Troubles in Paradise (Paradise #3)(76)

Just friends. Maybe Huck and Vasco are just friends as well. Maybe Swan misunderstood the situation at Skinny Legs. Oh, please. Oh, please! Irene isn’t sure how she’s going to make it until three o’clock. She would text Huck right away but she knows he’s out on the boat. She’ll be waiting when he pulls back in. If, God forbid, Agent Vasco is also waiting for Huck on the dock, Irene will…push Vasco in.

I’m crazy, Irene thinks. Crazy about him and just plain crazy.

She sits by the pool with her captain’s-license study materials but she can’t concentrate on characteristics of weather systems or lifesaving equipment. She heads to the kitchen. She isn’t hungry, but what about a drink? The bottle of wine she opened with Swan is gone, but Irene has plenty of other bottles. What if she starts drinking now, at eleven o’clock in the morning, and shows up at the dock completely blotto?

This is so out of character, she’s tempted to try it.

She still has a few Ativan left. Should she take an Ativan?

I think maybe Huck got lucky! Go, Huck!

She hears a car in the driveway. Yes? No. Yes—a car door slams. Did Baker come home for lunch? Irene goes to the front door and sees a black Jeep with tinted windows in the driveway and a small woman with a limp brown ponytail approaching. Probably she’s lost. Hikers come out this way looking for the start of the Reef Bay Trail coastal walk, but that’s up the hill.

“Can I help you?” Irene says.

“Irene Steele?” the woman says.

Irene blinks, looks again at the Jeep. Didn’t Huck say something about a black Jeep with tinted windows? Yes. He saw one loitering on Jacob’s Ladder.

“I’m sorry,” Irene says. “Do I know you?” The woman is wearing a plain white short-sleeved blouse and khaki capris. She has a pale, round face and brown eyes. FBI? Irene wonders. They’ve taken everything she has. If they ask for anything more, she’ll give them the Christmas ornaments.

“Irene.” The woman checks their surroundings as though she thinks they’re being watched. “May I come in? I need to speak to you confidentially.”

“About?”

“Your husband,” the woman says. “And Todd Croft.”

“Are you with the FBI?” Irene asks. “I’d like to see some ID.”

“I’m not with the FBI,” the woman says. She takes a step closer to the screen door and lowers her voice. “Irene, we’ve spoken on the phone. I’m Marilyn Monroe.”

Irene’s hand flies to her mouth. Marilyn Monroe was the person who called Irene on New Year’s Day to tell her Russ was dead. She was Todd Croft’s secretary, but it seemed like she’d dropped off the face of the earth.

She looks nothing like the famous Marilyn Monroe. Under other circumstances, Irene might find this amusing.

Irene holds the door open, then locks both the screen and the solid wood door behind Marilyn. Turns the dead bolt.

“Yes,” Marilyn says, as though this is a necessary measure.

“Can I offer you anything—”

“We just need a quiet place to talk,” Marilyn says. She looks around the Happy Hibiscus. “He hasn’t gotten in here, so it’s safe.”

“Who?”

“My husband,” Marilyn says. “Todd.”

“Todd Croft is your husband?” Irene doesn’t mean to sound incredulous but she’d thought Todd Croft, with all his money and power, would have a trophy wife. Someone like…Swan Seeley. Polished, put together, a woman who wears five-hundred-dollar-an-ounce perfume and carries a two-thousand-dollar bag, someone who owns a cigarette boat so she can zip over to Virgin Gorda for a facial at Little Dix. This woman looks like she drives in a carpool, then heads home to scrapbook. She’s neither fat nor thin, neither pretty nor ugly. How would Irene describe her to the police? Round face, clear skin, a nice straight part in her brown hair. She wears a gold wedding band next to a diamond engagement ring; her nails are filed into pretty ovals, though they’re unpolished. She has leather thong sandals on her feet and a gold anklet so thin it’s almost imperceptible. Irene can’t recall the last time she saw anyone wearing an anklet. Her sorority sister Sandra, maybe, back in 1985. She must be Irene’s age, maybe a few years younger. Fifty-two or fifty-three, Irene would guess.

“Yes,” Marilyn says. “We’ve been married for twenty-five years.”

“So before all this started.”

“Todd started Ascension the year after we got married,” Marilyn says. “My family owns marinas and boat-building concerns in Florida. My father got Todd set up in business.” She nods at the sofa. “Okay if we sit down?”

Yes, yes. Irene leads Marilyn into the living room but the midwesterner in her will not be quieted. “Are you sure I can’t get you any coffee, tea, or…will we be needing wine?”

Marilyn doesn’t smile at that, and Irene starts to worry. “I’ve been trying to talk to you alone for a while now. But you were always with the captain.”

“Huck,” Irene says. “Yes.”

“And then, suddenly, you weren’t. I thought I’d lost you. I thought you left the Virgin Islands.”

“No, I moved in here with my son. You found that out somehow?”

Marilyn nods. “I asked someone close to you.”