“Yes. He asked if I saw you last night.”
“You stayed in my room. Please tell me you said this to him.”
“Yes, Grace. I thought it might be important to mention that I was in your room overnight.”
Ellie looked to the corner of the room where Grace’s younger brother, Marshall, sat at the table with hischessboard laid out in front of him, the pieces perfectly arranged. Her face took on the expression of smelling a foul odor.
“Does he ever stop with the chess thing?” Ellie lowered her voice. “I swear, I love him Grace, but does he even know what’s going on?”
“He hasn’t fully . . . recovered. From the seizure last night.”
“I’m not deaf,” Marshall said in a calm voice while he surveyed the chessboard in front of him. “And, Ellie, yes, I’m well aware of what’s happening. Thanks for the air of superiority, though. It’s always charming.”
“Marshall,” Grace said, shaking her head subtly when her brother made eye contact with her. It was all she needed to do to keep Marshall at bay. Just sixteen months separated them in age, and the brother-sister relationship between Grace and Marshall Sebold was strong. Sometimes even overwhelming to those around them. It was something only the two of them understood fully. Since Marshall’s accident, they had only grown closer.
Marshall returned his attention to his chessboard. Grace looked back at Ellie. “What did Pierre say when you told him you were with me?”
“He wanted to know what time I came to your room, and how much I had had to drink. His partner scribbled everything I said in his notepad.”
Grace ran a hand over her cheek and to the back of her neck. “They think I did it. God, Ellie! They think I did this.”
“Stop being hysterical. That’s what they want.Hysterics.Instead of looking for who actually killed him, they’re wasting time trying to scare us.”
Grace startled at the loud knock on the door. Twoloud smacks followed by the once-rhythmic, but now jarring, Caribbean lilt from the other side.
“Ms. Sebold. It’s Inspector Pierre, with the Royal St. Lucia Police. Please open the door.”
Grace’s lips separated in a frozen pose as her eyes went wide while she stared at Ellie. In the corner, Marshall quickly collected his chess pieces and folded his set closed.
“Ms. Sebold!” More knocking came from the door.
“Go!” Ellie said, pointing at the door.
Grace wiped her eyes with the back of her hand as she walked across the cottage and pulled open the door. Inspector Pierre stood in the door frame, a huddle of police officers behind him.
“Ms. Sebold,” Pierre said, handing Grace an envelope. “We have a warrant to survey your room.”
The cottages were isolated by the lush grounds of the resort and speckled within the rain forest at the foothills of the Jalousie Plantation. Despite being small in its capacity—only eighty-eight cottages, villas, and bungalows made up Sugar Beach Resort—the resort grounds were expansive. Tuk-tuk carts transported guests throughout the property, both because the walk from the cottages to the beach was long, but also because the terrain was hilly and difficult to manage on foot.
After the Sebold girl was ushered from the room, Pierre and his team entered through the front door, greeted by a large bedroom of cherrywood floors and an expansive four-post bed draped in brilliant white sheets. A matching sofa and overstuffed chair sat in the corner and faced a flat-screen television. A private bar was stocked with Chairman’s Reserve rum and Pitonbeer, the countertop covered with coffee and tea paraphernalia.
Off the bedroom was a walk-in closet, which led to the luxurious bathroom. Lining the closet walls were built-in shelves for clothes, suitcases, and hanging garments. The bottom row of cubbies held an assortment of Grace Sebold’s shoes, to which Pierre pointed. The technicians approached with gloved hands and retrieved each pair of shoes, dropping them into clear plastic evidence bags, which they quickly sealed. Grace’s dresses and blouses, which hung in the closet, were placed in clear plastic bags, too.
Pierre took thirty minutes to inspect the room, disturbing as little as possible as he surveyed and sifted through Grace’s belongings. He eventually made his way into the bathroom. The wooden shutter blinds were operated by a middle-panel lever, which he pulled down until the room was dark.
“I can smell it before we even look,” Pierre said.
“Me too,” the technician said.
As Pierre stood in the corner, the technician squirted luminol from a plastic spray bottle. Methodically he covered in a grid formation the sink and countertop, the mirror and wall, the armoire, and finally the floor in front of the sink. When he was finished, he backed away. Inspector Pierre clicked on the handheld black light. The mirror and wall were blank, but the sink and floor glowed with a fluorescent blue, bright and eerie in the darkened room.
The second technician removed several vials from his pack, unscrewed the top to one of them, and withdrew the cotton swab, which had been soaking in the vial’s solution. He methodically swabbed each area that glowed under the spell of the black light. He used fourvials to swab the floor, and another six to capture the evidence on the countertop and sink.
Finally he unscrewed the drain from under the sink, emerging with the U-shaped PVC fitting in his hand. Pierre opened the blinds and clicked on the bathroom light. The technician dipped another swab into the black shadow of the drainpipe, momentarily losing sight of the white tip as he brushed against the top of the fitting. When he pulled it out, the once-white cotton tip was muddy red.
CHAPTER 6
ON THE WINDWARD COAST OF ST. LUCIA, IN THE TOWN OF DENNERY, the white buildings of the Bordelais Correctional Facility spread across a flat plane as hills jetted up in the distance and palm trees swayed in the ocean breeze. Sidney’s crew consisted of two cameramen, a sound engineer, and a lighting tech, all of whom had piled into the van for the long journey from Sugar Beach, out of the Jalousie Plantation, and through the mountains of St. Lucia to the island’s only jail. One of the cameramen opened the sliding door of the van as they crested the hill. The Bordelais Correctional Facility came into view in the basin below; with the camera on his shoulder, he leaned out the open door to capture the footage. Tall chain-link fences topped with spiraled barbed wire surrounded the entire complex. After the twelve-foot brick interior wall and four guard towers, the chain link was the last line of defense to separate an inmate from the rest of the island. Long rectangles of two-story white brick buildings, four in total, made up the cell blocks. An arid dirt soccer field represented the prisoners’ only relief from confinement; and from their place up on the hill, Sidney and her crew witnessed two teams of felons running through the dusty haze. This was where Grace Sebold had spent the last ten years.
