Watch Your Back!

36

PRESTON DIDN'T APPEAR for lunch. That never happened; Preston was not a man to miss a meal. Alan looked around the half-full dining hall, and Pam, this week's tootsie, was also not present. Had they chosen to lunch together, in his room or hers? Not entirely like him, but not impossible, either. Still, Alan didn't like this nonappearance, so after lunch he went looking.

Nobody home at Preston's place. Door locked, shades drawn, nobody home. Alan called through the glass door just to be certain, calling Preston's name and his own, but no response.

At Pam Broussard's place, though, the situation was quite different. Alan knocked on her door, and when almost immediately she opened it, he reacted first to her clothing — she was wearing clothing, all over, even shoes — and then to what she said: "They're on — Oh." Surprised, but not awkwardly or guiltily so. "I thought you were the bellboy," she explained.

In the dimness of her room, he could see two rather large suitcases on the bed, closed and ready to go. The less a woman wears, the more luggage she needs to carry it in. Feeling a sudden apprehension, he said, "You're leaving us?"

"The office here got an e-mail for me," she said. "My mother just died, very unexpectedly." Said with no more emotion than if she were saying, "I'll have the fish."

She doesn't care if I believe her or not, he thought. "That's terrible," he said, matching her emotional level. "I was wondering if you knew where Preston was." She does know, he thought, she does know, and something has gone dreadfully wrong.

But she said, "I have no idea, I haven't seen Pres since breakfast. I went sailing, and you know how he never wants to go sailing. Then I came back from my sail, and there was the message about my poor mother."

"Of course." There would actually be such an e-mail message — he had no doubt of that — but if this ice statue had ever possessed a mother, that mother had not unexpectedly fallen down dead today. What has she done? Alan thought. Where is Preston? What on earth can I do about it?

"Oh, good, here's the bellboy now. Very nice to have met you, Alan," she said, and extended a steady hand.

What else could he do? He shook her hand, a cold hard thing like a falconer's glove. "We'll miss you," he said, and gave her back her hand.

The bellboy, young, thin, French, and leering, stripped the clothing from Pam with his eyes, then went on inside to get the luggage, while Alan's brain spun madly, searching for something to grasp onto, something to make sense. They wouldn't kill him; no one would kill him; everybody wanted Preston Fareweather alive. He was the goose that lays the golden eggs, safe here on this remote island in the Caribbean, so where was he?

"I'm so sorry not to say good-bye to Pres," Pam said, already turning away. "Would you say it for me?"

What has she done? "The next time I see him."

She smiled; something about that amused her. "Yes, that's when I meant," she said. "Good-bye, Alan." And she followed the bellboy away, down the curving path.