Drowning Lessons Read online

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously.

  DROWNING LESSONS: A Red Frog Beach Mystery Book 1 Copyright @ 2019 Rachel Neuburger. All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  www.rachelneuburger.com

  ISBN: 978-1-7338378-0-4 (PRINT)

  ISBN: 978-1-7338378-1-1 (MOBI)

  ISBN: 978-1-7338378-2-8 (EPUB)

  Cover design by Tim Marrs

  This book is dedicated to John Reynolds, my everything…

  Acknowledgements

  I’m so excited that I am finally getting to write an acknowledgments page. I’ve been waiting for this a long time…

  I’ve had a lot of helping hands on this one. Thanks to Joe Roland and Marianna Kulukundis for their help at the beginning. Big love to my early readers: Mary Syler Lange, Peter Breger, Laurence Paone, and Colleen O’Donnell. Huge developmental thanks to Gordon Dahlquist and Michael McDonough. The lesson I learned from Michael, is that if someone like him pokes a small hole in a mystery, it all unravels. It’s come a long way from there.

  Thanks for the support and encouragement from my agents, Sharon Belcastro and Ella Marie Shupe, of the Belcastro Agency. Big ups to my original editor, Brenda Heald. And a million extra thanks to my copy editor, Meredith Rodriguez.

  For guiding me through insecurities and answering so many more questions than anyone should ever be required to answer, thanks to Gary Sunshine, Roland Scahill, Katerina Baker and Ned Livingston.

  Thanks to my amazing mother, Evelyn, who introduced me to mysteries, typewriters, and most importantly the confidence to know I could do this. And very grateful to my father, Alfred, as well, for always encouraging me to do what I loved. Lastly, thanks to my husband, John, for his love, support, and belief in me… and for walking with me on this journey, from one beach to the next.

  .

  Contents

  Chapter 1: Fake It ‘til You Make It

  Chapter 2: Safety First

  Chapter 3: Dr. Nolan At Your Service

  Chapter 4: Bocas, PD

  Chapter 5: Salty Tears

  Chapter 6: Murphy’s Law: Anything That Can Go Wrong, Will Go Wrong

  Chapter 7: Nobody Really Cares If You Don’t Go To The Party

  Chapter 8: Left Behind

  Chapter 9: What Fresh Hell is This? (Dorothy Parker)

  Chapter 10: Mad About Max

  Chapter 11: Don’t Lick The Frogs

  Chapter 12: Public Enemy #1

  Chapter 13: Give Me Back My Man

  Chapter 14: La Gruta

  Chapter 15: The Scavenger Hunt

  Chapter 16: Swimming Lessons, Part I

  Chapter 17: Little Blue Box

  Chapter 18: Oh So Very Over My Head

  Chapter 19: Something Like Square One

  Chapter 20: The View From Above

  Chapter 21: Flat Foot

  Chapter 22: Alone in Paradise

  Chapter 23: Dress Up

  Chapter 24: Swimming Lessons, Part 2

  Chapter 25: What Comes Around

  Chapter 26: You Have To Kiss A Lot Of Frogs To Find A Prince

  Chapter 27: What A Cliché

  Chapter 28: Let’s Twist Again….

  Chapter 29: Business As Usual

  Chapter 30: There Was A Little Girl

  Chapter 31: Phyllobates Terrebillis

  Chapter 32: Pretty Is As Pretty Does

  Chapter 33: Swimming Lessons, Part 3

  Chapter 34: Wh’appened?

  Chapter 35: Reluctant Wolf. That Is, Alone.

  Chapter 36: A Rose By Any Other Name Would Still Smell…

  Chapter 37: It Was a Dark and Stormy Night….

  Chapter 38: ’til Death Do Us Part…. (Bwahahahahahah)

  Chapter 39: The Buddy System

  Chapter 40: Swimming Lessons, Part 4

  Chapter 41: But What About Love?

  Chapter 42: See ya, wouldn’t want to be ya…

  EPILOGUE: Fall seven times and stand up eight (Japanese Proverb)

  About the Author

  DAY ONE

  Chapter 1: Fake It ‘til You Make It

  Our captain cut the motor of the speedboat about 300 feet from Cinco Puntos Beach and sat there, staring into the crystal waters off the Caribbean coast of Panama.

  The beach was one of the most magical places I had ever seen. It was a gorgeous, empty white sand beach lined with starfish so big that it would take two hands to pick one up.

  A good swimmer could have easily made it quickly to shore, but, as we sat under the noonday sun, the captain lied to my fellow passengers, muttering, “Piranhas.”

  The captain was lying at my personal misguided request. My next action wasn’t going to make anyone happy, and I wanted all the help I could get.

  Feeling relatively comfortable in my safety vest, I rose to look my guests in the eyes, teetering a bit due to my fear of water. “Welcome to Bocas del Toro,” I nervously said.

  As the Maid of Honor for my dearest friend Olivia’s wedding, I was one of four attendants put in charge of small groups of guests. Each group of invitees was scattered over four eco-resorts on two neighboring islands.

  The bridal party had flown down on Saturday to get the lay of the land, to indulge in a little relaxation, and to prep for the additional thirty-five guests who’d be joining us for the ultra-luxurious destination wedding.

  The other three bridesmaids and I were responsible for the constant entertainment of our little flocks. They were a high maintenance contingency. Entertaining them on a regular day would have been hard enough, but an all too recent break-up with Salty, my ridiculously-named ex of five years, made it all feel like a Herculean task.

  Currently it was my duty to ready these guests for the first in a packed schedule of five days of decadent events. The problem was just that it simply wasn’t going to start well.

  The five guests began sweating away, waiting for whatever I was going to say before I led them out of the perils of the piranhas (in my extensive research of safety of all the sea dwellers of the archipelago, piranhas were far from the worse, but I wasn’t going to get into that just then).

  “Come on, Lexie,” Dave, the groom Walter’s brother, said, “why aren’t we going to shore?”

  Good question.

  It’s because I have to perform my first official duty as a bridesmaid.

  Olivia was starting to get a bit out of control, I might be correct in saying. She’d given me a script to recite along the way to the first event, and it wasn’t going to be pretty.

  Olivia had been my best friend since I was five. Last year, she was adorably thrilled, like a toddler, when she had learned she could have a destination wedding. Then, slowly over the course of the year, she started losing sight of reality. For the last month, she had been transforming into a bona fide Bridezilla.

  I just kept tight-lipped about most of her behavior. You only get married once (some may say). She’d come back to her normal self after this all became a memory. She always came back for Earth after she got a little alpha.

  I tried to keep a bright smile and sunny disposition, reaching down to open a waterproof lockbox. I knew I looked ridiculous, being the only one wearing a safety vest while also shoved into a cute little blood-red dress that fit four weeks ago and was now resembling sausage casing.

  My split with Salty had hit me way harder than I thought. The ten pounds I had added since certainly weren’t doing me any
favors on this beach vacation.

  “Fake it ‘til you make it, Lexie,” a wise-ish woman once said to me.

  “So,” I said, “on behalf of Olivia and Walter, would you please surrender your phones, computers, and all mobile technology to me for the duration of your stay on Bocas Del Toro?”

  Five baffled and irked guests stared back at me, making no move to hand anything over to me. Checking a phone at the door of a club or a party for a few hours was a concept that was getting some traction back in the States, but it wasn’t going to catch on for an entire five days in Panama.

  I went on to mutter that it was for the best, and that, in any case, they weren’t going to get any phone service on the island. Besides, when was the last time they had been really free of technology? This was ultimately going to be the couple’s gift to them.

  More in hopes to get away from the non-existent piranhas and out of the sun, they began to accept defeat.

  First, Walter’s brother, Dave, and his girlfriend, Georgie, tossed their matching iPhones in the box. Pretty much everything about them matched: dirty blond hair, dark blue eyes, color-coordinated outfits perfectly tailored for their lanky bodies.

  Becky, Walter’s long-term assistant, gave up her phone next. She had an envious head of wild beautiful red curls that seemed to be constantly bouncing. I’d only met her once before, but with hair like hers, she wasn’t easy to forget.

  When it became obvious that I wasn’t playing games, Josh, one of Walter’s groomsmen, frowned but followed suit.

  I’d read he’d be quiet in the ridiculously large wedding binder we were to have with us at all times. “Unassuming,” was written, followed by, “Just there.”

  The book said that if you did get him talking, he’d become a mile-a-minute snooze fest. Olivia had made us laugh, smirking after meeting him at the engagement party. “What did he do? Go to the barber and ask for the ‘regular guy’ haircut?”

  She hadn’t always been quite so snarky.

  Looking at him now, I saw he had a friendly smile. There was something about him. Deep hazel eyes glanced back at me when I briefly caught his gaze. And yes, though I guess he did have the regular guy haircut, it had the charm of just starting to go grey through the light brown. And the kind smile? I hadn’t seen one of them for a while.

  One of the people I was supposed to wrangle from the airport had ceased to get off the plane, thank god.

  Olivia’s very estranged younger sister, Emma, surprised everyone when her response card came, devoid of any answers to the questions about dietary restrictions and flip-flop size. The RSVP, hastily scrawled with a green Sharpie, announced, “Your sister and some dude will attend. Surprise!”

  Classic Emma, always making things at best inconvenient, and at worst horrid. It was the best moment of my day when I didn’t see her get off that flight.

  One man remained, staring me down, phone held tightly in his hand. Last but anything but least was Nico - tall, dark, and mean. As the heir to a Greek shipping fortune and a hedge fund genius, he had more money than I could even begin to comprehend, and access to a world that I never thought I would see.

  When first being introduced to the Walter and Nico wealthy crowd through Olivia, I had learned that there were three distinctive categories of wealth. There were those with money, those with real money, and then there was Nico.

  His gift to the happy couple was paying for the over the top wedding, which I knew had already hit the low six-figures. I had always tried to be positive about people, but he was simply a Class-A bastard. He could simultaneously piss off, and then charm, everyone in the room. He was rotten.

  He shoved his phone down his pants. “I dare you,” he said. He looked up at the sun in glory, then said with condescension, “I’m Greek. We Greeks love the sun. I could stand here all day.”

  And I went for it, hand down his pants, trying to avoid his intimate areas, while he made a point to attempt the opposite. Quickly reaching deeply into his luxuriously soft boxer briefs, I gave his phone a heave-ho overboard, made-up piranhas cheering me on.

  His eyes bore into, and I was possibly shivering waiting for his response. He knew just the below-the-belt thing to say. “No wonder that writer of yours left you.”

  I left him, but I wasn’t going to get into it with someone like Nico.

  Count to ten.

  Count to ten twice.

  Count to ten backwards.

  Then breathe and resume my hostess duties.

  The captain started up the motor and we were off to the landing. Avoiding Nico’s stare, I tried to return to my scripted TV hostess positivity.

  “Okay, before we check into the hotel, please join us for an early lunch at Red Frog Beach, hosted by the charming bridegroom, Walter! Following your feast, we’ll head out on a fun-filled snorkeling trip before we shuttle you to your luxury accommodations.”

  Red Frog Beach was on Isla Bastimentos, a half hour boat ride from the major island of Isla Colon. It was home to the resort where only Walter and his parents were staying. The bride would be staying at one of the other resorts until their wedding night.

  I helped everyone off the boat into two feet of warm Caribbean water so I could give the folks my requisite welcome speech before lunch. I handed each of them an official blood-red wedding towel, the intense shade being one of many small homages to Olivia’s gothic past. It was going to be blood-red up the wazoo.

  Looking on the bright side, a week out of New York was a week out of New York. We were off-grid, in the Bocas del Toro archipelago, off the Caribbean coast of Panama; 6 islands, 52 cays, and over 200 small islets.

  Though there was a marina we could have used at the Red Frog Beach resort, it hadn’t been built when Olivia and Walter had first visited the beach three years ago. They wanted to share the experience of their original discovery of the great expanse of the virtually empty, white sand Red Frog Beach. Thus, I lead my charges off the beach through a rugged path up the coast.

  Becky, Walter’s faithful assistant, walked closely behind me, smiling and always looking like she was about to say something. She giggled often in a coquettish way. She had enough energy and happiness for all of us.

  A few moments in, I returned to my performance. “Welcome to Bocas del Toro, which translated means Mouth of the Bull. Not far away, we also have beaches like Bocas del Drago, which is Mouth of the Dragon. This very island was discovered by Columbus on his fourth and last trip to the new world in 1502…”

  Nico, financial master of industry and best man, chimed in, “Did he have to conquer the imaginary piranhas first? That must have been a sight.”

  Rather quickly people stopped listening to me, but I knew how to reel them back in. I skipped ahead to my favorite part as a trio of minuscule red frogs hopped across our path. I reached down, carefully picking one up.

  The group was talking among themselves. Georgie was repeatedly asking her boyfriend, Dave, when she’d be getting a cocktail. I’d been told in advance that she and Walter’s brother were good friends with the bottle. Knowing I was losing them to the promise of a tropical tipple, I spiced things up.

  “Please, guys, hold on. This is going to blow your mind. These are strawberry poison-dart frogs, used to make blow darts a hundred years ago. Once upon a time, the natives used to sharpen slivers of wood with the jaw of a sawfish, dip them in frog poison, and blow them through bamboo shoots. A master assassin could hit a target from thirty feet.”

  The group took a few steps back as I held out the adorably lethal two-centimeter frog.

  Georgie buried her face in Dave’s shoulder, mumbling, “Save me.”

  “Don’t worry. You can’t die by touching it. You’d have to actually put it in your mouth and suck on it.”

  Nico raised an eyebrow.

  “You would have to agitate the frog,” I continued. “You would have to get its defenses up, get the poison glands working overtime, and then roll your dart on the frog’s back. Alternatively, you can puncture a
gland to extract the poison.”

  Becky hadn’t said much yet, but she put her hand near mine, wanting to hold the frog herself. “He’s pretty. This red is pretty,” she said, smiling goofily.

  I further explained, “That’s how larger animals know to stay away. Bright colors like this mean danger. It’s their only line of defense against these little red guys.”

  Nico raised his arms in the universal “So what?” gesture, walking off from the group, while the frog still rested comfortably on Becky’s hand.

  Dave got a little closer, and snickered, “I’d take a picture, but, huh, no discernable camera...”

  We cleared the jungle, arriving on the stunning beach with mighty waves crashing into the glassy waters. Pristine and sun-drenched, it was arguably the most beautiful and serene place I’d ever seen.

  Walter greeted us with open arms, “Bienvenidos al Paraiso! Let the party begin!”

  Like Olivia, he had an enviable body, complete with a six-pack shimmering in the rays of sun.

  Olivia’s success had come from Femme Fit-all, her lady’s boutique gym business. That was how they had met. Not that Walter was lazy or a lady; he too owned gyms, only his was a nationwide chain. And he had wanted to buy hers. He’d been unsuccessful.

  The rest of the wedding guests were already on the beach having a beautiful party, which warmed my broken heart. The huge snorkeling catamaran had already docked at the marina, waiting patiently for us down the beach.

  We were just close enough to see Olivia waiting on the boat, long blond hair casually blowing in the soft tropical breeze. She was waiting for her grand entrance. There was nothing she loved more than a grand entrance. Except Walter. And possibly me.

  Just beyond the lapping waves was the biggest grand shellfish and champagne feast I’d ever seen. Two bartenders walked through the revelers, taking orders. When done with demolishing local langoustines and similar island treats, everyone ran into the waves, ignoring my warning that one should take a twenty-minute break to digest food before taking a swim.