Echoes (3 page)

As the door swung shut, Callie's muscles all relaxed at once, leaving her weak and limp. Mac Brody put her on edge and kept her there. She'd be wise to avoid him as much as possible.

***

Mac grunted in displeasure as he set the barbell into its cradle with a clang. His concentration was shot. Maybe he ought to go for a swim; at least he wouldn't injure himself if his form was off in the water the way he might on the weights. But he had no desire to head for the pool. Not when he'd just hauled April Matthews out of it, wrestling a towel around her and explaining—for the third time in less than two weeks—why she couldn't strip naked poolside no matter how famous she was or how much money her husband had. Then he'd been forced to wait with her in her room with one of the female bartenders as a chaperone while Andy, one of his assistants, dug up Clayton Matthews and brought him back to take control of his wife.

The first time April had pulled her little stunt, Mac had assumed that dropping her at the door to her room would suffice to teach her a lesson. She'd been back at the pool in twenty minutes. The second time, he'd made the mistake of accompanying her inside her suite, only to find her plastered to him almost before he cleared the threshold, her hand halfway down his pants. The woman was a viper.

Nowadays, he always brought one of the female staffers with him when he had to deal with April. So he and Maris had sat in the living area of the suite, watching April fling herself around the room, ranting about getting them both fired—all the time naked as a jaybird—for more than an hour. Mac didn't think he'd ever been as happy to see anyone as he had been to see Clayton Matthews, and he'd left the hotel as soon as Matthews took over, heading back to his cottage. While still on Lewis-owned ground, the home he shared with Nikki wasn't part of the hotel proper. It was fenced and gated; no one could enter without his permission or knowledge. He'd remodeled one of the three bays of the cottage's garage almost the moment he'd moved in, converting it into a bare-bones gym, and most of the time a hard sweat sufficed to calm him no matter what he had to deal with up at the hotel.

But the usual tactics weren't working. And, much as he wanted to blame April Matthews or his missing wife, another woman entirely was at fault.

Calliope Pearson.

Who was she? He'd checked her website before going to see her, but he hadn't been able to learn much. Given the list of credits on her site, she probably did plan to write an article. But if that was all she planned, he'd eat his barbells.

And like hell was her resemblance to Nikki, or the timing of her arrival, coincidental.

Mac poured himself a glass of water and headed upstairs for a shower, letting his mind drift, hoping it would snag on something important. The technique had served him well in his years with the Atlanta Police Department.

In some ways, Lewis had been right: feature for feature, Callie and Nikki weren't so much identical as similar. The two women were much of a height, though he'd only rarely seen Nikki without heels—by the pool, she chose clear-topped, Lucite-heeled slip-ons; fresh out of the shower, she wore feather-topped suede-heeled mules—so it was hard to say for certain. It was also hard to say whether their skin tones would match, given that Nikki loved sunbathing almost as much as she loved her stiletto heels. John hadn't commented on the shape of Callie's face—the hair coming to a delicate widow's peak to create a heart emphasized by high cheekbones—but that, too, she shared with Nikki. Callie's chin, however, was decidedly her own, less pointy and more stubborn than Nikki's, which didn't bode well for making her see reason and reveal the truth about her intentions.

He'd remarked to Claudine on the weight difference between the two women, and when he'd talked to Ingalls and realized Callie had understood every word, he'd seen another variance: no matter what game she played, Nikki would never have been able to control her outrage if she'd heard him say such a thing. She'd have launched herself at him and tried to claw his eyes out. Truth be told, Mac preferred the softer curves, but he'd once made the mistake of telling Nicole she didn't need to work so hard at maintaining her figure. He'd been cut off from said figure for two weeks until he learned an appropriate appreciation for it.

Although Callie's were darker, both women's eyes shared a slight, almost exotic tilt. Nikki emphasized hers with black liner and dark shadow. And lies. Nikki's eyes were filled with them, though it had taken him too damned long to figure that out. Calliope Pearson, on the other hand, didn't seem able to lie worth a damn, though she was giving it the old college try.

And those lips . . . He understood why Lewis had had trouble looking away from Callie's mouth. He'd had a problem with it himself. She wore some kind of transparent gloss that made her lips slick and shiny and led a man to imagine them on him. Around him.

He turned the shower to full cold.

A restless night did nothing to improve Mac's mood, and seeing Callie sharing a table with John at breakfast didn't help. True, she was taking notes as they spoke, and the conversation appeared more business than pleasure for the moment, but Mac had little doubt where it would lead. As he strolled over to their table, he told himself he was only interrupting them to irritate John.

“You have to do something about the Matthewses,” he said, forgoing a greeting. “I realize they have two weeks left on their reservation, but she's pissing off the rest of the guests. Especially the Dunlaps, who don't want their seven-year-old twins exposed to April Matthews's . . . twins.”

He saw Callie's lips twitch, but she repressed her smile as she rose. “I'll go. You two have things to discuss. Thanks so much for taking the time to chat, John.”

Lewis stood, also, laying a proprietary hand on Callie's arm. “Stay. The Matthewses can wait until after breakfast.”

“I have a feeling breakfast is over.” Mac nodded toward the doorway, where he'd noticed Claudine escorting two men dressed in the uniforms of the gendarmes, the French police, in their direction.

Mac knew the younger of the two relatively well, but had never seen him so grim-faced. The first time they had met, Michel Vichy had been dragging away a drunk who had managed to vomit all over his impeccably pressed uniform. Even then, he had maintained the aloof air Mac had found common among the gendarmerie. Until, of course, one shared a few bottles of good French wine with them off duty, at which point they became some of the friendliest and most expansive people Mac had ever met. Not so different from the police he'd worked with in Atlanta, though the gendarmes dressed better.

“Monsieur Lewis.” John inclined his head. “And Monsieur Brody.
Pourrions-nous avoir quelque compte rendu de votre temps?
” The French police were more polite, too. No American cop would request a few minutes of a suspect's time. And from the look on Michel's face, Mac had a pretty good idea that both he and John had landed on a list of “persons of interest.”

“I was just leaving.” For the first time, the policemen turned their attention on Callie. The older one put out a hand to stop her.

“A moment, mademoiselle.” The French had been a power play, a way of putting Mac and John in their places. The gendarme spoke to Callie in English. “You are related to Madame Brody?”

“No. I'm not.”

“This is difficult to believe.”

Mac watched Callie draw herself up to her full five-foot-four-inch height, leaving her a good half a foot shorter than the man questioning her. Despite the height difference, she managed to look down her slightly freckled nose at him and, as much as he mistrusted her, Mac felt like laughing. “Difficult or not, monsieur, it is the truth.”

Michel took a notebook and pen from his pocket. “Your name, mademoiselle?”

“Callie Pearson.”

“Callie?” He said it with a distain only a Frenchman could achieve, as if he found her unusual name offensive.

“Calliope Elizabeth Pearson.”

“And what is your business here?”

Mac watched her carefully, but she didn't flinch or hesitate. Apparently, she had told the lie often enough to be comfortable with it. “I'm writing an article for an American travel magazine about the island and the resort.”

“You are a friend of the Lewis family?”

“No. Just a writer.”

“
Bien
. You may go.” Michel watched as Callie took her plate of fruit and cheese and settled a few tables away. Then he turned back to Mac. “It is as she says? She is not family to your wife?”

“So she claims.”

Michel raised an eyebrow at the noncommittal answer. “But it is so easy to know. Some from you”—he jerked his chin at John—“and some from her, and voila! DNA tells all.” Of course, it was not nearly so simple, but apparently French police were as curious, as impatient, and as suspicious as their American counterparts. As far as Mac was concerned, the French cop's suspicions had a side benefit: they forced Lewis into a grudging admission.

“If she's related to my sister, she won't have genes in common with me.”

“No? But why?”

Mac watched John shift in his chair. The fact that Nicole Lewis was illegitimate, that her conception had almost ended the Lewis marriage one short year after it had begun, was an open secret on the island. The gendarmes, however, worked in three-year rotations, and Michel had been in St. Martin only five months. Either he had not heard the gossip about Nicole's birth, or he'd adopted the naïve facade to watch John's reaction. The gendarmes were not casual hotel guests; what John had glossed over with Callie he had to detail for them.

“Nicole isn't my blood sister. She was born in Paris. My father and Ava were separated at the time.”

“Ah.” Michel lifted his shoulders in a typically Gallic shrug. “A shame.” He seemed to collect himself, to remember the reason for his visit, though Mac was certain it had never left his mind. “Is there a place we might speak privately?”

“All of us?”

“If you please.” Again the deferential tone, a thin veneer over shrewd evaluation.

“I suppose we can use the office.” John dropped his napkin on the table and led the small procession out of the dining room and down the hall behind the reception area. Once the four men had seated themselves around the desk, Michel introduced his partner, Alec Saint-Simone. Saint-Simone withdrew a small bag from his pocket and dumped out its contents.

“You recognize this, yes?”

Mac reached for the slender gold circlet set all around with perfect baguette-cut diamonds, but withdrew his hand before touching it. “It's Nikki's ring.”

“You gave it to her?”

“No, actually. It was Ava's. Nikki chose it as her wedding ring for sentimental reasons.” And because he couldn't afford anything half as nice. “Where did you find it?”

“Sadly, it was on the finger of a young woman who had, how do you say . . .
lavée vers le haut sur la plage
 . . . washed ashore.”

Mac closed his eyes against the sorrow, guilt and anger threatening to swamp him. He'd suspected she was dead, but he hadn't wanted to believe it. She—or someone using her phone—had texted the day of her disappearance to say she'd gone to St. Barths with friends and Mac could damned well entertain himself until she got home. And since he'd served her with divorce papers the day before, the texted message, along with the disappearance of a suitcase full of clothes and all her hairbrushes and cosmetics, wasn't entirely unexpected. But he didn't like the fact that neither she nor any of her friends had contacted him since then.

And Calliope Pearson's arrival had given him renewed hope for a moment that it was all one of Nikki's games, that she was off at a spa somewhere laughing at him.

“Of course, it is possible that she sold the ring,” said Vichy, “or gave it away. We cannot be certain this young woman is your wife. Fingerprints are not so reliable when the victim has spent considerable time in the sea, and in this case there are additional difficulties.” Again, the gendarme shrugged. “We could be certain with DNA, but when you made your first report, you informed us she had taken with her all her cosmetics, brushes, earrings, anything that might provide for us her own DNA to compare.”

“And isn't that convenient.” John glared at Mac. “If you couldn't find proof that my sister was dead, you couldn't start a murder investigation.”

“For Christ's sake, Lewis. I'm the one who insisted on filing the report. The rest of you kept saying she just needed a break.”

“A break from you.”

“If she wanted a break from me, all she had to do was sign the divorce papers.”

Vichy interrupted before the argument blew up into battle. “You and Madame Brody were divorcing?”

Mac had been a cop long enough to know how the gendarmes would interpret that information. But his relationship with Nikki had been public in both its swift rise and its spectacular fall, and however much his desire for a divorce might damage him in the eyes of the investigators, trying to hide it would only exacerbate the problem.

“I asked for one, even filed the papers. She hadn't signed them yet.”

“You failed to mention this when you came to us last week.”

“It would only have confused the issue. I wanted her considered a missing person, not a runaway wife.”

Vichy nodded briefly. “You were married in the United States?”

“In Florida. Yes.”

“And Madame Brody, did she have provisions for a divorce?”

“You mean a prenup? Yes.” They'd married in the chambers of a federal judge who had been a friend of Mark Lewis's. He'd had the prenuptial agreement waiting alongside their marriage license on his desk when they arrived. Not the most romantic of circumstances, but Mac hadn't been thinking about romance at the time. Hadn't, truth be told, been thinking much at all.

“So you wouldn't get a damned thing if the two of you divorced.” John's flat, angry statement spiked Mac's blood pressure, bringing him back to the present.

“I didn't have a damned thing before we got married, and I was doing just fine.”

“You had a job here, which I can assure you, you would have lost. Will lose the minute we leave this room.”

“Monsieur Lewis. Restrain yourself, if you please. We have not ascertained even that the woman from the sea is your sister.”

“What are we waiting for? I don't need DNA or fingerprints to recognize my own sister. Just take me to her. I'll identify her and we can get the investigation moving.”

“I am afraid it is not so easy. The young lady who was wearing the ring had been much damaged. You would not recognize her.”

“Dental records, then. Nicole's dentist in Miami can fax them to you.”

“I am afraid such records will not suffice.”

John stared blankly, his mouth moving without sound for several seconds. “Jesus Christ,” he finally choked out, “what the hell happened?”

“
Les requins
 . . . the sharks. She had been in the water for some time.” John's face washed green, and Mac knew his own mirrored it.
Oh, Nikki, I'm so fucking sorry
. He'd seen a body pulled from the Chattahoochee once; the image would be with him the rest of his life.

He shook off the memory. “So what's next?”

“For you? Nothing. We will be in touch.”

“You expect us to sit around like it's any other day when you've just found my sister's body?”

“Perhaps we have. Perhaps not.”

“So we just twiddle our thumbs until you get the fingerprints matched?”

“Unless you have an avenue you believe we should explore.”

“What about Callie Pearson?” Three pairs of eyes turned on Mac. “I can't be the only one who finds her turning up here just now suspicious. I mean, look at her! John, you yourself said she could be related to Ava.”

John shook his head. “I'll admit, it's strange. But maybe it's irrelevant, or connected in some completely innocent way.”

“Give me one possible innocent explanation.”

“Maybe the timing isn't entirely coincidental. Possibly, Nicole knew Miss Pearson was coming and didn't want to face her, so she took off.” Lewis warmed to his theory. “I mean, think about it. Nicole only likes to be the center of attention when she can control it. She probably saw a picture of Calliope and knew the minute the woman showed up here, all the old gossip about Ava's lover would be resurrected. Being a Lewis is important to Nicole.”

That much was certainly true. Nikki had refused to take his name when they married, calling the tradition outdated. Mac rubbed a hand along his scar, which tended to itch when he got tense. The doctors insisted the phenomenon was entirely psychological, that no medical reason for it existed, but what did they know?

And what did he? He'd been married to Nicole Lewis only three months, all of which had been fraught with arguments, prevarications, and outright lies. He'd been too angry at the end, hadn't paid enough attention to Nicole's mood. Not that he'd have been able to interpret it even if he had, but perhaps he could have gotten her to talk to him, and his guilt might not have assumed such crippling proportions. John's explanation deserved consideration.

“You really believe she gave her ring to some stranger and took off?”

John sighed. “No, I don't. But I also don't see any point in trying to figure out whether Calliope Pearson and my sister are somehow related. Even if they were, what difference would it make?”

“I have no idea.” And it frustrated the hell out of him. “But Michel asked about avenues to explore, and Calliope Pearson is one hell of an avenue. Even if she doesn't mean to be. Maybe you're right. Maybe Nikki got a load of the woman's website and freaked. Could be she asked someone—the wrong someone—to help her, and that's how she ended up in Plum Bay.” Something flitted along the edge of his vision, but he didn't turn. Another medically impossible stress reaction, the hallucination would fade soon enough. He focused on Vichy.

“Michel, surely you could at least question Miss Pearson. Ask her if she knows anyone here on the island. Has any relatives here. Because if she does, that could be who Nicole turned to for help.”

“
Mais, oui
, we can ask Mademoiselle Pearson any number of things. But we cannot compel her to give us her saliva in order to determine whether she and Madame Brody are related, or whether she is related to the body we found, and if she tells us she knows no one here in St. Martin, who will contradict her?”

“It couldn't hurt to ask,” Mac insisted. He knew what he would have done in Atlanta. He'd have had Calliope Pearson sweating in an interrogation room for so long she'd be forced to ask for a drink. And when she tossed the soda can, he'd have had her DNA without asking. But maybe the gendarmes didn't operate the same way.