So Then There Were None

by Annie Adams

  Pam perked up. I could almost see her ears straining toward the voices, as if she were an animal in the wild.

  The two women approached the buffet. “Well you can eat up,” Eva said. “It’s not likely Jill will be joining us for breakfast. I think she’ll be down and out for a long time.”

  “Oh you’d like that wouldn’t you?” Audra said, not too kindly.

  “For Jill not to come to breakfast?” Eva shrugged. “Sure. Whatever.”

  “No, you’d like for me to pig out and gain a few pounds. It’s not enough you’re so skinny, you want the rest of us fatter in comparison.”

  Eva looked at the young woman on the catering staff who was overseeing the meal and jerked her head toward Audra. “Someone needs a Bloody Mary.” She looked back at Audra. “That’s not what I meant at all. Calm down.”

  K.C. leaned in and whispered, “Some of us got up on the wrong side of the bed today.”

  The large French doors at the back of the garden room had been opened onto the patio. After we ate, K.C., Alex and I followed the patio steps to the decks of the swimming pool.

  “I think I’m going to take a dip,” K.C. said.

  “Did you bring a suit?” I asked.

  “But of course. I never travel without it. I’ll be back in five.”

  “Seems like she packed pretty thoroughly for just in case,” I said. “But she is someone who likes to take advantage of every adventure that comes her way. One needs to be prepared.”

  “Her whole life is an adventure,” Alex said. “I’d say I’m jealous, but sometimes her idea of an adventure is a lot different than mine.”

  “What, you mean like solving crimes?”

  He gave me a solemn stare. “I wouldn’t call what you two have done solving crimes.”

  “Oh really?”

  He held his hands up defensively. “That may have come out the wrong way. I just remember something about the two of you, driving around in her convertible, without any clothes on…”

  I rolled my eyes. “We both had underwear on.”

  “Ah, well in that case,” he said sarcastically, as if he were in agreement. “How’s about we change the subject?”

  Alex led me to a sitting area at the end of the deck, which seemed to jut out over the very edge of the rocky foundation of the island. We sat and took in the scenery in pleasant silence for a while.

  “We should really try out that swimming pool,” he said casually.

  “Mmhmm,” I replied, rather noncommittally.

  “You don’t sound too enthused.”

  “I’m not—not enthused.” I looked up at him with a goofy smile.

  “That wasn’t a real answer.” He put his arm over my shoulders and leaned in. “What do you say, we suit up and I’ll stare at your hot bod’ as we walk downstairs and then jump in the pool?”

  I felt my cheeks burning and it wasn’t from a sunburn—yet.

  “And if it’s too cold we’ll sit in the hot tub together. And then we’ll make out like teenagers.”

  I had to admit, that sounded like fun. What I didn’t look forward to was the applying of gallons of sunscreen to my near-transparent pasty skin, thanks to my father’s Scottish genes. And oh yeah, if I’d been intimated by the competition before, I could just imagine what it would be like standing next to those super models in a bathing suit. And then there was the whole, almost drowning three times, thing.

  He stood, and then pulled me up from the couch. “C’mon let’s go change.” He patted my behind as we walked toward the garden room.

  I turned back to look at him. “What’s gotten into you?” I said, playfully.

  “I don’t know. It must be the mountain ai…”

  I followed the direction of his gaze to see what had caused his eyes to become the size of dinner plates. And I’m sure mine had done the same, because we were about to be surrounded by mountains. Mountains of flesh in this case, which bulged out the sides of tiny, taut triangles of fabric, held together by strings that must have been made from the same material as the suspension cables from the Golden Gate Bridge for all the load the tiny strands were supporting.

  The “Ees,” had all donned bikinis and not much of anything else. Except sunglasses, even though they were indoors. Two of them had picked at the breakfast spread and placed a couple of bites of fruit on their plates.

  “Holy cow!” K.C. shouted from the entrance to the room. Her Hawaiian print Mumu flowed all around her as she ambled over to the buffet and stood next to the Ees. “Good thing my fella’s not here or I’d have to give you ladies what for. But I don’t mind saying you gals look as hot as firecrackers on the 4th of July. If you got it, flaunt it, or in my case even if you don’t. Ha!” She pretended to pat at her hair, which was covered by a swimming cap rimmed in silk floral rosettes.

  I glanced at Alex, who pretended to look in the opposite direction as the flesh-fest.

  “It’s okay, you don’t have to pretend,” I said. I lowered my voice. “I can’t expect you to be super-human. Although I think a large percentage of their bodies might not actually be human anymore.”

  Another bikini clad babe came bouncing into the room.

  “Kourtnee, what’s wrong?” Pam asked.

  Kourtnee took a moment to catch her breath. “I can’t wake Jill up.”

  “What do you mean?” Audra asked.

  “I went into her room to ask if she had any cigarettes—”

  “I thought you quit,” Megan asked just before Pam snorted a laugh.

  Kourtnee cut her look that should have killed her. “Is that what’s important right now?”

  Megan shrugged and slunk into the background.

  “I’ll go check on her,” Pam said. “Alex, you should probably come too.”

  I was in agreement with Pam, this time. He was trained to deal with emergency situations.

  “I have to go with you,” Kourtnee said. “Her room is locked. You’ll have to go through mine.” She held her key card up in front of her.

  The three of them left and the rest of us looked around uncomfortably, not knowing just what to do next.

  “I don’t understand, one of the other Ees said. “Jill drank a lot yesterday, but she drinks a lot every day. Especially at a party. Why would this time be any different?”

  "Poor Jill!" someone said.

  Audra coughed out a laugh. "Poor Jill, please. She deserves everything she gets." She left the room and K.C. and I stared at each other for a moment.

  "Well, well, well. I wonder what that was all about," K.C. said.

  Megan came over and glanced around conspiratorially. "You know what Jill did to Audra’s father don't you?"

  K.C.’s sails filled with the wind of gossip that propels her forward. "No. Do tell. I think it could help us understand what' going on so much better. It will help us to help that poor girl. Don't you think, Quincy?"

  I was doubtful it would help anything. I barely knew who Jill was. I knew she was the one who didn't hang all over my fiancé as much as the rest of them did. Although she had demanded to see him naked at the bachelorette party.

  "What happened?" I asked, much to K.C.'s glee, I was sure.

  "Well, when she was in high school, she had a job helping out at her friend’s dad's office. He was a dentist. Apparently, she stole a prescription pad or two after she’d been working there awhile. Our Jill was quite the little entrepreneur, even then. Anyway, she was dealing pills to her friends. Now, here's the interesting part, the thing that makes her so smart. She was afraid he was suspicious about the prescription pads, so she started flirting with him…"

  "Uh-oh, I don't like where this is going," K.C. said. "But continue."

  "So Jill got him to stay late in the office a few times, if you know what I mean."

  "This girl was in high school," I said. "What was he thinking?"

  Megan shrugged. "She was actually done with all of her classes because she was so smart. And she was like sixteen. It's a good thing she wasn't o
ver eighteen. Her records were sealed."

  "What records?"

  "I'm getting ahead of myself. She got him to admit that he knew about the prescription pads and told him that she would go to his wife if he ever pressed charges. She started to blackmail him. Which was how she made money for a while, because she'd overused the prescription pads and needed to lay low.

  “She went on like that for a long time, but eventually she started drinking. She was in college. She had scholarships and everything and she was one of the youngest students. But her drinking got out of control and she started slipping up."

  "Working at the dentist's office, going to school full-time and keeping up with the seedy relationship? I know I'd be worn out. I think I would be drinking too," K.C. said.

  Megan half-laughed and half-coughed simultaneously.

  "She wasn't working at the office any more. But she was meeting up with him there. That was the beginning of the downfall. The wife caught them there. She’d gone to surprise him because things hadn't been going so well for them, so when she punched in the alarm code and walked in with her long coat hanging open with nothing underneath—she was pretty alarmed."

  "Hah. Alarmed—good one," K.C. said.

  "How do you know all the sordid details?" I asked.

  "It was Audra’s mom and dad. She was Jill's best friend."

  "Until this happened, I imagine."

  "Actually, no." Megan grabbed both of our wrists. "That's what makes it all the weirder! They stayed friends. Audra hated her parents. Her mom confided in her all the details, all the time. That's part of why she hated it. She never felt like a kid. Her parents treated her like an adult from the time she was little. She and Jill got into a lot of trouble. But Jill's the only one who drank like that."

  “Are you close to Audra?” I asked.

  Megan shrugged. “No, but Regan is.”

  I suppressed the urge to ask her how close she was to her sister, since it seemed to me they didn’t like each other very much.

  "What about the record you talked about?" K.C. asked.

  "Audra’s dad would have lost his license to practice if he took the blame for the prescription fraud. So he turned on Jill. She was still a minor when she stole the prescription pads, so she was charged as a juvenile. Her records were sealed. But she had to drop out of school and do a bunch of volunteer work and pay a lot of fines."

  I felt sicker inside with every word that she spoke. “What about his wife?” It had to have been awful for everyone involved.

  "She left him, took all of his money in the divorce. Audra wouldn't talk to her for a long time. I think she blamed her parents for everything that happened. I'm sure Jill made it sound like she was coerced by Audra’s father. But let me tell you, Jill doesn't get coerced by anyone. Everything she does is calculated down to the last detail."

  "Such a sad story," K.C. said. "I wonder how it's going up there.”

  Megan excused herself to go sit in the pool.

  "Boss, I really think we should check on things, don't you?"

  "You mean go up and stick our noses in?"

  She sucked in a sharp breath, as if she’d been deeply injured. "I can't believe you would think such a thing. I merely have concerns for Jill, and for Pam and Alex, frankly. What if they need our help?"

  “I’m sure if Alex needs our help, he’ll ask for it. Besides, he’s already mentioned our crime solving activities since we’ve been here. And not in an encouraging way. I’m not going to give him any reason to complain about me butting in where I don’t belong.”

  “Oh, alright.” She put on her pouty face and flung the end of her beach towel around her neck like a scarf. “I’ll just go sit outside by the pool…alone.” She took a few steps past the buffet then stopped. “Just as soon as I finish one of these lovely chocolate-filled croissants.”

  Those were a new item at the buffet and I decided I couldn’t live without having one myself. I joined K.C. at the table.

  “You know, Boss, something just isn’t quite right here.”

  “You mean with these?” I held up a croissant. “They look perfect to me.”

  “Oh no, these little buns are sheer perfection, bite into that one and see. No, I’m talking about Jill and the ghosts and—”

  “What ghosts?”

  “Oh you poor, naïve, thing. It’s my fault, really. I haven’t told you of all the sightings I’ve had since we’ve been here.”

  “You think the ghosts have put Jill in a coma?”

  She turned toward me and propped her daisy-ringed sunglasses up on her forehead. “I’m not that crazy. Ghosts don’t put people into comas. Everyone knows that. No—it’s the timing of things…”

  She gazed at the ceiling as if deep in thought. Or maybe she was having another ghost sighting.

  I was growing worried about Jill. It seems like we should have heard from someone by now. I couldn’t tell if the other women even cared about their friend. I could hear the chatter of their animated conversations, but there weren’t any hushed tones or furrowed brows of concern in the room as far as I could tell.

  Maybe I would go to our room and put on a bathing suit. And perhaps on the way there, I might just happen to pass by a certain room and see if Alex needed anything.

  “Well, I’ll be snookered,” K.C. shouted.

  My heart dropped to my kidneys, she’d only been standing a foot away from me. The chatter in the room stopped, probably as the rest of the people in the room tried to recover from the shock of her outburst.

  “You know what’s happening here, don’t you?” K.C. looked at me, but she spoke loud enough for everyone in the large room to hear her clearly.

  I shook my head.

  “It’s the mystery.”

  I looked at the others to see if maybe one of them showed some small sign of comprehension. All of us wore blank stares.

  K.C. made a little spurting sound. “Don’t you all remember? We were promised a mystery by Christie and Mike yesterday at the luncheon. I bet this is it.”

  Chapter Eight

  “It’s got to be. Don’t you think?”

  K.C. may as well have been speaking to a room full of zombies. It was all blank expressions and dead behind the eyes reflecting back at her.

  She made a spurting sound with her lips. “I’m calling a team meeting. Everyone, gather ‘round.”

  A crowd of bikini babes encircled the flower bedecked woman with the giant, daisy-rimmed sunglasses. It was like an Esther Williams movie gone bad.

  “Gang,” K.C. said, “Mike and Christie promised us a mystery, and now that they’re long gone…” she swept her hand up and into the air, “Voila. The mystery has arrived.”

  Audra stepped into the circle, her dramatic exit having been short-lived. “You mean Jill—”

  “Phht. Jill being Jill is a mystery? What’s to solve? It’s not like it’s that hard,” Regan said.

  Audra crooked her eyebrow at Regan. Knowing her past with Jill and the harsh comments she’d made just before she “fell” into Alex’s arms the night before, I was proud of Audra for showing a glimmer of concern for her old friend.

  “What?” Regan replied defensively. “Now that she’s really done it to herself, you guys are going to act surprised?”

  “What do you mean, Regan?” Eva asked.

  “She took a bunch of pills after she drank all day and night. Not that hard to figure out. Mystery solved.”

  I stole a glance at Regan’s sister. Megan’s eyes were fixed on Regan at an angle that seemed to show a very precise disdain, probably perfected after much repetition.

  “Who said anything about pills?” Audra said.

  “Yeah,” Pam said the loudest of everyone else. She’d snuck in unnoticed.

  Regan jammed her hands on her hips. “What? Am I a suspect now? I heard Kourtnee say something about it to the hottie out in the hall. Gawd.” She gave us all the stink-eye, grabbed a chocolate-filled croissant, and left the room.

  “Okay
then,” Candee said. Her double Ds were probably the most exposed out of all the bathing beauties. I truly wondered how the thin strings stayed intact against the strain of their disproportionately large cargo.

  “Well, ladies, as they say,” K.C. hitched up her mumu, “I think the game is afoot.” She kicked one of her feet behind her and wiggled her toes. Her bejeweled flip-flop went flying into a potted fern on the other side of the room.

  “Do you really think Jill is okay?” Megan asked after the others dispersed.

  “Yes, I do.” K.C. jerked her head to look at me. “We’ll have to wait until we see Alex— whenever that might be—instead of just going up to see what’s what.”

  I looked at her innocently.

  “But I think this is all part of the game,” she said.

  Pam hadn’t rejoined the group completely unnoticed earlier. I had noticed her quiet return. And now she stood nearby. “Maybe Pam can tell us something.”

  “Goodness gracious, yes. What was I thinking? Oh, Pam, dear, tell us what’s happening upstairs.” K.C. wrung her hands enough to break the bones in her fingers.

  “There isn’t that much to tell. I got up there and…”

  “Well?” K.C. said expectantly.

  “I couldn’t look. Kourtnee let us into her room, which shares a bathroom with Jill’s. But before I could walk through the bathroom, I started to feel nauseous. I’ve never seen anyone unconscious or…you know.”

  “Dead?” K.C. blurted out.

  “K.C.!” I said. “She’s not dead.” I wasn’t so sure, but I was hanging on the hope that the mystery game theory was correct. “Did Alex say anything?”

  “He told me not to worry, that he would take care of everything, and then he gave me a huge hug.”

  I gave K.C. a look. She made a gagging motion just out of Pam’s line of sight.

  “I told him I couldn’t take it if Jill was really—you know—and anyway, he had me wait just outside the bathroom door.” Pam put her hand on my forearm and squeezed a little too tightly. “He’s such a gentleman. Anyway, he called out to me that Jill was going to be okay.”