"Hardly surprising," the other guest muttered, leaning in. "Beatrice must have an agenda."
"Agenda?" I interjected, sidling up beside them. Their heads swung toward me like startled deer clocking an intruder.
"Eva Rae," Mark's mother greeted me, her voice dropping to a cooler octave. "We were just?—"
"Discussing Emilio?" I finished for her. "I'm curious about this agenda you mentioned."
"Curiosity," she quipped, "can be a perilous pursuit."
"Perilous but necessary," I replied, locking onto her evasive stance. "Especially when agendas turn fatal."
"Fatal? Pfft," she scoffed, dismissing the idea with a wave. "Emilio is… misguided, not murderous."
"Yet here we stand, at a murder scene," I reminded her, leaving the statement hanging like a noose. “And there’s a man present you don’t care for and obviously didn’t want here.”
"Coincidence, Eva Rae," she insisted, but her eyes darted away, telling a different story.
"I don’t believe in coincidence," I shot back.
"Coincidence or not," the other guest chimed in, "it's clear that Emilio's presence has stirred troubled waters."
I squared my shoulders.
"Your relationship with Emilio," I started, casual but piercing. "It goes back?"
"Years," she clipped out, her eyes narrowing just enough to betray her guard.
“Where do you know him from?”
"Oh, I barely remember anymore. You know how it is, Eva Rae."
“Are you sure? Then why are you unhappy with him being here?”
"Let’s just say my sister wasn’t exactly honest about the person she wanted to bring here for my son’s birthday—about his background, where he came from, and who he was." Her tone was dismissive, but her fingers betrayed her, tapping a nervous rhythm on her forearm.
Was she referring to the fact that he was Hispanic? I had known Victoria for years and never heard her say anything remotely racist.
"What happened to your daughter? To Isla?"
Her tapping stopped. Silence hung between us, heavy and expectant.
“You’ve lost two children now,” I said. “Here on the island.”
She looked at me, confused. Tears sprung to her eyes, but she refused to let them escape and turned away instead.
“I need to… I have to….”
She walked off, stoic as always. Amy came up to me. “Why did you have to mention that? Marcus Cole committed that murder. He was sent to jail for it.”
I nodded, breathing heavily, reminding myself I was among friends here. Good friends. Old friends.
Yet I never knew that Victoria had a daughter. I guess we weren’t as close as I thought.
Chapter15
The door shut firmlybehind me, cutting off the low hum of hushed conversations and clinking glass as I left the main house. I glanced over the expansive view of the ocean visible through the large windows. There, standing alone on the beach against the horizon, was Emilio.
Alone.
