man faded into the darkness and vegetation of the island as if he’d never existed.

The man must have been Carlos Lazarro, she realized who, according to Odell, lived in the old boathouse.

Willa closed the window and started to close the blinds as well, when something caught her eye. Movement. The old man? Had he come back? She watched someone moving through the vegetation, but it was too dark to make out who it was. Not the old man. The person moved too easily. Almost catlike, making little sound, the movement fluid and hinting of power. Whoever it was headed for the back of the villa.

Landry Jones.

Willa shook off the thought. Landry couldn’t have found her. It had to be Odell. She moved to the door, unlocked it and stepped out onto the long balcony over the courtyard. Below her, the pool was cloudy and bottomless. She stared down into it, seeing nothing and glad of it.

As she glanced across the courtyard toward Odell’s apartment, she saw that a single light shone through the cracks between the blinds in what she assumed was his living room. The window was open. She listened for the clack of an old manual typewriter, but there was no sound coming from his apartment.

But behind the house she could hear the purr of a motor. The generator that supplied the electricity. They’d had a generator on the farm for when bad weather took out their power lines. She knew the sound well growing up on the South Dakota prairie.

She moved away from her open apartment door, sneaking as quietly as possible along the balcony to the back wall of the villa to gaze out through the thick foliage in the direction where she’d seen the person going. No one. Could it have been an animal? Whatever it had been it certainly moved like one.

Another rhythmic sound drew her attention. She moved along the back of the second-story walkway away from her apartment. Through the trees she spotted a figure bent over digging a hole in the ground. The sound of the steady scrape of a shovel blade through the soil drifted on the night breeze.

As the figure straightened, she saw that it was Odell. Of course that was who she’d seen from the window, she thought with a wave of relief. He turned up another shovelful of dirt, stopped and looked back toward the villa as if he’d heard something. Or sensed her watching him.

She melted back into the dark shadows along the wall, hoping he hadn’t seen her spying on him. What could he be digging up? Or was he burying something?

He resumed his digging but she stayed hidden, afraid he would look over his shoulder again and see her. The shoveling stopped, then resumed again.

She took a peek. He seemed to be covering up the hole now. She watched as he patted down the disturbed ground then covered it with several palm fronds.

As he started toward the villa, she flattened herself against the wall, not daring to move. She feared he would see her even in the dark shadows because of the light-colored nightshirt she wore. But he didn’t look up in her direction. He seemed intent on hurrying back to his apartment.

She watched him come through an archway almost hidden by vegetation and keep to the shadows, not making a sound as he entered his apartment. He no longer had the shovel. Nor was he carrying anything she could see.

Willa stood there until he’d closed his apartment door. Another light came on deeper in the apartment, then went out. What was all that about?

Did she even want to know? For just an instant, she thought about sneaking down there and finding out. Wouldn’t she sleep better if she did?

Yeah, right.

She shivered as she made her way back to her open apartment door. Slipping inside, she locked the door behind her.

Whatever it was Odell had dug up or buried, it was none of her business. Though it was odd. And even a little chilling.

As she padded barefoot toward her bedroom she caught an unfamiliar scent in the air and slowed. Perfume? It smelled like…gardenias? Had someone been in her apartment? She’d foolishly left the door wide open and hadn’t been paying any attention during the time she’d been watching Odell.

Deeper into the apartment, the scent grew stronger then faded all together as if she’d only imagined it. Like she’d imagined the little boy’s face in the photo?

She stopped in the middle of her bedroom. Her pulse jumped, her heart leaping to her throat. Someone had been in her apartment. She hadn’t imagined the scent of gardenias and what she saw—or in this case didn’t see.

Her easel stood empty.

The painting she’d done of Landry Jones and the murder was gone.

Trembling, Willa removed the shade from the lamp on the table next to the bed and hefting the base, quickly searched the small apartment to make sure the thief wasn’t still there.

The apartment was small with few places to hide. Once she’d checked the bathroom and the closet and under the bed, that didn’t leave much of a hiding place.

But still she moved the couch out away from the wall to look behind it, feeling foolish. Why would someone be hiding in the apartment after taking the painting? But why would anyone come into her apartment and take an unfinished painting to begin with?

Once she was sure there was no one lurking in the apartment, she put the lamp back beside her bed, the shade on again and turned on all the lights.

Her stomach felt queasy and she remembered the sandwich Odell had given her. The supply boat wouldn’t be coming until tomorrow morning with her groceries.

She had bought a box of granola bars before she’d met Gator at the dock and several bottles of water. She took the water from her large purse, opened one and put the other in the fridge. Too antsy to sit, she ate the sandwich and one of the bars standing up.

She felt a bit better but still nervous as she listened to the sounds of the night and the creaks and groans of the old villa and thought of the story about the Santiago family. Overhead, she heard footfalls on the floor as if someone was creeping around up there, then silence.

On impulse, she checked the hole behind the couch. No light shone from the floor above. She slid the couch back, double-checked the door to make sure it was locked, then made sure all the windows were closed and locked before hooking a chair under the doorknob as an extra precaution before going to bed.

As exhausted as she was, she thought sleep would elude her, especially given that someone had taken the disturbing painting she’d planned to paint over in the morning. Who? And why? Alma Garcia? The same person who’d cut the tape on the painting supply box while it was on the dock? Maybe the poor old soul had a problem with taking things. Willa would have to keep her door locked. And keep an eye on the old woman.

And Odell. What had he buried? Or dug up? She knew she would have to find out. She thought about going out there now but suddenly she couldn’t keep her eyes open. Sleep dragged her down as if she’d been drugged.

She tried to fight it, suddenly afraid that Odell had put something in the sandwich. She felt as if she were underwater desperately trying to swim to the surface. She thought she heard a sound at her door then someone calling her name but then she went under and there was nothing but blackness.

In the dream the water was dark. She stood on the edge of the pool. There was something just below the surface. She could almost make out what it was. She leaned closer.

A face began to take shape. The face of a little boy like the one she’d seen in the photograph except the boy seemed to be fighting to save himself, as if he was being held under. There was terror in his eyes and he was gasping.

Suddenly the child’s face floated to the surface. Not the face of a little boy but the bloated, distended face of a monster, the decomposed skin slipping off, the face literally dissolving before her eyes.

Willa screamed and lurched backward but the child’s hand came out of the fetid water and grabbed her wrist, pulling her toward the pool as if to drag her to the bottom with him.

Frantically she fought to free herself but the grip on her wrist was like a steel band. She screamed again as she was dragged to the lip of the pool, what was left of the child’s face grinning grotesquely up at her.

“Hey! It’s me!”

Suddenly her eyes flew open and she fell backward. Odell grabbed her and pulled her back from the edge of the pool. She struck out at him, still deep in the nightmare.

“Hey, what’s wrong with you?”

He held her at arm’s length until her eyes focused on him, then he let go. She stumbled back from him, confused and shaking with terror.

“Are you all right?”

She blinked and looked around, memory of where she was slowly coming back to her. “How did I get down here?”

He shook his head. “Oh, man, were you sleepwalking?”

Her gaze flickered over the moonlit courtyard. Still in the grip of the dream, she stared at the dark water of the pool, until she finally pulled her gaze away and looked at Odell. He was wearing only pajama bottoms, his chest and feet bare, hair mussed as if he’d just woken up.

“I heard a scream and I came running out….” He was staring at her, looking almost as scared of her as she was of him. “That was really creepy. I’ve never seen anyone sleepwalking before. You were looking right at me and yet you didn’t seem to be seeing me at all. If I hadn’t grabbed you, you looked like you were going to fall into the deep end of the pool.”

She tried to make sense of what he was saying. “It was only a dream?”

He chuckled, looking relieved that she was no longer freaking. “More like a nightmare from the way you were screaming.”

It had been so real. She shot a glance toward the stagnant water of the pool again and shuddered, hugging her bare arms. She glanced down and saw that her feet were bare and realized she was wearing only her nightshirt. Although it covered her from her shoulders to her knees, she felt half-naked in the hot humid night air with this man.

She remembered the sandwich and the feeling that she’d been drugged. Was it possible he’d put something in the sandwich to make her hallucinate? But why would he do that? If he’d been sent here to kill her, why not just drown her in the pool get it over with? Why save her?

“Are you sure you’re all right?” Odell asked.

She nodded, realizing that the last time she’d gotten even a little close to a stranger had colored her thinking. She used to be so trusting. But Landry Jones had changed all that.

Thoughts of what could have happened if she’d gotten into the car with Landry that night skittered past. Another shudder ran through her as she stepped farther away from Odell.

“If you’re all right, I’m going back to bed,” he said, seeing her move away from him. He seemed irritated. After all, according to him, he’d just saved her.

She nodded and stumbled backward to the stairs, groping with one hand behind her as if blind, even though an almost full moon and a canopy of stars now lit the courtyard.

Odell said nothing, just watched her until she disappeared up the steps and through the open door of her apartment. She closed the door, locked it and moved to the window to peer through the blinds down on the courtyard and the pool. Had it really only been a nightmare?