The Shadow Box(77)

43





CLAIRE


I was riveted, listening to Spencer, a woman I had read about, who had seemed more like a phantom of the internet than an actual person.

“Marnie Telford was my best friend,” Spencer said. “From the time we were in sixth grade. You know how sometimes people outgrow each other as they get older? We were the opposite. We got closer.”

“Like us,” I said, glancing at Jackie.

“I wish Marnie and I had the chance to say that now. But we didn’t. She left this world too soon. It all began—and ended—on a trip we took when we were juniors in college.”

“To Cancún,” I said and felt my stomach flipping. Was this it? Was I about to hear the story that would explain it all?

“Yes,” Spencer said.

At first it had been a thrill. It was their first time really on their own—away from college, out from under their parents’ supervision, making their own money. Working at Las Ventanas Resort, the luxury pink hotel on its own private beach, had been a dream. It was too high end for the usual spring break crowd, but there were plenty of young people on vacation with their parents.

“Or, in the case of Griffin, some family friends,” Spencer said.

“Wade and Leonora Lockwood,” I said.

“Yes, they were the hosts. A friend of Mrs. Lockwood’s was along and her stepson, Dan. Plus, Griffin and his girlfriend, Ellen. The group seemed like typical guests. Superrich, there for the fishing and beaching and lots of cocktails. Marnie and I were chambermaids by day, cocktail waitresses by night—we were working extra shifts to save up money.”

“And you served them?” I asked.

Spencer nodded. “At first we were just the hired help, but Griffin, Ellen, and Dan were our age, and we began to be kind of friendly.”

“You joined them for dinner or something?” Jackie asked.

“No,” Spencer said. “That wouldn’t have gone over with the Lockwoods. You have to picture this place. Five stars, right on the beach, but with a restaurant where people ‘dressed’ for dinner. The guests either knew each other from yacht clubs or business deals or Yale—or they’d read about each other in the Wall Street Journal or Town and Country. Drawing the wagons tight so no riffraff, like hotel employees, could get in.”

“You’re not riffraff,” Jackie said.

Spencer smiled. “Our parents were Washington people—they would have gotten along just fine with the resort crowd—but they weren’t there. To people like the Lockwoods, Marnie and I were just the hired help.”

“But Griffin saw you differently?” I asked.

“I’m not sure how he saw us. It started with Ellen. She caught us after lunch one day, when we were just finishing our shifts, and invited us to hang out with them that night. On a beach a few miles from the hotels, one that we knew pretty well, where we sometimes went to get away from the resort people.”

Spencer and Marnie had said yes, excited to escape the hotel for a few hours. Marnie thought Dan was cute, scruffy, and easygoing compared to perfectly preppy Griffin.

The girls wore sundresses and sandals, glad to leave their Ventanas uniforms behind. Ellen seemed nice, and she said she was relieved to have other girls around. But Spencer had noticed something: the way Ellen kept looking at Griffin, with deference, as if trying to read signals from him.

“I felt weird almost as soon as we got into the car. It was a Jeep—the Lockwoods had rented it to go off-road, exploring the Yucatan. Griffin drove and Ellen sat up front; Dan was in back, between Marnie and me. He was sweating—I could feel it through his clothes, like he was nervous about what was about to happen—and Ellen kept glancing over at Griffin, talking to him in a low voice.”

“What was about to happen?” Jackie asked.

I listened to Spencer describe the ride: the radio was on as they left the bright lights and bustle of the hotel zone. The foliage along the roadside was thick, dark green in the headlights. The sounds of tree frogs and Yucatan night birds came through the open windows. They drank Coronas; when Griffin finished one, he hurled the empty bottle at a street sign. They heard the glass smash.

Griffin turned off the main road, and they bounced along a rutted track, trees growing so close they scraped the sides of the Jeep. Eventually they broke into a clearing at Playa Mariposa, the calm Caribbean a black mirror reflecting the stars, spreading into infinity.

“Ellen said she thought there’d be more people here,” Spencer said. “She sounded nervous. Marnie told her it was safe and we went there all the time—just to get away from the resort crowds. Only locals knew about it. And kids who work at the hotels.”

“You’d gone there before?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said. “And it started off as a good time, but there was a strange vibe between Griffin and Dan.”

Something about the way Griffin spoke to Dan made Spencer think the two boys weren’t really friends, that Griffin, in fact, looked down on him, was embarrassed by him. After a season at the resort, she couldn’t miss the differences in status—who in the party had the most money, who was in charge, who was the diva, who called the shots.

Ellen spread out a blanket—Spencer knew she’d taken it from the room—and the boys brought a cooler and a canvas bag down to the water’s edge. Dan took a small CD player out of the bag and turned on the music. There was an offshore breeze keeping most of the insects away, and they were lucky it hadn’t rained lately. Dry weather kept the mosquitos away.