“Thanks,” Hannah said to Merry once Silvio had left.
“No problem,” she replied, “but I would still sit somewhere else. There are lots of tattlers around here and if it gets back to him that you took the seat anyway, he might hold it against you.”
“What would he do then?” Hannah asked, placing her tray one table over and sitting down.
“Hard to say,” Merry said, sitting down opposite her. “He might pee in your bed. That wouldn’t be a first. He might smash a chair through the window, which also wouldn’t be the first time. Best not find out if you don’t have to.”
“It sounds like maybe Silvio should be in the Assistance Wing.”
“He bounces back and forth,” Merry explained. “But he’s had a good last month on this side. It would be a shame if he couldn’t stick around.”
“Any idea why he’s so fixated on that table?”
“That’s where he was last year when he learned his mom had died of cancer,” Merry said. “His dad told him that she’d gone to heaven and every time a wave crashed on the beach, it was her sending a kiss down to him. So he likes to sit there and watch them crash.”
“I see,” Hannah said, proud of her self-control earlier, “In that case I’m glad I didn’t throw my coffee in his face.”
“You’d do that?” Merry asked, her eyes wide with shock.
“Only if I felt threatened,” she said, picking up the cup to take sip and noticing Merry flinch. “Don’t worry, you’re safe. You don’t seem like the threatening type.”
Merry beamed with happiness at the comment and much to her surprise, Hannah felt an odd, warm stirring in her gut that she imagined others might call affection. Was she actually making a friend?
Who would have guessed that all it would take was two weeks of self-imposed commitment to a psychiatric facility?
CHAPTER TWENTY THREE
Neither of them said a word about last night.
Jessie thought about it in the shower, at breakfast, and on the walk to Bridget Newhouse’s casita. She would have liked to have confided in Kat but her friend was on a well-deserved break, going on a coastal morning hike, and was unreachable.
Besides, as much as Kat’s presence might have eased tensions a bit, what Jessie really wanted was to talk to her fiancé about all this. But if Ryan wasn’t going to say anything, neither was she. Maybe he didn’t know what to say yet. Or maybe he just didn’t want to get into it when they were in the middle of the case. That was fine with her. She needed to keep her focus on finding out if Scott Newhouse was murdered and by whom. Her personal issues could wait.
As they approached the Newhouse casita, they reviewed the plan.
“We need to get Bridget to retrace Scott’s steps from the start of the trip,” Ryan said. “We don’t know much about what happened on the day they checked in, other than their appointment with Cedric Cleaver. Maybe they went somewhere or did something that could shed new light on what happened.”
“You think we might have missed something?” Jessie asked, glad to get into the rhythms of the case and away from anything personal.
“I think we don’t even know enough to determine if we might have,” he replied, following suit. “I want to at least have a new avenue to pursue when Chief Laird calls.”
“When do you expect that to happen?”
Ryan looked at his watch.
“It’s just after nine now,” he said. “I’d say we have until about noon if we’re lucky.”
“Maybe we should ask Captain Decker to run interference for us,” Jessie suggested.
“I would,” Ryan said as they arrived at the Newhouse casita, “but now that Laird has a direct pipeline to us, he’s not going to be put off by Decker.”
Spike, the security guard outside the casita this morning, stepped aside and Ryan knocked on the door. It didn’t take long for Bridget to open it. She was dressed in jeans and an oversized sweatshirt and didn’t have on any makeup. Her eyes were puffy and red and her skin looked pasty. There didn’t seem to be anyone else there.
“Come on in,” she said, opening the door wide.
“Where are your friends?” Jessie asked.
“Ellie and Matt are at their casita, per Detective Hernandez’s orders,” she said, her voice sob-strained and weak. “Malcolm and Abby said they wanted to give me some private time, but the way they were going at it in the club last night, I think they wanted the private time.”
“So you were here alone all night?” Jessie wondered, surprised at the callousness of her friends.
“Yes, but it was okay,” Bridget insisted. “I actually needed some time by myself to process all this. Getting drunk or relentlessly bucked up by people isn’t going to solve anything. Having said that, I was hoping you’d have some information for me. My sister’s flying in from New Jersey today to help me but she won’t get here until early evening. The nanny’s been holding down the fort but I can’t ask her to keep this secret from my kids much longer. It’s not fair. I need to tell them before they hear it on the news or someone lets it slip out. Plus, I have to start making plans for Scott’s funeral. It’s so weird to hear those words come out of my mouth.”
“We get how difficult a time this is, Mrs. Newhouse,” Ryan said sympathetically. “That’s why we wanted to see you early to get the ball rolling today. We were hoping to go over your timeline on Thursday, the day you arrived. It’s possible that some event or interaction your husband had played a role in what happened to him. Something that might seem small to you could prove important. Are you up for that?”
“Sure,” she replied, though it was apparent that she wasn’t. She sat down heavily on the couch and they took chairs opposite her.
“Okay,” Ryan launched in, pretending not to notice her exhaustion. “You arrived on Thursday, afternoon, correct?”
“Yes, but we got an early check-in around 1 p.m.,” she said, ‘we wanted to maximize our time.”
“So what did you do after you checked in?” Jessie asked.
Bridget thought about it for a second.
“First we grabbed some drinks from one of the pool bars. Then we took a walk on the beach for a while, maybe an hour?”
“What about after that?”
“We came back here to change,” she answered. “We had a couple’s counseling session that afternoon.”
“Oh,” Ryan said as if this was news to him. “Was there anything unusual about the session?”
She shook her head.
“No,” she answered firmly. “I know it sounds weird: come to an exclusive resort and almost immediately dive into therapy. But like I said before, that was kind of the point of this retreat for us and our friends—to reconnect with our loved ones.”
“What can you tell us about the session?” Jessie asked, trying not to sound too intrusive.
“I’d prefer to keep the details private,” Bridget replied, though not defensively, “but I assure you that there was nothing discussed that we hadn’t addressed before. There were no shocking revelations or massive breakthroughs. We didn’t walk out of there on the verge of a divorce or run back here to hop into bed. It was just an opportunity to improve our communication with each other.”