Rum Luck Page 2

  “No phone?” he asked the sergeant as Victoria peered over the desk, looking for his other belongings. “The case has a Canadian flag—a red maple leaf—on the back.”

  The desk sergeant shook his head and hunched over the desk as he filled out the receipt for Ben to sign.

  “Ben,” Victoria whispered, inclining her head to direct his gaze. “What’s that piece of paper, the one in that evidence bag?”

  He spotted the evidence bag. Inside was a document typed in Spanish with his name and signature at the bottom. It looked as though someone had spilled . . . Was that blood?

  “That’s my signature, but I don’t remember signing anything.”

  Victoria held a single finger to her lips as a warning, then spoke to the desk sergeant politely in Spanish.

  Ben could barely order beer or fajitas, but the sergeant’s tone made it clear he wasn’t handing over the bag. He and Victoria argued back and forth. The sergeant shook his head.

  Victoria raised her voice and slapped her palms on the desk. Then she slid her phone out of her jacket and looked as though she was threatening to . . . call someone? Who would she call? Ben wondered what strings had been pulled to get him out.

  Thunderclouds passed before the sergeant’s eyes, and the guard strode toward the desk, his hand on his baton. Ben tensed. All he wanted was to go back to his hotel and have a nap. Was that so much to ask?

  But before the guard reached them, the storm passed. Victoria threw up her arms in resignation and slid the phone back into her pocket. The sergeant gave Ben a look that was equal parts pity and disgust as he thrust a clipboard into Ben’s hands.

  “Sign. Now,” Victoria hissed.

  Ben needed no further prompting. He signed.

  He and Victoria walked out the front door of the station toward the waiting car, leaving the stained document in the custody of the Tamarindo police.

  Miguel’s phone buzzed twice. He snatched it off the table and read Victoria’s text message. He smiled, the weight of last night’s decision lifting from his shoulders. Now, how had she—?

  He felt . . . something.

  Miguel grabbed the hand sliding into his pocket and twisted. The would-be thief sank to his knees. He tried to pull away but found no escape, only agony.

  “You’ll break your wrist that way,” Miguel said mildly.

  The man grimaced. “I thought you were someone else.”

  “I’d hope so.” Miguel plucked the wallet from the thief’s twisted fingers and whacked him on the forehead with it, just hard enough to make a point. “What did you learn?”

  “Huh?”

  Miguel twisted further. The man yelped. Miguel smiled, hopefully reassuring his fellow diners. “I said, what did you learn?”

  “I’m a lousy pickpocket?”

  Miguel twisted just a bit further.

  “And I should find another job.”

  “Sounds about right to me,” Miguel said, releasing his grip. “Now get the hell out of here before I change my mind.”

  Between his crushing exhaustion and pounding headache, Ben barely had room to feel relieved. He sank into the car’s plush back seat and let the chill of the air conditioning gently waft over him. A strong whiff of barnyard and moonshine reminded him how long it had been since he last showered.

  He looked in the rearview mirror and saw his familiar slate blue eyes, set in a face so swollen and bruised it was almost unrecognizable. He turned to Victoria and drew his swollen lips into a humorless grin. “It’s a modern-day fairy tale—Beauty and the Beast.”

  Victoria wrinkled her nose and rolled down a window. “More like Lady and the Tramp.”

  He glanced back in the mirror and locked eyes with the driver, who stared at him as though examining the bottom of his shoe. Ben scowled back as he wriggled deeper into the seat. The driver made a noise of pure disgust, then eased the car through the still-quiet side streets of Tamarindo.

  Victoria stared out the window at faded wooden shacks and the latest Costa Rican fashions drying on clotheslines. Ben wondered how he could repay her for what she’d done for him.

  “Thank you,” he said simply.

  She gave him a small smile. “Don’t thank me yet.”

  The car lurched to a halt beside the stone walls of his hotel, the Tamarindo Diria. Ben got out and savored the victory of returning here once more. Inside, bellboys bustled with bags while guests lounged on dark wicker furniture, flipping through brochures for marlin fishing and sunset tours. Past the open-air lobby, a trio of stone tribesmen spat streams of water into a glittering swimming pool.

  Yet it was the beach that held his eye. Beyond the pool and its leafy, gnarled trees, a stretch of fine golden sand paved the path to the turquoise and navy bands of the Pacific, sparkling in the late morning sun. The surf whispered rhythmically against the shore.

  He took a deep breath of sea air and salivated at the aroma of cayenne and searing meat. “I’m famished.”

  “I think you mean ‘filthy.’ ” The disdain in Victoria’s eyes shone through her oversized sunglasses. “Go clean up. Miguel and I will be waiting out on the patio, once you no longer look as though you’ve washed ashore from a desert island.”

  He realized then that his fellow guests had stopped studying their brochures, and were instead studying the strange man who had apparently escaped Davy Jones’ Locker to pillage their passport pouches.

  He sighed with resignation. “Order me a burger, will you?”

  She nodded in reply, then waved for a bellhop to gather up a surprisingly large number of Louis Vuitton suitcases.

  The cheerful beep the door made when Ben slid his room card inside the slot was perhaps the loveliest beep he had ever heard, in a life full of beeps. Much the same could be said for the shower that followed.

  He returned to the lobby a new man. Or a bruised man in a new shirt, at least.

  “Brother!” Miguel cried, wrapping his lengthy arms around his friend, slapping his back heartily, and re-bruising most of Ben’s injuries. Miguel had greeted him this way since they became friends midway through university; Ben had never got used to it for the simple reason that Miguel easily outdid him in height, fitness, and strength.

  No wonder Miguel rarely talked about his mandatory stint with the Colombian Army, part and parcel with growing up there. With a build like that, his term as a conscript must have been little more than a glorified camping trip. His current job as a bartender at one of Toronto’s premier clubs seemed a much better fit for his gentle, friendly nature. Even so, some of their acquaintances had indelicately suggested that pouring shots and wiping up spilled pints wasn’t exactly a dream job for a university graduate. Miguel would shrug and say he’d put his sociology degree to better use in a barroom than a boardroom.

  He dragged Ben through the lobby to a small, shaded table in the far corner of the restaurant’s patio. Victoria was waiting for them with a cappuccino in hand, her dark wool suit replaced by a simple linen skirt and a colorful, flowing blouse. Soaring palms waved in the wind behind her, dappling the patio with shade.

  “So,” she said after the waiter had taken another round of drink orders, “what the hell happened last night?”

  “I don’t exactly . . . remember everything, precisely.” Ben gulped his water, wondering how something with no taste could taste so good.

  “What do you remember?”

  “We drove down to Tamarindo from San José . . . and then . . . Miguel?”

  “Ben got really drunk last night.” Miguel’s eyes were ringed with exhaustion. Ben wondered whether his friend had also overindulged last night. More likely, he was up late talking with Victoria, plotting Ben’s jailbreak.

  The waiter returned with their coffees, then vanished once more.

  “I gathered as much.” Victoria stirred sugar into her fresh cappuccino and looked back at Miguel. “I assume you don’t remember much about last night, either?”

  “We stopped in at one of the beach bars. Ben looked
fine when I left, sometime around ten. He and the bartender were getting along like long-lost cousins,” Miguel said. “He was drunk. Sure. But he’s on holiday, you know? I got back to the Diria before one. I thought I’d find him sleeping it off, but he wasn’t in his room, so I went back to the bar.”

  “You left him there on his own?” Victoria asked, eyebrow slightly raised.

  “I met someone,” he stammered.

  If Ben didn’t know better, he would swear his Colombian friend was blushing.

  Miguel looked at him. “I’m sorry, man. I never should have left you on your own after . . . you know . . .”

  “Not your fault,” Ben said. “I shouldn’t have tried to drink Costa Rica out of rum.”

  “Jesus, Ben. Not rum again,” Victoria said. “I thought you gave that up.”

  “Yes. Rum. Again.” There had been a time, early on in their friendship, when Ben occasionally overindulged. But that was ages ago. He hadn’t tried to tie a shopping cart to the top of a tree in well over a decade. “Like Miguel said, I’m on holiday.”

  Miguel finished, “By the time I got back to the bar, the whole place was wrapped up in police tape and you were asleep in the back of a squad car. Once I knew where you were headed, I ran back to the hotel and called Victoria.”

  “Sounds like that’s the only smart decision either of you made since you got here.” She frowned at Ben. “Thanks for the wedding invitation, by the way. Aren’t you supposed to be on your honeymoon?”

  Ben had been hoping to avoid that subject until he’d had a chance to eat. Or, ideally, forever.

  “It’s a long story, but the wedding’s off. The airfare and the hotel for the honeymoon were nonrefundable, so Miguel and I decided to get out of town for couple of weeks.” He would have liked to invite Victoria to the wedding, but he’d sooner have convinced Tara to add laser tag to the day-of itinerary.

  “You should call her. She’ll be worried,” Victoria said.

  “If the next time I talk to Tara is from my deathbed, it’ll be too soon,” Ben replied evenly.

  Victoria’s eyes flickered with surprise. She started to ask another question, but Miguel spoke up before she got a word out. “How did you get him out of prison so quickly, anyway? I thought we’d be here for weeks.”

  Ben shuddered. “If we were lucky.”

  She waved a hand dismissively. “Mansion has a friend who went to St. Andrew’s with the Minister of the Interior. Our firm vouchsafed that Ben will remain in Tamarindo until the investigation is concluded.”

  Victoria always referred to her father, Jonathan Holmes, as Mansion—a backhanded tribute to both his greatness and his size. Ben had met him. Once. They might have exchanged two or even three words; the man had an unnerving knack for ignoring anything he found distasteful.

  The waiter emerged from the kitchen with their meals. Ben’s stomach rumbled at the sight of the thick, juicy hamburger and the piping hot mound of fries. It took all his self-control to wait until after his friends were served before tucking in.

  They were lucky to have come when they did. The patio was starting to fill up with last night’s bar crowd medicating their hangovers with greasy fare and chiseled surfers fueling up. They chattered happily to one another, laughing and smiling. Ben tore himself away from people-watching so he could eat. “That’s all it took? One call from your dad to his grade-school chum?” he asked between mouthfuls.

  “The Ministry of the Interior has the utmost regard for the solemn word of our law office. Particularly after it hands over two hundred thousand dollars in bail bonds.”

  Miguel whistled.

  “Try not to skip town, Ben. We’d like our money back.” Victoria dabbed her lips with a napkin. “To be honest, I’m not sure it was necessary. From what the captain said, you’re not an active suspect, though I did have to surrender your passport.”

  Ben shook his head. “I wish I could remember something about that damned piece of paper I apparently signed last night.”

  “Oh, thanks for reminding me.” Victoria slid out her phone and pulled up a picture. “It’s not a great shot. The paper is pretty filthy, but I can make out a few words. Miguel, can you have a look?” She handed the phone over to him.

  “What is that?” Ben asked a second before he clued in. “Did you take a photo of the document in the evidence bag?”

  “So?”

  “So, you stole evidence from the police! Good God, what if you were caught?”

  “Relax, Ben. ‘Stole’ is a very harsh word. It’s only a picture. Think of it as a souvenir.”

  Miguel looked at the photo. His eyes went wide.

  “Oh, no . . . no . . . You couldn’t have . . .”

  Ben and Victoria looked on in horror as Miguel clutched his chest and doubled over in agony.

  CHAPTER TWO

  “Miguel!”

  “My phone!” Victoria cried at the same time.

  Ben rose to his feet to help, but Miguel held out a trembling hand to ward him off. Miguel’s breathing turned ragged and devolved into a coughing fit while Victoria deftly scooped her phone from the ground, looked it over, and buffed it on the hem of her skirt. By then, Miguel had stopped gasping, though sweat still beaded his face.

  People nearby looked over at the commotion for a moment, then turned back to their meals. It was poor street theatre by Tamarindo standards. Ben waved off a concerned-looking manager and turned his attention back to his friend. Miguel appeared to have come around. Victoria, apparently unconvinced, flicked ice water in his face.

  “Hey!” Miguel recoiled. “You’re getting lemon in my eye!”

  “He’s fine.” Victoria rolled her eyes. “Looks as though Ben wasn’t the only one who overdid it last night.”

  Ben wasn’t so sure. If he didn’t know better, he would have sworn Miguel had suffered some kind of panic attack. Despite the heat, the hair on Ben’s arms stood on end. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine. I just . . . choked on a fry, that’s all.” Miguel refused to meet Ben’s gaze. “I never thought you would actually do it. I mean, you talked about it. We’ve all thought about it. But, doing it . . . If I’d known . . .”

  “Miguel?”

  “The photo. It’s the deed to the bar. It’s in your name.”

  “Bar? Which bar?”

  “The bar. Your bar.”

  “My bar?” The thought slapped Ben. “The murder bar?”

  “Don’t call it the murder bar. It’s bad for business,” Victoria said. “Miguel, what are you talking about?”

  “I own a murder bar,” Ben muttered to himself, horrified. Shards of last night returned to him—the flimsy plastic pen he’d clutched as he scrawled his signature across the bar’s wrinkled deed, the gleam in Antonio’s eyes, and the rush of raw elation that followed. But he hadn’t really meant to buy a bar. Had he?

  “Around the time I left, Ben was telling the owner how much he’d always wanted to own a bar on a beach,” Miguel said. “The owner offered to sell the place cheap. Only sixty thousand dollars.”

  Ben’s mouth dropped open. “And you left me there to haggle?”

  Miguel threw his hands in the air. “You were drunk. And crazy. You called it Bar on the Beach Enterprises. You kept saying everyone wants to run their own beach bar some day and they’d pay good money to call the shots for a week.” He glared at Ben. “Besides, it’s not like you were sitting next to a suitcase full of newly minted fifties. Where were you supposed to get sixty grand?”

  The blood drained from Ben’s face.

  “Back up a minute,” Victoria said. “What’s this about hiring out the bar?”

  “Ben had the idiotic idea of offering tourists a taste of owning a real beach bar. One week it’s a jazz club, the next a Scotch lounge. He was going to put together a list of experiences—handing out drinks, kicking someone out of the bar, firing a clumsy busboy—that clients could pick off some damned menu, like they were ordering chicken fingers.”

  Victoria
tapped her chin with a manicured finger. “It’s actually not a bad idea.”

  He snorted. “Ridiculous.”

  “I’ve seen businesses built on less.” Victoria gazed out over the stretch of pristine sand. “It might sound like paying to do work, but it could be a true vacation—the chance to step outside of your life and have a bit of fun without worrying about the consequences.”

  “Are you joking? Ben was totally smashed. After he scrawled out his business plan on a cocktail napkin, he tried to steal a sombrero off the wall.”

  Ben suddenly remembered trying to steal the sombrero. Sort of. Mostly, he remembered looking up at the sombrero from where he lay on the floor.

  “What does it matter, anyway?” Miguel said. “It’s not like Ben found sixty grand hidden under his bar stool. I’m sure he didn’t actually pay for the bar.”

  Ben dropped his burger on the plate. “I had that kind of money—before I bought a murder bar.”

  “Stop calling it that,” Victoria said.

  “Tara and I are—were—planning to buy a house. The down payment was sitting in our joint account, ready to be transferred out.”

  “You couldn’t have sent that much money out in one night, could you?” Miguel asked.

  Ben wasn’t so sure. Memories of last night flickered in the dark. He took a deep breath. “Victoria, I need your phone.”

  “Why?” she asked, clutching it to her chest.

  “I have to check my bank account.”

  She reluctantly handed it over. Ben loaded the website for Greater Canadian Financial and tried to access his account. And tried. And tried.

  “Any luck?” Victoria asked.

  “I’m locked out of my account,” Ben said.

  “Any chance you could have entered the wrong password?” Miguel asked.

  Ben shook his head. “Tara is going to kill me. Most of that money belongs to her parents.”

  Victoria smiled. “It never hurts to have a few extra investors.”

  “I need a drink.”

  “It’s a good thing you own a bar, isn’t it?” she said.