I woke up on my chaise lounge the next morning, fully clothed in my maxi dress from the day before. Same song, different verse. But I was even more disgusted with myself than usual. I was here to look into the deaths of my parents and straighten myself out, which was supposed to include cutting down on the drinking. And thinking about something other than Nick. It seemed that all I had done was bring my baggage with me into this world, and that I was set to make the present into more of the past. Way to go, me.
In a moment of gut-dropping panic, I remembered part of the night before. The email from Nick. The rum punch. The hotel bar. Had I sent him another message? Oh, please no.
I shot upright, my heart pounding in my ears. Blue water was teasing the brown sand of the beach in front of me. In the distance, two small children played with buckets at the waterline. Overhead, the morning sun shone through palm fronds to kiss the carpet of grass in front of my patio. The serenity of my retreat comforted me. Everything would be OK.
I found my phone beside me and scrolled through the sent texts and emails on my iPhone. Nothing, thank God. I had blown it last night. Today, though, today I would begin looking into the mystery of my parents’ deaths, and I would start over on the personal front. After a few hours’ more sleep. I folded myself back into my chair.
“Lah, girl, we party like rock stars,” a woman said. A woman almost right beside me, from the sound of it.
I sat up again, even more quickly. I recognized the husky voice. The name of the woman it belonged to was a blank to me. I searched for it. Abigail? Ariel? Eva? No. Ava. It was Ava.
I forced out a laugh. “Yeah, I guess we did. What I can remember of it.”
I looked down at the chaise on the far side of the patio, and, sure enough, there was Ava. She stood up on her tiptoes and stretched her arms toward the sky, something better done in an outfit other than a yellow lycra minidress. I averted my gaze. She finished and plopped back in her chair, tugging at her eye.
“So, I guess we better get started,” she said, and laid a set of false eyelashes down on the patio table and started working on the other eye. “I vote for a barrel of water and two Excedrin with a mess of eggs first, though.”
I had absolutely no idea what this woman was talking about. I tried to shake the hangover cobwebs from my head. Should I worry? I’d read about pirates and crooks in the Caribbean. Maybe she was a swindler of some sort. I could, in essence, be her prisoner. It was a stretch, but it was possible. Something nudged my brain cells toward memory, then faded out.
Ava kept talking. “I know the cook in the restaurant. He hook us up.” Ava reached for the phone on the patio table beside her.
I listened to her order in her island patois. She had continued her ablutions while on the phone—removing earrings, a bracelet, and a necklace—and she stood up again when she ended the call.
“Chop chop, Katie. They expecting us down at the station.” She pulled off her dress in a single fluid motion, revealing flawless café au lait curves reined in somewhat by a leopard-print satin bra and panties. My hands found my own jutting hipbones, Pippi Longstocking next to her Beyoncé. She ducked into my room.
I clamped my jaw shut and focused on her words. Police station. Yes. That was it. Snatches of our conversation last night floated back to me, including me telling Ava about my quest to find out what had happened to my parents, and her call to some police officer she used to date or that wanted to date her or something. Yes. That was it. I remembered. Relief.
She poked her head back around the door as she gathered her long curly black hair into a topknot. “You mind if I use the shower first?”
“That’s fine,” I said.
She raised one eyebrow. “You OK?”
I jumped to my feet. “Absolutely. Let’s hurry with the showers and try to finish before room service arrives.”
“Yah mon,” she said, and disappeared again.
I tipped my head back with my eyes closed and pinched the bridge of my nose. Just because I remembered last night, it didn’t necessarily make today a good idea. I didn’t even know Ava. Was this insane? I lifted my head back to its normal position.