Rebel Island (Tres Navarre #7)(19)

I opened the door. Chase didn’t look good. His skin was blanched and his eyes were so bloodshot they were the same color as his hair. He had that consternated expression that comes from trying to solve problems while drunk.

“What’s up?” I asked him.

“I just wanted…” He saw Maia. “Oh, hi.”

“Hello,” Maia said.

“Damn,” Chase said, “you are pregnant.”

“Chase,” I said, “is there something we can do for you?”

He scratched his ear. “Um, yeah. It’s my friend Ty.”

“Latino kid?” I said. “Shaggy hair, looks like he’s going to throw up most of the time?”

“That’s him. He’s not doing so well. With the killing and the blood and all…there’s something I thought you should—”

The building groaned like a sailing vessel listing in a storm. There was a crashing sound. The floor shuddered.

“What the hell was that?” Chase asked.

“I don’t know,” I said, “but we’d better go see. This night just keeps getting better.”

As it turned out, there was nothing to worry about. Part of the second story had caved in, collapsing onto a ground-floor bedroom on the west side of the house, but no one had been staying there. Maia, Chase and I found Alex Huff busily sealing the door to the destroyed room with extra lumber and plastic tarp.

“Hated that room anyway,” Alex grumbled.

“Damn,” Chase said. “A whole room collapsed? Damn!”

“We’re gonna have dinner,” Alex said, wiping the grime off his forehead. “In the dining room. You know…everybody. A nice, late dinner. Jose figured out the food.”

The wild look in his eyes bothered me.

“Chase,” I said, “why don’t you go get your buddies and we’ll meet you in the dining room.”

“But, um—”

“It’s all right,” Maia assured him. She gave him her I’m-practicing-to-be-a-mother smile. “We’ll talk later. Go get your friends.”

Chase nodded with reluctance. “All right. But that guy Garrett’s up there teaching Markie to slam tequila. Not sure I can tear them away.”

“We need to talk,” I told Alex.

“I don’t have time, Tres. I’ve got this demolished room, no electricity, and the guests—”

“Alex.” Maia used her best calm, lawyerly voice. “We have a problem.”

“A problem?” He laughed in a brittle way. “You don’t say.”

Maia showed him the envelope with the newspaper clippings. I explained to him about the attempt on Peter Brazos’s life, the murder of his wife and children.

Alex looked at us like we were explaining a technical diagram in Japanese. “What does that have to do—”

“The assassin is called Calavera,” I said. “He leaves a candy skull at the scene of every hit.”

“An assassin. Candy. Did Garrett put you up to this?”

“Look, Alex, Calavera is real. He’s done dozens of hits. All of them explosions. Mostly he works for the drug lords, silencing informants. Knocking off the competition. He took down the leader of a Juárez cartel about a year ago. Then he tried to kill Peter Brazos. You sure you haven’t heard about this?”

Alex shook his head, but I could tell his mind was going a million miles an hour.

“The explosion was in Port Aransas,” Maia said. “It must’ve been big local news. Surely you heard about it.”

“Maybe—maybe I’ve heard the name Brazos or something. But an assassin? Why would someone give those articles to you? What does it have to do with anything?”

“Someone apparently thinks Calavera is here,” Maia said.

“That’s nuts.”

“Jesse Longoria came here for a reason,” I said. “We found Chris’s business card and a candy skull in Longoria’s suitcase. I think Chris tipped him off that Calavera would be here. Today. June fifth.”

“Look, Tres. I can’t…” Alex ran his hands through his hair. His fingers were trembling. “I can’t handle this right now, okay? The hotel is falling apart around my ears.”

“You haven’t found Chris?”

“Not a sign. The guy’s disappeared.”

“Then I’m glad you arranged a dinner,” I said. “We need to warn the others. They need to know.”

“You’re going to scare the hell out of everyone because someone slipped an envelope under your door?”

“Alex, if this guy Calavera is trapped on the island, he’s got no way off until the ferry tomorrow night.”

“Well, I guess, unless—”

“He can’t afford to have anybody get in the way of his escape.”

“What are you saying? He’s going to kill us all?”

“That’s what I would do,” Maia said.

Alex and I both stared at her.

“If I were a cornered assassin,” she amended.

Alex shook his head miserably. “A nice dinner. All I wanted was a nice dinner to take everyone’s mind off things.”

He ripped off another piece of duct tape, slapped it across the doorway like a bandage, then trudged off down the hall.