“Carl!” Tyra was disturbed. “Don’t call her that. You don’t know her.”
“Riva and Sean hurt Kate,” Carl shot back. “What else can you expect from a slimy guy? The cheating was what did it. It was finally too much for Kate. She didn’t sleep for three nights. Then when she met Clay he wrote to her all day long. She started to feel better, was able to sleep again at night. It kept her mind occupied, she looked forward to hearing from him.”
“I have something that will surprise you,” Cindy said slowly then.
“What?” Both of them turned to her, expectant.
“The police gave me a note they found in Kate’s wastebasket. She wrote it to Sean before she died,” Cindy said, taking the crumpled paper out of her pocket and smoothing it out again.
Both Carl and Tyra stared at the paper.
“What did she say?” asked Tyra, alarmed.
“Read it yourself,” Cindy held it out as Carl leapt forward and grabbed it, his face puckering as he read every word.
“She’ll always love him, what garbage!” Carl exclaimed as he came to the note’s end.
Tyra grabbed the note and read it next. “She loved him. That’s how she felt,” Tyra insisted. “It wasn’t a lie.”
“It sounds like a good bye note,” Cindy said quietly, fishing to see how Carl and Tyra would respond.
Tyra began sobbing again. “She still loved him, she was still suffering,” she whimpered.
“There’s nothing new there,” Carl’s face darkened. “Telling the idiot she loved him again and again. What was there about him to love? Why didn’t she send the note to him?”
“She may have,” said Tyra, “this might just be a one version. It’s all crumpled up, the handwriting’s hard to make out. She probably wrote it again on a fresh piece of paper. If I know her, she did. Always begging him back, one way or another.”
“It’s an odd note to write the night you get engaged,” Cindy remarked. “The police are taking it as a suicide note.”
Both Carl and Tyra froze into silence.
“What do you think?” Cindy’s probed.
“That’s not possible,” Carl said in a husky tone. “I completely reject the possibility. There was no reason for her to kill herself over this. She’d been through breakups before.”
“But she hadn’t gotten engaged to someone else before,” Cindy interrupted. “Kate just got engaged to Clay and really wanted to be with Sean. Could be she was desperate and didn’t know how to get out of the situation?”
“She could always have called me,” Carl burst out. “She called me for everything, all the time. I’ve gotten her out of worse situations.”
“But she knew you couldn’t stand Sean,” Tyra interjected. “Maybe she thought you wanted her to be with Clay.”
“Of course I did,” Carl was shaking. “Anyone could see why.”
“Did you know that Kate was coming down here to meet Clay for the week-end?” asked Cindy pointedly.
“Of course I knew,” said Carl. “I told her I thought it was a good idea. She needed distraction. She needed help forgetting Sean.”
“You knew? You knew? You never told me that,” Tyra began sobbing again.
“Did you also know that Sean and Riva are both down at the hotel here, too?”
“What?” Tyra jumped off her seat.
Carl grew pale. “Are you sure about that?”
“Positive,” said Cindy, “and did you hear that someone was yelling and banging on Kate’s door late that night?”
“No, I did not,” Carl’s face grew white. “Get the police on it, and you talk to that bastard right away.”
“Sean and Riva at the hotel? Why? What are they doing here?” Tyra could not be consoled. “It’s awful. What if they ran into Kate and Clay, what a nightmare for everybody.”
“Get right on this, Cindy,” Carl demanded, “you’re terrific, you’ve gotten to the heart of the matter. Suicide, my ass. If Sean and Riva are here that could be the answer to our questions. It could lock things up.”
“I am on it,” Cindy replied, as Carl stared at her, half admiringly, half afraid.
CHAPTER 11
As Cindy walked back to the hotel from the bar, she noticed the sky clouding over again and winds blowing up. It was unusual in Aruba for the clouds to keep returning. Usually the sun was constant and strong. Cindy wanted to get back to the hotel quickly and freshen up before she and Mattheus met with Sean. The police had called and informed him that they were coming and he was waiting for them. It seemed strange to Cindy that no one had spoken to Sean yet. She wanted to proceed wisely.