Death at the Voyager Hotel (15 page)

As Paula had expected, Tuesday was an awful day. Between 8
a.m. and late afternoon, she had meetings in widely separated parts of town. The
last of them, and the least welcome, was with her boss. It wasn’t until almost
7:30 p.m. that she was able to free herself from his claws. She felt bone tired
as she got into the Highlander to face the ride home, then remembering that she
had planned to stop off at Jost’s place. She called him first to be sure he had
returned from Cape Three Points.

“I got back a
couple hours ago,” he said cheerfully. “I had a wonderful time and I feel
rejuvenated. Would you like to come by? I have some pamphlets for you about different
home solar systems. And you said you had another question to ask me?”

“Yes, I’ll
explain when I arrive. No guarantee what time I’ll get there, though—what with
the traffic.”

“That’s
perfectly fine. I’m not going anywhere. I always just relax on the night before
I leave.”

After hanging
up with Jost, she called Thelo, who had picked up Stephan and Stephanie from
school earlier on and was getting them ready for bed.

“Are they
behaving?” she asked.

“They’re okay,”
he said, his tone still somber with her. “Stephan is having his bath, Stephanie
is moody about something – don’t ask me what.”

“Kiss them both
for me. I won’t be back before they’ve gone to sleep.”

“Why, where are
you going now?” he said, sounding a little irritated.

“I have to
catch Jost Miedema before he goes back to Amsterdam tomorrow.”

“Oh. Still on
this solar energy thing, are you?”

“Yes. I am.”
She wasn’t going to tell him that she also planned to ask Jost about a possible
Heather-Edward connection.

 He sighed
resignedly. “I’ll see you later, then.”

Paula could
feel that the air between them had not yet cleared. The sooner she found out
the truth behind Heather’s untimely death, the better, she thought. Then life
could return to normal.

She made it to the chalet by 8:25, which was a little better
than she had anticipated. Jost opened the door at her knock.

“Paula, how are
you? Come in, come in. Take a load off your feet. Would you like some wine or a
soft drink?”

“Just water
will be fine, thank you. I hope I’m not disturbing.”

“Not at all. I
was just finishing up my packing.”

After some
small talk, Jost went through the home solar installation pamphlets he’d set aside
for her and explained the different plans and options.

“I’m very
impressed,” she said after studying them. “I’ll take these with me and show
them to Thelo, my husband, and then we should stay in touch by email—perhaps
set something up for when you’re in town again, hopefully soon?”

“Probably in
July,” Jost said. “Now, you said you wanted to ask me about something?”

“Yes, I did,
but I also don’t want to put you on the spot, so if the question makes you uncomfortable,
just let me know and I’ll go away.”

He smiled. “I
doubt that will be necessary.”

Paula was about
to begin when the doorbell sounded.

“Oh, do excuse
me,” Jost said apologetically. “It might be Edward coming to say good-bye.”

Her stomach
flipped.
Edward?
She hoped not. That would be awkward.

Jost went
around the corner to the door and she listened as he greeted the visitor. To
her relief, it was a woman who spoke.

“Good evening, sir!”

“Hi, Selina.”

“Please, sir, I
was wondering if you wanted to settle the bill this evening or you will do it
in the morning?”

“I can come up
a little later tonight, if you like.”

“Okay, that
will be fine. I’m going off duty, but I’ll let all the front staff know. I hope
you’ve enjoyed your stay with us again?”

“I always do. There’s
one thing I’m unhappy about, however.”

“Oh, dear!
What’s that, sir?”

“The very last
day I’m here is the day Edward fills the pool back up.”

As Jost and
Selina laughed, Paula realized he was only making a complaint in jest.

“No, truly,” Selina
said, “I’m sorry for the inconvenience to you of the pool closure, but as you
know, after the tragedy, we’re trying to minimize the chance that it could ever
happen again.”

“But of
course,” he said. “I absolutely understand.”

“Thank you, sir.
Isn’t it so sad?” she said, her voice softening. “Such a beautiful young woman.
Did you meet her father by any chance?”

“No, I didn’t,
although I would have liked to have given him my condolences.”

“He was here
yesterday to speak with Edward. He looked devastated.”

“It must be
very hard for him,” Jost said. “Different types of tragedies have struck the two
women in his life that he loves the most. His wife is bedridden, suffering terribly
from severe multiple sclerosis, and now his daughter Heather has been taken
from him.”

“My goodness.
How awful.”

They moved on
to chatting about Jost’s children, Selina asking whether he would bring them along
on his next visit to Ghana. But Paula’s mind was back at Jost’s comment on Peterson’s
wife and her suffering. How had he known about that? Mr. Peterson had remarked
to Paula that with the exception of those she felt
close to
, Heather
never talked about the psychologically painful subject of her mother and her
illness. Jost had told Paula when she had first met him that Heather didn’t
confide in him about anything troubling her “deep down.” So why would she have
shared details with him about her mother when that was such a difficult topic
to discuss? Was Jost hiding something about his relationship with Heather, and
if so, why?

Paula’s
thoughts travelled from one point to another like billiard balls bouncing randomly
off the sides of the table, and at the end of it all she looked down at the
solar pamphlets in her hand and realized how stupid she had been all along not
to see the connection.

She looked down
the hallway leading to the bedrooms. She was sure Jost’s conversation with
Selina wouldn’t last much longer, but she had to take this chance now because
she would never get it again.

She moved
quickly down the hall. The first door was the bathroom, the second was one of the
two bedrooms. She went in and switched the light on. A stylish, fawn-colored suitcase
on the bed was almost fully packed, but the top was open. She was about to go
through the contents when she spotted Jost’s laptop on the desk connected by a
USB cable to a Nikon single reflex camera. Forget the suitcase, she thought,
quickly crossing the space between the bed and the desk.

The laptop was
the same MacBook Paula used, so she was quite familiar with it. She swiped her
finger across the touchpad and the screen woke from sleep mode directly into
iPhoto. It was obvious Jost had been downloading images of the beautiful
scenery he had captured at Cape Three Points from the Nikon to his Mac.

Paula scrolled
through the alphabetized picture albums on the left-hand side, clicking on one
called
HP.
Not Hewlett Packard, but Heather Peterson. The photos were
dated from earliest to latest. Scores of action images of Heather’s freestyle,
breast, back and butterfly strokes. Some posed pictures were included as well, rather
similar to the one Jost had texted Paula—a smiling Heather looking vivacious
and pretty in the swimming pool.

But then the nature
of the photographs changed abruptly, and Paula’s blood ran cold. She was looking
at several night shots of Heather floating face down in the water in her tangerine
swimsuit.
Dead
?

There was a
video. Paula’s breath trembled as she clicked on it. The undulations of the
pool’s surface looked like moving crescents of black and white. Slowly and
steadily, Heather, her white skin lit up against the dark, liquid tomb around
her, drifted naked to the bottom of the pool.

Paula let out a
stifled cry and took a step back, nearly jumping out of her skin as she bumped
against someone behind her.

“What are you
doing in here?” Jost said. He sounded both horrified and furious.

She tried to
turn, but could not. With quick, overpowering strength, he had her in a
chokehold.

“I beg you,
don’t scream, Paula,” he pleaded. “I don’t want to hurt you. Please.”

She stayed
still, rigid, and mute.

 “We’re going
to the bed together,” he instructed, his voice shaking. “I’ll be right behind
you to guide you. When you get to the night table, open the drawer. You will
see a roll of duct tape, which you will remove and hand to me.”

He was
breathing heavily as they went in tandem to the bedside and she did as he had instructed.

“Lie face down
on the bed with your arms by your sides,” he said.

As she lay flat
next to his suitcase, he removed his grip on her throat, but the pressure of
his knee in her back compressed her chest and prevented her from moving or
taking a good breath for a scream. She heard the harsh crackle of the tape as
he pulled off a length. He wrapped it around her mouth several times. She felt
a sudden panic that she might suffocate, and she struggled for a moment until
she found herself quickly exhausted.

“I’m sorry,” he
said, sounding as if he was about to cry. “I really like you, Paula, but now
that you know I drowned Heather, I just can’t let you go.”

He brought her
wrists behind her back and bound them.

“Is it too
tight?” he asked her.

She nodded
vigorously, trying to say yes through the gag.

He hesitated.
“Okay, I can loosen it a little bit, but not too much.”

After doing
that, he wrapped her knees and ankles.

He got off the
bed and began to pace at the foot of the bed. Paula swiveled her eyes to watch
him. Muttering to himself in Dutch, he stopped several times and ran his hand
through his hair, appearing nerve-wracked and uncertain what to do with her.

“
Godverdomme,”
he swore, standing in front of her. “Why did you have to get into all this pointless
detective stuff, Paula? Why couldn’t you just leave things the way they were? I
mean, you’re very clever, but what you’ve done is the height of stupidity.
Mijn
God,
just look at the mess we’re in now. ”

He cursed again
and paced several times more before pulling up a chair in front of her. He sighed
in exasperation and stared at her for a moment.

“Okay, look,”
he said finally, “I need you to be relaxed and peaceful.” He jumped up. “I
don’t want you struggling.”

She looked up
at him, eyebrows raised, pleading with her eyes. What was he planning to do
with her? If only she could speak, she might be able to reason with him. He
went out of her sight to his desk behind her, and she heard him open one of the
drawers. For a moment there was silence, and then he came back and got onto the
bed.

“I’m going to
give you a heavy dose of diazepam,” he said. “It will make you sleep. I sometimes
use it myself in small amounts to relieve muscle spasm after a long swimming
session.”

He pulled down
her waistband, exposing the upper portion of her right buttock. “Here it comes.”

She flinched as
he stabbed her and injected the stinging medicine.

“It will simply
be easier for both of us,” he said. “I don’t want you to fight me. You’re
bigger than Heather—more powerful, too. I simply have no choice, Paula. I have to
drown you too.”