Free Tourist Trapped by K. J. Klemme Page A

another ten minutes of reviewing the facts with Rodriguez, they had little to go on. They thanked him and headed out the door, into the heat and clamor of traffic.
    “I forgot my prescription sunglasses. I’ll need a cap. Think we can run over there for a minute?” Chad pointed at Plaza Kukulcan across the street.
    Her gut turned. She didn’t mind venturing into the southern hotel zone to touch base with the police, but she refused to push her luck by hanging around a mall. “Instead of shopping here, let’s go to La Isla. You can buy a hat and I can check out Rebecca’s activities at the aquarium. That’s where they swam with the dolphins.”
    “Great idea, I have to see this.”
    Better to see dolphins than Miguel.
    * * *
    “How much help do you think Rodriguez will give us?” Chad said as he followed Amanda into La Isla Shopping Village. Towering steel and canvas structures, engineered like mushrooms, shaded portions of the outdoor mall.
    “Based on the progress he’s made so far, let’s just say I’m not exactly optimistic.” Amanda said, making her way through the strolling crowd.
    Two stories above them, massive grids anchored long stretches of fabric, reminding Chad of Freemont Street in Vegas, but without the animation—or the slots.
    Las Vegas. A spring about six years before, Danny accompanied Chad to a technical conference there. He had suggested she come along to relax by the pool and to shop while he attended the sessions. He’d join her for dinner and a show each evening. Chad hoped a change of scenery and some warmth and sunshine would boost her out of her gray days.
    The first night had been wonderful. They took a cab downtown and wandered the old section of Vegas, dining on the twenty-fourth floor of Binion’s. Unfortunately the next day, once Chad left for the conference, Danielle had too much time alone with her thoughts. When he returned to their room late in the afternoon, he found the lamps and mirrors shattered and his bleeding wife, naked and shivering, wedged into a bathroom corner next to the toilet.
    The defeated pair had flown back to Chicago the next day.
    “Did the police report offer any information that we didn’t discuss?” Amanda crashed through his thoughts.
    “Zilch.”
    “Great, we got a dud team.”
    They passed stores such as Lacoste and Puma, but Chad wanted to pick up a Cancun-inspired baseball cap. “What, exactly, is Mexican about this shopping center? Most of these stores could be found at any upmarket mall back home.”
    “Based on where you go and what you do, a person could spend more than a week in Cancun and never know they were outside the States,” she said.
    A smattering of gondolas, canvas covered motorboats and paddleboats floated down a manmade river that cut through the mall and out to the lagoon, gracing the locale with a touch of Venice. Familiar businesses also lined the canal: Chili’s, Coach, Benetton. One of the motorboats crawled down the waterway with a single passenger, a young guy wearing a green baseball cap and sunglasses.
    “Kinda boring to ride alone.” Chad nodded toward the guy.
    Amanda surveyed the fellow in the runabout. “His wife’s probably shopping.”
    The path dead-ended at a boardwalk that ran along the edge of the mall. Diners sat in front of open air restaurants, munching on shrimp and hamburgers while enjoying an unobstructed view of the lagoon.
    “Sorry, I’m probably taking the longest route possible. It’s been a while since I’ve been here.” Amanda turned back and steered them through another route, passing a wall that resembled a Mayan ruin—something straight out of an Indiana Jones flick.
    It didn’t seem real, any of it. Chad Cooper, wandering through Cancun with Amanda Sloane, passing shops and tourists while they searched for a missing woman and her husband. No leads and little to go on, they roamed a shopping mall.
    How typically American.
    “Let’s get your hat.” She stopped in front of a