Island Blues

by Wendy Howell Mills

“The kayaks are a courtesy to the guests, but we ask that they sign for them so we know who has what. Whoever took the blue kayak didn’t bother signing it out. Didn’t bother bringing it back either.”

  “While you were taking the fat—Gilbert over to the island where he died, someone came and took a kayak without signing it out. That’s suspicious, isn’t it?”

  “The police thought so. Especially when they found blood on it.”

  “They found blood on the blue kayak?” Sabrina remembered that Sergeant Jimmy said the police found signs a kayak was on the island about the same time as Gilbert. Something about tides that made them certain of the timing…

  “I found the kayak last night, over on the other side of the island. I brought it back here, but it was too dark to see anything. This morning when I told the police about it, they looked at it and the other two kayaks that were out at the same time, and they found blood on the blue one.”

  “What other two kayaks?”

  “The two that were out when I left to take Kane over to the island. They were returned a little while after I got back from taking Kane.”

  “Who took them out? Would you recognize the people?”

  “Well, there they are right now.”

  Sabrina turned to see Patti Townsend and her young friend coming down the shell path toward them.

  Chapter Fourteen

  “That lady,” Sam nodded at Patti, who was concentrating on making her way down the steep path, “has gone out several times since they’ve been here. The pretty girl joined her last night, just before I took Kane over to the island.”

  Sam went to the nearest kayak and began dragging it down toward the water. Sabrina followed him, still trying to think of questions about Gilbert, but failing. Her mind was too wrapped up with the fact that Patti and her friend were out on kayaks at the approximate time Gilbert died. Was there some reason why they would want to kill him, though?

  “I hear you’ve been involved in the break-ins in town.” Sam looked up at her, squinting a bit in the dazzle of the setting sun.

  “Please?”

  “The. Break-ins. In. Town.” Sam enunciated the words slowly and clearly for her. He looked as if he considered doing sign language to be on the safe side.

  “I heard you the first time! I was just wondering if you were trying to accuse me of breaking into houses. That’s what it sounded like.”

  “Me thinks she protests too much! Did you?”

  “No! Of course not. Why would you say such a thing?”

  “I didn’t. When he left, the sergeant said he had to go follow up on some things from the break-ins, and mentioned something to the effect that you probably wouldn’t be too far behind him there either.”

  “I see.” Sabrina was pleased that Sergeant Jimmy recognized what a good job she was doing.

  “He muttered something else too, but I couldn’t catch most of what he said. Something about ‘license to be nosy’ and ‘as if she needed any encouragement.’”

  “Oh.” Her bubble burst.

  “So?”

  “So what?” Sabrina was aware her voice was verging on nasty, but at the moment she couldn’t care less.

  “So, what do you know about the break-ins? Have you zeroed in on your villain, just waiting for the right moment to bring him down? Perhaps you plan to call together all your suspects and elegantly reveal the evidence until the blackguard has no choice but to confess?”

  “You’re being silly.” Sabrina did not mention her plan to hold a male beauty pageant and parade all the eligible men on the island before her only eyewitness, Maggie Fromlin. Small-minded people like Sam would only scoff at such an innovative idea.

  “No, silly—and gruesome—is the modern Chinese practice of cricket fighting. It’s been around since the tenth century, and the crowds love betting on the tiny gladiators as they tear each other limb from limb. That’s silly, I’d say. Hello, Ms. Patti, Ms. Sophie.”

  Sabrina found that her mouth was opening and closing like a fish. She slammed it shut and smiled at Patti, who was dressed in shorts and a windbreaker, her long dark hair wound on top of her head like a coronet.

  “Sabrina! It’s nice to see you again. This is my friend, Sophie Jacquette.” Patti turned to her young friend, who was nodding her head even before Patti finished her introduction. Then Sabrina noticed the tiny white earplugs in her ears and realized the girl was bebopping to her iPod.

  “Hello, Sophie, it’s nice to meet you.”

  Sophie Jacquette was tall, but so fragile looking that she projected a little girl helplessness. The short white dress she wore, which showcased her long, long legs and bared her slender shoulders, added to the image of girlish innocence. She wore her hair in a shiny blond cap, swept far over to the right side in a style reminiscent of the sixties. In fact, as Sophie Jacquette looked at Sabrina and removed her earplugs, she could have been British super-model Twiggy’s sister, a leggy, saucer-eyed waif oozing sixties chic.

  “How do you do, Lisa?”

  There was a brief silence while Sabrina looked around to see who had joined the group. No one had. Who was Lisa? She waited to see who would answer, but everyone was looking at her.

  “Were you speaking to me? My name is Sabrina.”

  “I know!” Sophie giggled and looked apologetic. “I’m sorry. I forget that everyone isn’t like me.”

  If everyone was like Sophie Jacquette, the world would look like one of those young, hip TV shows where everyone was incredibly attractive and sat around talking about the color of their toenails.

  Sabrina knew she was being uncharitable, and kept a charming smile on her face while she waited for Sophie to explain. For all she knew, the girl was a perfectly lovely person inside.

  “I give nicknames because I can never remember anyone’s name.” Sophie’s ravishing face was earnest.

  “Please?”

  “You remind me of a girl I knew in high school, Lisa. I’ll call you Lisa so I can remember your name.”

  “But Lisa is not my name,” Sabrina pointed out logically.

  “But at least I’ll remember it.”

  Sabrina looked over at Patti and the older woman shrugged, her handsome face apologetic. She was used to her young friend’s foibles, and seemed inclined to forgive. Sabrina decided to give the girl the benefit of doubt.

  Sophie’s cell phone rang, and her eyes widened in alarm. “Shane, you’re not supposed to call me,” she said upon answering the phone. She moved away from them, but her distressed voice was still audible. After a moment, she covered the mouthpiece of the phone and whispered, “Patti, go on without me. This might take a while.”

  Patti sighed and shook her head. “I’d like to say that love’s shambles is harder to deal with when you’re young, but I don’t think it’s true. It’s never easy. Would you like to go kayaking with me, Sabrina?”

  Sabrina wasn’t sure what to say. Did she really think that Patti had cold-bloodedly murdered Gilbert Kane and was now turning lascivious eyes on her as the next victim? Of course it was ridiculous.

  “That sounds fantastic!” Oops. Way too enthusiastic. She toned it down a bit. “I mean, that sounds like fun. I’ve never done it before, though. Are you up to teaching a novice?”

  “It’s easy. You’ll love it.” Patti beamed and Sabrina saw that the woman took genuine pleasure in introducing other people to her favorite sport. As this was a good opportunity to talk to Patti in private, Sabrina was feeling pretty pleased herself. Any niggling doubt she squashed without compunction, and when she found it still wriggling, she stomped on it repeatedly until it stopped bothering her.

  “Let’s go. We don’t want to miss the sunset.” Patti dragged her kayak farther into the water and proceeded to give Sabrina a quick and dirty lesson on kayaking. Once Patti pointed out how easily the kayaks could flip over, Sabrina concentrated hard on the pointers about keeping her balance.

  “You may need a jacket. It gets a little chilly after the sun goes down.” Pat
ti looked at Sabrina’s short sleeve aquamarine shirt and her bright tropical culottes and shook her head. They were standing in knee-deep water, and Sabrina was shivering as the cooling breeze nipped at her wet slacks.

  “Here.” Sam finished adjusting the footrests on her kayak and stripped off his windbreaker.

  “I couldn’t—”

  “You can tip me later.”

  Sabrina bit her lip to prevent herself from saying she had a tip for him right here and now: take a long walk off the Shell Lodge’s short pier and take his blasted windbreaker with him. But sheer self-preservation won out. She was cool, and the windbreaker looked warm. She put it on, noticing that the jacket smelled not-unpleasantly of sweaty man and fish guts. Or maybe there was something wrong with her, because that combination should not have been appealing.

  After donning her life jacket, Sabrina climbed on top of the kayak and Sam gave her an enthusiastic push that set her to rocking in the shallow waves. She frantically put the paddle out to the side as Patti had shown her, trying to regain her balance. For a moment it was touch and go, but finally she got the craft under control. She threw a dirty look at an entirely-too-innocent-looking Sam before paddling after Patti, who was already headed for the mouth of the cove.

  For the next twenty minutes, she concentrated on sitting upright, dipping her paddle in by her toes and bringing it up again by her hip, and using her torso, not her arms, to bear the brunt of the strokes. Oh, and staying afloat, that took a good bit of her attention as well. The waves were minute, but they still presented a challenge to her novice sense of balance, and paddling smoothly was a bigger challenge than she had expected. But soon she fell into a comfortable rhythm and began to enjoy herself.

  “How are you doing?” Patti slowed to allow Sabrina to come up alongside her.

  “I think I’m getting the hang of it. You’re right, it’s easy once you get used to it.”

  “I’ve been coming out here every night since we arrived to watch the sun set. Isn’t it glorious?”

  She was right. Glorious. The sky was a neon display of orange clouds touched with the dark shadows of the disappearing light, and the pinks and yellows of an Easter egg hunt. The water reflected back all that glory in softer tones, no less spectacular for being muted by the quicksilver shimmer of the waves.

  They were close to a small hummock of an island, all white sand and waving green grass and bushes, and thick trees huddled in the center. Several birds circled above, and a large nest dominated one of the pine trees.

  “That’s Goat Island, where Gilbert…died. I looked it up on the map in the bar when Michael told us last night we would be coming here for our sessions. Of course, after what happened to Gilbert, they’re planning to take us to another island tomorrow morning.”

  “But it’s so close!” Sabrina looked back over her shoulder at the massive bulk of Comico Island, and the slender umbilical of the causeway that linked Shell Island to its mother island. They had only been paddling for twenty minutes, and Sabrina could still see the Shell Lodge perched high up on the hill, its white shells reflecting sunlight like a fiery opal.

  An experienced kayaker could be here in less than twenty minutes. A motor boat could be here in much less. Despite the isolated feel to Goat Island, it had not been far enough away to stop a determined killer.

  “Sophie and I were at this very spot last night about the time the police say Gilbert died.” Patti appeared shaken by the thought she had been so close to a murder.

  “That’s awful!” Sabrina dipped a paddle in the water, watching the small pastel galaxies radiating out into nothingness. “I don’t suppose you saw anything?”

  “Sophie told the police she saw another kayak coming around the back of Goat Island, but I didn’t see it.”

  “You seem pretty close to Sophie. How long have you known her?”

  Patti smiled and adjusted her paddle across the front of her kayak with a faint clunking sound that seemed to travel far across the darkening water. “Girlfriend, I hear what you’re not saying. I know we make an odd pair, and it’s hard for me to believe I just met her a couple of days ago. But that little girl needs someone to look after her, even if she is a big-shot model. She must’ve always looked like that, so pretty you want to blink twice to make sure you’re really seeing her right. I think people do things for her because of the way she looks. But people don’t really care about her, you know what I’m saying? She might be on the cover of magazines, but no one really gives a damn about what she thinks or feels. That little act she puts on, she does it because that’s what people expect from her. Underneath, she’s in a lot of pain and scared to death.”

  Sabrina was silent for a moment, watching the crimson sun slip beneath the surface, leaving a sanguinary pool in its wake. “I imagine you have quite a few stray animals at home.”

  “You have no idea!” Patti laughed her luscious, opulent laugh. With that type of laugh, a person could survive on humor alone.

  “So…this Hum. Is it painful? You have to excuse my curiosity, but I’ve never heard of anything like it before.”

  “I know it sounds crazy and I usually don’t tell people. When it first started for me, I couldn’t figure out what was going on. My whole head was buzzing, and I couldn’t concentrate on anything. I thought maybe it was stress, because I’d been having some problems with my coffee shop, but it went on for weeks and weeks. Sometimes it was worse than others, but it was always there, like a little refrigerator I carried around in my head. I went to several doctors, and first they thought it was tinnitus, which isn’t uncommon, just a ringing in your ears. But they ruled that out, and tested for about everything else you can imagine. They even did a CAT scan of my head, but didn’t find anything wrong. I think they finally decided I was a kook, because they sent me to a psychologist.” Patti laughed, but it was a dark, self-derisive scrape of a noise this time. “I got on my nephew’s computer and did some research. I was at my wit’s end, let me tell you! That’s when I heard about the Hummers. There’s other groups out there that say they hear the Hum, but Hummers International is the only one that says they can fix it. This Joseph Siderius, he’s been around for a long time, knows everything there is to know about the Hum. There were a lot of testimonials on the website from people that he helped. They had a retreat coming up in a month and I signed right up.”

  “Was it expensive?” Sabrina adjusted her balance as a vigorous wave rocked her kayak. She had no idea how deep the water was, and as the fiery exuberance leached from the sound, leaving only inky waves in its place, she was aware that she was bobbing about on the surface of an inhabited, very carnivorous world. It occurred to her for the first time that it was Mitchell’s Day. Lima had told her to stay away from the water today.

  Oh, but that’s just an old wives’ tale!

  “You’re asking if this is some big scam to take money from poor deluded souls who think they hear the voice of the universe? Well, it’s nothing I couldn’t afford, and I’m not rich. And I needed a vacation from my business, so this was worth it for that, if nothing else. You can’t figure that doing these retreats with five or six people at a time with what we pay is going to make anyone rich. And I looked into it before I signed up. I tracked down some people who have done this before and asked ‘em if they were cured. Every one said they were. Now, what they didn’t tell me…” She trailed off and picked up her paddle. “We need to be heading back before it gets full dark.”

  Sabrina flexed her fingers, realizing that they were hurting from maintaining a death grip on the paddle. “What didn’t they tell you?” This was no time to be subtle. She felt that she was getting close to something, but what?

  “I didn’t expect…” Patti waved her hand in a futile gesture, then shook her head and began paddling.

  Sabrina paddled hard to catch up, her kayak swaying dangerously with her efforts. “Patti, I’m confused. I thought you all wanted to understand this voice of the universe. You say you just want it to go a
way.”

  Patti threw an unreadable look over her shoulder and then paddled harder, forcing Sabrina to concentrate to keep up.

  “Patti—”

  An explosion of noise and froth beside her sent Sabrina’s kayak careening back and forth. She opened her mouth to scream as she lost her paddle, and then her balance.

  Down she went into the opaque, avid water.

  Chapter Fifteen

  “It came up right beside my kayak. Before I knew what was happening, I lost my paddle, and then splash! Right into the water. I just knew something was going to eat me. Of course, it’s Mitchell’s Day, so I should have known better than to be out on the water.” Sabrina picked up her glass of wine, noting in the reflection of the tawny liquid that her drying curls made her resemble Medusa. Since she was sitting in the Shell Lodge’s swanky dining room in a fluffy white bathrobe, it probably didn’t matter much what her hair looked like.

  “It was a dolphin. He must have been chasing a fish or something, because he came up beside Sabrina’s boat with a huge splash. It startled me too.” Patti took a bite of her lobster cake, which was topped with an avocado relish and mustard cream sauce.

  “If it wasn’t for Patti, I don’t think I’d ever have been able to get back on that kayak. Of course after I floundered around for a while I realized that I could stand up. The water was only four foot deep.”

  Dennis Parker laughed and reached over to fill Sabrina’s wine glass, which had somehow become empty. The tall, country boy was more cosmopolitan this evening in his suave dinner coat and polite dinner manners, though he still looked as if he were too elongated for the dining chair in which he sat.

  “Thank goodness you’re all right, Lisa,” said Sophie Jacquette, and tears welled in her beautiful eyes. “I would have been so scared!” The model was dressed in some sort of fluffy crimson concoction that would have looked ridiculous on anyone else, but with her blond cap pinned back with a baby barrette and her flawless skin bared strategically, she looked stunning.

  Sabrina was feeling too mellow to care about Sophie’s continued inability to remember her name. The girl did seem genuine in her concern.