“Good night, kids,” I said, took two of the pills myself and turned off the light.
The hideous, ear-splitting screams drove icy shivers down my spine and made me jump so hard my head and neck seized up in fear, sending shots of purple pain through my skull and back.
“TURN IT ON!” she screamed over and over, with insane wailing and screeching in between. It was Jessica, going mad. “THE LIGHT! TURN IT ON! TURN IT ON!”
I obeyed, turning the gaddamned thing on as fast as I could. Jessica was shivering, cowering into the corner of the loveseat, her eyes opened as wide as her skin would allow, peering at the closed door. Melinda was curled up in a ball, shaking and rocking on the sofa, crying loudly. I jumped up and ran to Jessica, calming her. “It’s on, for Christ’s sake the light is on, dollface!”
I don’t know how long it took to finally get them calmed down. It seemed like hours in the soupy slosh my brain was in, but it was probably only minutes as the Valium worked its magic on the three of us. As I started to drift off, I could hear the wind rattling against the building, the waves crashing on the beachhead outside. The storm was letting up, certainly. The worst was over.
The worst was over.
All over.
Tomorrow, I would leave Tiki Island, and the worst…would…be…overrrr…
Chapter Five
Wednesday Morning, October 31st, 1956
Halloween
It was the bone-chilling silence that woke me the next morning. No wind, no waves, no thunder crashing. Just silence, except for the far-off hum of the Island’s generator, still running and keeping the lights going all night. A quick look at my watch told me it was eight thirty. I was hoping to be out of it until at least noon, but I guess the Valium didn’t do such a good job on me as it had on the girls…they were out cold. I was wide awake.
As the fog lifted from my brain I wondered what was left of the Island. Had the hurricane been so bad after all? Or was it just…a smokescreen, a convenient cloak for…for what? You were about to say for some gaddamned ghosts to come along and murder Hawthorn, weren’t you Riggins? That was crazy, and I knew it. But gaddamn it, it happened, sure as hell it happened. I know it did.
I got up from the chair and made my way out to the bar. The place was in shambles, chairs knocked around, seaweed everywhere.
Yea, it happened. Sure as hell.
I found the men’s room and splashed some cold water on my face. The whipped cream I had wandered through last night was melting away, and reality was setting in, way too fast for my style. I knew I had to go topside to check out the damage. I was afraid of what I’d find.
When I stepped out of the men’s room, Melinda was standing there. I almost jumped out of my already goose-bumped skin
“Oh, eh, sorry doll, I didn’t meant to wake you.” There was something that just didn’t seem quite right about her. Her eyes were wide but tired. There was a twitch in her face. She hardly blinked. Poor kid.
She said in an alien voice, “You didn’t. I just woke up, no reason. I need to see the damage.”
“Yeah, I was just about to go topside myself,” I said, taking her hand. “What about Jessica?”
“Out like a light. She took an extra pill and washed it down with a glass of whiskey.”
I nooded. “Listen, Melinda, about last night…”
“No, don’t William,” she interrupted softly, on the verge of tears. “Not yet. I can’t bear it.” She looked around the shattered room and shook her head. “One catastrophe at a time.”
The door to the stairs opened with a wet creak. Some water poured in, but not enough to make us nervous, at least not yet. The stairwell was dim but not dark, lit by an emergency light at the top landing. The little window was obscured by the darkness. I unlocked the heavy, watertight door at the top, held my breath, and opened it. A little water came through, but nothing more.
Without a word Melinda and I walked up the gray hallway to her office. The door was closed, the way we left it the night before. I turned the handle and gave it a budge. “It’s stuck,” I said.
“Probably warped from the water,” Melinda answered mechanically. I turned the knob and gave it a good shove. On the third try it busted open. “Jesus,” was all I said. Melinda said nothing.
Her office was in shambles. Furniture was tossed around, bookcases toppled over. Everything was wet, dripping with seaweed or covered in salt and sand. Soaked papers littered the floor and stuck to the walls. The desk, on which I made love to her less than a day ago, was broken and wedged up against the back wall.
We picked our way through in the dim, wet office to the front door, the one that opened out to the front desk and the lobby. I put my hand on the knob and looked at Melinda. Her eyes were moist, and I could tell she was choking back a lot of tears.
“Are you ready?” I said softly.
She tenderly let the word “Yes,” escape from her quivering, joyless lips.
I opened the door.
At first it didn’t seem too bad. Bright sunshine filled the lobby, giving the wood walls a clean, fresh look. The front desk was intact, and showed no signs of damage. But once we moved around the desk to the lobby itself, we saw what the storm had done.
“Flood,” Melinda said quietly, “My worst fear, for the island.” We carefully picked our way over some debris, planks of wood, a chair, a mound of sand, so that we were standing in the center of the lobby. It was, in a word, disastrous. “Completely flooded, William. Destroyed.”
The two giant, mahogany front doors had been ripped from their hinges. One was splintered, rammed into the base of the toppled Tiki that I had installed the day before. The other was wedged up against the front desk. Every chair, table, ashtray, everything had been tossed around by the angry sea and re-deposited in a place it was never meant to be. Pieces of driftwood, palms, seaweed and other assorted detritus festooned the floors and walls. The glass of the elevator was shattered. Piles of wet sand coated every surface. Several shafts of sunlight pierced the air through holes blown out of the roof by the winds.
“Look here, William,” Melinda said in a stronger yet still surreal voice. “Here’s the waterline where the tide was at its highest. About four feet, I’d say.”
“Four feet above sea level?” I asked innocently. Melinda laughed, not a happy laugh but an annoyed, horrid laugh.
“No, no. Don’t be so foolish, Riggins. Remember what I told you about the building.”
I shook my head and it came to me. “The main building is built up ten feet above the ocean, right?”
“That’s right.”
“That means that last night…we were sitting in that room with more than twenty feet of water over our heads?” The thought scared the carp out of me, to say the least.
“Eliot didn’t call it a Safe Room for nothing,” she responded, and that was the last straw. She couldn’t hold it together any longer and the water works started running full force. “Eliot!” She let out a wail that could wake the dead, and collapsed to her knees on the wet, sandy floor of her beloved Resort. She cried and screamed and cursed God and the Tiki Gods and pounded her fists on the sand, her face and soul twisted in pain. All I could do was stand there, and when she couldn’t scream any more I held her and let her cry it out.
I don’t know how many minutes or hours went by as I knelt on the cold sand holding this beautiful, broken women in my arms. I wanted to tell her everything would be all right, but I couldn’t. We both knew it wouldn’t…nothing would ever be all right for Melinda ever again, not after this, and all of my lies and kisses couldn’t change that one bit.
Finally she let up, and got to her feet. “I have…I have to check on the fish, William,” she said as she tried to pull herself together.
“Fish? What fish?”
“In the tank. In the Shipwreck bar. I have to see if they survived.” I followed her to the aquarium in the lobby bar. The bar was dark, but throwing the switch turned on another emergency light. It wasn’t a
pretty sight. The chairs and tables were mostly thrown up against the glass of the tank, put there as the tide went out and the water receded. But the glass was intact. “Oh God, thank you,” she said quietly as she realized her forty or so aquatic pets were ok. She turned to me again, her eyes red and swollen with tears. She took me by the arms and stared her big browns directly up at mine.
“William, I…I’m so afraid, William. And so…sad, oh God, I don’t even know how to express it. Eliot was…he was everything to me, and this place…I know to you it’s just a hotel, but it’s my home, it’s all I’ve ever known, and it’s…it’s destroyed, William. My whole life, everything I’ve ever loved is gone…except you…and you’ll be gone soon, too...I…I don’t know what to do…”
I swallowed hard. I knew what was coming next.
“Please, William,” she pleaded with a desperate heart, “Please, tell me you’ll stay, here, with me, tell me you’ll help me rebuild the Resort for the two of us! Tell me everything’s going to be ok!” She broke down in tears once again, burying her face in my arm. I wanted to tell her to forget it. I wanted to be cold and tell her she was on her own, and that she was a big girl and would be just fine on her own, without me. But I couldn’t.
“Everything will be ok,” I lied, and held her closer. “This is all just stuff, Melinda. It can all be replaced. Get a good crew in here and throw around a few bucks, and this place’ll be Spic ’n’ Span in a few months. No sweat.”
“But nothing can bring Eliot back, William. He’s gone. Gone forever.” She wept quietly this time.
I looked down at her and said, “Eliot knew this was coming. He knew for a long time and he tried to prepare you as best as he could. You know that, don’t you?”
“I do.”
“That man may have done some screwed up things in his life, but it seems to me that you and your mother turned him around. Remember him for the man he was to you, not the man those…things…made you see.”
“I know,” she said softly, “And I will. But…it doesn’t make it any easier, William. I loved him, I loved him.” Her voice trailed off as the crying went on.
I took a deep breath. “Let’s go check out the damage to the outside of the Island. I’ll bet it’s not so bad out there. Probably make you feel much better.
Man, I couldn’t be more wrong.
As soon as we walked out the front doors, we saw the real devastation. The Island had been eviscerated of almost all of its plant life. Once lush gardens were flattened dunes of mud and seaweed. Giant palm trees were turned into poles, stripped of their fronds. The beach had eroded so badly that two of the Tiki bars had washed out to sea. From dead fish to broken chunks of boat hulls, debris littered every inch of the Island. Some of the hurricane panels had been ripped from the windows, and the glass was shattered. The dock and thatched beach entrance, along with the Tikis and other décor, were simply gone, ripped up and carried away by the wrath of the storm.
“Destroyed,” Melinda said to herself.
“Time and money,” I said, “And it’ll be as good as new. You’re insured, right?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Then you’re golden.”
We walked along the beach, being careful not to step on any wood or debris in fear of nails or other nasty things. The Gulf was very calm. The sun was shining brightly in the early morning sky. Only a few clouds hung with it. It was a cool seventy degrees, with a light tropical breeze. The day was, weather-wise, perfect.
Other-wise, it was one of the worst days in Melinda’s…and consequently my…life. And it was about to get worse.
+++
She woke up alone in the unfamiliar, dimly lit room. Her mind was still groggy from the pills, she knew that much. She focused on the desk across from the couch, and recognized it right away. It was Eliot Hawthorn’s desk, the desk on which she had let him do things to her while Bachman secretly filmed it with his eight millimeter camera. The couch she lay on was the one on which she first made love to Melinda, years ago. She wasn’t sure why she was in that room, but the memory of the night before began to seep back into her mind, and she shook.
+++
We had come upon the ruins of the front boat landing of Tiki Island when I saw the heap in the distance. I saw it, because I was trained to see such things. Thankfully, Melinda was not.
“Wait,” I said, “There’s something up ahead. You wait here.”
“Why?”
“Because…I think it might be a body, and you don’t need to see that.” She obeyed, and sat on what was left of a stone bench, one which had a missing cement leg. I walked on ahead.
As the heap came closer into view, I got that twisted feeling in the pit of my stomach, that feeling that in the city would tell me to stop and wait before going into that dark alley, to make sure my rod was loaded and in my hand, to look behind me before taking another step. I wasn’t sure what it meant here, but I knew it couldn’t be good.
I approached the mound of clothes, and realized I was correct…it was in fact a body. But not just any body.
It was Eliot Hawthorn.
+++
Jessica called out for Bill, then for Melinda. When she got no answer she got up and, shakily, investigated the room. She was alone, but the door to the stairwell was wide open. She surmised they had awakened early and decided to check out the damage, so she followed in their steps. She was amazed at the damage she found in Melinda’s office, the office where the two girls had spent so many stolen moments doing naughty things to each other while the customers waited at the desk out front, the office where Melinda had handed her hundreds of dollars in cash for entertaining certain guests, the office where Melinda had first suggested they both visit Hawthorn together in his bed.
She walked through the office and out the lobby, where she found even more wreckage. Footprints in the sand led to the bar, and back out to through the front door, all the way to the beach. She gasped in dread at the condition of the gardens, the beachfront. Then she followed the prints down to the water’s edge, where she found Riggins standing over what appeared to be a pile of rags, and Melinda kneeling in the sand, screaming at the sky, her fists raised in anger towards the heavens.
+++
Why do broads never listen? I told Melinda to stay put, but she had to do things her way. My back was to her as I turned Hawthorn’s waterlogged body over. She came up behind me just as I did, and saw the horrible sight I didn’t want her to see. Just like he had done to his wife and friend, his face had been smashed in beyond recognition. Small crabs crawled over his features and devoured his flesh. The only way I knew it was him for sure was by the custom-made heavy silk robe in which his mangled body was entangled. Melinda took one look at his face and started screaming her head off again. She dropped to the sand and once again cursed every God she could think of, from Zeus to Poseidon to some Hawaiian kats I never heard of, and screamed until her screamer broke and all she could do was cry a raspy, gurgling wail. I quickly turned Hawthorn’s body back over to hide the grotesque cavern that was once his face, and got up to calm Melinda down. Again, I held her. I tried everything I could to soothe her. Time. It took time, and finally she calmed down. It was right about the time she stopped crying that Jessica showed up.
I saw her walking up the beach and jumped to my feet. The last thing I wanted was for her to see the body too.
“What’s goin’ on?” she asked as she approached.
Quietly, I replied, “Hawthorn’s body washed up on the beach. It’s not good.”
“Jesus,” she said low, looking over at Hawthorn. “No wonder Melinda’s having a cow.”
“Yeah. Listen, we’ve got to get off this gaddamned Island. Do you know where they stow the boats?”
“There’s a drydock where the loading docks are out back. Might be one there, if it’s still in one piece.”
“Can you please take Melinda to the boats and see if you can get one going? I’m going to move Mr. Hawthorn off the beach so
the birds don’t get to him.”
“Jesus, Bill, can you spare the details?”
“Sorry kid. I forgot you were…”
“It’s ok. I’ll take Melinda to the boat. Ya’ll, just don’t take too long, ok?”
I realized she seemed surprisingly coherent and unemotional to me. “Yeah. Listen, are you ok? I mean, last night was pretty…”
“Last night was nothing,” she said very darkly. “Last night was a walk in the park, and if I’m lucky that was the end of it.” She looked over at Melinda and squinted in the bright sunlight. “It’s a lot tougher for her, she lost Eliot. Me?...well, let’s just say I’m not too broken up that my murdered mother got her revenge.” Jessica then went to her, got her up, and helped her walk along the surf toward the rear-end of Tiki Island.
When they were far enough away for comfort, I grabbed Hawthorn by the shoes and pulled the body, gaping face up, all the way up to the building. There was a small storage shed there where they kept beach chairs. It somehow survived the flood, so I removed the chairs and stowed the bloating corpse inside, hopeful that it would keep from exploding in the hot sun the way Reams told me bodies tended to do. Once he was put away, I washed my hands in the surf and headed for the docks. When I got there, Melinda and Jessica were already in a boat with the motor running. We left Tiki Island at nine-twenty a.m. on October thirty-first, Nineteen fifty-six.
+++
The girls were quite. When I pulled the boat up to the virtually undamaged dock on Sugarloaf Key, they said nothing. They said nothing as we walked up the path to Melinda’s garage-warehouse, which was completely intact. Besides some palm fronds and a few pieces of roof shingles littering the lot, you’d never know a major hurricane had just come through.
I used Melinda’s keys to open the garage. The Cadillac car was there, top down as I left it, without a scratch or any sign of flood damage. Dry as a bone. The girls climbed into the back seat and I motored the car up the clamshell driveway to the Overseas Highway. Again, almost no sign of any significant damage. I turned the Caddy right and headed towards Key West. As soon as I got on the road, Melinda, out of the clear blue, finally snapped and let go the water works. Jessica did her best to comfort her, but it was a long, painful drive down to the big Key.
Murder on Tiki Island: A Noir Paranormal Mystery In The Florida Keys (Detective Bill Riggins Mysteries) Page 47