“Fire. Backbone. Someone solid as a rock who wouldn’t budge no matter how hard she pushed. Our Elle is a fighter.”
Elle smiled. She wasn’t a fighter. One needed to be strong to be a fighter. She wasn’t; she was a runner. A classy one who did it with a smile, but a runner nevertheless. She’d proved that again and again after the death of her father and her brother. Before that too. Her default response was to fly; never stand her ground and fight, especially if that meant facing unpleasantness and feelings she didn’t want to revisit.
“We miss you around here. Your workshops were the best. No one has taken up Zumba for seniors since you left. We got an instructor that treated us like deaf, dumb mummies.”
“I miss you guys too.” In spite of the sad circumstances surrounding her mother and Elle’s move to Florida, she’d loved it down here. It had provided her a permanent source of escape; comings and goings all day long. A hectic job at the airport. Endless student parties. And she’d needed it so badly.
“You still organizing the Zumba class tomorrow?”
“Sure I am.”
“Great. I’m taking my husband along,” Mrs. Nicholson said. “I finally convinced him.”
As they were talking, she noticed that the TV program had been interrupted and a picture of a man was on the screen.
“Who’s that?”
“They’ve been broadcasting about it the whole night. Dick Aalto, the politician, has been found dead.”
“What do you mean ‘dead’?” Elle turned on the volume on the TV, staring, stunned, at the picture of the man she’d seen boarding the corporate jet this morning.
“Squashed into the pavement, flat as a pancake,” Violet said and made a very descriptive sound. “In the Florida Keys. Almost gave a heart attack to the couple who ran over him with the car. Squashed and run over. Poor fella. They don’t know how long he’d been there in the middle of the road because that’s one of those backwater places, hardly no traffic. Police suspect he was thrown from an airplane but they can’t find his name in any passenger manifests.”
Of course they couldn’t, and they wouldn’t, because she hadn’t written down his name. Oh God. She sobered up right away.
“Lately he’s been making a lot of noise about illegal immigrants and the need to tighten and restrict entry into the US. He has the port all but paralyzed. An old-school loony Republican, if you don’t mind me saying,” Violet added. “As if this whole country wasn’t based on immigrants searching for a better future to begin with.”
Mrs. Nicholson started talking, but Elle wasn’t listening. She had to speak with Marlene. They had to call the cops.
She grabbed her cell and dialed Marlene’s number. She’d left her at her place before asking the cab driver to take her to the Eternal Sun. There was a good chance she was still awake.
The phone rang but no one was picking up. Finally, someone did.
“Marlene?”
“Who is this?” a male voice asked in response.
“A friend of Marlene’s. Who are you, and why are you answering her phone?”
“I’m Detective Sheehan from the Miami police. I’m afraid something terrible has happened to Ms. Cabrera.”
Chapter Three
“Protective custody? Are you serious?” Elle asked, gaping at the detective sitting in front of her.
“Dead serious. You don’t know who this guy is and what he’s capable of.”
No, she hadn’t known who Joaquín Maldonado was. Now she did. Apparently, he was the biggest, most powerful narco this side of the Milky Way.
“Look at this,” the detective, Hensen, continued, pushing a picture toward her. It was the pilot of the morning flight. “Dead. Apparent heart attack.” Then he put another picture on the table. “This is Dick Aalto’s driver. Dead. Apparent hit and run. And Marlene Cabrera,” he finished, showing her a shot of her friend lying on the floor of her condo in a pool of blood. “Dead. Apparent home invasion. Oh and let’s not forget this one,” he said, tapping at what looked like…she wasn’t sure what. “Dick Aalto, a bit worse for wear as you can see. Apparently fell from a plane.”
Elle’s head hurt, and she was in a daze.
After speaking with the police on the phone, she’d rushed to her friend’s to find the place cordoned off. A home invasion gone wrong, they’d told her. A case of wrong place, wrong time.
“Did something special happen tonight? Something that stood out of the ordinary? Some guy showing too much interest?” the police officer had asked Elle while taking her statement.
No, nothing out of the ordinary. Not in the evening anyway. Not sure it had anything to do with it, she’d explained about her—that is, Marlene’s—morning flight and Dick Aalto boarding it with a guy named Maldonado, and the officer had turned white. He’d gotten on the radio and soon after that four plainclothes cops had flanked her and unceremoniously escorted her to the police station. That had been hours ago.
Elle looked at the pictures in front of her on the table, trying to avoid Marlene’s, feeling totally overwhelmed. “This is insane.”