Chapter 9 #2
“I don’t think they come alone,” he pointed out. “Maybe they come with a girlfriend or a wife, but I’m not sure how many guys would come here without a partner.”
Eden laughed. “Or to find a partner.”
“There’s that too,” he agreed, nodding, “and I have no clue what the percentage for that would be. It would make more sense if it was maybe a work thing or, you know, a girlfriend thing.”
“Maybe.” She wasn’t sure what to think about it, but, ever since the lunch invitation, she felt a little uncomfortable, and all the ease that she had felt here before was dampened.
He smiled, clearly noticing her discomfort. “Just relax.”
She’d been staring over at the main table. “I guess it’s bad when I’m so obviously staring at him, huh?” she asked, chuckling.
“I don’t know about bad, but it shows you’re interested, which may get you a second invitation. Or you are curious, in which case, you’ll probably still get another invitation.”
She winced. “Not sure I like the connotation behind either of those.”
“And maybe it’s all good,” he suggested. “I wouldn’t worry about it either way.”
She sighed as she looked over at him. “You make it sound so easy.”
“It is easy.”
“But what if he had something to do with her death?”
He faced her and then replied, “If that’s the case, then we obviously don’t want you to have anything to do with him.
However, we don’t know that’s the case, and, considering that we have no evidence of any wrongdoing on his part, that would be something of a miscarriage of justice to blame him for it. ”
“But …” she began, noting the look on Eric’s face.
“Was Debbie the kind of person—” Then he frowned and answered his own question. “Of course she was.”
“What do you mean?”
“She was the kind of person who would immediately take him up on his lunch invite, wasn’t she?”
Eden considered his question, then slowly nodded. “Yes, absolutely. And they were smitten.” She glanced in Richard’s direction. “At least I thought he was.”
Later that night Eric knocked on her bedroom door, and, when she opened it up, he asked, “Feel like going for a walk?”
She frowned. “I’m feeling more tired than I would have thought, and it just seems a little harder to stay awake.”
“That’s okay,” he replied. “I just wanted to go out and maybe take a lap around the grounds again. You can stay in, if you aren’t feeling up to it.”
“Nah, I’ll join you.” She fell into step beside him, and, when they got outside to the beautiful grounds, the evening light was settling in around them. She whispered, “It really is magical.”
“It is,” he agreed.
“If only he could bottle this, right?”
They heard voices up ahead, so they turned to a different corner, so they didn’t have to deal with people. “You won’t exactly get your investigation going this way, will you?” she asked, half joking.
He smiled at that but nodded. “That’s very true. Do you want to go back around?”
“No, I really don’t,” she muttered. “I would much rather have nothing to do with this whole thing.”
“I’m not sure I can promise you that,” he stated, “but we can certainly avoid some of it right now.”
They walked down to a little rise with a big bench. They sat down, and she gasped as she took in the valley view in front of them. “Wow. I didn’t see this earlier.”
“I didn’t either,” he said, as he looked all around the area. “It truly is spectacular, isn’t it?”
That was one word for it. She was still searching for the right words, when they heard a raised voice somewhat in the distance behind them.
Eric stood up and looked around.
She frowned as she asked, “Do we need to do something about that?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “They don’t seem that angry, and nobody’s calling for help. I’m not exactly sure what we’re looking at but—” His attention appeared to be completely directed at whatever was going on. Still, he turned and sat back down again.
She smiled at him. “It’s really hard for you to turn it off, isn’t it?”
“Particularly when I’m here specifically not turning it off,” he stated pointedly.
She frowned and responded, “Good point.”
“And I’m not trying to remind you,” he muttered, with a groan. “I was just, in a way, trying to excuse the behavior, which is so ingrained in me by now that I’m not sure I could turn it off if I wanted to.”
“I think that’s part of the point I was trying to make. Turning it off is probably an unreasonable expectation.”
“I’m not sure it’s something you should be worrying about either,” he added, turning to her.
She smiled. “It’s obvious that is who you are, and this is a huge part of what makes your world function. If so, then that’s just fine.”
He just smiled at that and didn’t say anything but tried to relax again. After a while of peaceful silence, he asked, “You ready to go up to bed?”
“I think I can sleep now, yeah.” She yawned several times as they walked back.
He pointed off to the side and said, “A little shortcut path is over here, if you want to take it back?”
She nodded, and, since it was a little bit darker, he looped her arm through his so she could keep a better footing.
As they came out on the other side, he stopped.
She looked down, not sure what the problem was, only to see something in the distance.
Just then, he let go of her arm and bolted into a run.
She followed, close on his heels, and, when she caught up, she found him bent down beside someone.
He turned to Eden, frowning. “She’s ill, seriously ill.
” He quickly pulled out his phone and called for an ambulance.
After that, some serious chaos ensued, as everybody came running at the calls for help.
When she saw Richard running too, she pointed to where Eric was still beside the woman and explained, “We found this woman in the shrubs. She collapsed.”
“Oh dear,” he muttered, as he bent down at her side and checked her over.
One of the observers asked, “Is she one of the attendees from the meditations?”
Eden looked over at him and replied, “I have no idea.” She looked back at Richard and asked, “Do you know?”
“She is,” he confirmed, as he continued to check her over. “She’s breathing, but it also looks as if her condition has worsened.” He looked over at them and shared, “It’s not public knowledge, but she’s dealing with stage four cancer. I believe it involves the liver, but I could be wrong.”
The ambulance arrived, and it took a few minutes for her to be assessed, to be loaded onto the gurney, then taken away. After they left, Eden looked around and saw that everyone was staring at Richard, questions in their eyes.
“Obviously this is not the energy we want here,” Richard announced to the crowd, with a sad smile, “but it can’t be helped in this instance.
I suggest you all head back to your rooms, meditate tonight to help ease some of this energy that we’ve now been exposed to, and try to relax.
In the morning, we’ll do a special ceremony to help clear away this energy again.
” And, with that, he motioned for everyone to return to their hotel rooms.
As Eden looked around, expecting to find Eric, she saw no sign of him.
She took several quick glances around, but Richard was ushering her along with the others, away from all the negative energy, as he put it.
Sure enough, as they got closer to the hotel itself, the energy felt a little bit better, a little bit calmer, though there was still a buzz in the air, and people continued talking excitedly.
Richard was trying to shut that down, and he quickly got people heading off to their rooms. As soon as Eden made it to her suite, she texted to see where Eric had gone. She tried a few times but got no answer from him.
Frowning, she checked the hallway, waiting until Richard had disappeared after trying to send the other women back to their rooms. It seemed to her that several of them were clinging to him, as if he were a lifeline in a shocking scenario.
He wasn’t trying to disengage himself, but it was obvious that he was also looking for a bit of space himself.
After they had finally all disappeared, Eden picked up the phone and tried calling Eric again.
With no answer, she sent him a flurry of texts, getting no response. So she sent one last message. You better respond, or I’m coming back outside. That did the trick.
He responded almost immediately, with a single phrase. Stay there. That was it, and, not sure what to make of it, she sat here in their suite and waited for him to show up.
It took an hour, and, when she got one look at him, she pulled him into her room. “Oh my God, what happened to you?” He was covered head to toe in dirt, as if he had tumbled down a hill.
He looked at her and groaned. “One answer is that I fell.”
She raised an eyebrow. “What’s the other one?”
“The other answer is that I was pushed.”
*
Eric sat gingerly on the small chair in Eden’s bedroom, knowing that he was probably spreading dirt everywhere.
She just stared at him as she came out of her bathroom with a towel and handed it to him. “Are you sure you shouldn’t see a doctor?” she asked for the umpteenth time.
He brushed off her concerns. “No, I’m fine.”
“Are you sure?” she asked again.
He looked over at her and smiled. “Thank you for being concerned, but, right now, I think that’s the last thing I need.”
She just nodded and sat down beside him. “You seriously think you were pushed?”
“Yes, I seriously think I was pushed,” he declared. “The problem is, I didn’t see anybody, so I can’t tell anybody who it was.”
“Of course, and if somebody pushed you—”
“Not if,” he declared. “I was pushed, no doubt.”
“Right.” She grimaced. “I’m not trying to suggest otherwise. I’m just trying to figure out what may have happened.”
“When you figure it out, let me know,” he replied grumpily.
In fact, he was mostly just pissed that it had happened and that he didn’t see it coming. He wasn’t expecting that kind of attack.
“Tell me where you were and how this came about.”
As it was, at least the events were something he should clear up in his own mind, so he walked her through the chain of events after the scenario involving the woman.
He added, “I wanted to go look in the direction where we heard the yelling and see if there was any chance that it involved this woman. However, no cameras were anywhere around this area that I could see, and that alone makes me suspicious.”
She rolled her eyes at that. “Of course. Once a detective, always a detective, right?”
He snorted. “I didn’t find very much in the way of pathways in that area. Not very much in the way of anything, to be honest.”
“So that’s not a bad thing, is it?” Eden asked.
“No, not if you want a corner of the world to keep to yourself, so that’s the corner you’ll make mischief in,” he suggested.
“The fact of the matter is, that is the corner where the woman collapsed. It’s also the corner where there’s that little bit of a drop-off.
Remember when we sat on the bench, and it was on a hill? ”
She nodded.
“That’s where I went over. I came up around that same area but approached it from the other side, still looking for any sign of what may have gone on. Then I felt a hard push between my shoulder blades and went over. The thing that gets me is that I didn’t hear footsteps.”
She thought about it. “And we did hear footsteps of those other people when we were walking,” she noted softly.
“Exactly, given the trees, I didn’t hear even the crunch of the leaves underfoot.
Not the squeak of shoes. Not the rustle of clothes.
I heard nothing. Now, I won’t suggest that I couldn’t have been too embroiled, and maybe I was just too busy and missed something.
I mean, obviously something happened, and, if I missed it, I missed it,” he conceded, waving a hand around, “but I also saw no sign that someone waited around to see if I was okay.”
She winced at that and then slowly nodded. “If it had been accidental, somebody would have come looking or would have called out for help.”
“Exactly,” he agreed, “and you can bet that nobody did.” He looked down at his clothes in disgust. “I didn’t bring all that many clothes with me, and this will all need to hit the laundry.”
“You can probably brush some of it off,” she suggested, yet doubt surfaced as she studied his clothing, “but you would definitely feel better if you changed clothes.”
“I have another change,” he noted. “I just don’t have many of them.”
“Ah, so in other words, if this happens again, we’re going home early.”
“No,” he declared. “I’ll just have to wear the same damn clothes a second time. Now, if something suspicious wasn’t going on, I would have peacefully made my way through the night. Right now, however—”
“You’re pissed,” she said, with a nod.
“I am pissed, and I have a reason to be,” he stated, “and the fact that this happened here is just making me even angrier.”
“Is there another place for it to happen?” she asked, frowning at him. Then she held out a bottle of water for him.
He accepted the water, had a big drink, and handed it back to her. “Thanks. I forget just how thirsty this work makes me.”
She smiled. “I don’t know that it’s work necessarily,” she pointed out. “I was looking for you out there, but you didn’t show up, and Richard kept trying to get us back into the hotel and to calm down. Some people were a little more excited over this turn of events than maybe was good for them.”
Eric nodded. “When something like this happens, a lot of people get excited. Life is simple, and, if they don’t have a lot going on in their world, this is exciting stuff.”
She winced. “That poor woman though.”
“I know, and it was easy for Richard to say that she had cancer, but that’s nobody’s business but hers, if it was even true,” he noted, shaking his head.
“Anyway, I have sent off a request for information on her from one of my cohorts, and, depending on when they get back to me, we may or may not get a little more information on her condition.”
“Do you really think something nefarious happened?”
He frowned as he faced her. “What I can’t get out of my head is the fact that we did hear somebody having an argument right before we found her,” he reminded her.
“We don’t know who it was though.”
“That’s what I was trying to find out, and, no, I didn’t manage to do so.”
“Of course not,” she muttered. “If it were that easy to find out, that wouldn’t have made sense either.”
He stared at her and eventually nodded. “To a certain extent, yes, but most criminals don’t know how to clean up after themselves.”
“Or to even care to,” she added, nodding. “So, you’re thinking that maybe it was deliberate?”
“I don’t have a clue,” he admitted. “All I know is that the evening didn’t turn out the way we expected it to.”
“No,” she replied. “And I don’t think it ended up the way he expected either.”