Undeniable Proof

Odell. She groaned. Where had she come up with Cara? “Just a minute.” She glanced around the room as if there might be something lying around that would give away her true identity, but didn’t see anything. She couldn’t help the feeling that she’d already made a mistake that was going to get her in trouble. She couldn’t keep living like this.

She opened the door. “Odell,” she said as if seeing him was a surprise.

“Hi. Sorry to bother you, but I noticed you didn’t bring any food,” he said, looking sheepish. He held out a sandwich wrapped in plastic. “If you don’t want it now, you can eat it later. Turkey and cheese.”

She took the sandwich. “Thank you. It looks…great.” She actually smiled and he seemed to relax. A part of her felt bad about being so unfriendly. Back home in South Dakota her behavior would have been outright rude.

The whisper of fabric made them both turn. All Willa caught was a blur of white.

“She sneaks around here all the time like that, I guess,” Odell said of the elderly woman who passed on the third-floor balcony overhead. “Her name’s Alma Garcia. She was the nanny.”

“The nanny?”

“You don’t know the story of Cape Diablo?” he asked, sounding surprised. “The island is cursed. At least according to local legend. There have always been reports of strange happenings out here, including storms that wash up all kinds of interesting things. For decades it was home to pirates and treasure seekers who looted ships that sank or were sunk just off shore, smugglers and drug runners.”

“Who built the villa?” she asked, unable not to. The place had drawn her from the first glimpse.

“Andres Santiago, a rather notorious pirate and smuggler, and this is where it gets interesting,” Odell said, warming to his story. “Back in the late sixties, early seventies, Andres smuggled guns, drugs, anything profitable in from Central America. The Ten Thousand Islands have always been home to smugglers of all kinds because it is so remote and easy to get lost in.”

She nodded remembering how quickly she’d become lost among the mangrove islands on the way here. “You said he had a nanny?”

Odell nodded. “He lived here with his wife, Medina, and three small children from his first marriage. That wife died in childbirth. Medina was the daughter of a Central American dictator. During a revolt, her father was killed but Andres managed to rescue Medina and a devoted lieutenant named Carlos Lazarro. He brought them both to the island. Carlos still lives in that old boathouse by the pier.” Odell paused. “Do you really want to hear this?”

He didn’t give her time to answer. But she would have said yes even if he had.

“The woman up there, Alma Garcia? She was the nanny for Andres’s children.” He glanced toward the third floor. Only a faint light glowed overhead. “She went crazy after what happened.”

Willa felt a chill. “What happened?”

“First, Andres’s only son drowned in the pool. Then the whole family went missing. No one ever knew what happened to them. Alma and Carlos had been inland that night. When they came home some time after midnight, they discovered everyone gone. There was blood… The authorities suspected foul play, of course, but the case was never solved. That was thirty years ago.”

“How awful.”

“There are lots of theories. Some say Medina’s father’s enemies came and killed the whole family. Others say Andres made it look as if they’d all been killed so he could disappear with his family. In Andres’s will he made provisions for both Alma and Carlos to live on the island for the rest of their lives. That’s why the villa was divided into apartments since the money Andres left has long since run out. A lawyer friend of the family handles everything.”

Willa saw the woman sneak back into her apartment. The front of her white gown was covered with what appeared to be dirt.

“When I got here, I saw her digging,” Odell said. “Local legend has it that Andres Santiago hid a small fortune on this island.”

She felt her eyes widen.

Odell laughed. “If it were true, fortune hunters would have found it over the last thirty years.”

“I’m surprised Alma and Carlos would want to stay here after what happened,” Willa said, seeing the villa so differently now.

“I guess they had nowhere else to go. Alma spends her days creeping around here like some kind of ghost. Carlos is the caretaker but most of the time from what I can tell, he’s on the other side of the island in his boat fishing.” He seemed to notice that she was still holding her sandwich. “You probably want to get that in the fridge and I’ve talked your ear off again. Sorry.”

“No, I enjoyed hearing the story, and thank you for the sandwich.”

He smiled. “Holler if you need anything. And don’t worry about Alma and Carlos. They seem harmless enough.”

“Thanks.” Willa stepped back into her apartment and closed the door. She waited a few moments, until she heard Odell’s footfalls retreat, before she locked the door.

After she put the sandwich in the fridge, she dragged her suitcase over to the marred old chest of drawers and unpacked. At the bottom of her suitcase, she found the sheets and towels she’d brought. She made the bed and hung up the towels in the bathroom, surprised to see there was a huge clawfoot tub.

Some of her fatigue evaporated at the thought of sinking neck-deep into a tub of hot water scented with her favorite bath soap. She popped in the plug and turned on the water. The old pipes groaned and complained but after a few moments, wonderfully warm water began to fill the tub.

Quickly she checked to make sure she’d locked the door before she went back to the bathroom and stripped off her clothing and stepped into the tub.

Everything was going to be all right, she told herself as she immersed herself in the warm water and began to soap her body in the rich lather. From somewhere she heard music again, the song older than the woman on the third floor. Past the music, she heard voices, though too faint to make out the words.

She couldn’t help but think about the story Odell had told her. The history of Cape Diablo and the Santiago family fascinated her. She’d felt something when she’d stepped off the boat and looked up at the crumbling old villa. A sense of mystery. A story unfolding. Or had she sensed something else? The spirits of the lost souls? Or a sense of foreboding as if she’d been drawn to this island for another purpose?

She shivered, wondering again what could have happened to the family and even more intrigued by the woman who’d stayed on upstairs.

Odell certainly was knowledgeable about Cape Diablo. She felt foolish for suspecting him of having other motives for being on the island. And yet, anyone could learn the history of the place. And pretending to be a writer gave him the perfect cover.

She shook her head at the path her mind had taken. She hated that she was suspicious of everyone now.

Finishing her bath, she toweled dry and dressed in a sleeveless nightshirt. She felt better, calmer, back in control somewhat, she thought as she started to wipe the steam from the mirror and was momentarily startled by her own unfamiliar image in the glass.

Her hand went to her short curly auburn hair. It did make her eyes seem larger. Or that could have been the fear.

She picked up the glasses from where she’d left them on the sink. The lenses were clear, but the plastic frames distracted from her face enough to make her look entirely different from the woman she’d been just weeks before.

She touched her hair again, missing the feel of her long, naturally straight blond hair inherited from her Swedish ancestors.

But she would let her hair grow out again. After Landry was caught, after the trial—when it was safe to go back to her life, she told herself, trying hard to believe she could ever reclaim it.

Glancing around the apartment, she decided the first item of business would be to make this place more her own. What little furniture there was had been shoved against each wall.

She grabbed the end of the couch and pulled it away from the wall and saw at once why it had been pushed against the wall as it had been.

There was a sizable hole in the wall behind it.

On closer inspection, she saw that the hole—four inches wide, a good foot high and seemingly endless in depth—had been chipped into the adobe wall. She couldn’t tell how deep it ran. Not without a flashlight.

As she straightened she noticed a scrap of paper on the floor near the hole. She picked it up and saw that it was a piece of a torn photograph. The piece appeared to be part of a face covered with something like a gauzy veil or a film of some kind.

She peered into the hole and thought she saw another piece of the torn photograph. How odd.

Vaulting over the couch she dug in her purse for the penlight on her key ring. In the kitchen she found a butter knife and returned to behind the couch.

Shining the tiny light into the hole, she began to dig out the pieces of the photo with the butter knife. She still couldn’t tell how deep the hole was—obviously too deep for her dim light. But there were more pieces of the photograph in there, as if they’d fallen down from the floor above.

Diligently she worked the pieces out until she couldn’t reach any more.

Just as she was starting to collect the scraps, a sliver of light sliced down through the top of the hole. Willa angled her gaze upward into the opening and saw light coming through what appeared to be a crack in floorboards upstairs.