“You’ll never get him to admit that.”
“Guess he likes isolation.”
“That and he’s incredibly hardheaded, just like my grandfather. Actually, Carlos is my great-uncle. He and my grandfather were brothers.”
“I suppose the hardheaded trait missed you,” Jaci said, finally managing a smile.
“You got it. I’m a rational, thinking man, and I’ll butt heads with anyone who says differently.” Raoul propped a foot on the rim of a clay flower pot full of blooming verbenas, and looked into the murky water. “I hope your room’s in better shape than the pool.”
“It’s clean, and the bed is comfortable.”
“This pool is disgusting.”
“I asked your uncle about it. Apparently it hasn’t been used in a very long time.”
“Try three decades. It should have been filled in years ago.”
“Or at least drained and cleaned,” she agreed. “Is there a reason why it’s been left like this?”
“Not that I’m aware of, but it’s a waste of time wondering how or why my uncle and Alma Garcia do anything on Cape Diablo. I gave up years ago.”
So he’d been coming to the island for a long time, maybe all his life. He might have even known the Santiago children, though he’d have been so young, Jaci doubted he’d remember much about them.
Raoul stooped to fish a plastic cup from the algae-filled pool. Jaci took the opportunity to study him more closely.
He was lean and fit, as if he worked out or engaged in physical activity on a regular basis. Dressed in denim cutoffs and a short-sleeved knit shirt open at the neck, even though she found the night wind cool. Dark hair. Probably dark eyes as well, though she couldn’t tell in this light.
Not classically handsome, but with a rugged sexual appeal that seemed to stem as much from his self-confident manner as his looks.
“So what brings you to Cape Diablo?” he asked, once he’d tossed the cup in a nearby trash basket.
“I needed some downtime, and a secluded island seemed the perfect place to find it.”
“That’s about all you’ll find here. That, snakes and every kind of annoying insect you can imagine.”
She hoped to find a whole lot more, and Raoul might be just the person to help her get it. “Will you be around awhile?”
“A couple of nights, but I probably won’t be here much during the day. I’m hoping to take Carlos fishing. He likes to catch the big ones, and his boat is too small to handle the waves in the open gulf.”
“I didn’t hear your boat come in.”
“Purrs like a kitten. It’s a lot quieter than the generator, except when I first start up the engines.”
She dropped to the edge of one of the webbed lounge chairs, hoping Raoul would do the same. He didn’t.
“The island must have a fascinating history,” she said, looking up at him with what she hoped was a natural and slightly seductive smile. “Do you know much about the original builders of the villa?”
“I’m not big on history.” He slapped at a mosquito that was buzzing around his neck. “Not fond of mosquitoes, either, so I think I’ll head back down to the boathouse. If I don’t see you again, enjoy your vacation.”
So much for her feminine wiles. “Thanks.”
She gave a slight wave as he retreated. But she had no intention of letting him get off that easily. She’d find a way to talk to him again.
He knew about the history of the island, but didn’t want to get into it with her. Why else would he have turned and run the minute she mentioned it? It couldn’t have been the mosquito. If he’d been avoiding those, he’d never have ventured out in the first place.
And even if she got nothing from him except company, it wouldn’t be a total loss. The solitude might suit Carlos, but as far as Jaci was concerned, it was growing old fast.
Her mother might not be able to push her into the path of a sexy man, but isolation and an old murder case could do the trick.
RAOUL TOOK THE LONG WAY back to the boathouse, still trying to decide the best way to accomplish what he was here for, but now also thinking about Jaci Matlock. Needing downtime wasn’t much of an explanation for why a young, good-looking woman would come to a secluded island by herself.
Maybe she had some big decision she was wrestling with and wanted uninterrupted time to think, or she could be getting over a man. Losing someone you loved could make a loner of you. Who knew that better than him?
Raoul slowed as he caught sight of Alma a few yards ahead of him, crouched between two clusters of sea oats. She was down on her knees, and sand was flying around her as if she were in a whirlwind.
A few steps closer, and he could see the small plastic shovel moving so fast it seemed to be gas propelled. He doubted she was building sand castles, but then who knew with Alma Garcia?
The woman was nuts. He’d first realized that when he was about ten and she’d kept calling him by the name of the Santiago kid who’d drowned in the pool. And then there was the time he’d run into her on the beach and she’d said she was looking for Pilar and Reyna because they had run off from their lessons. That had been four years after the girls and their parents had disappeared.
As far as he could tell, Alma was getting worse all the time. The woman should be living in a home someplace where she could get medical attention, not roaming the beach alone all hours of the night. She was probably the reason Jaci had spooked so easily.
But he didn’t dare mention that to Carlos again, not after the way he’d exploded the last time Raoul had suggested the woman get psychiatric help.
Raoul didn’t even begin to understand the relationship between his uncle and Alma Garcia. Misguided loyalty, his grandfather had called it. Carlos thought Andres Santiago expected him to care for his children’s nanny, and Carlos had never failed his old boss, even if it meant staying on Cape Diablo and looking after Alma until one of them died.
Raoul planned to make sure that didn’t happen, which was why he was here.
JACI WENT TO BED AT NINE, mainly because there was nothing better to do. Yawning, she stretched between the crisp white sheets, only to have macabre images of blood splatters start creeping through her mind. Two people had been shot and killed in the boathouse, one at much closer range than the other. Two and only two, though four had disappeared. There might also have been two shooters, one taller than the other, or else the killer had changed positions or been struggling with one of the victims when the gun went off.
That was as much as she could be sure of from the photos of the splatters—or at least relatively certain. It was unfortunate that some of the blood hadn’t been collected and preserved.
Not that they had any DNA from Andres or Medina to compare it with, but if the samples from the boathouse had included the blood of Andres’s daughters, DNA tests would have indicated the relationship.
Jaci’s mind went back to the police reports, most of which she’d memorized.
The beds of the Santiago children were unmade. The sheets, blanket and pillowcase had been stripped from one bed. Even the pillow was missing. The second bed was mussed, with the covers pulled back as if it had been slept in. The bed in the master bedroom was neatly made. There was no sign of a struggle and no blood found anywhere inside the villa.
And after that night neither the girls nor their parents were ever seen again. So the questions remained: had Andres and Medina been murdered in the boathouse upon returning from a Mexican Independence