Fields' Guide to Abduction, - [famous ebook reader TXT] 📗

“Marta!” I pulled on her shoulder. Please, God, let me be wrong.

Marta rolled over onto her back. A residue of foam crusted her lips and her eyes were open and sightless. In her hand she clutched her phone—almost as if she’d died calling for help.

My stomach somersaulted three times—cattawump, cattawump, cattawump—and rejected my morning coffee. Violently. All over the tiles. My knees gave out. I thumped onto the floor hard enough to rattle my bones. Oh. My. God. I wasn’t wrong.

This couldn’t be happening. Not again.

This had to be a bad dream. Except, it wasn’t. Dreams don’t smell like regurgitated coffee and Marta’s body still lay on the bed. I crawled (I shook too hard to stand) to the land line and dialed zero.

“Buenos días.” The woman who answered the phone sounded as bright and hopeful as a sunrise.

It was not a good morning.

“I…” there wasn’t enough air in my lungs. I inhaled through my mouth. “I…”

“Cómo puedo ayudarle?” Concern colored her voice.

“I…” I clamped my hand over my lips, covering a second wave of nausea.

“Está bien?” She sounded worried now.

No. I was not bien. There was a corpse staring at me and I couldn’t breathe. “Please, send help.” The three words emptied my lungs.

“Qué pasa?”

So many things. I forced more air into my lungs. “This is Poppy Fields. Marta Vargas is dead in the extra bedroom.”

“Que?”

“She’s dead. Dea…” My voice broke. What was the right word? Muerte? “Marta Vargas es muerta.”

Apparently my awful Spanish was good enough. The operator gasped.

“Por favor, eh, ayuda, ayuda!”

“Si, señora.”

“Gracias.”

I hung up the phone and curled into a fetal position on the floor.

This was bad. So, so, so bad. Marta Vargas (poor Marta) was the second body I’d found in a short period of time. The police called that a pattern.

I hauled myself off the floor and stumbled to the steps. Clutching the bannister like a life-preserver, I tripped down the stairs and opened the front door.

Then I retreated to the steps. I sank onto the third stair and waited for help. Déja vu—especially when it came to bodies—was a terrible thing.

“Miss Fields? Señorita Fields?”

“In here.”

Two men wearing poplin suits pushed through the open front door and stepped inside.

A dapper man regarded my stained nightgown with distaste. “Miss Fields?”

“Yes.”

“I am Carlos Silva. I manage the resort. This—” he waved his hand at the other man “—is Oscar Valdez, head of security.”

I nodded mutely—saying pleased to meet you seemed wrong. Plus, the air wasn’t mixing properly in my lungs and little stars were dancing around me.

“You told the receptionist that Marta Vargas was dead in your villa.”

I nodded.

“Where is the body?”

“Upstairs.”

Valdez slipped past me and climbed the stairs.

“You’re sure it’s Miss Vargas?” Señor Silva wrung his hands. “You’re sure she’s dead?”

I stood. “I am.”

“What happened?”

Standing had been a mistake. I sank onto the couch (sitting helped with the stars), told Señor Silva about Marta’s unexpected arrival at the villa, and repeated every word she’d said to me.

“Did she tell you the man’s name?” Señor Valdez stood on the stairs and mopped his forehead with a handkerchief.

“I assumed it was Javier. I saw them together yesterday.”

“Javier Diaz?” Valdez looked positively green.

So did Silva.

Asparagus green.

“Who is Javier Diaz?”

Neither man answered. They just exchanged a look. With each other. I was on the outside looking in.

“Who is he?” I insisted.

“He might be a senior executive in the Sinaloa organization.” Señor Silva’s voice was hardly a whisper and the green of his skin had morphed from asparagus to avocado.

Valdez grimaced and wiped his brow again.

“A senior executive with the Sinaloa organization? You mean a drug lord with the Sinaloa Cartel?” Damn. “You have to call the police.”

Whatever shade was greener than avocado—that was the shade Silva and Diaz turned next.

I too was feeling green. I’d shared a pool deck with a drug lord. I’d shared a drink with a drug lord. Those men with the bellies and the mustaches and the tattoos—they were probably sicarios. Killers. And there was a dead woman in my upstairs bedroom. A woman who had stormed away from them. A two-year-old could make the connection. I glared at Silva. “You invited a drug lord to your grand opening?”

“No.” Silva held up his hands as if he were warding off evil. “I didn’t invite Diaz. He informed me he was coming.”

“And you let him?”

“One doesn’t say no to Javier Diaz.”

I had.

And now there was a dead woman in my villa.

And the two men in front of me didn’t seem to have a plan for removing her.

“Someone needs to call the police. Now.”

Looking very much as if he’d rather chew off his arm, Valdez pulled a phone out of his jacket pocket and dialed.

Twenty minutes later, another man in another poplin suit arrived. He regarded me with the exact same mixture of suspicion and derision as Detective Parks had. “Detective Gonzales.” He flashed a badge.

I seriously hoped Detectives Parks and Gonzales never met.

“Where is the body?” Gonzales demanded.

“I’ll show you.” Señor Valdez waved toward the stairs.