One Way or Another(8)

“You think the gold necklace belonged to her,” Artemis said, and Marco nodded.

“All I have to do now is find out her name.”

*

It was not easy; in fact it proved impossible. Nobody knew her. People came in and out on boats all the time: vacationers, backpackers, college kids on the loose. She could have been anybody.

Well, there it was, Marco thought, moodily, back in Costas’s bar, sipping a sweet wine that made him long for a glass of cool, clean, French sauvignon blanc. He eyed Em, lying with her head on his flip-flopped brown feet, ignoring the nightly bone. Even Em seemed to have lost her taste for this place. It was time to go. Leave the girl and the mystery of her death that maybe wasn’t such a mystery anyway; it was just him and his faulty memory. He needed to move on.

He went back to the simple white cottage, packed his old T-shirts and bathing shorts in his canvas duffel, fed Em the last of the chicken he’d bought the day before, threw out the jasmine blossoms he’d picked from the tree outside his door and which still smelled fragrant and sweet. He stood for a moment looking around his small home away from home. He loved this place, loved his solitude. This was the first time he had ever felt disturbed here. He did not like that feeling. Worried, he went and sat on the terrace. Em hunkered nervously next to him, paws neatly arranged.

He stretched out to stroke her head, such a small skull, so fragile … it brought him back again to the way the girl’s head had looked, smashed to the bone. There was no escaping the memory. He knew what he had seen. There was simply nothing he could do about it. It was time to go home.

Lightning lit the sky, another storm coming. It was that time of year. In the flickering light he caught sight of a boat making its way to the harbor. A large, black-hulled yacht. Of course there were other black-hulled yachts but somehow he knew this was the boat. Same cabin door from which she had emerged in her blue dress, the rail over which she had fallen as though dead. Which Marco believed she now was.





6





ANGIE


Am I dead? It’s a supposed fact that when you are dead you feel nothing. Then I must be. Yet I was aware of the wound to my head, I’d felt the sea licking at it, perhaps the salt water was medicinal. Or perhaps the wound was too deep for that. And if I’m dead, then it makes no difference anyway.

All I’d been aware of was the current pulling me, so fast I was helpless against it. Not that I could have saved myself, it was too late for that. I must be far from the spot where I’d fallen off the yacht, far from those people whose invited guest I was. Well, sort of a guest. Supposed to be anyhow, but it turned into something else. I was the dumb innocent who thought she was going to be a star in a hair commercial with her mane of long red wavy hair!

I am trying frantically to remember everything before it’s too late. I’m twenty-one years old, I remember that. I also remember my name. Angie. Raised by a single mom. I remember her too. In fact, I can see her in my mind’s eye, right now, her thin, always-worried face, her sweet expression when her glance lingered on me, which was not often enough since she had to work three jobs to keep us afloat. Afloat. Ironic, now that I am drowning. Drowning without you, Mom. Perhaps it’s my own fault.

Here’s how it began.

*

A month ago I was working as a hostess, a greeter at a well-known restaurant in Manhattan. Raised in Queens, I had traveled no farther than New York State in my life, never had the money, or perhaps even the ambition. Manhattan was it all, for me, and as an attractive young woman with my mane of red hair, always worn tied back when working, of course; a faintly freckled nose which I tried to cover with concealer; hazel eyes—greenish in some lights—and a slim, well-toned body from working out at the gym five mornings a week, I knew I looked good. No beauty, but certainly attractive enough to generate interest from diners at the expensive place that was really nothing but a glorified steakhouse faking out the menu with exotic French-and Italian-sounding dishes. Naturally, most people ordered the steak anyway, and the chunky fries. I could have written out their orders before they opened their mouths.

Not that I was the one taking their orders. I merely showed them to their tables, handed out menus, indicated the specials and the better bottles on the wine list, made sure the candle was lit so the women looked younger, smiled my professional smile and was gone in minutes. Except when an interesting man showed up, especially if he showed up alone. Which is how I met Ahmet Ghulbian and sealed my fate.

I was not the one actually to greet him; a coworker had that privilege, but I could tell right off he was important just from the way he strode into the place then stood silently taking in the softly lit room, the white linen tablecloths, the huge urn of flowers at the desk whose scent mingled with that of good food and excellent wine. He wore a dark suit I recognized was of European cut, narrow and fitted perfectly to his body, and he had the kind of thick dark hair I’d heard described as “luxuriant,” though it was conservatively cut; olive tan skin; clean shaven. Oddly, since this was a dark room, he wore tinted glasses which he kept on the entire time he was there.

There was just something about him that attracted me immediately and when my coworker hurried off to place his drink order, I moved in. Smoothing my short black pencil skirt over my thighs, adjusting the collar of my white shirt, I drifted casually past, throwing him a smile as I went.