Murder in Dubrovnik by Zoran Basich

Author:Zoran Basich [Basich, Zoran]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-05-16T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 32

Marko spent the night in the safe house, lying in bed and unable to sleep. Dragin's words kept playing in his head like a looped recording that he couldn't shut off: The girl is dead...Go home Bell. There's nothing for you here.

He was up and out of the house early, checking on Suzana before he left. He looked through her partially open door and saw her sprawled in bed before slipping out of the house.

A furtive walk through the cool cobblestoned streets of Dubrovnik, quick looks out of the corner of his eyes for sudden flashes of movement, the materialization of a threat.

Sylvia answered the door and let him in without a word. Instantly Marko recognized that something had changed. Some vital life force had seeped out of her, obvious not just in her vacant stare. Her entire being radiated something like exhaustion, but deeper, as though she had been fighting off terrible thoughts she now knew were destined to consume her.

“I had your phone records checked,” Marko said. “You got here more than a week after Amanda. Why would you lie about something like that?”

Sylvia was staring at him, gears slowly beginning to turn despite her despair.

“You didn’t want me to know you got here after Amanda,” Marko continued. “That would have made something too clear. What was it, Sylvia? Was it because Amanda was the reason you came to Dubrovnik, and not the other way around? What did Amanda tell you when you talked to her from San Francisco? What was it that brought you here?”

“Please, Marko. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Marko started to walk toward the door.

“Where are you going?”

“Back to San Francisco,” he said. “I’m done.”

Sylvia said nothing, calling his bluff. He reached the door and opened it. He didn’t know what he would do if she let him leave. Maybe get on a plane for San Francisco. He didn’t know what else he could do. All he knew was he was sick of Sylvia’s lies.

Just as he was about to walk through the door and out of her life, she called out.

“Wait. Please. Don’t leave.”

He turned. “Answer my question. What did Amanda tell you that brought you to Dubrovnik?”

Her shoulders sagged, then shook softly. “She asked me if I knew who Alexander Maximov was.”

Marko took a step forward. “Why?”

She kept her eyes on the ground, and Marko understood that the change in her demeanor was caused by a sense of shame that seemed to envelop her.

She sat down across from him. Her fierce light had left her eyes. It seemed to Marko that it was only in that moment that she finally understood the gravity of Amanda’s disappearance.

“It’s amazing how things can start,” she said in a small, weak voice. “They seem like nothing at first. She thought our paths may have crossed somehow, or that I had heard of him. I’m rich, and he’s rich. And Amanda believes there’s a rich person’s club. She is innocent in that way,” she said with a sudden burst of tender affection that caused tears to begin spilling from her lower eyelids.

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