It took a long time to finally get to the restaurant, located in the old town of Puerto Vallarta, despite the driver cutting everyone off along the way. You either drove aggressively around here or you didn’t drive at all.
“Thank you,” she said to me as I took her arm and helped her out of the cab. When she straightened up she looked at the place and made an impressed face. “Wow. You know, I’ve never been here before and I’ve lived in PV for a long time.”
“First time for everything then.”
I picked the place because it looked a bit different from the tourist traps in the downtown area. There wasn’t much to the outside except for a tall stone fence topped with green, strangling vines and flowers that bloomed like white and magenta cotton balls. But on the other side of the cast-iron gate was a different story.
I helped her over there and a waiter opened it up, giving us a hearty welcome to Coconut Joes. I gave him the reservation name and he led us through tables with ivory-lace tablecloths, past a clear blue pool with koi fish and a waterfall, under dramatic palm fronds and all the way to a table in the back corner with a candle on it. The place wasn’t anything too outrageous or stuffy but it was just classy enough.
“Again, wow,” Alana said as I helped her into seat. I was starting to like being her nurse. She looked around, her cheeks glowing beautifully in the candlelight. “This is something.”
“Something good?” I asked as the server poured us bottled water.
“More than good,” she said. “The guys I date never bring me places like this.”
Something pinched in my chest. “Oh? They take you to McDonalds?”
She gave me a look. “Most of the men I dated were pilots. They would take me somewhere really snobby and expensive to try and seem better than they were.” She took a polite sip of her water and straightened her napkin on her lap. Every day, her pain seemed to be easing, her movements becoming more fluid. “Then the next night they would take some other stupid flight attendant to the same place.”
As much as I felt an unjustified hit of jealousy, she was giving me some information, something I could work with.
“So I guess there’s a lot of drama in the workplace, huh?” I said casually, eying the waiter who was approaching us with menus in hand. In the background “Morena de Mi Corazon” started to play from the speakers. “Spurned lovers and revenge in the air.”
She laughed. “No, not really. It was my fault. Rookie mistake to date a pilot … even though I did more than a few times.” She looked away, embarrassed. “Most guys I date are a mistake but no one seems to get hurt.”
So that probably ruled out the whole spurned lover angle. Not that I thought an ex-lover could or would attempt to have her taken out and for that amount of money. Love made people do crazy fucking things but that would have been a first in my books. Besides, if she did have an obsessed ex-boyfriend then I was sure I’d find out about him sooner or later.
The waiter came by and told us the specials. I ordered for the both of us – seared Ahi – because I’d never done that before, not even with Carmen, and made sure he kept the bottles of wine coming.
She was about three glasses of wine in, giggly and eating her fish with gusto when I started pressing her.
“So do you have any siblings?”
The smile seemed to vanish right off her face. There. I had something there. No matter what her answer was, I hit a nail.
“I have a twin sister and a brother,” she answered simply.
“Oh? And where do they live? What do they do?”
She relaxed her jaw a bit and took a bite of her rice. “My sister, Marguerite, she lives in New York. Goes to film school.”
Hmmm. That placed her out of range and a student at that.
“And your brother?”
“He lives around here.”
“In Puerto Vallarta?”
She shot me a wary look. “Around here. But he’s an asshole and I’d rather not talk about him.”
I raised my brow. “An asshole? What makes you say that?”
“I just do,” she said stubbornly. Then she sighed. “He just is. Every family has a black sheep right? Well that’s him.”
“What’s his name?”
She bit her lip and said, “Juan.”
I didn’t know her well enough to tell if she was lying or not. I’m not sure why she would lie about her own brother.
I pressed it further. “What does he do?”
“He’s in importing and exporting. Trade with America. That sort of thing.”
Well, we all knew what that meant down here. Running drugs, like everyone else. Still, that gave me something to go on. Of course the name Juan didn’t help me much.