Murder in the Raw (9 page)

The waterfront restaurant resembled a warehouse in size and structure, which lent a nice airy feel. The entrance displayed shelves of island souvenirs and offered a grouping of sofas where couples sat with drinks from the bar.

“My usual table,” Vernon requested of the maître d’, who led them to one of the large twilit windows open to the sound of waves lapping on the beach. The lights of Anguilla twinkled in the distance.

“Aye, very nice,” Rex said, complimenting Vernon on his choice of restaurant. He scanned the menu and decided on the hot artichoke in gratinated goat cheese sauce and the
coquilles St. Jacques
on curried pasta. In accompaniment, he ordered a bottle of Sancerre. “As you were saying in the limo …,” he prompted Vernon, when the waiter left.

“Greg Hastings was at Paul’s birthday party at The Cockatoo all evening. He personally organized the whole thing. Then he sat down with us for dinner.”

“Unlikely he could have slipped away then.”

“There’s no way,” Vernon said emphatically. “Anyway, I don’t suspect him for a minute. For one thing, he isn’t Sabine’s type. He’s managed the resort ever since most of us have been going to the Plage I kept coming after my first wife died. It was less lonely than going on a singles’ cruise or to Club Med.”

“And the driver?”

“Pascal has worked there for quite a few years as well.”

While driving them over to Grand Case, Pascal had told Rex that before his chauffeuring job at the resort
,
he had worked for a charter boat company, sailing all types of luxury boats for weeks on end. Now he got to sleep most nights at home. He had confirmed he’d had the afternoon and evening off the Tuesday Sabine Durand disappeared. He lived in town with his wife and four children, and had been fishing on his boat until past sunset with his two eldest.

“You should be looking at Brook,” Vernon said, wielding his crab cracker, which he then clamped on the crustacean’s claw. With one snap, the delicate pink meat was laid bare. “There’s an edge to Brook that’s not immediately obvious. He has incredible drive. Fact is, he couldn’t have made it to where he is without being a son-of-a-bitch when he needed to be.”

I’m sure the same could be said of you
, Rex thought.

“He was crazy about Sabine.” Vernon wiped his fingers off on his napkin. “Well, everybody was. Do you think you’ll ever get to the bottom of this case?”

“I certainly intend to try,” Rex said, piqued by Vernon’s tone. “I’m still at the fact-finding stage. It might help if I could take a look at your wife’s personal belongings. Not that I want to impose on your grief …”

“Feel free. I’ve left everything the way it was. I suppose at the back of my mind I keep thinking she’ll come back.”

“I don’t suppose she took anything with her on her walk?”

“Just what she was wearing, I imagine. How are your scallops?”

Rex was not so easily thrown off the scent. “How was the marriage?” he queried his dinner companion. “Sorry to have to ask.”

“I’m just not accustomed to being at the receiving end of the questions.” Vernon took a deep breath. “Look, I want to find out what happened to my wife, however painful it might be, but with regard to your question, I didn’t feel married to Sabine. She did more or less what she pleased.”

“Extramarital affairs?”

“She said not.”

“Did the question of divorce ever come up?”

“Of course. I’m sure it does in most marriages.”

“Where did you spend most of your time?”

“At our apartment on Park Avenue. Of course, Sabine traveled a lot for her work.”

“That can put a strain on a marriage. I expect, as an entertainment attorney, you put a prenuptial agreement in place?”

Something resembling a smile cracked Vernon’s wooden face. “Of course.”

“And, under the terms of the agreement, how would Sabine have fared?”

“Badly.”

Rex was left with no doubt that being on the wrong side of this lawyer would be an extremely uncomfortable place to be. During the main course, they concentrated on the food.

The young waiter cleared away their dinner plates. “Would you care for dessert?” he asked, and listed the selection.

“Why does it always sound so much better in French?” Rex asked in appreciation. “I’m supposed to be on a diet, but I’ll make an exception, just tonight.”

The waiter smiled. “Very wise.”

“The
Crêpes Suzette flambées au Grand-Marnier
.”

“Profiteroles for me,” Vernon said.

The waiter nodded and glided away.

“I don’t get to eat like this back home,” Rex said. “We’re rather fond of our haggis and pulverized turnip.”

“What is haggis?”

“Sheep’s innards.”

“Good God.” Vernon pulled a sour face.

“The Scots are a thrifty lot. None of the sheep goes to waste.”

The waiter drew up a tripod table with a hibachi and set fire to the pancakes in the brass skillet. A deliciously decadent fragrance of torched orange brandy and caramelized sugar wafted into the air. Rex wished he could bottle it and spray it onto his pillow.

Vernon sliced into his chocolate-topped pastry puff filled with French custard. “You can spend a month at the resort and eat out at a different gourmet restaurant every day without ever going into Marigot or Philipsburg.”

“Add to that the fantastic weather and the Caribbean Sea. It’s paradise all right.” Or was, until Sabine Durand went missing, which did lend a sinister pall to the attractions. “Did Sabine take medication of any kind?”

“Only Luminal to help combat jetlag and stagefright.”

“What was she seeing the chiropractor about?”

“She got thrown by a horse when she was fourteen and was laid up for a while. Her back plays up from time to time. She says the quack in Philipsburg works wonders.”

“Did you ever go there with her?”

“Never. It would’ve meant a wait at the office and then a shopping expedition afterward. She was always gone at least three hours.”

“Did she suffer from depression?”

“You’re on the wrong track. She didn’t kill herself, if that’s what you’re getting at.”

Rex did not press the point, even though he knew that people closest to the suicide victim often went into denial over the subject. Still, by all accounts, Sabine did not appear to be a likely candidate for suicide, unless there was some mental illness she kept quiet about. The police had made only a perfunctory search of the cabana.

“How did you come to lose your phone on the beach that night?”

“I didn’t. It was in our cabana. I remember checking my messages before I went on the dive excursion. Later, when I wanted to see if Sabine had called, I couldn’t find it.”

“This was before the party?”

“Yes, while I was waiting for my wife to make an appearance. In the end, I left without her.”

The waiter poured them the rest of the wine from the ice bucket. Vernon thawed slightly when they moved away from the topic of Sabine to discuss the differences between American and Scottish law, intrigued to learn that courts in Scotland have fifteen jurors, as opposed to twelve in the States.

“Another important aspect of Scots law,” Rex told him, “is that every essential fact has to be corroborated by two independent witnesses.”

“Interesting,” Vernon said. “Harder to prove guilt.”

“Aye, but our law allows three verdicts: guilty, not-guilty, and not-proven. Not-proven means that though the prosecution failed to meet the criterion of ‘beyond reasonable doubt,’ there is still a suspicion of guilt in the jury’s mind and in the mind of the public.”

“That’s how I feel—as though my friends were the jury and, in default of being proven guilty beyond reasonable doubt, I’m walking around in a cloud of suspicion.”

“We’ll see if we can’t clear that up,” Rex told him.
You canny old lawyer.

The limo picked them up at nine prompt.

“I’ll be playing racquet ball with Duke in the morning,” Vernon informed Rex on the drive back to the resort. “You can come to my cabana then and poke around Sabine’s things to your heart’s content.”

“Thanks. It’ll give me a better feel for her.”

“I wish you could have met her.”

“I do too. She sounds intriguing.”

They bid each other a cordial goodnight outside the cabanas. When Rex opened his door, Brooklyn met him in the hallway and handed him a message from the front desk.

“I just got back and found this on the door,” his roommate said. “I was about to go looking for you.”

“I went to dinner in Grand Case.” Thinking the message might be from Thaddeus in London, Rex was eager to read it. “URGENT,” it said. “Call mother.”

“Do you want to use my cell phone?” Brooklyn asked.

Rex glanced at his watch, rubbing it absentmindedly with his thumb. “It’s past two in the morning in Scotland.”

“But if it’s urgent …”

“Aye. Thanks, I will borrow your phone if you dinna mind. I’m not getting service on mine out here.”

“You’ll have to take it outside to get a signal,” Brooklyn said, handing him the Motorola. “Just don’t let anyone see you. They’re a bit uptight around here about finding their nude pictures on some sleazy website.”

Rex privately considered most of them had nothing to worry about, unless they were concerned about being blackmailed.

“Could be embarrassing, I guess,” Brooklyn said, voicing his thoughts. “Hope everything’s okay,” he added, discretely disappearing into his room.

The message had been taken almost three hours ago, far past his mother’s bedtime. Anxiously, he dialed her number.

“This is the Graves residence,” the housekeeper in Edinburgh intoned on the recording. “Please leave a message for Moira Ann Graves or Rex Graves, QC.”

Rex started speaking in the hope his mother would pick up. If the news was that urgent, she would have waited up for his call—although she was getting on now and was prone to nodding off. “I’ll try you first thing in the morning my time, Mother,” he ended by saying into the machine.

He wandered back in from the patio and knocked at Brooklyn’s door.

“Couldn’t get through?” the American asked, tying the belt of his white bathrobe.

“I got the answering machine.”

“Keep the phone with you so you can try again later. Leave it on the kitchen counter when you’re done with it.”

“I appreciate it. My mother will be up in three or four hours. She’s an early riser.”

“Is she in good health?” Brooklyn asked.

“Aye, fit as a fiddle, but she’s eighty-five. The message might be regarding my friend in Iraq. I haven’t heard from her in a while.”

“Is she Iraqi?”

“No, she went to Baghdad on a humanitarian mission. She disappeared from her hotel without leaving a forwarding address and I can’t get through to the relief office where she works.”

“That’s tough,” Brooklyn said sympathetically. “Here, let me make you a pot of coffee. Looks like it’s going to be a long night.”

Rex followed him into the living room. “You don’t need to go to the trouble.”

“No trouble.” Brooklyn filled the machine with water and within minutes the kitchen was filled with an appetizing aroma of freshly ground French roast.

“It’s just that with all the bombings over there, I don’t know what’s going on from one day to the next.”

Brooklyn leaned against the counter. “Have you contacted your Embassy?”

“Aye. She’s not on any casualty list. I suppose what concerns me most is the risk of kidnapping. Several hundred people of all nationalities, religions, and professions have been kidnapped since April of last year. Even the Red Cross and the UN are targets. And Moira goes into areas where there’s not always a military presence.”

“Moira? Is that a Scottish name?”

“Aye. It’s my mother’s name as well, which gets confusing.”

Brooklyn pulled two mugs from an upper cabinet. “I heard you had a son in Florida …”

“Campbell. He just finished his first year at Hilliard University in Jacksonville. Marine Science.”