Page 56 of The Resort

“The police came here yesterday evening. I called Logan after it happened, and he said you were ill and not to bother you, so I figured I’d wait until this morning. You feelin’ any better?”

Despite the kindness of his question, irritation lifts the tiny hairs up off my arms. How can he be interested in anything besides the news of the investigation?

“I’m fine. So what happened?” The words come out clipped, impatient.

Still, he pauses.

“Doug!”

“Ah yeah, my bad. I’m checking the radar. We’ve got a ripper of a storm coming in.” And then finally, he tells me. “The police said that Sengphet confessed.”

Suddenly, the patio rocks beneath me like the deck of a boat tossed in rough waters. I grasp onto the railing in front of me in a futile attempt to steady myself.

I should be relieved at hearing someone else named as the killer.But this doesn’t make sense. There’s no way Sengphet is capable of killing Daniel.

“Sengphet?” I force my lips around his name, which comes out shakily. “As in the waiter at the Tiki Palms?”

“Yeah, can you believe it? I wouldn’t have pegged him for the type. Frederic is mad as a cut snake, understandably.”

The image of Sengphet’s face flashes across my mind. That perpetual smile as he darts around the restaurant, delivering every order with his palms pressed together and a small bow in the customers’ direction. Always so gentle, so kind. The only time I’ve ever seen his brow even furrow is when he’s stretching to understand a guest’s English.

“But wh-why? Why would they think he did this?”

“The police said it was a drug deal gone wrong. I guess Sengphet was dealing. Daniel must have tried to rip him off or something.”

“They’re sure?” I ask. There’s no part of me that can reconcile cheerful Sengphet with a drug dealer turned murderer.

“Yeah, they said he confessed,” Doug assures me. “I mean it makes sense. Remember how Frederic couldn’t find Sengphet before the staff meeting? Apparently that was when Daniel was killed.”

I think back to the other night. Brooke suggested that Daniel might have been meeting someone. I just never thought it would be Sengphet.

“But he has a family back in Laos.” I recall one morning at the Tiki Palms when he explained to me in broken English how he sent money home to his wife and kid.

“I guess Frederic wasn’t paying him enough,” Doug suggests. “He had to find cash somehow.”

It makes sense, at least at surface level. But Sengphet, really? I just can’t make it fit in my mind.

“Wait,” I say as a thought clicks in my brain. “Sengphet doesn’t speak Thai, right? And his English barely extends beyond the dishes and drinks on the Tiki Palms’s menu. How could he have possibly confessed everything to the police?”

I can almost hear Doug’s shrug down the line. “Dunno, but I guess he did.”

But who was he working for? And what went so wrong between him and Daniel that he needed to kill him? And how—if at all—does this connect back to Lucy?

I’m about to voice these questions, but Doug has started making a clicking noise with his tongue. I’ve worked with him long enough to know that tic. He’s distracted, probably engrossed in the radar map again.

“Damn, this storm is looking really intense. It just keeps building. Anyway, Frederic and I are going to talk through this today. Try to figure out the best way for us to frame it so this doesn’t blow back on the resort. We might have to hire outside PR.”

I barely register his words. My mind is still locked on an image of Sengphet, smiling and cheerful.

“We’re not opening the shop today, so don’t worry about coming in. We can’t dive in this weather. Oh, and did you hear they’ve stopped the ferries to and from the island?”

I make a sound in response that I suppose could be mistaken for agreement. The news isn’t surprising. It’s not safe to take people out on the water during a storm like this. The island has stopped the ferry routes many times since I’ve been here, and it’s never been too much of a concern. I never had anywhere else to go. Butthis time, with everything that’s happened and now Sengphet’s arrest, it feels different. Like we’re isolated from the rest of the world.

Or trapped.

I look out again over the water that just a moment ago was basked in the glow of the red morning sky. But in the few minutes I’ve been on the phone, that glimmer has faded, the air now coated in a darker tint, the previously translucent waves now opaque, masking whatever the ocean hides below.

“You should stay home and prepare the house,” Doug says, breaking back into my thoughts. “Just keep your phone on. Frederic might need to call an ‘all hands on deck’ meeting later this morning to talk through ideas.”

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