So Then There Were None

by Annie Adams

  "Our little Pam isn't quite the gentle kitten I thought she was," K.C. said. "More like a tiger it seems." She checked over each shoulder and motioned for us to come close. "Now listen,” she near-whispered, “I assume we are all on the same page now when I talk about the results of your investigation. What went on up there?"

  "Jill is gone," I said. "Her flask is full of water, and she probably wasn’t drunk last night. And there aren't any large quantities of pills missing from the heartburn medication that was on her bedside table. Her stuff is all gone too."

  "Well I'll be snookered. Where did she go?"

  "We're not sure," Alex said. "We thought we might go take a look around after we're done with these games."

  "What about Kourtnee? Where is she?"

  "She literally went into those woods over there to pitch a tent and stay alone until she can find a way off the island," I said.

  "That seems a bit odd, doesn't it?" K.C. said.

  "I don't know, a lot of things are odd to me this weekend."

  "You said it, sister. Hey, you know what? She did get little hiking boots when she pulled her charm out of the cake. I guess she's just a real outdoor adventurer. A lot like our boy here, I heard."

  "Huh?" he said.

  "You know, when we first arrived, I overheard someone saying what a mountaineer you are," K.C. said.

  "Oh, that. She was exaggerating. We were out hiking around in those woods and I told them to watch out for some poison ivy that I saw. They made a big deal about it. It was kind of a joke, really."

  "Ah, I see. Well, I want to talk to you two about this prize money. I think the three of us together would make a great team. All of us have experience at crime scenes."

  I watched Alex's face to see if he cringed or smirked, but he remained neutral, a testament to either his patience or his poker face.

  "If we end up solving this thing, that'll be ten thousand smackeroos! And I've decided I don't want a share of it. I want the two of you to use it for your honeymoon. Go somewhere that tickles the twines of your hearts’ desire."

  "K.C., that's so thoughtful, but you should get a share," I said.

  "That really is a generous gesture, K.C., but we haven't won anything…yet," Alex said.

  “Oh-ho, so the gentleman is game, too? I’m so pleased.”

  "Attention everyone!" Eva called out.

  "We're about to start our own little Olympics. We were going to wait for the guys to get back from their hike, but obviously they've run a little long. Lunch will be ready soon and we don't want to wait any longer."

  As we all filed over to the open area on the pool deck, Alex muttered, "How long do we have to do this?"

  "I don't know…but as soon as we can get out of it, let's go. I'm all for that."

  Someone had sent Sydnee to fetch the people on the catering staff to make up for some of the missing groomsmen. The kid that drove the boat when K.C. and I arrived and the two young women who I had seen helping with catering showed up. They had another young man with them I hadn't seen before. The two guys looked like they’d won the lottery when they saw all the girls in bikinis.

  "Okay, this is a really fun game that will help us all to become close friends," Eva said. She had us line up across from each other in two parallel lines. She handed an orange to the first person in each line. I stood next to Alex and, wouldn't you know, Pam stood on his other side.

  "Now, the first person puts the orange in the crook of their neck, like so." She bent her head so that she could hold the orange in between her chin and her shoulder. "Then, you pass it to the next person in line," her voice came out muffled since her voice box was smashed up against an orange. "They take the orange from you," she demonstrated with Candee, who was next to her, "with their own neck, like we just did. The team who passes the orange to the last person in the line first, wins. If it drops, you have to start over. And one more thing—except for picking it up off the ground—no hands allowed!"

  Someone shouted go, and the orange was passed. It was quite comical watching the short and tall people trying to contort their bodies in order to pass the orange without dropping it. It meant that people had to get chest-to-chest, or in the case of most of the women, breast-to-breast.

  K.C. had stood in line across from me. She had to pass her orange to Regan, which wasn't too difficult as they were similar in height. The orange finally came to me, after it was dropped a few times and the person had to start over. Alex and I fit together quite well—we were used to getting close to each other that way. Then, he had to pass the fruit to Pam.

  Pam took full advantage of the situation, and if I didn't know any better, I would think she was the most uncoordinated person in the universe. But I did know better. She had a full-on tumble under the sheets with my fiancé, except they were standing up. Finally, someone down the line yelled at Pam to hurry up and pass it, because our line was losing so badly.

  As soon as the game was finished, I made up an excuse to go use the restroom, and grabbed the stuff I had brought down to the pool. To my relief, Alex followed.

  Once inside, we looked at each other and shook our heads.

  "I know I'm pretty naive, when it comes to certain things," I said, "but why didn't I see that coming?”

  “I feel like I've been assaulted," Alex said. "This whole time, I've just been trying to be nice to Pam. I didn't want to make a big deal out of it when you all told me about her crush. I admit it’s flattering to hear that someone has a thing for you. But that was ridiculous. Seriously, it got scary out there.”

  "I should have thought of it when we all lined up. And it wasn’t just Pam. All of those tiny bikinis. They're all...buxom and bursting at the seams, and I'm—not. It’s embarrassing."

  "Hey—" he gently grabbed my arms. "You've got nothing to be embarrassed about. It’s not a competition. If it were, you’d win, hands down.” He flashed a smile at me that made my toes tingle. “I'm the one that should be embarrassed. I've been pretending not to be bothered by Pam, which has only led to her trying harder."

  "Pam does seem a little crazy, but I think she's just jealous of me. Who wouldn't be? I don't know how I lucked out with you."

  "Stop it." He looked at the ground. The tips of his ears turned red. "What do you say we go look around? I want to see how Jill disappeared. And, I want to go stand on a beach with you. Granted, it's a beach on a lake, but it'll be pretty. Like you." He winked at me and I felt something fluttering inside.

  We walked past the kitchen on the way to the back entrance. The phone that hung on the kitchen wall rang. We continued on but it kept ringing.

  “I don’t think anyone else is here,” I said. “Do you think we should answer that?”

  “Sure, it’s probably just an automated sales call anyway.” We went in and Alex picked it up.

  As soon as he answered, his brow furrowed and his voice took on a serious tone. “How many of you are sick? Do you think…what did everyone eat? Okay man, glad we walked by the phone. Oh, hey, by chance, did Jill happen to go out on the boats with you guys? Okay, I’ll check back with you when we get home.” He hung up and paused for a moment. His face was serious and he looked as if he were calculating something in his mind.

  “What? Who? What’s happened?”

  “That was Sid.”

  I had a blank stare for him too. Was I just that unobservant? Or was something wrong with my memory? I gave him a palms-up shrug. “Who is Sid?”

  “He’s Christie’s brother, one of the groomsmen.”

  “I’m not placing him.”

  “He had a green sweatshirt on yesterday…walked up the aisle with Megan?”

  All I could do was shake my head. “Okay, but what’s wrong? Why was he calling? You looked concerned.”

  “He’s been calling for the last half-hour trying to get someone to answer. Everyone’s cell phones are turned off because of the poor reception. All but two of the guys got sick with food poisoning, they think. Or maybe the flu got passed a
round while they were here. They’re at the hospital. He called from there.”

  “Oh, my gosh, how horrible. Is Jill with them?”

  “No. He’s going to figure out what to do with the boats and make sure everyone has a way home from the hospital. He wants us to tell the girls that everyone will be okay, but they got violently ill in the middle of their hike.”

  “I feel so bad for them. Glad we were here. Should we go tell the others now?”

  “No, it’s not going to change anything. We’ll let them have a good time with their games. Let’s go exploring.”

  Chapter Eleven

  I hadn’t realized how large the island was when K.C. and I came on the boat. I was too busy imagining all the awful ways I could die in the water before I reached the shore. Most of the beachfront was rocky, almost lined with low cliffs, but as Alex and I strolled around the perimeter of the lodge, we found an area toward the opposite side of the building that trailed down to a rough sand beach. The waters were fairly calm, but gently lapped in a soothing rhythm at the shores.

  Finally we had a break from the rest of the group, with time all to ourselves. We sat for a while and talked about our future together. It seemed surreal to me that only a few months before I was feeling overwhelmed and alone, barely with my head above water. Now, I was sitting with the love of my life, talking about our future wedding.

  We didn’t find any sign of Jill, or Kourtnee as we explored. We didn’t go too far into the woods, though. We wanted Kourtnee to have some time away from everyone too, since she had seemed so upset by seeing Jill the way she was and then having her disappear. I’m sure it probably messed with her mind, unless she was in on the secret of the mystery. And then she had messed with our minds.

  We headed back to the lodge and I couldn’t help feeling a little disappointed at having to return to the crowd, but my stomach was rumbling. It had to be lunchtime.

  We came back the same way we had left and found that the back door was locked. It was mid-day and there didn't seem to be any reason for the door to be locked, but maybe someone had made a mistake.

  We walked around the entire perimeter, not finding an open door. As we finally came to the pool side of the lodge, we heard happy island music and laughing voices. The gate to the security fence was also locked, and it took a lot of yelling before someone heard us and came over to let us in.

  We managed to catch the attention of Chad, who was the young man that had captained the boat when K.C. and I arrived at the island. I’d finally broken down and asked him his name so I didn’t have to keep referring to him as "the guy that drove the boat." He said they had been playing games on the deck since we'd left.

  We continued in to find K.C. doing the limbo under a pole set across some tiki torches.

  “I never would have guessed she’d be that flexible,” Alex said with a bit of wonderment.

  She spotted us after she came up from her dip and shimmied over to where we stood. "Where did you two get off to?"

  "We went for a walk and looked around. No sign of Jill," Alex said.

  "Or Kourtnee," I added.

  "We couldn't tell where you'd gotten to, but that's okay, without you here to show me up, I've been crowned the Limbo Champ of the Lodge."

  "Congratulations,” Alex said.

  She did a dramatic curtsy.

  “It took us a while to get back," I said. "The doors were all locked."

  "Which doors?" K.C. said.

  "All of them," Alex replied.

  "The entire house has had every single door locked. We had to yell until Chad heard us and let us in," I said.

  "Is someone else working in the house?" K.C. asked. "Because no one left the party as far as I know. I wonder who could have locked all the doors?"

  "Why would they need to lock all of them anyway?" I asked.

  I went and got Eva.

  "Is there anyone else working in the house that you know of?" Alex asked.

  "No, everyone is out here with us."

  Who would want to lock us out of the house and why? I didn't say anything until Eva left. “Well we know it wasn't Pam."

  "How do we know that?" K.C. asked.

  "She would never lock him out." I jerked my thumb toward Alex.

  K.C. laughed. "Too true. Oh now, that was a good one, Alex. It's okay, you can laugh. It's funny."

  He cracked a little smile and gave us a sarcastic laugh. "Maybe one of these kids did it, not realizing we weren't all in the house."

  "I don't think so, Alex. I was out here with everyone the whole time," K.C. said.

  "Maybe it was the ghosts," I said.

  K.C. looked at me, astonished. “I thought you weren't a believer."

  "I'm not, really. I've just heard a few spooky things and—I don't know—just gotten some weird chills."

  "Sorry about that," Alex said. "I have that effect on women." He winked and then we both rolled our eyes at him.

  "Well, I happen to know this house is haunted," K.C. said.

  Neither Alex nor I said anything.

  "It's true! I saw a little history of this property and the family who originally lived on these grounds. They were basically kicked off in order to build this big thing. The family was down to only one relative who lived in a rickety old shack, but it was her shack. She's rallied the family to come back and haunt this place."

  "How again, did you find this out?" Alex said.

  "There were some photos and newspaper articles posted in the hallway near the display shelf you two obliterated. I read while you put it all back together."

  "It seems weird that the owner of this lodge would post that kind of information—it doesn't shed them in a very good light."

  K.C. shrugged. "Maybe they feel guilty."

  The sound of a woman yelling came from the pool gate where we had been let in. We hustled over to the gate.

  "Finally! What the hell? I don't stay in the house, so I'm not allowed back in?" Kourtnee said.

  "We had the same problem," I told her.

  "I came back to eat lunch. I figured everyone would be inside already."

  "They're running a bit late," K.C. explained. "We needed extra bodies to pass the oranges, to account for the missing ones, so our cooks were out here playing with us. I think they're just about ready though."

  Kourtnee looked justifiably baffled, but she seemed to work it out in her head or decide it wasn’t worth pursuing. “Who is missing? I mean—besides Jill?” Kourtnee asked.

  “The men,” K.C. said. “They’re not back yet.”

  “Really?” Kourtnee seemed truly surprised.

  Alex gave me a knowing look, but didn’t say anything.

  We walked over and joined the group. On the way, I asked Kourtnee about Jill. "You didn't see any signs of anyone else out there, did you?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "I don't know…a path to the beach where there might be another dock? Or a little shack in the woods where someone could hide?" It was a reach, but who knows?

  "I didn't really go that far in. I didn't see anything like that and there aren’t any trailheads. I just had to get out of the confines of that house. Too crowded."

  I had to laugh at that. My little house would fit into the lodge about six or more times.

  "Lunch is served,” Pam said.

  "Why don't we go and change clothes before we sit down to eat?" Alex said.

  "Good idea. I can show you the photos and newspaper clippings that I saw in the hallway while we're there."

  We went upstairs and K.C. showed us the place in the hall.

  Alex scratched his head. "I don't remember seeing anything like that when we were up here."

  "You were probably too busy fooling around," K.C. said.

  "We weren't fooling around!" I said.

  Alex kind of laughed. "No. We wanted to be, but my plans were derailed."

  "Oh, you alley cat. Now look, they're right over here."

  She pointed to some framed photographs on
the wall, a few feet from the shelf we'd knocked down.

  "I love it when businesses display photos from their history. I should do that at the flower shop."

  "I'd probably avoid the part about how the builders forced the people off the land," Alex said.

  I took a look at the photographs. A black and white family photo with a family of nine children and a mother and father, lined up from tallest to shortest, reminded me of one of my great-grandparents’ photos. They stood in front of a log cabin style home, and it looked to be from the late 1800’s. The people in the photo looked thin and wiry, but healthy. And they were all frowning. But, as I had learned, people weren’t actually frowning in old photographs—they just weren’t smiling.

  Each photo took so long to take that people had to freeze in place with no movement. It would be difficult to hold on to a smile for as long as the photography process took without their jaws growing tired of smiling, causing them to move, thus ruining the photo.

  “K.C., this news clipping doesn’t say anything about the family being run off the property,” Alex said. “In fact, it sounds like the opposite. Like they were happy to sell their land to the developers.”

  “That can’t be!” K.C. moved in closer to get a better look.

  “You might want to take off your sunglasses,” I said.

  “Oh, right.” She took them off and handed them to me. They must have weighed at least three pounds with all the embellishments.

  “This is not what I read yesterday,” she said.

  Alex leaned in for a closer look. “What do you mean?”

  “The story I told you downstairs is the story that I read, right here, in this framed newspaper article. I swear it on my Uncle Albert’s grave.” She held her palm up and crossed her heart with her other hand.

  “You’re sure?” Alex said.

  “Positive.”

  “Hmm. It’s another mystery,” he said.

  It seemed to me like a good time to change the subject. “I’m so hungry. How about you guys?”

  “I’m famished,” Alex said. “How about you, K.C.? Did you work up an appetite out at that pool?”

  “Yeah, sure…” her voice trailed off. She followed us to the room but remained uncharacteristically quiet.