The Lornea Island Detective Club

by Gregg Dunnett

  Neither me nor Amber really say anything to this, so Principal Sharpe says it again.

  "Do I have your agreement on that?"

  I quickly nod, and then look at Amber to see if she does the same, but if she did I missed it.

  Principal Sharpe takes a deep breath. "Good." She sits down again behind the desk.

  "My mother is seventy five years old, and unfortunately she's suffering from a rare form of dementia. Her memory is the most obvious symptom, but it also affects her personality. She can shift from one version of herself to another. I don't know if you noticed?"

  I nod again. Principal Sharpe looks annoyed at the interruption. But then she smiles at me.

  "People with her condition tend to lose their older, or more traumatic, memories first. And it's not uncommon that they become quite distressed and put time and effort into trying to recover those memories. They feel there's a significant gap, that needs to be filled." She laughs suddenly. "The irony is, there's often another part of their personality that still recalls those memories. So at times she knows what happened. At other times she doesn't. But the two parts of her no longer join up."

  Amber and I wait in silence.

  "My mother has always lived a very active life, she's certainly not one to sit around being distressed. And it seems that, when part of her lost her memory of what happened to my father that same part concluded it was a big mystery. And so she looked for help solving it. And then somehow got mixed up with the two of you, pretending to be detectives..."

  She look levelly at me. I don't know what she's thinking.

  "So what did happen to him?" Amber asks.

  She glances at her, she seems annoyed.

  "Nothing."

  "Well where is he then?"

  "There is no mystery, Miss Atherton. I'm very sorry to disappoint you."

  "But... We found out he was principal here until 1979, then he disappeared and no one knows what happened to him." Amber pauses, maybe she realized that might not be quite right. "At least, we couldn't find anything about what happened to him. There was nothing in the Island Times about him."

  A slight frown creases Principal Sharpe’s face.

  "Why would there be anything in the Island Times?"

  "I don't know... We just thought... Well if something did happen it would be news."

  The frown deepens.

  "So what did happen to him?" Amber says in the end.

  "I told you. Nothing happened. At least nothing dramatic. He and my mother separated, and he moved off the island."

  For a moment it feels like Principal Sharpe is going to say more, but she doesn't. There's a few moments of silence before Amber speaks again.

  "But... Mr. Jacobs, she said he disappeared. That he went out one night and never came back."

  "No. That's not how it happened." Principal Sharpe drums her fingers on the desk. "Perhaps that's the dementia..." She stops and watches us. A few moments later she goes on.

  "There's an element of truth in it. Perhaps that's why..." But then she stops again and sighs.

  "My father did walk out. And it was at Christmas. It could have been 1979, I'm not sure without working it out." She takes a deep breath. "I can’t believe I am explaining my childhood to two of my students." She takes a sip of her water.

  "I was nine years old, and yes, for a few weeks we didn't know where he was. But it wasn't the first time he'd gone away like that. My mother thought he'd come back, like he always did, but this time he didn’t. Then we got a postcard. From Hawaii. My father explained how he had met someone else, and moved in with her on the island of Maui. He continued to send letters, and birthdays cards for a few years. But then they dried up. It was very hard on my mother. It was very hard on all of us. But there's no mystery. And there never was."

  There's silence for a while. Then Amber speaks.

  "Palm trees," she says.

  "I beg your pardon?"

  "Mrs. Jaco... Your mother said she remembered something about palm trees. How they were important."

  "Hmmm. Perhaps. They may well have featured on the postcards."

  I zone out for a while. I'm getting this really weird feeling watching Principal Sharpe. All the time I've known her she's been this scary authority figure, but now it's as if I can see beyond this. That she wasn't always that way. Once she was just a kid, and bad things happened to her. But Amber doesn't seem to be thinking the same.

  "Do you know if he's still there now?" She asks.

  It takes Principal Sharpe a long time to answer.

  "Excuse me?"

  "Your dad. Is he still there now? In Hawaii?"

  "I don't know. His communications dried up a few years after he left. And to be honest with you, after the way he treated us, I wasn't minded to care much either way."

  There's a long silence while she takes another sip of water, and I see how much her hands are shaking. As she sets the glass down it spills and a drop falls on the paper she read from earlier. The surface tension holds it up like a translucent blob before finally it collapses, being absorbed and sucked into the paper.

  I can't take my eyes of it.

  Twenty-Nine

  We each have to go to class after that, but we arrange to meet up at lunch in the school canteen. There's nowhere to sit though, not where we can talk in private. That is until Amber asks a couple of first graders to move.

  "Well? What do you make of all that?" she asks, when they've skulked away saying how they're going to tell a teacher. I think for a moment how to answer.

  "She's actually alright isn't she? Principal Sharpe. Underneath all that..." I reach for the right word. “Fierceness.”

  "Yeah but," Amber interrupts. "Do you actually believe her?"

  "Believe her?"

  "Yeah. Cos I'm not sure I do." Amber takes a bite of her hot dog and ketchup squirts onto her plate.

  "Why not?"

  She chews for a minute, fast, because she wants to keep talking. "Because of what the guy in the garage told us." She takes another bite.

  I think back to what the mechanic said. About how Henry Jacobs had a reputation for liking the boys.

  "What's that got to do with it?"

  "Like I said before. It's a motive. It's a reason why someone might want to kill him."

  "But we know now that no one did kill him. He didn't disappear, he just left the island."

  "That might be what Sharpe told us. But it doesn't make it true. What if he was actually murdered because of what he was doing to the students, and then whoever did it, sent a letter to Mrs. Jacobs, pretending it was from him and saying how he'd met someone else?" Amber opens her mouth wide and pushes all the rest of the hot dog in. Then she keeps talking, even though her mouth is totally full.

  "Or, what if she did it? Mrs. Jacobs I mean. We already knew she's mental, and now Sharpe's confirmed it. But what if she's really mental. What if she actually murdered him, and then pretended to her daughter that he'd gone with the other woman? Isn't that possible?"

  I think about this for a second. I'm not even sure that it is.

  "Well? Isn't it?"

  "I suppose it might be. But isn't it more likely he went off to live on Maui, like she said?"

  Amber looks annoyed and turns away. Feeling a bit awkward, I take a bite of my own hotdog. I chew it carefully and swallow it down. Then I open my mouth.

  "I saw a documentary on Maui..."

  "He didn't go to fucking Maui!"

  "What?" I almost choke on my mouthful.

  "He didn't go to Maui. I can't believe you're being so dumb about this. He was a pedophile who disappeared. Doesn't that strike you as a hell of a coincidence?"

  "But he send postcards. And birthday cards."

  "It's easy to fake a birthday card Billy," Amber says, like she's some kind of expert in it.

  "Is it?" I ask. "Wouldn't it be really hard? Wouldn't you need to go to actually Maui to post it, to get the right postmark…"

  "Oh come on Billy! What the
fuck's wrong with you?" Amber interrupts again. "Aren't you supposed to be the expert in all this? Didn't your dad lie to you about your mom for years? Didn't he tell you she was dead, when all the time she was locked up in some mental institution? I don't get how that can happen to you, and you can't accept this could have happened to Sharpe?"

  I don't say anything to this. In fact I freeze a little bit, my hot dog quivering over my plate. Amber looks at me for a while then sighs.

  "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to say it like that. It must be hard to have that much shit in your family history." She offers me a smile. "But don't you see? If it can happen to you, why can't it happen to someone else too?"

  I still don't reply. But she's got it wrong. I don't mind her talking about everything that happened in the past. The problem is, there's so much going on now, with Dad hundreds of miles out in the ocean, and me living with a murderer. Maybe she's right, and I've just been too distracted to see this case for what it really is.

  "Do you really not believe Principal Sharpe?"

  She watches me for a long time before answering.

  "I don't know what to believe. But I think we should keep on investigating. It's possible that Henry Jacobs never left the island. Or at least, never left the island alive."

  I puff out my cheeks. Leaving Principal Sharpe's office I really thought this stuff with Mrs. Jacobs was over. That I could just concentrate on sorting out the Tucker issue. And then everything else that I have to do. Suddenly everything feels overwhelming.

  Then I can't stop myself. I reach into my pocket and I bring out the SIM card I found in Tucker's phone yesterday. It feels like weeks ago.

  "What's that?" Amber asks.

  "It's a SIM card."

  "I can see that. What are you doing with it?"

  Then I tell her. I just blurt it all out. I explain how this old friend of dad's turned up at our house a couple of weeks ago, completely unexpected, and how he won't leave. And how I suspected he was a criminal, so I tricked him into using my computer when I was at school and recorded how he'd murdered the security guard in the jewelry store he was robbing. And then how Dad's gone out on the Ocean Harvest, and left me alone with him. And then how he smashed his phone up and threw it down the cliff, and then how I found it. And when I'm finished, and the remains of my hotdog are left on the plate completely forgotten, and Amber's mouth is open in amazement. Then she laughs.

  "Fucking hell Billy. There was me thinking you were useless at this detective stuff, when all the time you've got that going on at the same time. No wonder you've been distracted."

  This cheers me up quite a lot.

  "So what are you going to do?"

  So I tell her about how the police will be monitoring his phone, so if I put his card into my phone it'll look like his phone is switched on. And then the police will see that he's here, on Lornea Island. And then they'll come and arrest him.

  "Fucking hell," Amber says again. Then she thinks a bit.

  "Well go on then," she says. "Put it in."

  Her eyes are shining bright with excitement.

  "I can't here."

  She frowns. "Why not?"

  "Because then the police will come here. I've got to do it at home, later on. So the police know that's where he is."

  "So when you gonna do it?"

  "Tonight I guess. I'll swap it over when I get home. Put Tucker's SIM in my phone. It doesn't matter what phone you use, as long as it's unlocked, it'll send out the same signal to the base station."

  "OK." Amber looks thoughtful. Then she speaks again.

  "I've got an idea," Amber's eyes shine brighter still. "I've got Mom's car today. Why don't I give you a lift home? Then I can help you do it. And I’ll get to meet a proper murderer..."

  Thirty

  HOOOOOOooooonk. The white panel van goes shooting past the windscreen, the driver leaning on the horn, alarm on his face at the way Amber has veered into his lane.

  "Asshole," Amber says, giving him the finger.

  The good thing about going home with Amber is that I don't have to sit on the school bus and drop off half the school before I get home. The bad thing is I figure I've about a fifty-fifty chance of making it alive

  "You have to be careful with the turn off the Silverlea road to Littlelea," I say, trying not to sound as nervous as I feel. "It's a left, and Dad always says..."

  "I can drive you know." Amber shoots me a look.

  Actually it's not just Amber's driving that's making me unsettled. Obviously I'm nervous about the whole plan to alert the police to where Tucker is. But there's more to it than that. The thing is, I've never actually had anyone from school come to my house. Not ever. It's not that I'm ashamed of where I live. It's just... Well, I'm a bit worried there's some things she might think are a bit odd. That's all.

  I feel tense for the rest of the journey, and make a vague plan to try to keep her out of my room at least. And somehow we do make it alive. She stops behind Dad's truck. I notice again the way Tucker's parked it wrong, he doesn't turn it around, ready to go the way that Dad does.

  "Jesus Billy, you live on the edge of the fucking cliff!" Amber is already out of the car and standing looking out over the beach below "It's amazing. You can see for miles!"

  I don't really answer her. "He's here." I say instead. "Dad's letting him borrow his truck, so he must be in."

  Amber spins around, and seems to notice the truck for the first time. Then she takes in the house and the yard.

  "What's that?" she asks.

  I frown, not sure what she means, then I follow where she’s pointing. "Oh. It's the jaw bone of a sperm whale. It's not really..."

  "Where the hell did you get that?"

  "On the beach, but it's not relevant. We need to go inside."

  Amber eyes linger on the bone for a moment, but then she spins around.

  “Right.” Then she looks at me and gives a grin. Her eyes are sparkling with excitement. Honestly, I don't know why she's so excited to meet a murderer.

  We go inside, Tucker's not in the kitchen, but I can see the TV's on in the next room.

  "That you Billy boy?" Tucker calls from the lounge. Me and Amber look at each other.

  "Yeah," I call back, but not too loud.

  "I made veggie lasagna. Figured you boys been eating too much red..." He appears in the kitchen. Straight away he notices Amber.

  "...Meat. Hi there."

  His eyes take her in. They don’t focus on her hair, which by the way, is dark green now. Instead they run up and down her body.

  "Say Billy, you didn't say you were bringing a friend."

  I don't like the way Amber is looking at him either, like he's a white tiger in a zoo. Dangerous and rare, but beautiful.

  "So? Aren't you going to introduce us?" Tucker's grin widens.

  While I'm thinking what to say, Amber steps forward.

  "I'm Amber. I'm a friend of Billy." She pushes a strand of hair out of her face and tucks it behind her ear. Her eyes are sparkling bright.

  "Tucker."

  "Billy's told me about you."

  "Has he?" Tucker's eyebrows go up. "Nothing bad I hope?"

  Amber half shrugs, but smiles to show she's kidding. Then the two of them just watch each other, like I’m not even here.

  "Amber needed some help with her homework," I say, just to break the weird silence. "So we're going to go upstairs..." I know I said I didn't want her in my room. But when a plan goes wrong, you have to change it.

  "Sure." Tucker glances at me, but then turns back. "Say Amber. You'll stay for dinner right? I made plenty." Tucker laughs. "You wouldn't think it, looking at the kid, but he eats like a goddamn horse."

  "No, she's got to..." I start to say, but Amber talks over me quickly.

  "That would be great. I love veggie lasagna."

  "Alright then. Girl after my own heart." He smiles. He looks a bit like a tiger now. Or a cat, purring about something.

  "I'll set up another place at the table
. Give you a shout when it's ready."

  They watch each other some more.

  "Come on Amber," I say. Then when she doesn't move, I grab her sleeve and pull her towards the stairs, so hard she nearly stumbles.

  We walk upstairs, and I sense how Amber is checking out everything in our house. She sticks her head into the bathroom, and then into Dad's room. I pause before I finally let her into mine.

  "You might be a bit surprised," I say, "looking in here..."

  "Why? What's in there? Is it like a museum filled with dinosaur bones? Or have you got a massive porn collection? That wouldn't surprise me Billy. Nothing about you would surprise..."

  She doesn't finish what she's saying because at that moment Steven wakes up. There's a loud mewing sound, and then a big thump on the door.

  "No. It's not that."

  I open the door, and all at once I'm set upon by an overjoyed juvenile herring gull, flapping his wings and trying to rub his neck against mine. I catch him and smooth his feathers down to calm him, and tell him I'll get some food in a minute. Eventually I get him sitting on my forearm, mewing noisily. Then I look up at Amber. Her mouth is open, staring at Steven.

  "You've got... A seagull as a pet?"

  “He’s not a seagull. And he's not a pet. You're not allowed to keep wild birds as pets. I'm just looking after him until he’s ready to be released."

  Amber looks around the room. I see her take in my collection of dried starfish, my fish posters, and then settle on Steven's nest, it sits in a plastic dog bed, his name written in black marker pen on the top.

  "Steven?" She says. "Is that its name?"

  "His name. Yeah."

  "Why?" Amber asks.

  "It was my Dad's idea. There's some actor called Steven Seagal and he thought it was funny."

  Amber looks at me, screwing up her nose. "Jeez. Parents are so fucking lame sometimes."