"It was an accident," Alonso insists.
"Then it will be easy."
Chapter Nineteen
"Emma, it was an accident."
There are those words again. It's Bellamy saying them to me this time, but they don't mean any more to me than when they came from the sleek, polished manager. I shake my head, pacing back and forth across her room. The police dismissed us from the scene an hour ago, and we came straight here. Within just a few minutes of us getting back inside, room service arrived with trays of food for us. It feels like a subtle form of damage control from the resort.
I'm sorry you saw a corpse floating in the pool, I hope these crepes provide you comfort.
“There's something else going on,” I tell her. “That wasn't just an accident.”
“Why not?” Eric asks. “Even the police investigators agreed with the initial explanation. Rosa went out to the pool for a swim, slipped, hit her head, and ended up drowning. It's awful, but it's not unheard of.”
“Maybe,” I admit. “But it still doesn't feel right. I just can't see that girl dying that way. You heard what Alonso told them. Rosa swam every morning. Every morning she went out to that same pool. You're going to tell me that all of a sudden, she ends up dying in a freak accident in the pool she swims in every single day?”
“That's what makes it an accident,” Bellamy says. “You can do the same thing over and over, but that doesn't stop things from going wrong. Anybody can slip, especially if it's actually somewhere near water.”
“No,” I insist. “I walked up there on that deck. You did, too. It wasn't slippery at all. A resort like this makes sure their pool deck isn't slippery. People throwing down this kind of money to stay at a resort aren't going to want to end up on their asses in front of everybody when they're showing off their new bathing suit. And that's another thing. Did you see what she was wearing?”
“A… bathing suit,” Eric says, drawing out the words because he doesn't understand their significance.
“A really sexy bathing suit,” Bellamy adds.
"Exactly. That's not the kind of bathing suit somebody wears to do a few laps around the pool at dawn. That's a bathing suit meant to be seen by someone else."
Bellamy looks like she's thinking about this for a fraction of a second, then shakes her head again.
“Not necessarily. You can't judge what happened based on what she was wearing. Maybe that is the type of suit she wore every morning to do her laps because it made her feel good about herself, and she wanted to start her day off well. Or, from a less perky perspective, maybe it was a suit she didn't like the way she looked in, so she wore it as her motivation to work out harder every day."
"No. She was in full makeup. Her hair had styling product in it."
"For all you know, maybe that’s just what she did. There's an agent in the fraud division named Jojo. She's a perfectly nice-looking woman. Clean, put together, obviously takes care of herself. She was out sick with the flu for almost three weeks last year. So I went to her place to bring her some soup. She opened the door in pajamas, slippers, a grimy bathrobe, and a full face of makeup. Far more makeup than she ever wore to the office. She told me she has always made it a point to wear makeup on her sick days because it makes her feel better. She's been doing it since she was in middle school, and her mother got her mascara for the first time."
"That seems like a lot of extra effort she's putting herself through when she's already sick. The last time I had the flu, I had to build up the energy just to roll over in bed. No way I could go through all that to put on makeup. And even worse… wash it off," I say.
"And that's fine, too. The point is, people wear makeup for all sorts of reasons. Jojo’s makeup didn't mean she wasn't sick, and Rosa's bathing suit didn't mean she wasn't swimming alone."
"I know that. But it doesn't mean she was, either. It's something to think about. If she was planning on meeting up with someone for an early morning swim or was already with someone, even if it was an accident, that someone isn't saying anything," I say.
"That's a lot of vague terms for one sentence," she replies.
"And yet you know exactly what I'm saying. Somebody knows something. Somebody either saw her last night or this morning or was planning on seeing her this morning. And yet they haven't said anything to the police or anybody else. What is it that they're not saying? What do they know?”
“Maybe they don't know anything. Even if she was supposed to meet somebody this morning, either they were already gone by the time she went into that water, or they were late and with all the craziness going on around finding her body, didn't want to get involved,” she theorizes. “Especially if it was the guy we saw her with. We already know she isn't supposed to be hooking up with guests. I'm sure she told him that by now, too. He's not going to volunteer that information.”
"Why not? It's not like Alonso can do anything to her now."
"Be honest, Emma. Don't think just about her death. Think about the entire situation. Try to see it from his perspective. If you were in a secretive relationship you knew probably wasn't going to last more than a handful of days anyway and the person you were in a relationship with ended up dying in an accident, would you want to rush forward and
