Kiss the Girls and Make Them Cry(20)

“Excuse me,” she called, raising her voice in an attempt to get the attention of the taxi driver.

He turned down the radio.

“Slight change of plans,” she said as she gave him the address of the rental shop.





22





The owner was on the phone when Gina returned to the rental shop’s small boathouse office. He was finalizing an order for four kayaks for the afternoon on the following day. Before entering, she had glanced down at the docks near the gas pump. There was no sign of Klaus and the Jet Skis were not in their dock slips. Probably leading today’s tour, she thought.

Placing the phone down, the owner turned to Gina. “Can I help you?”

“Yes, you can,” she said, “Mr.…?”

“De Vries,” he answered, pointing to a framed license hanging on the wall behind the counter.

“This is your place, Mr. De Vries?”

“For the last twenty-five years, yes,” he said, smiling.

“Two and a half weeks ago, a young woman named Cathy Ryan was killed while riding a Jet Ski that was rented here.”

“Are you a lawyer?” De Vries asked, the smile having been replaced by an angry stare.

Here we go again, Gina thought to herself. She spent the next two minutes assuring him that she did not work for a law firm, had no interest in suing him, and that she was convinced that the ski he had rented to Cathy was in good working order when she rented it.

“I want to find out what happened to the ski after the accident. The police said they released it to you. Did you bring it back here to your shop?”

“Of course not,” he said. “How stupid do you think I am?”

“It was your property—”

“I know who it belonged to. You were on the ski tour yesterday. Am I right?”

“Yes.”

“How would it look if you walked down to the dock and saw a wrecked ski? You’d ask, ‘What happened?’ I’d say, ‘No big deal. A young lady who rented from us got killed when she crashed into a yacht in the harbor. But I’m sure you’ll have a nice ride today.’?”

“Okay,” Gina said. “I understand why you wouldn’t want to bring it back here. What did you do with it?”

“I called a carting service and told them to take it to the dump.”

“You didn’t want one of your people to look at it, to see if—”

“To see if what? The police told me the young lady, who by the way was drunk, had panicked and caused the accident. What was I supposed to look at?”

“Do you know what dump they took it to?”

“There’s only one in this area, but you won’t find the ski there.”

“Why not?”

“Because it was over two weeks ago. I’m sure by now it’s been crushed.”





23





A little crushed was how Gina felt the next morning as she buckled her seatbelt for the almost five-hour flight from Aruba to JFK. Leaving nothing to chance, she had rented a car and made the thirty-five-minute drive to the dump site that served the central part of the island. The sound of trucks going in and out had been punctuated every ten minutes by the high-pitched whine of a compactor and the crunching of its contents. A supervisor on-site had confirmed that items made from metal—cars, appliances, and yes, a Jet Ski—would be routed to the compactor to be crushed and sold for scrap. Typically, it took three days from arrival for a metal item to make its journey to the compactor. Nothing would remain of a Jet Ski that had been dumped almost three weeks ago.

The Airbus 320 accelerated down the runway and began its ascent over the blue-green waters below. The hydraulic hum signaled that the wheels had tucked inside the bowels of the aircraft. Gina stared out the window, lost in thought. “Stalemate” was the word running through her head. Her gut told her that she was on the right track. Someone had wanted Cathy Ryan dead and had made it look like an accident. But the Cathy Ryan trail, at least in Aruba, was cold. She was forced to pin her hopes on Meg Williamson, who for whatever reason was not responding to the messages she had left.

She had emailed Geoff to schedule a date to fill him in on what she had learned during her time in Aruba. His response had surprised her. He was traveling the early part of next week. If she wasn’t too tired, could she meet him this afternoon? Gina had accepted.

She now faced a daunting task. Find a way to convince Geoff that the REL News story had legs at a time when she herself was uncertain about how to go forward.

At least tonight will be fun, she thought. Gina had agreed to Lisa’s suggestion that they were overdue for a TGIF dinner. After the last few days in Aruba, I could use a few laughs, she thought as she started to writes notes for her meeting at the magazine.





24





Geoff expected her at three-thirty. That gave her time to toss her few summer outfits on top of the washing machine and unpack her toiletries. It also gave her an opportunity to call her father. When she had tried to reach him before she left for Aruba, she had only got his answering machine, and he had not replied. The faint feeling of uneasiness was released by his message. “Hi. Sorry I missed your call.”

There was an unexpectedly buoyant sound in his voice. Welcome, but surprising. Her “Hi Dad” was immediately interrupted by his question “How was Aruba?”