Island

by Richard Laymon

  That’s getting ahead of things, though.

  First came the decision about where to put Keith. Then we all trooped over there, Andrew marching in the lead with the body slung over his shoulder. (Thelma came with us. Her ankle injury had been pretty minor, and she was able to hobble along okay without help by the time we had our funeral procession.)

  Kimberly picked exactly the spot where she wanted the grave to be. Then Andrew and Billie and I helped her to clear some rocks out of the way.

  Thelma stood by and cried like a maniac.

  Connie didn’t help, either, but acted strange; she stood rigid and watched, had this far-off look in her eyes, and rubbed her upper arms as if she was cold. Personally, I don’t think she was grieving over Keith. I think she was scared witless.

  After we’d cleared a depression in the rocks, Andrew and Kimberly loaded Keith inside it.

  Then Billie said, ‘Someone should say something.’

  ‘Let’s bow our heads,’ Andrew said. We did. In a low and steady voice, he said The Lord’s Prayer. Knew it by heart, which came as a surprise to me. I wouldn’t have taken him for the religious sort.

  While everybody still had their heads down, I broke into ‘Danny Boy.’ God only knows what possessed me. I’ve got a pretty good tenor voice, but I’m not a guy who goes around singing in public. It was a sappy thing to do. The guy’s name wasn’t even Danny.

  But I’d liked him, and I felt so sorry for Kimberly ...

  When I got into ‘Danny Boy,’ the waterworks were a sight to see. Everybody cried.

  Even Kimberly teared up. After the song was done, she came over to me, wet-eyed and sniffing. She put her arms around me and hugged me.

  I’m hoping she’ll do that again sometime, under more favorable conditions.

  Fat chance.

  She was too overcome with emotion to know what she was doing.

  Anyway, I’m glad I went nuts and sang ‘Danny Boy.’ She wouldn’t have hugged me, except for that.

  When it was time to finish the burial, she asked everyone to leave. ‘I’ll take care of it,’ she said. So we all left her there.

  Away from the rocks where Kimberly was working, Andrew called the rest of us together.

  ‘I don’t want anyone to go straying off alone,’ he said. ‘Keith didn’t have an accident. He was murdered.’

  Thelma let out a high-pitched, squealy sound. She seemed embarrassed by it, and plastered a hand across her mouth.

  Connie started to shake.

  Billie, frowning with concern, put an arm across Connie’s shoulders. ‘It’s all right, honey,’ she said.

  ‘We think it happened out in the jungle where we found him,’ Andrew went on. ‘Someone knocked him on the head, and then hung him. That’s how we figure it.’ He glanced at me.

  ‘It was probably just one person who did it,’ I added. ‘I mean, the sneaky way it was done.’

  ‘Somebody strong enough to hoist Keith’s body fairly high up in a tree,’ Andrew said.

  ‘What’ll we do?’ Billie asked.

  ‘I’m not sure yet. Need some time to think things through. Let’s figure on a pow-wow later on. For now, we’ll probably be all right as long as nobody goes off alone. I don’t think the killer’ll come after any of us out here on the beach in plain sight.’

  ‘What about ... when we need to relieve ourselves?’ Billie asked. ‘Do you want us to do it right here on the beach?’

  Connie joined the party. ‘Not me. Huh-uh.’

  ‘We’ll work something out,’ Andrew said. ‘For the time being, we can keep on using the same area as before. But not without an escort. Let me know, and I’ll go with you.’

  ‘Oh, charming,’ Connie said.

  ‘I changed your diapers, babe. But don’t worry, I won’t peek.’

  ‘This really sucks,’ Connie said.

  Andrew suddenly looked steamed. ‘You’ve got two sisters whose lives have been blown all to hell in a matter of less than twenty-four hours. There’s an asshole out there who’ll probably try and kill more of us the first time he gets a chance. What we do not need at this particular juncture is any kind of adolescent shit from you. We know you’re deeply inconvenienced by all this, but ...’

  ‘Go to hell!’ she blurted. Bursting into tears, she whirled around and ran toward the water.

  Thelma, by the way, was already on her knees, sobbing into her hands. This had happened at about the time Andrew made the remark about the two sisters whose lives had been ‘blown all to hell.’

  Billie scowled at Andrew and shook her head. ‘That was really uncalled for, do you know that?’ She didn’t wait for an answer, but went hustling after Connie.

  I was the only member of the group still standing in Andrew’s presence. He seemed to be glaring at me from behind his sunglasses.

  ‘I didn’t say anything,’ I told him.

  ‘Don’t be a smartass,’ Andrew said. And stalked off himself.

  I was left on my own, so I got my bag and came up to my tower. (Violating the new rules about straying off, I suppose, but nobody called me on it.) There was a lot of journal to catch up with. Instead of going to the place I’d found yesterday, I picked a spot in the rocks where I had a view of our beach.

  When I arrived, Kimberly was still busy on the other side of the inlet, picking up rocks and gently arranging them on top of her husband. After she finished with that, she took care of making the cross. (I’ve been keeping an eye on her while I write. The others are down there, too, but they haven’t been doing anything worth mentioning.)

  For a while now, Kimberly has been sitting on the beach. She is still wearing Keith’s bright, Hawaiian shirt. Her legs are out in front of her, her knees drawn up, her arms around her shins. She seems to be gazing out at the water. A breeze is stirring her hair, and fluttering the shirt a little behind her back.

  She looks so beautiful and alone.

  I wish there was some way to make things better for her.

  The important thing, now, is to make sure that the killer doesn’t get any more of us.

  Pow-Wow

  We ate supper early. Billie did the cooking again. It was a mixture of noodles and beef from some foil packets that Andrew and Keith had gathered out on the inlet, yesterday. We also had some canned peaches, and bread from a loaf that had gotten through the explosion with its cellophane bag intact. We drank stream water, pouring it into our plastic cups from a pot that we passed around.

  None of us had eaten anything all day, as far as I knew.

  I, for one, was pretty hungry.

  We sat in the sand around the fire, eating, passing the water pot around, and not saying much. Everyone seemed pretty upset.

  Afterwards, Billie asked me to help her with the dishes, and I agreed. Glad to get away from the group, for one thing.

  The ‘dishes’ were a mix of things: a couple of metal pots rescued from the bottom of the inlet by Keith, plus plastic plates, cups, knives, forks and spoons that we’d brought ashore for our picnic.

  We didn’t want to mess up our beach with food scraps, so we carried everything out to the north point - leaving the beach behind and stepping carefully from rock to rock until we reached the very end (forty or fifty feet below the place where I like to work on my journal). We went around the tip, just a bit.

  There was nothing to see on the other side. Just more water, beach and jungle.

  Billie sat on a rock and dangled her legs in the water. She washed her dishes by bending forward and dipping them into the water between her knees. When I knelt near her and tried to scoop up some water in a pot, she shook her head. ‘Just put it down. I’ll take care of washing these things. I just wanted you along for the company.’

  ‘I’ll help.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous. There isn’t enough here to worry about.’ She had brought a rag with her. Also, back on the beach, she’d scooped up some sand in one of the pots. While I watched, she rubbed the dishes with sand, wiped them with the rag, and
leaned forward to rinse them with a dip in the water.

  She didn’t seem to be in any hurry.

  I sure wasn’t.

  I liked being out there with her. For starters, Billie is great to look at. She had some major cleavage showing, and her breasts wobbled and shook because of the vigorous way she was washing the dishes. And then there was the way she kept bending forward to rinse things ...

  It wasn’t just her looks, though. Also, she’s a cool lady. She has always been very nice to me (too nice, if you ask Connie), she treats everyone decently, she has a sense of humor, she isn’t prudish (she’s almost immodest), she doesn’t fly off the handle every two seconds, and she seems to have loads of common sense.

  Unfortunately, she didn’t pass on many of these traits to her daughter. Connie has some of Billie’s looks, but apparently didn’t inherit much of her temperament.

  Anyway, it was very nice to be out there on the point with her. I tried not to stare at her all the time.

  Each time she finished cleaning an item, she twisted sideways and reached up and handed it to me. I made a neat pile on a slightly higher rock.

  We were almost done when she gave me a plastic fork, looked me in the eyes and said, ‘I have a feeling it might be Wesley.’

  Her words took me completely by surprise, but I knew right away what she meant.

  ‘It’s occurred to me, too,’ I said. ‘He blew the boat on purpose?’

  ‘Some kind of timing device, so he’d have a few minutes to swim clear before she went up.’

  ‘I’ve seen that sort of thing done in some movies,’ I said.

  ‘And so, I’m sure, has Wesley.’

  ‘Do you think he’d have the guts?’

  ‘Never underestimate the guts of a weasel,’ she told me. She patted the rock beside her, so I sat down. ‘I haven’t mentioned this to Andrew, yet. Not to anyone else, either. Wanted to see what you thought of the idea. You’re not an actual member of the family, for one thing. And you’re a good, sensible guy.’

  ‘Well, thanks.’

  ‘Look at the whole deal as an elaborate set-up,’ she said. ‘Whose idea was it to give Andrew and I this boat trip for our anniversary? Wesley’s. Who made all the arrangements? Wesley. Who came down in advance to look things over? Wesley. Who picked this island for our little picnic yesterday? Who stayed on board while the rest of us came ashore? Who got blown up - supposedly?’

  ‘He might’ve actually chosen this island as the place to stage the accident,’ I suggested. ‘Maybe he toured around last week till he found a nice, uninhabited one.’

  ‘Exactly,’ she said. ‘He would’ve needed not only a deserted island, but one that’s out of the way - where we’re not likely to get found immediately.’

  ‘Or at all.’

  ‘And while we’re on that subject,’ Billie said, ‘he could’ve left a trail of false information to make sure nobody misses us - or knows where to come looking.’

  I nodded. I’d been nodding fairly regularly since the start of our talk.

  ‘I bet he even came ashore,’ I said.

  ‘Here?’

  ‘Yeah. He must’ve brought in a bunch of supplies and hidden them somewhere. For his own use, you know? Whatever he’s got in mind for us, I’ll bet his plan doesn’t include screwing himself out of stuff to eat and drink.’

  ‘And what,’ Billie asked, ‘do you suppose his plan might be?’

  ‘What do you think?’ I asked her.

  ‘I asked you first.’

  ‘Okay.’ I took a deep breath. ‘For starters, Wesley wouldn’t do any of this if he really loved Thelma.’

  ‘I agree. And he didn’t. I think he could barely tolerate her.’

  ‘So why did he marry her?’

  ‘She’s very rich. As are we all, thanks to Andrew.’

  ‘Yeah. Okay. Is there a way that this business of marooning us might make Wesley rich?’

  ‘Sure. If he’s the only survivor.’

  We looked at each other, and we both grimaced.

  ‘What would he inherit?’ I asked.

  ‘What wouldn’t he?’

  ‘Jeez.’

  ‘So that’s his plan. Kill us all.’

  ‘Maybe,’ I said. ‘He’s gotten off to a great start - killed the toughest male in the group.’

  ‘I don’t know about that.’ She smiled. ‘Andrew’s a pretty tough hombre.’

  ‘He’s probably next on the list.’

  She shook her head. ‘Won’t let that happen.’

  ‘We’ll have to talk to the others about this.’

  ‘That’ll certainly endear us to Thelma. We’d better leave her out of it.’

  ‘Talk to them one at a time,’ I suggested.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘We might be completely wrong, you know. I mean, this is all guesswork - sort of farfetched, too.’

  ‘But it all fits,’ Billie said.

  ‘Yeah. The only thing is, sometimes things are the way they seem. Maybe Wesley did get blown up with the boat.’

  ‘And Keith was killed by ... ?’

  ‘A restless native?’

  A comer of Billie’s mouth turned up. ‘Maybe Gilligan did it.’

  ‘Or the Howells.’

  Billie smiled and shook her head.

  I suddenly felt a little guilty for kidding around about Keith’s death. Getting serious, I said, ‘In a way, it doesn’t matter who did it. What matters is that it happened and the killer’s probably still out there. Whether he’s Wesley or someone else, it’s pretty much the same deal.’

  ‘Except I’d sure like to know who we’re dealing with.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Me, too.’

  ‘It isn’t quite as scary when I think of Wesley out there trying to knock us off. At least he’s not a complete stranger. If it’s not him, it might be someone ten times more dangerous.’

  ‘Better him than some sort of deranged jungle-man.’

  ‘I’ll say.’

  ‘So, what are we going to do about our theory?’ I asked.

  ‘You don’t see any major holes in it?’

  ‘No. I think there’s every reason to believe it is Wesley - except that maybe he was blown to bits yesterday.’

  ‘Or maybe he wasn’t.’

  ‘Nobody found any bits,’ I admitted. ‘Which doesn’t mean he wasn’t blown up ...’

  ‘I’ve picked up one lesson from many long years of watching crappy TV mysteries,’ Billie said. ‘Here it is: if the body isn’t found and identified beyond a shadow of a doubt - then the person ain’t dead. It’s almost always a ruse, and the “dead” guy is up to no good.’

  ‘I’ve noticed that, too,’ I said. ‘But that’s TV. TV ripping off Agatha Christie. Or maybe ... is there a Holmes story where a “dead” guy is a perpetrator?’

  Billie frowned at me. ‘I wouldn’t know, Rupert. Do you think it is or isn’t Wesley?’

  ‘Might be.’

  She slapped the side of my arm, but in a sort of playful way. ‘Don’t be difficult.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘What I’m getting at ... should we tell the others about our suspicions?’

  ‘We’d better.’

  ‘Good. That’s what I think, too.’

  ‘But maybe we’d better bring it up in front of everyone,’ I said. ‘Including Thelma. Otherwise, what’ll happen if he is the killer, and she runs into him?’

  ‘You’re right,’ Billie said. ‘We’d better let everyone in on it.’

  With that settled, we gathered the dishes and returned to the beach. I was all set to work on my journal. Before I could get started, though, Andrew called everyone together for a group discussion.

  We all sat around the fire.

  Everyone seemed solemn except for Connie, who gave me dirty looks from the other side of the fire. Odds are, she’s put out with me for disappearing around the point with her mother. She probably thinks we were making out.

  ‘There are things that need to be said a
bout our situation here,’ Andrew began. ‘And we need to make some decisions about how to proceed. This time yesterday, our only real concern was how long we might have to wait before being picked up by a rescue party. Now, Keith has been murdered. That changes...’

  Thelma raised her hand like a schoolgirl.

  Andrew gave her a nod.

  ‘I’ve been thinking,’ she said. ‘About Keith’s murder and ... about Wesley.’ Her chin trembled. She pressed her lips together. After a couple of seconds, she went on. ‘Doesn’t anybody find it funny that Keith got killed so soon ... It was just yesterday the boat exploded and ... you know. Wesley. What I’m trying to say ... you all think the boat was an accident. But maybe it wasn’t, though. I’ve been thinking about all this, you know? Maybe somebody blew up the boat on purpose. What I mean is, maybe Wesley was murdered, too. Not just Keith. Maybe they blew up the boat to kill Wesley and strand us here. Maybe the idea is, they want to pick us off one by one. Or maybe they only just want to kill off all the men.‘

  ‘If that’s the plan,’ Kimberly said, ‘they’re halfway home.’

  I didn’t much like the sound of that, me being part of the remaining half.

  ‘What “they” are we discussing here?’ Andrew asked. He seemed a little annoyed. ‘I’m not aware of any “they.”’

  ‘Whoever’s behind all this,’ Thelma told him.

  ‘You think we’re the victims of a conspiracy?’

  She stuck out her lip. ‘You’re just so sure Wesley got careless ...’

  ‘If he didn’t blow up the boat by accident,’ Andrew said, ‘then why did it explode?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Thelma said. ‘Anything’s possible. Maybe it got hit by one of those rocket things. Or somebody might’ve swum up to it underwater and attached a bomb to it. You know?’

  ‘Who would do such things?’ Andrew asked.

  ‘Drug dealers? Maybe we’ve stumbled onto a nest of drug dealers, and they need to eliminate us. Or maybe there’s a secret military base on the island.’

  ‘Maybe it’s Dr No,’ I suggested.

  Nobody seemed amused. Not even Billie, who sort of cringed when I said it.

  ‘We’ll have no more of that,’ Andrew told me.

  ‘Yes, sir.’