A Clandestine Affair

Raoul tensed. He hadn’t expected anything that direct from Carlos. “I’m with women all the time. Some of my best divers are women.”

“You know that’s not what I meant.”

He knew exactly what Carlos meant, but there was no way he was discussing his sex life with his aging uncle. “We can take Jaci along if she wants to go. It’s no big deal.”

“Good. I’ll check with her in the morning,” Carlos said, yawning through the last of the sentence.

Raoul watched him walk away. Unfortunately, the question Carlos had asked didn’t recede with the man and his dog. The truth was Raoul hadn’t been with a woman in any kind of romantic or intimate way since Allison.

Two years plus. Twenty-seven months of aching loneliness.

Twenty-seven months of guilt.

He didn’t expect a day with Jaci to change any of that. Yet she was on his mind now, and he wondered again what had bought her to Cape Diablo’s isolated shores.

JACI HAD SLEPT UNTIL NEARLY 9:00 a.m., the latest she’d stayed in bed since the fall semester had started. Normally she would have been up by seven, but she’d lain awake for hours, tossing and turning and staring out the window into the darkest night imaginable.

She blamed her inability to sleep on the unfamiliar cacophony of sounds. The drone of the generator. The roar of waves crashing on the island’s western shore. The hooting of an owl. The chorus of a thousand tree frogs.

But it wasn’t just the noise. It was an apprehension she couldn’t explain, the feeling that something bad was going to happen before she got off this island.

She’d expected the place to be a catalyst for the investigation, but she hadn’t expected the aura of mystery to be so intense.

The isolation had a lot to do with that, but the island’s inhabitants certainly added to the eerie ambiance. Carlos Lazario and Alma Garcia were the strangest of bedfellows. Carlos was weathered but sturdy, like the mangroves that endured whatever storm come their way. Alma was more like the thin sea oats that swayed in the slightest breeze.

Yet they both seemed to belong to Cape Diablo, just as the crumbling villa did. Jaci stared at the vines that crept up the white stucco walls and twined around the second-floor loggia. The few remaining bougainvillea blossoms had turned brown, but she could well imagine them in full bloom, a riot of scarlet.

Wilma St. Clair’s painting didn’t seem nearly as bizarre now that Jaci had arrived on Cape Diablo. Fingers of blood gripping the walls fit the sinister feel of the place much better than colorful blooms.

Jaci padded to the kitchen and took a bowl from the cabinet over the sink. She’d have a bit of cereal, then get down to her real business of the day—finding transportation to Everglades City to meet with Mac Lowell before he changed his mind.

JACI TOOK A DIFFERENT PATH to the boathouse, one that skirted the eastern coastline of the island and wound through the mangroves instead of along the sandy beach. Birds chattered and shrieked in the trees, as if scolding her for invading their territory. Dragonflies and wasps flitted among the brush, and she stopped more than once to swat away a mosquito or wipe sticky spiderwebs from her face and hair.

The area wasn’t as frightening as the swamp would have been, but still it left her more uncomfortable than she would have expected.

She was almost to the clearing when she caught a whiff of cigar smoke. She had to search for the smoker. Finally, she spotted him standing under a tree a couple of yards away. He showed no sign of having noticed her, so she stepped off the path and behind a thick growth of palmetto to check him out.

Hispanic male, probably six-two, late fifties, lean but muscular, tattoos on both arms that looked to be dragons of some kind. No obvious weapon.

She left her cover and stepped back to the path. When he noticed her, she gave a wave.

“Good morning,” he said, tipping a Miami Dolphins cap. He seemed friendly and normal enough.

“Same to you. Are you a new tenant?”

“No. I’m a friend of Carlos and Alma, just here for a day or two.”

Who’d have guessed they socialized?

The man dropped the cigar and ground it out with the toe of his boot. “Enrique Lopez,” he said, walking toward her. “I’m sure we’ve never met. I would remember a woman as beautiful as you.”

“I’m Jaci,” she said, “a tenant.”

“A pleasure to meet you.” He took her hand and held it for a few seconds before kissing her fingertips.

The guy’s lines probably worked as often as not. He wasn’t bad looking for a middle-aged man. He had that pirate thing going on with the whiskered chin and dark, unruly hair.

“Are you going somewhere in particular, Jaci, or are you just out for a morning walk?”

“I’m on my way to the boathouse to find Carlos.”

“I just left there, and there was no sign of him.”

“He may be at the villa,” she said.

“I hope he is. That way I can surprise both him and Alma at once.”

“They don’t know you’re here?”

“Not yet. I got in late so I slept on my boat last night. It’s docked on the southern end of the island, in the deepwater cove.”

“Why didn’t you use the dock?”

“It is a very large yacht.”

“How did you meet Alma and Carlos?” she asked, still trying to picture the strange couple socializing.

“I had engine trouble on my yacht a few years back. I docked, Carlos fixed it for me, and we hit it off. Now this has become my haven.”

Cape Diablo as a haven. Jaci tried but couldn’t get that image to gel. “I guess I’ll see you around,” she said.