“I like it fine, Miss Sabrina, though I’m looking to pick up another job if I can.” Marilee Howard’s voice was country soft and confident. She was about sixteen, lanky and freckled, her extravagant red hair pulled back in a messy ponytail.
“Another job?” Sabrina frowned. “Don’t you want to go back to school now?” Marilee had dropped out of high school last year to take care of her aging great-grandfather. He had died about a month ago, and Marilee had insisted that she wanted to stay in the family house by herself. It was a situation that would never work in the big city, but here it did. Family and friends looked after the teenager, and a small trust paid the bills.
“I got my GED.” The girl’s voice was neutral but firm. It was none of Sabrina’s business, her closed expression said, but she was too well brought up to say it aloud.
“I’m happy to hear that. Are you thinking about college, though?”
Marilee shrugged and moved toward the door to the store. Something made her pause and she looked back over her shoulder at Sabrina. “I always did want to be an FBI agent.”
“An FBI agent? Me too! Well, any sort of secret agent would have worked. You need to go to college if you want to join the FBI.” Sabrina pulled out a notebook and started jotting notes to herself. “Have you taken your SATs? We need to look into scholarships and grants. Maybe a fundraiser…” She muttered to herself as she mapped out Marilee’s future.
“You really think it’s possible?” Marilee stared at Sabrina with the instinctive awe reserved for schoolteachers and doctors. These people were capable of daily miracles, she knew.
“Of course! We need to get to work, though. We’ll talk soon.”
Marilee nodded, her young face bright with hope. She raised her hand in farewell and went back inside.
“Sabrina! Aren’t you a vision in pink. And yellow. And green. And—” Lima said as he came out of the store a few minutes later holding a Styrofoam cup of fragrant, homemade Brunswick stew.
A strangled, creaking noise came from the bottom step, and they both looked down to see that Bicycle was laughing.
“Well, call me a butt and slap me silly. I don’t think I’ve seen Bicycle laugh in the twenty years he’s been back on the island. Hey, did you know today was Mitchell’s Day? I hope you’re not planning to go out on the water.”
“Lima, that’s an old wives’ tale.” After several months on the island, she’d finally persuaded Lima to tell her the story behind the islanders’ cryptic references to Mitchell’s Day.
Lima snorted. “You live here long enough, and then you tell me it’s an old wives’ tale. You’ll see. What have you been doing today, Sabrina?”
Sabrina ran through her morning: her talk with Maggie Fromlin about the strange behavior of the burglar, and then her very unproductive conversation with Mayor Hill Mitchell, who couldn’t, or wouldn’t, explain how he had known someone had been in his house while he was gone Friday night.
“That man’s got so many screws loose he rattles when he walks.” Lima shook his head.
“You know, I wasn’t going to say anything, but did you ever notice his yard doesn’t have anything green in it? It’s all rock. No grass, bushes, trees, not even a weed.”
“Yeah, I’ve noticed. He did that right after he retired from being a florist for thirty years. I guess he got tired of plants.”
“Hill said nothing was missing, and so did Maggie. She remembers a note that the burglar may have dropped, though, reading ‘Mit,’ ‘Har,’ ‘Gar,’ and ‘Fred.’ Ring any bells?”
“Yeah, the silent one that only dogs and loonies can hear.”
“Maggie also remembered that the thief was barefoot. What kind of thief breaks into a house barefoot and doesn’t take anything?”
“Someone with more screws loose than Hill.”
“If only the bad ones did rattle when they walked, at least we would know they were coming.”
They thought about that for a while in the sleepy warmth of the noonday sun.
“Hey, Marilee,” Lima yelled through the window behind his rocking chair. “I’ll take another cup of this here stew. Best thing old Tubbs ever did, hiring Marilee,” he said to Sabrina. “Stacy Tubbs did a great job behind that counter, but I didn’t think Tubbs was ever going to find someone after Stacy left to go to college this past semester.”
“Well, don’t get too attached to Marilee being here. I just talked to her about taking her SATs and going to college. Did you know she wanted to be an FBI agent?”
“No, but I’m not surprised. That girl has a lot of spunk, let me tell you. Never a word of complaint, as bad as it must have been taking care of that old bastard, her great-grandfather. Not that Booker was a bad fellow, but he got right religious in his old age, always wanting to shove the Bible down my throat.”
“It’s never pleasant when someone tries to impose their religious beliefs on you.”
“No, I meant he actually tried to push the Bible down my throat. This is when he was into his nineties, you understand. We got in an argument one night after we’d both had a few—Booker liked his whiskey—and he came over the table with the book in his hand. Before I knew what was happening, he had my mouth open and was shoving that Bible into my mouth, doing his darnedest to get it past my teeth.”
“Oh, Lima!”
The old man shrugged, his eyes gleaming.
“Booker was one strange bird. Everyone says he was helping the bootleggers when he was on the police force back in the twenties. Some say he even helped cover up a murder.”
Sabrina leaned forward as Lima settled back into his chair in preparation for a nice, long story.
“Weeell, Booker was the one who found Gerry Lowry right after he shot himself. Booker was only seventeen, and looking for work. He was tired of fishing already, and what else was an island boy supposed to do to make a living? All around him, people were making it rich off the liquor that was flowing through this island like Shinola through a septic field.
“No one knows for sure what happened, but it’s pretty common knowledge that Gerry Lowry ran afoul of the bigwig rumrunners on the island and was planning to take the run boat—that’s the boat that ran between the islands and the mainland—off the island first thing in the morning. Then he decided to off himself that evening, after telling everybody he was leaving? It didn’t make sense. Like I said before, it was Booker who found him, and his testimony was key at the inquest the sheriff held before Gerry’s body was even cold. The sheriff was so deep in the rumrunners’ pockets it’s a wonder he didn’t choke on pocket lint. If the rumrunners were involved, the sheriff sure wasn’t going to call them on it. And Booker…well, Booker might have had his own reasons for not being entirely truthful about what he saw that morning. Soon after that, Booker was hired by the sheriff, and it’s rumored Booker made hisself a fortune looking the other way. Who knows, but most people agreed that Gerry Lowry wasn’t the type to kill himself, especially by shooting himself. You see, Gerry was shot by accident by his big brother when he was a kid, and after that he couldn’t even look at a gun without getting squirrelly-eyed and sweaty.”
Neither had noticed Mary Garrison Tubbs until she spoke.
“Sabrina Victoria Dunsweeney, we give you a simple job, something even you can do, and you manage to muck it up in a gigantic way. I should have known, should have known!”
“Mary, you’re one nasty bat, have I mentioned that today? What are you going on about now?” Lima rocked his chair angrily.
Mary took a deep breath and let it out in a delicious rush. “Gilbert Kane was found murdered over on Goat Island, that’s what, and it’s all Sabrina’s fault!”
Chapter Nine
Sabrina pressed down harder on the gas pedal of her old station wagon and watched the speedometer needle tremble at the edge of fifty. Sabrina was trembling as well, a fine tremor emanating from deep inside her that rippled along her skin and shivered her fingers and the edges of her mouth.
“It was your ide
a to send those poor people out to Goat Island, wasn’t it?” Mary had said with accusatory glee. “That’s what I heard, and if it wasn’t for you, that poor man would never have been on that island, and never got killed. I had second thoughts as soon as I suggested you for this job. You’re about as responsible as my dog Curly, and I haven’t managed to house train him all these years!”
Long Road never seemed longer as Sabrina sped past the endless grass-covered dunes. This part of the island was designated a national park, and except for the occasional homesteaded house and road, there was no sign that man had ever dreamt of beach houses and fruity drinks in sleek restaurants beside the sea. The park was full of birds and small animals, and bigger ones in the shape of the shaggy island ponies. Sabrina usually enjoyed the solitude of the road, which ran down to the other end of the island to an old, defunct military base, but right now she couldn’t enjoy the stark beauty.
After what seemed like forever, she saw the discreet sign that signaled the turnoff to Shell Island. She took the turn so fast the station wagon slid in the loose gravel of the private road and ended up with its nose touching a pine tree.
Her trembling had bloomed into full-blown shaking as she sat staring at the tree.
“I’ve got to get myself together,” she said out loud, wishing Calvin was with her. Not only was he a comfort, he also made her feel less like a shoo-in candidate for the loony bin when she talked to herself. “I’m fine. I can get through this.”
The shaking refused to abate. She thought about turning around and going back to town, finding Mary Tubbs and telling her she was quitting. “I. Am. Not. Going. To. Quit!” she said between clenched teeth. “If I can’t hack this job, then it’s time for me to go back to Cincinnati.” She took a deep breath. “I am sitting on a beach and I can feel the warm sand between my toes and hear the surf washing back and forth. I can taste the salt of the air and hear a seagull call…” The shaking slowly subsided as she continued to visualize her happy place. That her mental sanctuary, the one she created long before ever coming to Comico, closely resembled the island did not occur to her.
“Now, like a knight before battle, I will don my armor.” Sabrina pictured herself pulling on the sturdy armor that was featured in countless King Arthur movies. She had no clue how one would get the armor on in reality, so in her vision it slid on like a suit of clothes, even complete with a nice modern zipper. Once her vulnerable naked skin was covered, Sabrina added the last touch, the helmet. She surveyed herself in an imaginary mirror. Despite the heavy armor, she was pounds lighter than normal. Unlike TV, delusional fantasies subtracted pounds instead of adding them.
Satisfied that her loins were sufficiently girded, Sabrina opened her eyes. As her therapist had promised, she felt better. At least she didn’t feel as if she was walking around with her skin freshly peeled. She used to go through this ritual every morning, so she supposed she should be happy she only had to garb herself in armor on occasion now. Unfortunately, those occasions had been coming with more frequency over the last couple of months.
“Let’s try this again.”
With that, Sabrina put the car in gear and continued on to Shell Lodge.
***
“It was horrible,” Matt Fredericks said, and shuddered. For a moment it looked as if he might cry, and Sabrina patted his arm.
“There, there,” she soothed.
“He was floating there, face down, and he looked so white. Sam, our dock master, said we needed to go call the police, but I had to check, make sure, even though I could see the crabs scrabbling about in his hair.” Matt flinched. “God. But what if he was still alive, and I left him there? I turned him over, and that’s when I saw his ear. It was mangled, like pulp. His eyes were open and bulging and it looked like he was staring at me, and his mouth was agape, and I thought I saw bubbles and then I realized it was tiny fish in his mouth swimming around.” Matt closed his eyes. “I’ve never seen anything like that before. Sam was matter-of-fact, but then he always is, but I—I yelled, kind of, and dropped him back in the water with a big splash.”
He stopped and Sabrina continued her patting. She wondered if he felt like a dog. The thought made her withdraw her hand, but he unconsciously leaned toward her so she resumed the patting.
“He was dead, there was no doubt about it. As near as I can figure, someone hit or stabbed him in the ear. We got out of there, and called Sergeant Jimmy, who called in a bunch of other police.”
Sabrina had ample knowledge of how a murder investigation was run on Comico Island, as a pirate ghost—well, a man, really, though everybody thought he was the ghost of Walk-the-Plank Wrightly—was murdered in the rose garden of her rental cottage when she first arrived on the island.
She patted and thought. “Stabbed in the ear? With what?”
Matt shook his head and closed his eyes. “I have no idea. The only thing I saw lying there was an empty wine bottle. And that couldn’t have done that kind of damage to his ear.”
“But you think that’s what killed him? This injury to his ear?”
“That’s the only thing I saw wrong with him.” Matt scrubbed his head with his hands and then looked around the lobby to make sure there were no guests in sight. But the large room was empty; the entire lodge was languid in the honeyed afternoon sunlight, and it was easy to believe they were the only two in the building.
“His ear. Well, that’s interesting, isn’t it? So, a-hem.” Sabrina coughed, and stopped. “What…what was Gilbert doing out on Goat Island?”
She fully expected Matt to jump up and shout, “Why it’s your fault completely, Sabrina, you know that!” but the young hotel owner just looked down at his hands and shook his head.
“He wanted to check out the island, so I got Sam to take him over there yesterday afternoon. I saw Mr. Kane go into the lounge, and then he came through the lobby fussing over a camera, which he put in his duffel bag, and then he went out the front door and started down the path toward the marina. That was the last time I saw him. He didn’t look very good, upset or something, and he ignored me when I said goodbye. Not that that was unusual.” A brief flash of guilt crossed his face. “I’m sure he was under a lot of pressure,” he added quickly.
“I’m sure.” Sabrina’s hand was getting tired from all the patting. She switched hands. “He went with…Sam, did you say? By boat, I take it?”
“Sam is our dock master and fishing guide. He takes care of all our boats. He took Mr. Kane over in our Mako and was supposed to drop him off for an hour or two, then come back and pick him up before sundown. But—”
“Sam couldn’t wait for him on the island while Gilbert—Mr. Kane—looked around?”
Matt shrugged. “Mr. Kane said he needed to be alone so he could feel the vibes of the island.” He said this with a straight face.
Sabrina kept hers straight too. “I suppose ah, vibes are hard to feel with other people around. Though it’s probably a good thing they aren’t louder, or we would all be bee-bopping around to our own personal vibes.”
Matt nodded as if she’d said something intelligent. He was a good boy. “Sam left him on the island and came back to our dock. A while later Mr. Kane called Sam and told him he didn’t have to come pick him up. Sam locked down the marina and went home.”
“Gilbert never came back to the lodge last night? Didn’t anyone notice?”
Matt looked defensive. “Sam didn’t tell me any of this until this morning, and of course I assumed Mr. Kane came back to the lodge last night. None of the other Hummers said anything else about it, but then, they were on their own for dinner, so maybe they didn’t notice either. Anyway, they all acted pretty surprised when he didn’t show up at the dock this morning. Mr. Kane had arranged for Sam to take them all over to the island at eight o’clock this morning, but he never showed. When Mr. Kane didn’t answer the phone in his room, Sam and I went over to the island in the boat, and that’s when we found him.”
“Why would Gilbert tell Sam th
at Sam didn’t need to come back for him? Surely he wasn’t planning on spending the night on the island. Though, you did say he had a duffel bag…” Sabrina looked up. “You didn’t mention seeing the duffel bag on the beach. Where was it?”
Matt thought hard, his whole face screwed up like a six-year-old concentrating on not peeing his pants, and then shook his head. “I didn’t see it. It wasn’t there.”
“So, the bag was gone. Unless you just didn’t see it.” Sabrina made a mental note to ask Sam if he saw the bag. She had a feeling ten circus elephants could have been performing a line dance on the beach beside Gilbert’s body and Matt might not have noticed. “If it was gone, that implies someone came and took it. Which fits in with Gilbert calling and telling Sam not to pick him up. Someone came to the island, unexpectedly, or why would Gilbert have initially arranged for Sam to pick him up? And it probably was someone Gilbert knew or why else would he decide to catch a ride back with him? And whoever it was killed Gilbert and then took the duffel bag.”
Sabrina nodded with satisfaction. It all fit. All they needed to do was find the person who went to the island and they would have the murderer. Case closed.
Who knew this detective stuff would be so easy? She felt better already.
“Mr. Fredericks?” Two uniformed policemen came through the front door and Matt smiled automatically, though not before flinching as if someone had just delivered a quick jab to his abdomen.
“Can I answer any more questions for you?” Matt was courteous, though he couldn’t seem to stop running his hands through his short sandy hair. Sabrina wondered if this nervous habit contributed to the noticeable recession of his hairline. It couldn’t help.
“We would like to see Mr. Kane’s room. Can you let us in?”
“Yes, of course.”
Matt plucked a large key ring labeled “Master” off a hook on the wall, next to several other keys labeled “Jeep 2,” “Jeep 3” and “Jeep 5.” He led the policemen out of the lobby and down a hallway, and Sabrina tagged along without anyone objecting.
Island Blues Page 5