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She stepped to the window, surprised how quickly it had gotten dark. Through the palms, she could see the lights of a boat far out on the dark horizon. Below her, shadows moved restlessly across the courtyard. She could smell salt in the air coming in from the Gulf, hear the breeze rustling the palm fronds.
The music had stopped. She realized the voices she’d heard were coming from the other side of the villa behind her. Moving to the back of her small apartment, she opened the window as quietly as possible.
Two people were talking beneath the window in a low murmur. She couldn’t make out their words. As her eyes adjusted to the darkness she could however make out two figures in the shadow of the house.
As they moved, Willa saw that one was wearing an old-fashioned white gown like she’d seen the nanny wearing earlier while dancing. The other figure was that of a man. He too was older, his voice sounding gravelly.
He appeared to be trying to persuade the woman to go with him somewhere. After a moment they parted, the woman slipping through an archway back into the villa. The elderly man faded into the darkness and vegetation of the island as if he’d never existed.
The man must have been Carlos Lazarro, she realized who, according to Odell, lived in the old boathouse.
Willa closed the window and started to close the blinds as well, when something caught her eye. Movement. The old man? Had he come back? She watched someone moving through the vegetation, but it was too dark to make out who it was. Not the old man. The person moved too easily. Almost catlike, making little sound, the movement fluid and hinting of power. Whoever it was headed for the back of the villa.
Landry Jones.
Willa shook off the thought. Landry couldn’t have found her. It had to be Odell. She moved to the door, unlocked it and stepped out onto the long balcony over the courtyard. Below her, the pool was cloudy and bottomless. She stared down into it, seeing nothing and glad of it.
As she glanced across the courtyard toward Odell’s apartment, she saw that a single light shone through the cracks between the blinds in what she assumed was his living room. The window was open. She listened for the clack of an old manual typewriter, but there was no sound coming from his apartment.
But behind the house she could hear the purr of a motor. The generator that supplied the electricity. They’d had a generator on the farm for when bad weather took out their power lines. She knew the sound well growing up on the South Dakota prairie.
She moved away from her open apartment door, sneaking as quietly as possible along the balcony to the back wall of the villa to gaze out through the thick foliage in the direction where she’d seen the person going. No one. Could it have been an animal? Whatever it had been it certainly moved like one.
Another rhythmic sound drew her attention. She moved alon
g the back of the second-story walkway away from her apartment. Through the trees she spotted a figure bent over digging a hole in the ground. The sound of the steady scrape of a shovel blade through the soil drifted on the night breeze.
As the figure straightened, she saw that it was Odell. Of course that was who she’d seen from the window, she thought with a wave of relief. He turned up another shovelful of dirt, stopped and looked back toward the villa as if he’d heard something. Or sensed her watching him.
She melted back into the dark shadows along the wall, hoping he hadn’t seen her spying on him. What could he be digging up? Or was he burying something?
He resumed his digging but she stayed hidden, afraid he would look over his shoulder again and see her. The shoveling stopped, then resumed again.
She took a peek. He seemed to be covering up the hole now. She watched as he patted down the disturbed ground then covered it with several palm fronds.
As he started toward the villa, she flattened herself against the wall, not daring to move. She feared he would see her even in the dark shadows because of the light-colored nightshirt she wore. But he didn’t look up in her direction. He seemed intent on hurrying back to his apartment.
She watched him come through an archway almost hidden by vegetation and keep to the shadows, not making a sound as he entered his apartment. He no longer had the shovel. Nor was he carrying anything she could see.
Willa stood there until he’d closed his apartment door. Another light came on deeper in the apartment, then went out. What was all that about?
Did she even want to know? For just an instant, she thought about sneaking down there and finding out. Wouldn’t she sleep better if she did?
Yeah, right.
She shivered as she made her way back to her open apartment door. Slipping inside, she locked the door behind her.
Whatever it was Odell had dug up or buried, it was none of her business. Though it was odd. And even a little chilling.
As she padded barefoot toward her bedroom she caught an unfamiliar scent in the air and slowed. Perfume? It smelled like…gardenias? Had someone been in her apartment? She’d foolishly left the door wide open and hadn’t been paying any attention during the time she’d been watching Odell.
Deeper into the apartment, the scent grew stronger then faded all together as if she’d only imagined it. Like she’d imagined the little boy’s face in the photo?
She stopped in the middle of her bedroom. Her pulse jumped, her heart leaping to her throat. Someone had been in her apartment. She hadn’t imagined the scent of gardenias and what she saw—or in this case didn’t see.
Her easel stood empty.
The painting she’d done of Landry Jones and the murder was gone.
