“Just like you, mister rich man,” came a small voice from the rear.
“I’ll take my chances with myself and my wife,” he said, and Rose looked over to him with a sort of stunned and angered look. “Not with any of you. Good luck to you.” He pushed open the door. The wind came in, damp and fast. “Come on,” he said to his stand-in wife, and pulled her out of the station and back into the rain and wind.
“What gives?” she exclaimed as the wind nearly pulled the door off the hinges. “What are you doing? You know those people will all die if that train doesn’t come!”
“Overloading the yacht is a sure way to get us all killed. There’s nothing I can do about them. Let Roosevelt save them.”
“You’re a cruel, evil man Eliot Hawthorn. I never saw the real you until now.”
“Fine, whore!” he yelled to Rose as he got on the boat. Rose shuddered. “Fine. Think what you want. Would you like to stay here and take your chances with the storm or come with me and live?”
Rose’s heart sank so low she thought she’d drown in a puddle. She never detested anyone with all of her being as she did Hawthorn that day. “I’ll go with you, but this will be the last time,” she said.
“Yes, yes I do believe it will,” Hawthorn replied, and helped her onto the deck. Rose didn’t understand the irony. Then she stopped, froze. A horrible feeling came over her with that last remark. “What exactly do you mean by that?”
“I mean just what you said. It’s time for Plan B,” Eliot responded. In another minute he had the twin diesel engines pushing the boat hard, heading North along the Gulf side of the Keys.
1956
It was too much to take. The crying, the screaming, the secret room with the hidden safe and the combination not working, Hawthorn’s constant muttering of ghosts coming to get him and the incessant thunder was creating its own swirling hurricane in my head, blowing cold, wet, wild wind through my skull and tearing my thoughts apart. I closed my eyes hard and ran my hand roughly through my hair and over my face, my nearly numb face that needed some blood flowing back through it, some blood and oxygen passing through to my brain.
On the bed, Melinda tried to comfort Hawthorn, holding him as he rocked back and forth mumbling his crazy poem over and over again. Jessica had moved to the sofa and sat there sprawled, somewhat catatonic. She was oblivious now to Hawthorn’s rantings. She just stared at the back wall of the bedroom, waiting for more ghosts to come.
A severely loud crack jolted the entire room as it filled with a white-hot light for just a split second. Sheets of rain pounded against the shuttered windows. The storm was intensifying.
“Melinda,” I said quietly, “Can I talk with you in the next room a sec?”
“I don’t want to leave Eliot alone,” she said almost tearfully.
“Just outside the door. We can leave it open.”
She got up and walked over to me. She stood in front of me for only a second, looked at me with a sad look, then walked out of the room. I followed.
“What is it, William.”
“Why does Eliot think ghosts are out to get him, kid? What did he do to bring that kind of crazy jazz down on him?”
She looked down at the floor and sighed lightly. “I don’t know, William. He’s never told me why. Only that he’s done some ‘bad things’ in his life.”
I tried to look in Melinda’s eyes. I couldn’t, as she was looking down when she spoke. For the first time I began to believe she wasn’t being one hundred percent truthful with me.
“Bad things?”
“I can only guess,” she continued now looking up. “Remember I told you he talks in his sleep?”
“Yeah.”
“I’ve heard him say some things. Once he said something about ‘leaving all those people to die.’ Another time he talked about ‘that poor girl’. Then another time, it was, ‘all those girls, all those girls, all those people’. He was sleep-talking, just dreaming, but somehow it seemed…it seemed like he was reliving something, something from his past.”
I pulled a stick out of my deck of Camels and rolled it between my fingers. Somehow feeling the solidly packed tobacco helped me to remember that this was real, this was really happening, now. “That’s it, huh?”
“Yes. No idea what he was referring to. I tried asking him a few times. All he’d say is that he’d done some bad things in his life, in his previous life…before he met my mother.”
“Let’s ask him again, right now doll. I don’t know what he saw, and I still don’t believe in ghosts. But that wet seaweed didn’t put itself on the wall, and the apartment was locked from the inside. Which means another thing happened that we can’t explain. And if Eliot thinks ghosts are coming to get him, we pretty-damned well better do something about it before he dies of a heart attack…or something really does come. Either way, I can’t protect him if I don’t know what to protect him against.”
“What about Jessica?”
I looked around the room. The sound of her name coming from Melinda sounded strange…almost, dirty. “I think I already know what’s tormenting that kid. It’s one of two things. Either she’s hallucinating because of the drugs…”
“She’s not hallucinating seaweed,” Melinda interrupted.
“No, she’s not. And if she’s not, it’s got to be her mother trying to reach her. I don’t know why yet, but I think her old lady has been trying to get to her for years.”
“Her mother? If that’s so, then why is she and Eliot having the same visions at the same time?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” Melinda just looked up at me with those doey brown eyes. “Her mother died in the big storm. If Eliot is saying things in his sleep like ‘that poor girl’ and they’re both seeing her mother’s ghost…”
Melinda’s face twisted as she strained to hold back the tears. She lost the battle and the waterworks came, heavy and sad. I closed her in my arms and held her tight until she cried it out.
“Let’s ask Eliot now,” I said, and with a sad face she agreed. She walked into the room and sat beside Hawthorn.
“Eliot, darling, William is here. He thinks he can help you.”
Hawthorn turned to me and laughed. He was eerily calm and sober now. “Help me? Oh, Mr. Riggins, I’m quite sure your revolver and police training are no match for the fate that awaits me.”
“Tell us why they’re after you, Eliot,” Melinda said. “No reason to hide things now. Let us help.”
Hawthorn looked over at Jessica, then at me. “Well, Mr. Riggins, let’s just say I’ve done some bad things. Evil, heartless things.”
“Not good enough, Mr. Hawthorn. Come on, spill it.”
Hawthorn started to tremor. He lifted and dropped his hands in a strange way, as if he were going to start talking and suddenly couldn’t speak. Then, finally, as tears began to choke him he blurted out all at once, “Thirty people!” and clasped his hand over his mouth.
Melinda held him. “It’s ok, Eliot. It’s ok.”
“Thirty people,” he repeated more quietly. Jessica broke her gaze from the wall and looked his way. “I had room on my boat to hold thirty people. I could have saved them. I could have saved thirty of them. I didn’t. Instead I went with just Vivian. I was afraid they’d capsize the boat. I could have taken the children. All of them. I could have taken all the children and some of the parents. I didn’t. I left Islamorada in the middle of that damned storm knowing very well those people were all doomed. Vivian couldn’t stop me. I forced her back into the boat and we rode up to the north, until a giant wave tossed her over the side!” His voice cracked. He began to cry hard, heavy tears. Melinda held him closer. Jessica’s mouth opened, but no words came out, at first.
“I could have saved them!” he shouted. “I could have saved some of them at least!”
Thunder struck again, loud and close. But it wasn’t nearly as horrific as Jessica’s words. “You MONSTER! You sonovabitch! My Mother died in that storm! Now I know why she wants your ass ta
nned! You could have saved her and you didn’t!”
Hawthorn looked up from his tears. “I…I didn’t know your mother, young lady.”
“Of course not. She was just another blank face in the crowd waiting for the storm to wash her away, wasn’t she! You BASTARD!” she screamed, and lunged off the couch like a lion, landing on the bed just inches from Hawthorn. Melinda jumped back and hit her head on the headboard, knocking her senseless. Jessica scurried up the bed and grabbed Hawthorn by the throat.
“I’ll kill you myself you fucking bastard!” she screamed as she pressed her thumbs into Hawthorn’s neck. “I’ll kill you myself!” It all happened so fast I barely had time to react. By the time I got to the bed Jessica had full-fisted punched Hawthorn at least three times in the face, and was choking him again. I came up behind her and tried to pull her away, but she was wild, wild like a crazed woman hell-bent on getting her revenge. Her arms flailed, and as she broke from me she punched Hawthorn again. He screamed with agony as her boney fists landed over again on his nose and mouth. Finally I gave up on restraining her and grabbing her by the ankles pulled her off the bed and onto the floor. She kicked and screamed and tried to scratch my eyes out but I was too quick for her. I flipped her over onto her stomach and pinned her down with a knee in her back. I gave her a medium punch between her shoulder blades that froze her up in pain, and grabbed both her arms in my left hand and pushed forward. The resulting pain made her spit out a shriek that could have awakened the dead, again. With my other hand I pulled off my belt and tied it tight around her wrists.
“Stop it, Jessica!” I yelled, “Knock it off right now or I’m going to knock you out with a lamp over the head, do you understand?”
She was crying hard, heaving, shaking. Through it she kept repeating, “Let me kill him, he let my mother die, let me kill him…”
“No, Jessica. No.” I said, and let her cry it out. I looked up at Hawthorn. Melinda came back to her senses and was trying to stop his nose from bleeding. Blood flowed out of his mouth and a split in his cheek, too. Jessica really did a job on him.
“Melinda, you better get some more of that sleeper juice for this one.”
“Yeah,” she said disgustedly. She got up fast and got another kit out of one of Hawthorn’s drawers, filled up a needle and came over. Without a word she sadistically stuck the needle in Jessica’s leg and pressed the plunger. Jessica screamed and struggled for only a few seconds, then passed out.
It was ’round midnight when I finally got Jessica into her own room, snug as a bug in bed. Melinda dosed up Hawthorn and stayed with him until I got back. The storm was worse than ever, but there was no sign of anything from the watery afterlife for hours.
Melinda retired to Hawthorn’s study. She poured us both a double brandy and we sat quietly in the big wing-backed chairs, just listening to the rain and the thunder. The storm seemed to be going on forever. Close thunder. Far-off thunder. Thunder that sounded like it was inside the damned hotel with us. The rain threw itself against the building like buckets at a car wash. The howl of the wind was both scary and surreal. As I sat, I reflected on the long, crazy day, the longest I’d had in a long time. It seemed ridiculous to think that just this morning, a little more than twelve hours ago, I’d found out that Bachman was dead and I was a suspect, Jessica and Hawthorn were both being… haunted? by the same entities, and I was shown a secret party room in the basement of this kooky Island. Shovel on top of that this tropical storm, Jessica’s come on, Jessica’s ghosts, and making love to Melinda twice and that adds up to at least a week of Tiki insanity floating around in the lagoon of a single day.
“It’s only Monday,” I said groggily into the room.
“Technically it’s now Tuesday. It’s almost one a.m.” Melinda answered in a monotone tone. “I suppose we should try to get some sleep.”
“I assume you don’t want to leave your father alone.”
Melinda closed her eyes, and sort of twitched. “No, I shouldn’t leave Eliot alone. God knows what will happen if he wakes up and no one is around. I’ll sleep in there with him. You’re welcome to take my bed, unless you want to go back to your room.”
“What I want is to take your bed, with you in it,” I said smiling. No reaction. “But I guess I’ll go back to my suite. I need a shower anyway.” I got up and walked over to Melinda. She opened her eyes and I reached down and kissed her, gently. She smiled up at me with that old smile that made me melt, the one that I seemed to have first seen years ago in another lifetime. “I’m a phone call away if you need me kid,” I said, and left.
Back in my suite the storm seemed louder and the water stronger as it slammed against my shuttered glass doors. Hawthorn’s place didn’t have the big sliding glass doors that this suite had. Big difference. I took a long hot shower and poured myself a Jack on the rocks. I tried the TV and couldn’t get any reception. I tried the radio and got nothing but static and storm warnings. One announcement said the storm’s center had passed over the keys and was heading into the gulf. They estimated the worst was over, winds down to less than forty-five miles per hour. It was expected to be gone by four a.m.
I gave up on the radio and slipped a Les Baxter album onto the Hi-Fi. The jungle sounds fit in perfectly with the noise of the rain, thunder and wind. I sat back in the big leather couch and put my feet up. The Jack was only half done when I finally fell into a deep, black, thunder-less sleep.
+++
Melinda removed the remainder of the seaweed from Eliot’s room and sent it down the garbage disposal unit. She wiped up as much of the standing water and sand as she could, and finally called it a night. She slipped into the bed next to Eliot, who was sleeping soundly, and turned out the light. A few seconds later she turned the light back on, got out of bed, turned on a smaller lamp across the room, and went back to bed turning off the large light. Not sleeping in the dark tonight, she thought to herself.
Her tired mind wandered over the events of the day. She was concerned about the rooms at the back of the hotel where the wind seemed to be the worst. She was ever mindful of the tide, knowing high tide would come at around five a.m. and the possibility of flooding with it. She had plenty of staff keeping watch, but basically if a flood came there wasn’t much she could do about it. The salt water would kill a lot of the flowers, and would probably ruin the grass, but that wasn’t so bad. The Island would have to flood over six feet to damage any buildings, and that hadn’t happened in her lifetime.
She also thought about Eliot. About his dreams, and what he said aloud. She thought about the years they spent together after her mother passed away, how happy they were at first, but how things started going downhill when he started having the visions. She thought about Riggins too. About how she hadn’t felt the way she did with him in years, and she wondered if she was falling in love, or if she’d just gotten caught up in the newness of it all, the excitement of the relationship.
She wondered what Riggins thought of her.
Did he have any real intention of staying, giving up his old life for her? Or was he just enjoying his vacation as much as he could? The fact that she couldn’t honestly answer that question disturbed her. She liked him. She wanted him. She believed she could love him.
She needed him.
A crack of lightning split the night. White light filled the room for a brief second, then flickered out. No apparitions appeared. Melinda took a deep breath and let it out slow, and closing her eyes began to finally relax. William would have to wait for tomorrow. Tonight she needed to sleep. The last embers of her awakened fire died out, and sleep took hold of her deeply.
In the garden below, just outside Hawthorn’s window, a glowing white figure of a woman in a summer hat hovered in the night above the recently sealed grave.
Chapter Four
Tuesday Morning, October 30th, 1956
The noise crashed against my skull like a brick. I thought I’d slept through the thunder, but the noise hit me again, hard. I jumped and
fell off the couch. When I opened my eyes, a harsh white light infiltrated my head and the pain started immediately, running down the back of my neck. The noise came again and I screamed “Shut up!” but it didn’t help.
Then my mind started to come together, bits of brain waking up and realizing what was going on.
It was morning. The light wasn’t from lightning, but from the sun coming in full blast through my un-shuttered glass doors. The noise wasn’t thunder, it was the phone.
I picked up the coconut-shaped contraption and yelled into it.
“WHAT.”
“Well good morning to you, Mr. Sunshine. Sleep Ok?”
The voice was Melinda’s, bright and pert and awake. I hated her.
“What time is it?”
“Almost eight. I’ve been up since six. It’s a beautiful day. Storm is gone, out over the Gulf. No flooding. Very little damage. We were lucky.”
“Eight…in the morning? Didn’t anyone tell you I was on vacation?”
“Come on sleepy head. I can use some help.”
“Help?”
“Yes, help. Today is my first day as General Manager, and I’ve got a lot on my plate. Also, Sheriff Jackson would like to see you at some point.”
Great, just what I need. “Wake me up at eleven,” I said and hung up the receiver. A few minutes later I was in bed with the shades drawn, falling asleep.
It didn’t last. At nine I heard the door open and woke up. Standing in front of me was Melinda. She was wearing a peach and white dress covered with tropical flowers, and a peach-colored flower in her hair. I got up and squinted. She was smiling.
“Nice uniform,” I said. “Why are you here?”
“To take you to breakfast. I have some good news.”
Twenty minutes later we were dining in the big room with the windows on the second floor. I think Melinda must have shot-up with some speed, because she was talking a mile a minute and was more awake than I’d seen her all week. She told me all about how the Island survived the storm, how only one small boat broke loose but was recovered, and how Jackson lifted the no coming and going order. In her spiel was something about fresh fruit, new flowers, and great fishing. I caught about half of it over three cups of coffee and a muffin.
Murder on Tiki Island: A Noir Paranormal Mystery In The Florida Keys (Detective Bill Riggins Mysteries) Page 39