Curveball (7 page)

She crouched down and hugged her knees, burying her nose in her crossed forearms.
She didn’t know what a dead body smelled like, nor did she want to find out. He wore
only a pair of beaten and tattered blue jeans. His skin was nearly as pale as the
soaked sand beneath her toes. His face and shirtless chest were covered in purple
bruises.

Chance knelt down next to her. He didn’t say a word as he examined the body.

“He’s just a kid.” Her whispers were drowned in the waves. “I bet he’s barely eighteen
years old.”

“I called the police. They’ll be here in a couple of minutes. Let me take care of
it when they get here.”

Cat didn’t respond.

He rested his hand on her back. “Why don’t we step back a bit?”

She allowed him to help her up and saw Paige watching them from a safe distance back,
mascara-stained tears streaming down her face. She hurried over.

“W-what—what are we supposed to do?”

Cat instinctively gave her a hug. “Don’t worry, the cops are coming. Everything will
be okay.” Cat blinked hard, fighting the lump in her throat as she repeated the same
reassurances silently to herself.

On cue, sirens sounded in the distance and made her jump away from Paige. The sound
grew closer with each pounding in her chest. Brakes squealed as the wailing police
cars came to a screeching halt in front of the beach. The sand filled with strobing
red and blue lights.

As policemen began to swarm the area, Chance took control. He threw his hands into
the air and waved them over. “
¡Policía! ¡Ven! Echa un vistazo a esto!
”

(“Police, come, check this out!”)

Cat pointed helplessly to the body and Chance led the way with a group of officers.
An officer took her and Paige aside and gave them a blanket. “You are Americans, yes?”

“Yes.” Cat wrapped the blanket over Paige and herself. “We both are.”

“Okay. Please wait over here until we have a chance to take your statement.”

So they did. Huddled under the blanket, they silently observed the scene. Paramedics
arrived. A news truck showed up behind them. Spectators began to pile up on the boardwalk.
Then the coroner’s van pulled up. Stakes were set up along the beach and an officer
used it to enclose the area with bright yellow barricade tape.

ESCENA DE CRIMEN—NO CRUZAR

CRIME SCENE—DO NOT CROSS

With each minute, the hotel seemed farther away. Cat no longer found the ocean soothing.
Instead, the black ripples of waves seemed to mock her with each crash.

She turned away from the depths to overhear Chance telling a detective in Spanish
that neither she nor Paige spoke the language. Before she could correct him, another
officer approached them.

“Ladies?”

From her mound in the sand, Cat looked up to see a stocky policeman with a kind smile
and bags under his eyes.

“I’m Detective Alomar. I am sorry for your wait.” He spoke with the faintest of accents.
She wondered if the search for an English-speaking detective was responsible for the
delay. Perhaps if she had taken charge the way Chance had, she, Paige and Detective
Alomar could be in their respective beds instead of trapped in an episode of
CSI: Santo Domingo
.

Cat started to stand, elbowing Paige and pulling her to her feet. “No that’s fine.”
They stayed hunched together under the blanket. The wind had picked up, making the
Dominican night quite chilly. “We found, uh, the body.”

He nodded. “I just need a couple minutes of your time to take your statement.”

“Of course.”

Paige’s teary eyes stared off into the distance. Cat nudged her again. “Paige? You
still with me?”

Paige snapped back to reality and blinked the tears away. She issued a paparazzi-ready
smile. “
Statement
. Got it. This isn’t my first statement to foreign law enforcement. Apparently not
all French beaches are topless.” She said it in a stage whisper to Cat, but it was
obviously for the policeman’s benefit. She brought her volume back to the normal levels
and answered the detective’s first question before he could ask it.

“Paige Aiken. That’s P-A-I-G-E A-I-K-E-N.”

He smiled. “Thank you, Ms., uh, Aiken.”

“We’re both in town working for the Buffalo Soldiers. We’re staying at the
La Concha Gran Hotel
, room 626. This is my roommate, Catriona McDaniel.” She pointed at the hotel up on
the beach and clarified to Cat, “I checked us in already.”

He scribbled on his notepad. “Thank you. Now, can you walk me through the events of
the evening after your dinner with uh …” He flipped to the previous page in his notepad,
“Mr. Hayward? He’s a friend of both of yours?”

Paige spoke up again before Cat could. “We met earlier today. On the beach. This beach.
He took me out to dinner over there. The uh …”

“Ah,
La Tambora
. Very nice.”

“Yeah. Cat met us there. And then after dinner all three of us went for a walk on
the beach and were sitting right here when I noticed
it
.” Paige’s full lips disappeared as she pressed them together. “
Him
, I guess.”

Cat’s eyes shot over to the rocks but the horrible sight was no longer there. Instead
he lay on the coroner’s gurney, being prepared for his glorified garment bag. Cat
shuddered and looked back at the detective. Entranced, he nodded with every syllable
Paige uttered. So far, Paige-induced hypnosis seemed to be an affliction to which
every man on the island was predisposed.

Paige continued in her best campfire storytelling voice. “We walked closer and that’s
when we were sure. It was a dead body. Cat here totally lost it. Chance called you
guys right then. Nine-one-one, I guess. Do you guys even have nine-one-one here?”

Cat silenced her with an irritated shush.

The detective twirled his pen. “Did you notice anyone else in the area?”

Paige shook her head. “I remarked on how deserted it was, didn’t I?” She turned to
Cat for affirmation. “I tend to be very observant. I’m an Aries. It was only us and
… the fishermen. There were three, I think.”

Cat wanted to contribute to the conversation but could only squeak out a meek, “Yeah.”

The detective looked over to see that all three fishermen were accounted for. They
were huddled in the center of the jetty, poles in one hand and coolers in the other,
giving their own statements to another police officer.

Detective Alomar clicked his pen and stuck it in his shirt pocket. “Okay. Well, that
should do it. I am going to give you my business card. If either of you think of anything
else or even if you hear something, please telephone.”

Cat nodded and reached for the business card.

Another scream rang out on the beach.

They both jumped and she dropped the card on the sand. The detective whirled around,
drawing his flashlight out of his holster. In a matter of seconds he was shining it
across the sand. An older woman charged through the crime scene tape and ran to the
coroner’s van. When she saw the gurney, she clutched her chest with her thin arms
and began to wail.

“Mijo, Mijo! No!”

She threw herself on the gurney, still sobbing. Two police officers rushed over and
pulled her off. Her knees gave way and she collapsed in their arms. They escorted
her from the gurney, helplessly offering tissues and their shoulders to cry on.

Cat and Paige were frozen in the sand as they both watched the terrible scene unfold.
A hand touched Cat’s shoulder and she twitched, whipping around.

It was only Chance. “Let’s get out of here.”

Cat nodded and handed Paige the blanket. She bent down to pick up Detective Alomar’s
dropped business card.

“Es él! Es él!”

Cat stood up and saw the hysterical woman charging them.

“
Es él!
” She nudged past Paige and pointed her trembling finger at Chance. “
Tú lo hiciste!
”

What did he do? Cat thought.

Chance took a few steps back but the woman followed. She reached out, grabbed, and
yanked him across the sand. Cat hurried alongside, but stopped to crane her neck back
to the scene to see what had provoked this. The emergency personnel still on scene
looked as surprised as she did. Police charged after them and corralled the woman,
but it took three of them holding onto her arms to keep her from pursuing Chance.
She shouted after them as they rushed off the beach and toward the parking lot.

“Tú lo hiciste! Te odio! Te odio!”

“You did it! I hate you, I hate you!”

Paige maneuvered her arm away from Chance’s. “What is she ... Who was that woman?”

He pushed them toward a vintage red sports car. “Don’t know and I really don’t care.”

The girls hurried to the passenger side and he threw the car in reverse before Paige
had shut the door.

"Chance, Paige may not speak Spanish, but I do. I could've spoken to the cops myself.
You didn’t have to take control out there," Cat said.

"Trust me, you want to stay out of this. The last thing anyone needs is the American
Embassy all up on this."

Paige turned in the passenger seat and looked back and forth from Chance to Cat. “That
woman knew you. What was she saying, that she hates you? Cat? Did you hear that?”

Cat nodded.

Chance glared at Paige. “I thought you didn’t speak Spanish.”

“Well, not much, but some words are easy to remember, like
odio
. It makes me think of Garfield ’cause Garfield hates Odie,
odio
… hate. Get it?” She tried to smile, but Chance ignored the playful attempt to lighten
the mood. She dropped the act and turned back in her seat.

“I don’t know that woman,” Chance said with a sigh. “I’m guessing that was her kid
and maybe I met him one time through the agency. In this town it’s every kid’s dream
to be a baseball player and if they’re not good enough to get a contract of representation,
the asshole parents blame me.” His tires screeched as the car sped out of the parking
lot. “Where are you two staying?”

“
La Concha Gran Hotel
. It’s right there. We could’ve just walked home.”

“I know where it’s at.”

Cat hated awkward silences. The void of conversation made her anxious and since her
mental resting state was that of a caffeinated squirrel, nothing good could come of
this. She searched her mind for a safe topic.

“So is the weather here always—” her eyes fell to the wood-trimmed steering wheel
instead, focusing on the old-fashioned cursive logo in the center. “Wait a minute.
Is this an Iso Grifo?”

Chance grinned at her in the rearview mirror. “You know your cars. Most girls I meet
have never even heard of Iso.”

Paige’s glare was positively territorial.

“I know some cars.”

Her grandmother might have taught her baseball, but her dad taught her cars. Michael
McDaniel loved vintage cars. Unfortunately, he wasn’t drawn by the solid craftsmanship
or storied history; they were the easiest to break into and even more of a cinch to
hotwire.

She appraised the well-maintained interior. “We were in such a hurry and it was so
dark out, I didn’t even notice when I got in.”

Paige looked around her seat and crinkled her button nose in distaste. “It’s kind
of old.”

Cat leaned up in her seat and gave Paige’s shoulder a condescending pat. “It’s rare.
Think of it like a pink diamond.”

“Ooh!”

Chance nodded. “This is a nineteen seventy-four: last year they made them and same
year I was born.”

“Hmm.” Paige paused in deep contemplation. “That would make you …”

“The owner of a really cool car.” He winked.

Chance pulled in front of the hotel. “We’re here.”

Paige rubbed her eyes. “I just want to forget this whole day ever happened.”

“That makes three of us.” He took his hand off the gear shift and placed it on Paige’s
knee. “Except for the part about meeting you, of course.”

Paige smiled at him. “You’ve got my number?”

“I do. I’ll give you a call tomorrow.”

“Well there you go. Come on, Paige.” Cat thumped the back of the passenger seat. Cat
didn’t hesitate to slam the door before rushing the hotel.

Cat made the silent, groggy shuffle from her bed to the shower, slipping past Paige
on her way into the bathroom. She dug through her flamingo-pink makeup bag for shampoo,
conditioner and herbal body wash, steadying the three bottles crowded on the soap
rack. Slipping her oversized Chicago Bears t-shirt over her head, she stepped into
the tub.

She stuck her feet under the faucet and adjusted the water temperature. The water
was tepid at best and when it hit her back, she gasped. She fumbled for the hot water
nozzle and turned it to its maximum pressure. She stood and enjoyed the pounding stream
of hot water on her body, before blindly reaching for her body wash. The lavender
gel covered every inch of her body and she basked in the release of tension. She did
her hair next, rubbing the rosemary lather into her scalp in a therapeutic circular
pattern. The hot water began to cool, taking her moment of relaxation with it. She
supposed not even an industrial hotel hot water heater could sustain Paige Aiken and
reminded herself to set her alarm clock for ten minutes before Paige’s for the next
three weeks. She rinsed the conditioner out of her hair just as the water went cold.

Any other day, the bags under her eyes might’ve sent her sprinting to Sephora, but
considering the sandy corpse she saw every time she closed her eyes, puffy eyes didn’t
seem so bad. She swept her face with a Kabuki brush of fair mineral powder, dabbed
a little pink blush on her cheeks and brushed a swipe of black mascara over her light
brown eyelashes. Whipping the towel off her head, she rubbed her auburn hair vigorously
and tossed the towel on a hook. She took one last look at the mirror and shrugged.

One day down.

Wet hair didn’t really matter when it was paired with the curve-hugging little black
sheath dress she had planned to wear. It was a Nicole Miller she’d snagged at Nordie’s
end-of-season sale, one of the few designer items she owned. She couldn’t wait to
show it off. Paige was going to be begging to borrow it.