Cassidy Kincaid Mysteries Box Set Page 12

  “What’s that?” Cassidy asked above the hum of the motor as they idled.

  “It’s a synagogue,” he said, turning onto the road.

  Cassidy followed it with her eyes as Bruce sped past.

  Just then Bruce swerved to avoid another moped leaving the curb, and Cassidy instinctively tightened her grip around his middle.

  The Uno gas station came into view. Bruce pulled into the cobbled parking area in front of the glassed-in minimart.

  Cassidy slid off the moped, and Bruce rested it on its kickstand. Cassidy looked around, walking slowly towards the side of the building where she had spied the dumpster.

  The area around it looked unremarkable. The packed dirt ground revealed no bloodstains. There were no broken beer bottles or discarded cigarettes that she could sample for DNA. Like they’d do DNA testing here, she scolded herself. She did not attempt to lift the garbage-stained lid of the dumpster, rationalizing that the police had already cleaned it out.

  She stood there and closed her eyes, hoping to feel some kind of epiphany. Had Reeve been here? Had he gotten into a knife fight, been injured or killed, and the other person dropped his phone in the dumpster to rid the scene of clues? Cassidy knew it was possible. The most likely explanation is probably true, Pete used to say.

  But why would Reeve get into a fight behind a gas station? The only reason was drugs. Reeve had either been selling or buying, and the deal went bad.

  A buzzing sensation caught her attention. It was coming from her pocket. She checked her phone but the screen was black.

  Reeve’s phone was ringing.

  She pulled it out. The WhatsApp number she had called before, the same one Reeve had called the morning he disappeared, was calling her back. Cassidy looked for Bruce, but he had gone inside. She tapped the flashing icon on the phone. “Si?” she answered, holding the phone with a light touch, as if something dangerous might pop out of it.

  “Tienes una entrega?” a woman’s voice asked.

  Do I have a delivery? Cassidy thought, panicking. “Si,” she said.

  “Una hora,” the woman’s voice replied.

  Cassidy’s pulse whooshed past her ears as she tried to process what to say. “Where?” she blurted, but the call had ended.

  Bruce joined her. “What was that?” he asked.

  Cassidy looked at him in anguish. “The number. They called it back.” She brushed back tears. “It’s drugs. He was making a delivery.”

  Bruce’s face twisted into a grimace. “You sure? What exactly did they say?”

  Cassidy relayed the conversation word for word.

  “Shit,” he said. He looked uneasy.

  Cassidy stabbed the heels of her hands into her eyes and groaned.

  “One hour,” he said. “Here?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Look, I know you’re committed,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck. His face was pinched. “But can I make a recommendation?” His gaze flicked from side to side. “Now would be a good time to quit.”

  Slowly, Cassidy realized what was bothering her about Bruce’s look. He was scared.

  “I mean, what do you think’s gonna happen? That they’re gonna just tell you, ‘Oh, yeah, that guy? We killed him.’”

  Cassidy felt her stomach lurch.

  “Sorry,” Bruce said, as if reading her thoughts. “Maybe he’s alive. But he met someone and delivered something. Probably something illegal. The kinds of people he likely dealt with don’t play nice.”

  The smell of the diesel fumes from the gas station, coupled with the sour reek from the garbage bin was making her head swim. “Sounds like you know something about it,” Cassidy said, crossing her arms. Sure, this was dangerous stuff, and the phone ringing was like a hand reaching up from the underworld, but she had seen Reeve’s world before, and she had never feared for her own safety the way Bruce seemed to be.

  Bruce’s expression didn’t change. “Maybe I do. And maybe I’ll tell you about it someday. But for now, I strongly recommend we skedaddle.”

  She looked away. “Did you ask inside?” she asked.

  Bruce shook his head. “They don’t remember seeing anyone who fits his description, but he likely didn’t buy gas or go inside. And the gas station was closed when the stabbing occurred. At least that’s what they told me.”

  The resignation hit her like a cold splash of water. Cassidy felt her shoulders drop out of her ears. “So it’s over?” she asked.

  Bruce gave her steady look.

  Cassidy looked around, imagining Reeve in a scuffle, the flash of a knife. Thugs dragging his body to its final resting place, wherever that might be. A lonely patch of desert? A crocodile-infested river? The ocean? Overwhelmed with sadness, a shuddering sob escaped from somewhere deep inside her. She clapped her hand over her mouth, but the tears came anyway.

  Bruce stepped close and gathered her in his arms. It was a gentle, kind embrace, and he didn’t say anything, or try to stop her tears. Cassidy closed her eyes and imagined Pete doing the same thing. A wave of ache rattled through her, and she clenched her fists and gritted her teeth until it passed. After a moment, she was able to regain control, and stepped back.

  “Where do you want to go?” he said. In the low light, his brown eyes looked pained, and she realized that he too was upset. “The hotel?”

  Cassidy followed Bruce to the moped. He started the engine, and she swung her leg over the back and gripped his sides. As they sped away, Cassidy looked back, taking a lasting snapshot of the place where Reeve had likely engaged in a battle for his life—and lost.

  As Bruce sped down the main street, snippets of thoughts flipped through her head like movie clips, only jumbled, and some with no significant meaning. Reeve, about age ten, riding a wave into the shore on a boogie board, his grin bright and joyful. Reeve, arriving home from school with one of his sidekicks to smoke pot in his room and listen to Beastie Boys at high decibels. Reeve at Christmas dinner, looking pale and quiet, and the rest of the family agreeing they should forgo alcohol this year. Reeve with wild eyes, showing up at her and Pete’s house, demanding money. Then she pictured him at the beach in San Juan with the girl, his look peaceful, his eyes clear.

  What had happened to him? Had he been clean, like he swore to Rebecca? Or had he slipped back into the party life and was making ends meet by delivering drugs to and from Nicaragua?

  Would he put Bruce in jeopardy like that?

  Cassidy knew that when Reeve was using, his morals vanished. Nothing mattered except the next high. He had hurt so many people while locked in this battle.

  But if he was delivering drugs, where did they come from? Cassidy had followed Reeve’s abuse cycle enough times to know how the system worked, and the facts were off. Had he bought drugs in Costa Rica to deliver to someone in San Juan? If so, was he killed before he could make the delivery, and that’s why his apartment was trashed? How did the girl play into the story? Maybe she was simply an innocent bystander who had agreed to have her picture taken and had nothing to do with his disappearance.

  Reeve had arrived in San Juan, stayed aboard that afternoon, and come ashore early the next day. He had snapped that picture with the girl, then made a call. Later that same day he didn’t show up to drive the group back to the Trinity. That night he calls her. The next day his phone is found in a dumpster at the scene of a stabbing.

  It all seems jumbled, she thought, hugging Bruce’s middle tighter as they made a turn down a narrow lane. Cassidy wondered if she would ever know the truth.

  They paralleled the beach, the sun approaching the watery horizon. Soft orange light washed over the bars and carts lining the street.

  Behind them, Cassidy heard the rev of an engine. At the same instant, she saw Bruce’s expression in the side mirror change. She turned to see what was behind them. A small tan car with tinted windows was right on their heels. She expected Bruce to pull over to let them pass if they were in such a hurry, but he accelerated. Cassidy felt a slick of f
ear slide down into her belly.

  The car behind them came closer.

  “We’ve got company,” Bruce shouted over the engine noise.

  “What?” Cassidy replied.

  “They’ve been following us for a while.”

  Cassidy felt a jolt of panic as the tan car began to overtake them. The car’s front right corner was inches from her left leg. She realized that the car was going to force them off the road.

  “Hang on!” Bruce yelled. He slowed suddenly and turned right, into an alley lined with dumpsters and boxes, garbage bags cinched tight. Cassidy yelped as the back tire skidded, but Bruce regained control, and they sped straight, faster than Cassidy knew was safe. She turned to see the tan car speeding towards them, barely fitting through the narrow space.

  “Who are they?” she yelled.

  Bruce shot out of the alley and turned left onto the busy street lining the beach. Brakes squealed and horns honked as they cut across traffic. All around them people were walking, sitting in bars, riding in taxis. Music played from the restaurants and mixed with the sound of outboard motors whining in the bay. Cassidy heard screeching tires and crunching metal and turned back to see a motorcycle on its side and a car stopped on the sidewalk. Honking and yells erupted from passersby, who were tending to the motorcyclist. Cassidy watched the tan car steer around it and race after them again.

  “Shouldn’t we call the police?” Cassidy cried.

  “Those guys might be the police,” Bruce yelled back.

  Bruce took a sudden left into another alley, then a right onto a side street. Adrenaline poured into her bloodstream; she gripped Bruce’s middle tighter. He turned onto a narrow walkway meant for pedestrians headed for the beach. People jumped out of the way and yelled at them. Cassidy looked back, but saw no sign of the car. Could the police really be chasing them? The path emptied onto a crosswalk that crossed to the strand. Bruce drove across it and onto the sand, weaving in and out of the people, around the restaurants. People jumped out of the way, their eyes wide with fear; a group of guys shouted curses.

  Bruce cleared a large restaurant and pulled up along the side. The low sun cast a warm, soft glow over the sand, turning it golden and sparkly. “Can you get to the boat?” he asked.

  “Like, swim?” she asked.

  “Maybe you can catch a ride on that,” he said, nodding at a large catamaran rocking gently in the shallows. A sandwich board placed in the sand advertised whale watching tours, and a line of people were waiting to climb aboard.

  “Okay,” she said, dismounting.

  “Give me his phone,” he said.

  “Why?” She slipped Reeve’s phone from her pocket.

  “Because that’s how they found you,” he said, and slid the battery out of the device. “Want me to take yours too?”

  Cassidy shook her head. “My case is waterproof.” She looked behind them but there was no sign of the tan car. “What are you going to do?” she asked, dismounting from the moped.

  “Follow them.” He must have seen the look in her eyes because he added, “I’ll be fine. I’ll meet you out there later.”

  Cassidy felt her fear deepen. “Okay,” she said, forcing the waver out of her voice.

  Above her, on the street, she heard the swish of a fast car. She flattened herself against the side of the building. Bruce’s jaw clenched. “That’s my cue,” he said, and sped off after the car.

  Cassidy stood in the shadow of the restaurant, trying to control her breathing. She was shaking, with goose bumps pricking her arms and the back of her neck. Who had been following them? Had the phone call to Reeve’s phone set it off? And what did they want?

  Cassidy hurried to the water’s edge, lining up with the other tourists. Would they get her close enough to the Trinity? Could she jump off without being noticed? She stepped aboard, realizing that she would have to swim in her clothes.

  The catamaran pushed off from the shore and the sails filled. The others on board oohed at the sensation of gliding across the water.

  Cassidy found a place on the back pontoon and sat, watching the lights of the shore, her thoughts swirling.

  If Reeve was dead, why was she being chased?

  Music from the catamaran’s speakers drifted across the decks, and she heard the crack of beer tops opening and conversations swirling. A man was making an announcement about the tour and the kinds of whales they might see.

  Cassidy’s thoughts returned to the phone call. Una hora, the woman had said. But where? Cassidy checked her watch and calculated that she had another twenty minutes until whoever had called would be expecting Reeve to meet them.

  Cassidy thought about this. Reeve had paid Tikvah International two thousand dollars, for drugs or something else illegal. And then he picked it up in San Juan. Then something went wrong. Had Reeve double-crossed his source? If so, why call him back at all? They would know that he was a crook. They would know that he was missing because they would have been involved.

  Or were they?

  Several facts came together at once, so fast that she felt off balance, and before she knew it, she was sliding into the ocean and swimming back to shore.

  As a kid, she had swum in the ocean many times. She had completed the junior lifeguards program at age thirteen. It was the only way her dad and Pamela would allow her to go to the beach and surf without supervision. Junior lifeguards had taught her about rip tides and currents, and how to navigate, how to know when you needed a rest, and how to signal for help. She also learned endurance. Most people drowned because they gave up, not knowing that they had the inner reserves to save themselves. As long as the water wasn’t cold, it was possible to stay alive in the ocean for hours, sometimes even several days.

  The water in the bay was black, with the lights from the town sparkling over its calm surface, and her pale limbs swishing beneath her looked ghostly. She removed her flip-flops and slid them onto her hands, both to keep them from floating away and to assist in her mobility. She started with breaststroke to get clear of the boat, praying that nobody noticed her absence, her ears listening for the sound of worried voices calling to her, or for some kind of alarm. Then, sure she hadn’t been noticed, Cassidy switched to freestyle, pausing now and then to check her progress. The lights from shore didn’t seem to be getting any closer, and Cassidy was beginning to wonder if indeed she was caught in some kind of strange current, when the details of the restaurants and people strolling the beach began to focus.

  Finally, dripping wet, she emerged from the water, and looked both ways. Thankfully, no one seemed to notice her. She squeezed out her hair and wiped her face, still watching for the shadows to jump out at her. With a quick pause to slide her feet into her soaked sandals, she set off towards the streets.

  Fourteen

  Cassidy waited in the shadow of a restaurant, watching the busy thoroughfare along the street for signs of the tan car or anyone who might be watching her. She imagined a stocky man in a dark suit picking his teeth with a switchblade, his steely eyes glued to the water’s edge, instead she saw only regular-looking tourists and locals going about their business.

  Linking shadows, she made her way back toward the Uno. Once she was on the same street, she moved purposely, pausing every now and then to make sure she wasn’t being followed. She felt ridiculous, but her heart pounded with the firm belief that she was in danger.

  She chose to wait on an opposite corner, with a good vantage of the Uno. Across the road, a faded orange awning hung over the window of a small mercado. Next to it stood the synagogue with its faded star of David, and wedged between it and a bland-colored building was a closed fruit stand with a colorful storefront. On Cassidy’s side of the street, a rising bank of weeds and spindly, flowering trees covered the ground.

  Cassidy shifted her feet on the shady, cracked sidewalk. She checked her watch—her hour was up. She scanned the activity at the Uno but nothing caught her eye.

  She knew the Uno might not be the meeting place,
but with no other leads, there was nothing else to do but wait.

  What would she do if someone actually did show up?

  Cassidy realized the stupidity of her plan. She remembered Benita’s comment: you packing?

  A steady stream of people strolled the streets: a mix of tourists in bright vacation wear and flip-flops, sunburned and in various states of inebriation; and locals, the women in tight jeans and tops, wearing worn flats or heels, and the men in soccer-style sweatpants or faded chinos and T-shirts. The locals seemed to be in no hurry, stopping to chat, while the tourists rushed here and there, as if their vacation was a checklist with an endless column of boxes.

  Groups of young, backpacker types entered the Chabad House. Cassidy wondered if it was a hostel, or some kind of community center. Could there be that many Jewish tourists in Nicaragua?

  Across the street, the mercado’s television blared some kind of telenovella. Cassidy could just make out the flashes of color, which looked grainy even from her vantage point. She checked her watch again and realized with dismay that the time for the meeting had passed with no suspicious activity. The cars and trucks at the Uno came in; drivers filled their tanks, then drove off. After another half hour of waiting, the setting sun chilling her still damp skin, Cassidy admitted defeat.

  She turned to go, keeping to the shadows. She realized that it had been a long shot, coming back, but deep down inside her lived a tiny sliver of hope.

  Ahead of her on the sidewalk, three men stood talking. A car with the hood up rested against the curb, and two of the men were talking loudly, gesturing to the vehicle. One of the men looked more and more angry. Cassidy decided to cross the street, and then fell in behind a large group of teens and a set of adults she assumed were chaperones. Cassidy stole a look over her shoulder. Had one of the arguing men looked at her strangely? Should she have returned to the shore via a different route?