Eulalie stood up and put some money down on the counter. “I’d better get on now. My childhood fears won’t face themselves.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m catching the ferry to Monk’s Cay this afternoon. I need to take a look at exactly where Jessica disappeared. I might go into the forest and check that out too.”
“Take me with you!”
“What? No. Why would I do that? Why would you even want to come? It’s not like this is going to be fun.”
“You always refuse to take me into the deep forest even though I’ve asked you a million times.”
“I’ve told you before, I’ll take you when the forest gets Wi-Fi and hairdryers.
“Fair enough. You think I’m a city girl, and you’re not wrong. Perhaps spending the night would be too much for me. But this is just an afternoon expedition. It will be broad daylight and we’ll come back home on the last ferry. What could possibly go wrong? I’ll get my forest experience, and you’ll get to investigate your case. Win-win.”
“I don’t know…”
“Oh, come on. It’ll be fun. I trust you completely. I know you’ll get us both out of there safely.”
Eulalie was surprised by how much this idea appealed to her. She had been perfectly willing to spend the afternoon on Monk’s Cay alone, but the thought of doing so in Fleur’s company was much more appealing. The voice in her head that said she should do it the hard way was easily ignored. Eulalie had never been much of a puritan.
“What about the shop? Can you afford to leave it for the afternoon?”
“I was going to do stocktaking this afternoon, but I can do that any time. Jethro can handle the rest, especially now that his sister has arrived to help out in the kitchen.”
“Then let’s do this.”
Eulalie’s second ferry ride out to Monk’s Cay was a big improvement on the first.
This time she was sitting with her best friend and ordering mimosas from the ferry bar.
She drank the first one thirstily because she was still parched from her morning of interviews. A waiter immediately appeared with another. She drank that rather more slowly as they gazed out to sea and Fleur told her the long, sad story of how she had caught her kitchen employee skimming stock as it came in from the supplier. Fleur’s anger had burnt itself out, leaving her with nothing but sadness. She hated it when people made choices that had the potential to ruin their lives.
Eulalie’s head was buzzing pleasantly after the second mimosa. She ate a bag of potato chips to soak up the alcohol and waited for the feeling to subside. By the time they pulled into the dock at Monk’s Cay, it already had.
It was nearly three o’clock. They were accompanied by a tour group of Japanese tourists. The tourists would enjoy a guided tour of the ruins, followed by afternoon tea in the tearoom, and a chance to browse the gift shop. Then they would catch the last ferry back at six o’clock. Eulalie fully intended to be on that ferry too.
She and Fleur walked up to the ruins with the tour group. There was no access from the docks to the beach. The only way down was via the cliff path. As the tour group turned to walk towards the ruins, Eulalie and Fleur followed the cliff path down to the sandy strip of beach.
She remembered Zeenat and Amelie standing on this very path, and the boulder crashing down onto the spot where they had just been.
The memory made her shiver.
“This is where the motorboat arrived at around midnight five years ago.” Eulalie pointed to the beach. “They would have pulled it up above the tide line and gathered wood for their campfire here.” She indicated an area where the forest encroached almost onto the beach.
“After Jessica disappeared, they walked up and down the beach here calling for her.”
Fleur watched as she paced out the area, pointing precisely to where the campfire was made, and the boat was pulled out of the reach of the waves.
“You’ve dreamed about this,” she said.
“What?” Eulalie recoiled. “No, I haven’t. Why do you say that? I’m trying to be scientific here.”
Fleur shook her head. “You’ve been here in your dreams, but you haven’t seen enough to know what happened. You’re hoping that being here in person might stimulate your memory some more. If not, you’ll do the detective thing.”
Eulalie ignored her as she measured the distance from the entrance of the forest to the start of the cliff path. It was more than two hundred feet – almost the entire length of the beach itself.
“Damien thought she had gone up the cliff path,” she mused out loud. “While Pete thought the forest was more likely. Opposite ends of the beach, opposite opinions of what happened to her.”
“Are you talking about Damien Hodge?” When Eulalie nodded, she continued. “I forgot he was involved. Have you tried to interview him?”
“I tried. It was going quite well until his father came in and interrupted. He practically threw me out of his son’s office.”
“I’m surprised you lasted that long. They’ve been into the coffee shop once or twice and his parents keep him on a short leash. It’s like he’s still a teenager.”
“They’ve made him chief financial officer of the whole company. They can’t really see him as a teenager.”
Eulalie paced out the area from the start of the cliff path to the forest entrance. “The American kid, Chuck, was standing here, close to the water’s edge. If Jessica had gone for a midnight swim, wouldn’t he have seen her?”
“You’d think.”
“So, maybe she went into the forest.”
Fleur rubbed her hands together. “Are we going there now?”
“In a moment.”
When she had run through the whole beach scenario in her mind, Eulalie felt fairly confident that Jessica could have gone in only two directions – up the cliff path or into the forest. If she had walked into the sea, Chuck would have seen her.
Unless he had seen her and hadn’t said anything. That was also a possibility.
“Okay.” She took a last look over her shoulder at the warmth and light of the bright afternoon. “Let’s see what the forest has to tell us.”
She walked into its cool embrace.
Chapter 11
There was a crashing noise and Fleur appeared behind her.
“Hey, wait for me.”
“Keep up.”
They had hardly walked a few steps when the forest closed around them completely. The sun was blotted out and a greenish subaqueous light took its place. The temperature dropped several degrees, although it was still warm.
“It’s weird how it closes around you like this,” said Fleur. “Very disorienting. I feel like we came from that way.” She pointed. “But you’re probably going to tell me I’m wrong.”
Eulalie took her wrist and swung her arm a few degrees to the east.
“We came from that way.”
“Seriously? I’m already turned around.”
“This is why island parents tell their children tall tales to scare them away from the forest. If you don’t know what you’re doing, you would be lost almost instantly.”
“Is this what it’s like where you’re from?”
“This is a mini version of it. In the deep forest, the trees are much older and bigger. The canopy is higher and there’s less light. Also, there’s the river, which is a useful landmark.”
“There’s no river here.”
“That’s right.”
Fleur thought about this for a moment.
“But you still know where you are, right?”
Eulalie hesitated. “I’m almost sure I do. Now, was it this way…?” She swung to the left. “Or that way…?” She swung to the right.
“You mean you’re not sure? Oh, my God. We’re going to die here. We’re going to…” She broke off when she saw Eulalie’s grin.
“Bitch, don’t test me. I’ve had a hard day.”
“Relax.” Eulalie laughed. “You know how you feel walking down L
afayette Boulevard on a sunny afternoon and someone asks you the way to the Prada store? And you know you could find it blindfolded? That’s how I feel in here, so just chill and enjoy the walk.”
Eulalie picked the easiest route. She wanted her friend to have a good experience, so she kept choosing options that were easy to get through. Fleur was wearing thick jeans and good hiking boots and could manage the soft undergrowth that felt at times as though you were wading through thick mud.
“No wonder walking tours of the deep forest have never really taken off,” said Fleur. “It is incredibly hard going. You say the rescue party went all over this forest when Jessica Manilow first disappeared?”
“That’s what the deputy harbormaster told me.”
“I wonder if we are the first humans to have come in here since then?”
“We’re not. There have been people here recently. Very recently.”
“How do you know?”
“The undergrowth is compressed. There are gaps between trees that are so wide they look like paths. Look here.” She indicated a patch of bruised leaves. “Monkeys didn’t do this.”
“Do you think tourists sometimes come in here?”
“I doubt it. They’d get lost. This is someone who knows the way.”
Fleur looked over her shoulder. “Do you think there’s someone in here with us now?”
“No. I’d know if there were. These marks are recent, but they’re not from today.”
“What would they have been doing?”
“That’s what I’m wondering. We’re going to follow this path and see where it takes us.”
“What path? There is literally no path.”
“I can see it,” said Eulalie.
They walked on for an hour, stopping regularly for water breaks. Fleur kept insisting that she didn’t need to stop, but Eulalie made her. She was keeping a close eye on the time. They needed to be back at the docks before six to catch the last ferry home. Eulalie had absolutely no intention of spending the night here.
“Stop!” She held up her hand, and Fleur almost bumped into the back of her.
“What? Why? What’s happening?”
Eulalie pointed. “There’s a snake hanging from that tree over there. He’s thinking about dropping down onto us as we pass beneath. We’re bigger than his usual prey, but he’s hungry so he’s prepared to take the chance.”
“What snake? Are you talking about that thing hanging down there? It looks like a branch.”
“It’s an axe-mouthed tree snake. It has amazing camouflage and it’s poisonous.”
“What are we going to do?”
“I’ll get rid of it. Just stay here and don’t move.”
It seemed to Fleur as though Eulalie were standing on the path the one moment and halfway up a tree the next.
She climbed quickly and easily, finding hand and footholds with effortless agility. Soon she was twenty feet in the air and level with the lowest branches of the trees. She found a long thin branch and wiggled it until it broke off in her hand. Then she walked out along one of the lateral branches of the tree and sat down when she got close to the snake, her legs dangling above Fleur’s head.
She extended her stick and nudged the snake, destabilizing it and encouraging it to wrap itself around the stick for safety. When it was more on the stick than on the tree, she stood up and walked back towards the trunk of the tree, holding the snake at arms-length. She crossed over onto another branch and encouraged it to relocate itself there. She laid the stick down carefully on a branch and let go of it.
Then she slithered down the tree and landed on the ground next to Fleur.
“That was amazing. You climb like…”
“If you say a monkey, I’m going to get annoyed.”
“I was going to say a squirrel.”
Fleur knew that Eulalie had been teased and bullied when she had first moved to Queen’s Town. ‘Monkey’ was what the kids had called her. Fleur would not dream of using that word against her.
“Let’s keep going. I have a feeling we’re getting close.” Eulalie led the way, sensing a change in the quality of light and air up ahead. They walked on for a few minutes.
“Here we go.”
They had reached a small clearing in the forest – no more than ten square feet in size.
“Do you think it’s natural?”
“Definitely not. Look here.” Eulalie pulled away some of the undergrowth to reveal stumps. “You can see where these trees have been cut down.”
“But why? There’s nothing here. Why would anyone do this?”
“Something was stored here until recently. Look at these broad flattened areas in the undergrowth. It looks like boxes… or crates, maybe. Something flat and heavy.”
“Supplies for the tearoom, maybe?” Fleur shrugged when she saw Eulalie’s face. “Okay, that’s not very likely, I’ll admit. But what else could it be?”
“Nothing aboveboard, that’s for sure.” Eulalie looked up at the sky, and around at the surrounding forest. “You don’t hike for an hour through dense forest to store something here if your business is legitimate.”
“Do you think this was here five years ago when the search party was looking for Jessica?”
“I don’t see how it could have been. I’ve read every word ever written about the search, and I’ve never seen anything about this. The only comments on the forest were that it was thick and undisturbed, and no trace of her body was found, even when they brought in dogs.”
“So, you think this has nothing to do with her disappearance?”
Fleur flung herself down on the ground and pulled off her hiking boots, sighing with relief.
“I don’t know,” said Eulalie. “What are the chances of two suspicious events on this tiny island having nothing to do with each other? Pretty good, I suppose. I’ll keep an open mind on that.”
“Sit down and take a load off.” Fleur patted the ground next to her.
Eulalie sat down and drank from her water bottle. Her brain was working overtime, trying to make sense of what she was seeing.
“I wonder how many other little clearings there are in this forest,” Fleur said, opening her water bottle too.
“I have a feeling this is the only one. When we entered the forest from the beach side, there was just one path, and it led here. And the only path leading out of here is the one we’ve just been on. If you kept going in that direction,” she pointed west, “you’d come out on the far side of the island. There’s nothing there except a rocky cliff face. Nowhere to moor a boat, nowhere to land a plane.”
“A plane? Why would anyone want to land a plane on this godforsaken rock?”
“A plane, or a helicopter. This is a big operation. Nobody went to all this trouble to hide boxes of Q-tips.”
“What then?”
“I’m not sure. I need to see Chief Macgregor.” She laughed when Fleur waggled her eyebrows. “Don’t be like that. This is strictly business.”
“You can pick out the names of your future children in a businesslike fashion.” Fleur rolled out of the way as Eulalie swatted at her.
“We’d better get back. Put your boots back on. I have Band-Aids if you need them for blisters.”
“No, I’m fine,” said Fleur.
It seemed to Fleur that the route back took much longer than the route there. When she asked Eulalie if they were lost, she was told that they were actually making better time going back.
The sun had already dipped below the cliffs when they emerged onto the beach, casting long shadows that stretched almost up to the waves. Eulalie hurried them along the beach and up the cliff path. She wanted to get a look at the ruins before the last ferry left.
“There’s something going on inside that head of yours,” Fleur accused her. “You have an idea what this all means, and you’re not telling me.”
Eulalie walked quickly towards the ruins. “I’m not sure if I’m right yet. I don’t want to say something and be proved wrong.
I really need to speak to Chief Macgregor.”
The ruins looked exactly as Eulalie remembered them. The only difference was that there were tourists wandering among them, instead of middle-schoolers. As the tourists drifted back to the ferry, Fleur and Eulalie found themselves increasingly alone in the old monastery.
The shadows lengthened, and a chilly breeze kicked against the ancient stones. The monastery had belonged to a Benedictine order of monk from the sixteen-hundreds right up until Victorian times. The monks were a contemplative order – not totally silent but speaking only when necessary. They had kept mainly to themselves, appearing only rarely on Prince William Island for supplies. The large Catholic community on the island had granted them special status and felt honored to have them living nearby.
Sometime in the early eighteen-seventies, a scandal had rocked the monastery. Eulalie couldn’t remember the details but knew it had resulted in the small brotherhood being disbanded. The monks had split up to join other Benedictine communities. The monastery had been left to go to ruin. The rumors that it was haunted had started up almost immediately.
It was time, Eulalie decided, to acquaint herself rather more closely with the myth of the old monastery.
“Can you hear that?” Fleur said.
Eulalie listened for a moment. “Hear what?”
“I don’t know… it sounds like singing.”
All Eulalie could hear was the wind. She stood still and listened. The wind was ringing against the old stones, creating a high, whining sound as it funneled through the old passages and walkways.
“There. Did you hear that?”
Eulalie listened. In the very top notes of the wind she thought she could detect a soaring sound that reminded her of the novenas sung at certain high Masses.
“Did you hear it?” Fleur asked again.
“I heard something.”
“It sounds like… church music.”
A shudder danced along Eulalie’s spine. “Oh, stop it.”
“I’m serious. Perhaps there are speakers here with sound effects? Maybe it’s all part of the atmosphere – the tourist experience, you know?”
The Complete H-Series of The Eulalie Park Mysteries Page 53