Death by Jealousy (Caribbean Murder #6)

hotel suite.

The room, painted pale lavender, was large and open, with a bed, chairs, tables and large, swirling couch in it. A woman draped in a long grey shawl sat on the couch, without moving, staring ahead of her. She had dark hair, pulled back into a knot at the bottom of her neck.

“This is Allie’s mother Peg,” the old man said.

Peg did not look over as Cindy and Mattheus walked towards her.

“Sit down,” the old man said, pointing to some chairs. “Peg doesn’t really want to talk to anyone. We realize that we have to now.”

“I can understand how she feels,” said Cindy as she and Mattheus took their seats.

“You can’t understand anything,” Peg said bitterly, looking over at Cindy with burning eyes. “Nobody can understand how a mother feels who loses a daughter like this.”

“I’m so sorry,” said Cindy.

Peg did not take that in, just continued talking, rabidly. “But I knew it would happen. I even told Henry. Didn’t I, Henry? Didn’t I?”

Henry, the old man, nodded quietly. Obviously he’d been listening to his wife speak like this for a long while.

“I told Henry that no good can come of unbridled money spent in crazy ways. I knew something bad was coming into our lives when Allie met Peter. Why did they keep running down here to the Island all the time? What was wrong with his working at home in the U.S.?”

“Peter’s company is located down in both places,” Mattheus said, trying to calm her down. “Many people work offshore.”

“There’s something strange about that,” Peg’s eyes squinted. “There’s no need to work so far from home.”

“Cindy and I work all over the Caribbean.” He was trying to get through to her. It was impossible though.

“Why did Allie have to get with someone who didn’t want to work at home?” Peg continued. “Allie was greedy, that’s why. She was born greedy and I saw trouble coming her whole life long.”

“My daughter and wife never saw eye to eye,” Henry tried to get a word in.

“That’s putting it mildly,” said Peg, dismissing him in a flash. “You didn’t help me either, Henry. You didn’t step in and teach Allie that enough’s enough.”

“Allie had a good life, Peg,” he said quietly. “Allie was a good girl. She found a good husband. She had an accident.”

“This was not an accident,” Peg was emphatic.

“What was it?” Cindy was quick on the uptake.

“Someone definitely murdered my daughter. If you do your job and scratch the surface, it will be easy to find out who. There are plenty people down here who would have been thrilled to see Allie taken down from the perch she sat up on.”

“Like who?” Cindy asked.

Peg had a powerful, electrifying energy. She spoke as if she had access to information no one else did, as if she were the ultimate authority. It was disconcerting.

“Look carefully at Peter’s parents for starters,” Peg whispered harshly. “They never accepted Allie for a minute, just acted like they did. Everything about them screams phoniness! Basically they wanted someone better, a rich girl for their precious son.”

“What leads you to think that?” Cindy wanted grounding in facts. Peg wasn’t interested in facts though, just needed to make her case.

“And what about Peter?” Peg’s eyes were flashing. “A perfect suspect, if I ever saw one. Allie was becoming more and more clinging, like she always did since she was a child. What better way to get rid of her? Peter could have had cold feet when the wedding got too close.”

Cindy felt waves of nausea as she listened to this woman speak. There was a heartlessness about her. How awful it must have been for Allie to have her as a mother.

“What do you know about Peter’s company?” Mattheus broke in. “I’m interested in his financial dealings.”

“She knows nothing,” Henry piped up. “She thinks she knows everything, but she doesn’t. I know Peter’s a good boy and he loved Allie. So do his parents. I wouldn’t want you getting the wrong idea.”

“Henry lives in a dream world all of his own,” Peg lashed out at him. “Peter’s company did big international deals with huge sums of money changing hands. He wouldn’t speak about them. I asked him a lot and he wouldn’t say a word. Everything was super confidential. But I did see the jewels he gave Allie. Obscene if you asked me. Huge rubies, emeralds, sapphires. What was he doing? Buying her love? Showing off to the world? It turned my stomach. A man like this never makes a decent husband. A decent husband doesn’t have to put on such a show.”