by Rachel Woods
Ominous Island
Murder in Paradise Series
Rachel Woods
Angel Vane
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Reunion Island
Prologue
Murder in Paradise Series
Also by Rachel Woods
About the Author ~ Rachel Woods
About the Author ~ Angel Vane
About the Publisher
BonzaiMoon Books LLC
Houston, Texas
www.bonzaimoonbooks.com
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the authors’ imaginations or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2018 by Rachel Woods & Angel Vane
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Thank you God for creative ideas! Thanks Angel Vane for being a great friend and co-writing partner! This book is dedicated to all the wonderful people I've met throughout my travels in the Caribbean!
~Rachel Woods
Thanks to Rachel for being the best co-author ever.
~Angel Vane
Prologue
The first time I hit him in the head with a shovel, he was surprised, shocked, stunned.
As he turned toward me, his eyes were wide and confused. I almost felt sorry for him. But not quite. Not so sorry that I wouldn’t kill him. Because I had to. He had to die. And he knew why. He knew exactly what he’d done.
I swung the shovel again, connecting with the side of his head.
Crying out in shock and pain, he stumbled to one knee.
“I can’t let you live,” I told him. “Not after what you did …”
I whacked him again, a resounding thwack that put him face down on the floor and shut him up. Sprawled on the carpet, he didn’t move. Was he dead? Or, just unconscious? Maybe he was just pretending to be dead?
Just in case, I decided to hit him again. The crunch of bone and the spray of blood and brain matter comforted me.
I was convinced that he wouldn’t get up because I knew he couldn’t.
The son of a bitch was dead.
Chapter One
What the hell was that bitch doing here?
Noelle Bean lost her train of thought as she stared at Helen Farber. Moments ago, glancing from left to right, she’d been trying to gauge the interest of her audience when she’d seen the bitchy, bitter old hag. Her sour face twisted in a smug scowl, Helen sat in the center of the two hundred students crowded into the tiered seating of the small lecture hall.
Clearing her throat, Noelle glanced down at her notes to regain her focus. She had to finish the lecture. As an adjunct professor at the University of St. Killian’s School of Pharmacy, she wasn’t supposed to trail off mid-sentence and spaz out. She wasn’t known for going off on tangents like most of the stodgy, musty old professors who populated the classrooms and lecture halls throughout the Colonial buildings sprawled across the five-acre campus.
Many students looked to Noelle as a mentor, even though at thirty years old she was more like a dorm R.A., and a few had told her she was an inspiration. She was a dedicated, accomplished pharmacist at Palmchat Pharmacy, the premier pharmacy chain of the Palmchat Islands, bringing dedication, knowledge, and practical skills to the classroom.
What would her students think if she fell apart because of that crazy bitch Helen Farber?
Noelle raised her gaze to the students eager for her to continue. Quickly, she scanned the sea of faces staring down at her in rapt attention, fingers poised over smart tablets and laptops as they continued to wait.
Taking a small breath, Noelle spotted six or seven students clustered in three rows on the right side of the hall. Thankful for familiar faces, she focused on the doctoral students, each in their final year of the pharmacy college—Tina Chen-Soo, Sarah Linde, Matt Delany, Kevin Cook, Jimmy Quible and Eamon Taylor. The six had recently completed the Palmchat Pharmacy Company’s Internship Program. Highly prestigious and extremely competitive, the program was designed to give fourth-year doctoral students an on-the-job retail pharmacy experience.
Noelle had been chosen as the Intern Mentor of the current cohort, a coveted position within the company. Not only was she tasked with supervision and guidance, but at the end of the program, she’d selected the intern who would be hired by the company as an assistant pharmacist.
During the two-month program, Noelle had cultivated and developed a camaraderie with the students. She was pleased the companionship hadn’t ended when Eamon Taylor was given the job. Noelle had worried the remaining cohort would be standoffish toward her because of her decision, but they understood that only one of them could get the position.
Her confidence returning, Noelle began at the point where she’d trailed off and regained her composure quickly as she segued into her next talking point.
After the class ended, several of the students approached her to ask a few follow-up questions related to the lecture she’d given. Noelle was happy to provide additional insight and offer suggestions for further independent research on the topic.
As the students left the lecture hall, Noelle turned to the lectern and began gathering her note cards.
“Well, well, well, if it isn’t the bitch who ruined my life,” said Helen, her voice slightly slurred and laced with spite.
Bristling at the familiar brassy tone, Noelle braced herself for the verbal attack and turned.
Helen Farber rose unsteadily from her seat and made her way down the steps and toward the lecture stage. Dressed in an orange Chanel suit which had seen much better days, Helen looked well beyond her forty years. Stage-like make-up couldn’t hide the lines around her bleary eyes and pinched mouth.
“Good afternoon, Helen,” said Noelle, deciding to stay calm and be cordial. “How are you?”
“How am I? Did you really just ask me, how am I?” Helen scoffed, her nasty smirk turning to an angry scowl. “Bitch, how do you think I am? I am working in a dead end job where I’m underutilized and overqualified. My life is destroyed, and it’s your damn fault.”
/> “Your life is not destroyed,” Noelle said. “You can turn things around if you just get some help.”
“I don’t need your disingenuous motivational platitudes,” Helen said, the furor between her painted eyebrows deepening. “You think I want advice from the bitch who stole my job.”
“I didn’t steal your job,” Noelle said.
“You got me fired because you—”
“You got yourself fired,” Noelle said, fighting to remain calm. “You weren’t thinking about our customers, or—”
“I was going through a difficult time, okay?” Helen said, defensive, taking another step toward Noelle. “I thought you understood that because I thought we were friends, but instead you ratted on me.”
Noelle stepped back. “I had to make sure that our customers weren’t put in danger by your actions.”
“You don’t give a damn about our customers,” said Helen. “You try to pretend that you’re so kind and compassionate and caring, but I know the truth about you.”
Noelle went rigid, panicked by Helen’s claim.
“You’re a con artist,” Helen said, sneering. “People don’t know who you really are, but—“
“People don’t know the truth about you, either,” said Noelle. “If they did, there is no way they would trust you to work around all these chemical substances.”
“You back-stabbing bitch!” Helen said. “You may have it all together right now but one day your whole world is going to fall apart right before your eyes, and there won’t be anything you can do to stop it.”
“Are you drunk?” Noelle asked. “Or high?”
Helen gave a derisive snort and then said, “Here’s what you need to remember, Noelle: Karma is a bitch … and so am I.”
Chapter Two
Karma is a bitch, and so am I …
Truer words were never spoken, thought Noelle as she exited the Pharmacy building and walked along a hibiscus lined path toward the university quad.
Helen was a bitch, but Noelle could be a bitch, too. She could be worse than a bitch, but she wouldn’t give in to any hostile instincts. Noelle had promised herself she would never again “go all Handweg ho” on someone, no matter how bad they pissed her off.
Going “Handweg ho”— the pejorative expression assigned to young girls from Handweg Gardens—was no longer an option for her. Even though she was female and from the unofficial wrong side of the island, where tourists were warned never to tread, even in the daytime, she refused to be aggressive and confrontational at the drop of a hat for the slightest infraction, real or imagined.
Fifteen years ago, Noelle had decided she would no longer be defined by derogative generalizations based upon geographic location.
When she’d left St. Killian for a better life in America, she resolved to put her turbulent past behind her. After landing in Washington D.C. and moving in with her uncle, she began to change her narrative, to decide how she wanted others to perceive her.
The first step in her reinvention was changing her outward appearance. She ditched the baggy layers of clothing and dreadlocks and adopted the “girly-glam” feminine look of her cousins. She straightened her hair, learned how to apply her make-up, and patterned her style after the latest trends in Vogue magazine. Quickly, Noelle thrived in an atmosphere where she was encouraged and expected to succeed. She finished high school at the top of her class and went on to the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, where she studied at the Eshelman School of Pharmacy, ranked #1 in the United States.
The second step hadn’t been as easy as sporting a new look. Sometimes Noelle wasn’t sure she’d completely mastered reinventing her mindset. Reinvention meant more than adopting a glamorous persona. She’d had to learn how to think differently, how to solve her problems without threats or violence. Still, she’d struggled to walk away from conflict when everything within her wanted to “go all Handweg Ho” on whoever tried to start beef with her.
Noelle continued down the path, checking her watch. A few minutes after four-thirty. Enough time to stop at the market before she picked up her boys from her mother’s house. Natalie Chartres, Noelle’s mother, had recently declared herself the world’s best granny, but Noelle knew it was because her boys, three-year-old Ethan and ten-month-old Evan, were the world’s most perfect little munchkins.
As she reflected on her blessings, Noelle knew she shouldn’t let Helen Farber get to her. The woman was depressed and damn near destitute, both financially and spiritually, following the disastrous mistakes which had derailed her career. Once on the fast track to a district management position with the Palmchat Pharmacy Company, Helen had squandered her opportunities when she’d become addicted to prescription pain medication.
After a debilitating back injury, Helen began to rely on the pills, continuing to take them even after she’d recovered. When she could no longer find a doctor to provide her with a prescription for the powerful medication, Helen began stealing drugs from the pharmacy.
When a customer had a pain medication prescription, Helen would fill the prescription with sugar pills and steal the pain pills she should have given to the customer. After several customer complaints, Noelle became suspicious and alerted the head of security at the company. The security department conducted an internal investigation and devised a sting to trap Helen.
After falling for the bait, Helen was terminated and her pharmacy license suspended indefinitely.
As she hurried down the path, Noelle took in her surroundings, hoping the beautiful campus, with its swaying palm trees and breathtaking views of the Caribbean sea, would take her mind off Helen’s vicious verbal assault.
Salty breezes and abundant sunshine couldn’t distract Noelle from the truth of Helen’s tirade.
Helen was right about her. Noelle often felt like a con woman, fooling those around her. Since returning to St. Killian five years ago, Noelle had cleverly and craftily become the woman she’d always desired to be—the wife and mother with a great career. She’d taken great pains to make sure her past didn’t come back to haunt her, which meant there were certain places she couldn’t go and certain people she couldn’t associate with, and—
Her cell phone chimed, and she stepped off the path to dig it from her purse.
Probably Beanie, she guessed, smiling as she thought about her better half, the man she’d vowed to love forever for better or for worse.
Her eternal Valentine, Roland “Beanie” Bean, was a reporter at the Palmchat Gazette. They’d met when Beanie was at his absolute worst—suffering from a horrible shellfish allergy.
Stumbling into the pharmacy late one night, he was half-blind from a swollen face and red, watery eyes. Noelle had just started working at the pharmacy the previous week, and his monstrous appearance almost made her forget her rigorous training. To make matters worse, Beanie’s throat was so sore he couldn’t talk. With horrible penmanship on both their parts, they’d been forced to communicate via text message. That was how he’d gotten her phone number.
A few days later, he’d texted her to thank her and to ask her out on a date. Remembering the bloated, miserable man, she’d been reluctant, but despite his terrible predicament, she’d seen a spark of interest and intelligence in those watery eyes. With no plans for the evening, she’d agreed to meet him at Dizzy Jenny’s, a popular beachside restaurant. Noelle was glad she’d given him a chance. When he wasn’t suffering from a food allergy, Beanie was quite tall, dark, and handsome.
Roland Bean was more attractive and appealing than the type of guys she’d once hooked up with.
Noelle glanced at her cell phone. A chill of dread passed through her. She stared at the text message, wishing she didn’t recognize the anonymous number.
She knew exactly who was calling her—Grady Palmer, a nuisance from her past, an annoyance she couldn’t associate with anymore. She couldn’t avoid dealing with Grady. Very soon, Noelle would have to make some decisions about Grady and get him out of her life before—
> Your whole world is going to fall apart right before your eyes, and there won’t be anything you can do to stop it. Helen was wrong about that. Nothing was going to destroy what Noelle had with Beanie and her boys. She would fight with every fiber of her being to protect the beautiful life she’d made with her husband and children.
Determined to enjoy the beauty of the campus, Noelle walked leisurely yet with purpose. Although she was a proud Tarheel, she thought it might have been nice to further her education in paradise.
Who was she trying to fool, though? Certainly not herself. As she stepped onto the walkway which led to the faculty parking lot, Noelle knew that if she hadn’t escaped St. Killian, she wouldn’t have landed at the university.
She would have ended up in jail.
Or, more likely, dead.
Chapter Three
Pay what u owe mofo
Despite the warmth of the afternoon, Eamon Taylor felt an icy chill pass through him. Pay what u owe mofo. He knew exactly what would happen if he didn’t pay the debt. With trembling fingers, Eamon deleted the text. It wasn’t the first warning, and it wouldn’t be the last.