by Howe, A. E.
“If they knew I had a letter from Pete, they would have tortured me to find it.”
Suspecting that the woman was being a little melodramatic, Josephine asked, “Do you know what’s in the letter?”
“I don’t want to know. I begged him to stop. I didn’t care about the gold or treasure or whatever it was he was after.”
“Treasure?”
“He was digging into the secrets that have destroyed this island.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I’ve lived as long as I have by being ignorant of most of it. I’m going to give you the letter, then you have to go. You need to leave Cedar Island.”
“You realize how crazy you sound?” Josephine didn’t want to insult this woman she’d just met, but nothing she was saying made any sense.
“Worse than crazy. It’s evil.”
Mitzi went over to a safe in the corner. Josephine assumed that the letter was locked up inside, so she was surprised when Mitzi got down on her belly and reached as far as she could underneath the safe. The legs were just high enough to allow her to push her arm under it. “Can you help me?”
Josephine knelt down on the floor next to her.
“I’m not as nimble as I used to be. Can you see the board I’m trying to pull up?”
Josephine looked under the safe and saw that Mitzi was trying to lift a small section of the pine flooring.
“Let me try.”
Mitzi moved over and Josephine reached under the safe. A cloud of dust made her sneeze.
“Bless you,” Mitzi said.
“Thank you. Yes, I’ve got it up. I can feel a letter and a ring.” Josephine brought them both out. “This is his school ring.” She remembered seeing her uncle wear it, and how large the simple blue stone at its center had seemed to her child’s eyes.
Mitzi took the ring. “He gave it to me and told me I was his girl. Pete was such a funny man.”
“He must have loved you.” Secretly, Josephine wondered how serious her uncle had been about Mitzi. He’d once promised to marry a girl in Sumter, but had jilted her before making it to the altar. Peter Nicolson had not liked to be tied down.
“And I loved him. When he died…” Mitzi started to cry.
“It must have been horrible for you.”
“The worst of it was, I couldn’t tell anyone. If they’d known, they would have killed me.”
“Who?”
“I told you, Pete was dredging up old secrets, and some that weren’t all that old. Take the letter and go. Quickly.”
The woman’s urgency was infectious. For a moment, Josephine thought she saw movement outside one of the windows. Maybe her paranoia is contagious too, she wondered. Aloud, she said, “I have more questions.”
“I don’t know anything and I don’t want to. And I don’t know what brought you here after all of these years, but it’s a good thing you came when you did. I’m going to leave the island as soon as I can. I have someone to go with now.” She was physically pushing Josephine toward the door.
Puzzled at the woman’s intense reaction, Josephine looked down at the letter. It was the old-fashioned kind where the letter folded up so that it also served as the envelope. Both her father’s name and her own were written neatly on the front.
“But—"
“Go!” Mitzi insisted, crying harder now.
Josephine reluctantly left the post office. She was still looking at the letter as she walked back past the alley. In a flash, a small body hopped out from between the buildings and tried to grab the letter from her hands.
Josephine didn’t let go and was pulled into the narrow alley. She tried to see the thief’s face, but he was wearing a peacoat with the collar turned up and a knit cap pulled low over his head. He seemed hardly larger than a boy, but he pulled and yanked on the letter with considerable strength.
Josephine fought to keep her hold on the letter. Both she and the thief were gripping the letter with both hands, throwing each other repeatedly against the brick walls in the confined space. Battered and bruised, Josephine refused to let go… until she heard a ripping sound and then fell hard to the ground on her knees. The thief scuttled away to the other end of the alley, disappearing around the corner with a large piece of the letter in his hand.
Josephine looked down to see that she held only a ragged third of the letter. Furious, she jumped to her feet. She was debating the wisdom of running after the thief when she saw him suddenly reappear in the alley, running back toward her. Before she could react, the thief fell face-down in front of her. She was shocked to see a knife sticking out of his back.
Still shaken by the fight and aching all over from the struggle, Josephine stared at the body, unsure what to do. If she had been home, then she wouldn’t have hesitated to call the sheriff. But here on Cedar Island, with no phone lines and no local law enforcement that she knew of, she was at a loss.
She finally decided that the most sensible thing to do would be to go back to the post office and tell Mitzi what had happened. She’d know who they should inform about the murder.
Josephine walked a bit unsteadily out of the alley, looking around nervously to make sure there wasn’t anyone else lurking nearby.
“Damn it!” she hissed when she found the door of the post office locked. She knocked loudly, but there was no answer. Looking around, she didn’t see anyone else on the street, though it was nearly nine-thirty. Surely the stores should be opening soon.
Still in shock, she almost forgot the reason she was there. Remembering the torn letter in her hand, Josephine realized that there was something she needed to do. Reluctantly, she turned back toward the alley, hoping that the killer wasn’t still hiding nearby.
She took a deep breath as she approached the body. Bending over, she looked at his hands. The skin was crusty with an odd, pale green tint that made her stomach turn. Both hands were empty. With a feeling of revulsion, she reached into the dirty and threadbare coat to search his pockets, but found nothing. She looked at the knitted cap pulled down almost to his nose and saw scaly patches on his chin and around his mouth. She briefly considered pulling the cap off of his head, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it.
Nothing else to do but go back to the hotel, she told herself. She slipped the torn letter into a pocket of her skirt, then started walking as fast as she could, constantly looking over her shoulder.
Eric Donavan and Jamila were sitting on the porch having coffee when she returned.
“Morning,” Donavan said with a nod.
“Do you know where I can find Mrs. Lachlan?” she asked them.
“Why? What’s going on?” Donavan asked, noticing that Josephine was flushed and sweating.
“There’s been an… accident. I need to get some help.”
“I’ll do what I can.” Donavan stood up.
“I’m afraid we need the sheriff.”
“There’s no phone—”
“Someone around here must have some authority!” Josephine said, exasperated. “I just need to find Mrs. Lachlan.”
“Okay, I’ll look in the back. She might be in the kitchen. You might check upstairs. She sometimes starts cleaning early in the morning.”
“I believe I did see her going upstairs,” Jamila said, looking only mildly interested in Josephine’s anxiety.
“I’ll check there. If you see her, ask her to meet me upstairs,” Josephine said, hurrying through the door to the staircase.
Grace was just coming out of her room.
“Have you seen Mrs. Lachlan?”
“She’s in your room right now, makin’ the bed,” Grace said. “What on earth is goin’ on?”
“Stay here. I may need your help.”
Josephine rushed into her room and found Mrs. Lachlan finishing the bed with the help of the strange young woman they’d seen last night.
“We’re just about done in—” Mrs. Lachlan started to say.
“There’s been a terrible accident down by the post o
ffice.”
“What type of accident?”
“The kind where someone dies.” Josephine didn’t think that now was the time to sugarcoat the truth.
“Oh my! We’ll have to send over to the mainland for the sheriff. That’s going to take time. Are you sure the person is dead?”
“He has a foot-long knife rammed into his back.”
The young woman looked frightened, making Josephine briefly regret her choice of words.
“We need to get help,” she emphasized, trying to sound calmer.
“Yes, of course. I’ll send my son for the sheriff.” Mrs. Lachlan turned to the girl. “Go get Edward.” The girl didn’t seem to hear. “Go, girl, now!” Mrs. Lachlan clapped her hands and the girl jumped, hustling out of the room.
“I’m going to get my maid and go back to the post office,” Josephine said.
“You should take one of the other men too. Mr. Donavan or Mr. Brock,” Mrs. Lachlan said, looking concerned as they left Josephine’s room.
Josephine decided she was probably right. Two more hands might be a good idea.
“Come with me to the post office,” Josephine told Grace, who was still standing by her bedroom door.
“Did I hear you say that a man is dead?”
“Yes. He was stabbed in the back.” Reluctantly, she also admitted, “He tried to steal my uncle’s letter from me.”
Grace’s eyes widened. “I guess the shoppin’ trip ain’t happenin’. Do you think it’s a good idea goin’ back there now?”
“I need to.”
“I feel crazy for sayin’ it, but I sure do wish the baron could go with us,” Grace muttered as she followed Josephine and Mrs. Lachlan down the stairs.
Mrs. Lachlan’s son was waiting in the lobby. Josephine left her to explain about the sheriff and headed out the door. Donavan was standing on the porch, looking interested in all of the activity.
“Will you come with me to the post office?” Josephine asked.
“Certainly. I can see from here that there are some people gathering around outside it,” he said, falling in step with Josephine and Grace.
Sure enough, Josephine could see four people standing by the post office. She assumed that they had found the body and were waiting for help… or maybe they were just gawking. Like her attacker, two of the people were wearing coats and hats, even though the temperature was already above eighty and the air was humid. They all drifted away silently as Josephine and her companions approached.
“What kind of accident was it?” Donavan asked.
“It wasn’t an accident. A man was murdered,” Josephine told him.
“Murdered? Are you serious?”
They stopped at the entrance to the alley and Josephine looked into the narrow passage. The corpse was gone.
Chapter Nine
“I don’t believe it!”
Josephine stalked into the alley with Donavan following in her wake. She stopped at the spot where she had last seen the body. “It was right here.”
“Maybe he wasn’t dead.”
“He most certainly was dead.” Josephine was on the brink of telling him that she had rifled through the man’s coat, but she didn’t want to have to explain what she was looking for.
“I doubt that someone moved a dead body,” Donavan said with an irritating, know-it-all tone.
“Well, he didn’t get up and walk away.” She squatted and examined the ground. “There’s blood here,” she said, pointing to a spot on the ground. The blood showed clearly against the crushed white shells that comprised most streets on the island.
Donavan bent over and peered closely at the spot. “It’s blood, I’ll give you that, but it’s not very much. I’m sure you were very upset. I don’t blame you for jumping to conclusions. Most likely the guy got up and wandered off,” he said, his voice annoyingly superior.
“This isn’t the first dead body I’ve seen, but it’s the first one that’s ever disappeared.”
“You see a lot of dead bodies in Alabama?” Donavan asked with a lopsided grin.
“You’d be surprised.”
Josephine walked to the other end of the alley. She saw several empty lots and a couple of houses with fishnets drying in the yard next to crab traps and floats, but there was no sign of the dead man.
Frustrated, Josephine returned to the post office and knocked loudly on the door. There was still no answer. Where can Mitzi have gone? she asked herself, pounding on the door until her knuckles hurt.
“That’s probably why those people were standing out front,” Donavan said. “The postmistress must have closed up.”
“Why would she do that in the middle of the morning?” Josephine gave up and stopped knocking. She was so upset after talking to me, maybe she just needed a break, she rationalized. But another voice in her head suggested darker reasons why Mitzi wasn’t answering the door. She went around the building and peered inside all of the windows, now securely closed and locked. She saw no signs of anything sinister having happened.
“I really think you’re blowing this out of proportion,” Donavan said as he followed her from window to window.
Josephine sighed. “Perhaps you’re right. You can go back to the hotel.” She looked around and noticed for the first time that the maid wasn’t with them. “Where’s Grace?”
“I’m right here,” Grace called from the street a few feet from the post office. “If you think I’m walkin’ down that narrow alley where you saw a dead body, you got another thing comin’.”
“Stay close,” Josephine encouraged her, then turned back to Donavan. “I do appreciate you coming down here with me.”
“I’m sorry if I offended you, but you have to admit that the idea someone carted off a dead body in broad daylight is a bit crazy.”
“Crazy is suggesting that I don’t know a dead body when I see one. The man had a knife stuck in his back.” Josephine thought how much the whole situation sounded like a plot from one of the Gothic novels she’d devoured as a young woman. She reached into her pocket and felt what was left of the letter the dead man had attempted to snatch from her. She wanted to examine it, but couldn’t with Donavan hovering over her.
“The sheriff isn’t going to be too happy when he gets here,” he said.
“Honestly, you don’t have to stay.”
“I’ll wait. If there really is a murderer running about, I wouldn’t want to leave you out here by yourself. Tell me exactly what happened.”
Josephine debated how much she wanted to tell him. “I came out of the post office and the man in the coat was waiting in the alley. He jumped me and tried to take my… purse. I resisted and he ran off down the passageway between the two buildings, only to reappear and fall to the ground with a knife sticking out of his back.” She thought this summed it up nicely without giving away anything about the letter or her talk with Mitzi.
“Maybe it was a gag.”
“Don’t be an idiot.” Josephine walked over to Grace, all the while scanning the ground for any clues as to what might have happened to the body or Mitzi. “How long do you think it will take for the sheriff to get here?”
“I don’t know,” Donavan answered. “An hour, maybe longer. It’s fifteen miles before you get to anything you could call a town. And if he’s on the other side of the county, you’re talking a couple of hours.”
“Great.”
“There’s no sense waiting here.”
“Do you know where Mitzi Alexander lives?”
“I’m as much a tourist as you are.” Donavan shrugged his shoulders.
Grace was watching him closely. He had two strikes against him in her eyes; he was a man, and he was a stranger.
“I don’t believe we’ve met,” Donavan said to Grace. “I’m Eric Donavan. You work for Miss Nicolson?”
“I do. You can call me Grace,” she snapped. Another strike in her book was a man who would presume to talk to a woman without her speaking to him first.
“I say we sho
uld all go back to the hotel and wait for the sheriff. Then you can tell him your story when he gets here,” Donavan said to Josephine.
“It’s not a story,” she grumbled, though she realized there wasn’t much point in standing around if there wasn’t a body to guard. The body could have been anywhere by now. “Okay, let’s go back,” she said grudgingly.
“Who was it?” Mrs. Lachlan asked when they entered the hotel.
“Poof, gone.” Donavan moved his hands apart, palms up like a magician. Josephine wanted to clobber him.
“What do you mean ‘gone?’” Mrs. Lachlan said with a stern expression.
“Someone moved the body,” Josephine said before Donavan had a chance to make any more snide remarks.
“I don’t understand.” Mrs. Lachlan looked like she was about to faint.
“Apparently someone didn’t want anyone else to get a good look at it,” Josephine said, thinking about the body’s scaly skin and odd color. Could there have been another reason to move the body other than to cover up the murder?
“The sheriff isn’t going to be happy about this. No, sir, not happy at all.” Mrs. Lachlan was sweating profusely.
“I think you should sit down.” Josephine didn’t want her passing out or having a heart attack.
“That’s a good idea.” Mrs. Lachlan dropped into one of the chairs in the lobby and began to fan herself with her apron.
Josephine turned on the metal fan sitting on the corner of the reception desk while Grace went to fetch a glass of lemonade for Mrs. Lachlan.
“Another odd thing,” Josephine said to Mrs. Lachlan as they waited for Grace to come back from the kitchen. “The postmistress closed up the post office.”
“She’s probably just out. Mitzi is the only employee and, if she has to run an errand, she just locks it up. Usually puts a note on the door.”
“There wasn’t a note.”
“She is getting pretty old. Forgetful, you know. If they keep her on the job too much longer, who knows who will get whose mail. Thank you, dear,” she said as Grace handed her a cool glass of lemonade.
Suddenly Anton came trotting down the stairs, looking more focused than usual. He stopped a foot from Josephine and, as if making a pronouncement at a formal affair, he said, “The baron wants to see you.”