The High Tide Club

by Mary Kay Andrews

  “Yes. What happened after that man dragged my mother out of the ballroom?” Marie asked.

  The door to the kitchen swung open, and as Louette walked in, Brooke glimpsed C. D. sitting at the kitchen table, mopping up sauce with half of a huge biscuit.

  “I made coffee,” Louette announced, brandishing a pot. Josephine glared at Louette. “But you’re not having any, and I don’t care how much you fuss at me. It’s too late for you to be drinking coffee.”

  “Fine. Open a bottle of port and bring me that,” Josephine said. She looked around the table. “At one time, Papa had the finest wine cellar on the coast. We might as well have some of his port, don’t you think?”

  * * *

  When the coffee had been drunk and the port poured, Josephine resumed her story.

  “Russell was absolutely livid after he saw Millie dancing with Gardiner,” Josephine said. “I wasn’t out in the garden where he attacked her, so I only know what we managed to coax out of her the next night.”

  “I seen it all,” Varina said quietly.

  Every head in the room swiveled to look at her. She was such a tiny figure, almost child-sized, against the bulk of the enormous chair she sat in.

  “You did?” Josephine seemed taken aback. “You never said so, all those years ago.”

  “Nobody asked,” Varina said, shrugging. “Anyway, I was just a girl. I was so shocked at first, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing and hearing.”

  “Auntie, how did you happen to see it?” Felicia asked. She reached over and gently removed a crumb of biscuit from her great-aunt’s blouse, which was when Brooke noticed, for the first time, that Varina was also wearing a High Tide Club pin.

  “I’d finished up working in the kitchen, and Mrs. Dorris—she was the housekeeper back then—she told me to go ahead on home. I was supposed to wait for my brother to come fetch me and walk me home, but I knew he wasn’t coming for another hour, and anyway, I wanted to peek at all the fancy dresses in the ballroom. So I changed back into my pink party dress and heels, and I sorta snuck around to the back of the house so I could look in the doors from the veranda. About the time I got there, I saw that man hauling Millie out of there.” Varina looked over at Marie. “I’m sorry you have to hear this.”

  “It’s all right,” Marie said. “It was a long time ago.”

  “Millie was crying, telling him he was hurting her, but he didn’t care, and he didn’t slow down,” Varina said. “He drug her into the garden, way back where the camellia bushes were head-high. And that’s right near where I’d jumped into the bushes to hide.”

  Varina closed her eyes as though she were reliving the scene from memory. “It was a full moon that night, so I could see things I wished I hadn’t. That man, he shoved her up against a tree, and he had his hands all up and down in her dress.”

  She glanced over at Gabe, blushed, and looked away. “Millie was begging him to stop. She was afraid somebody would see them, like her mama or her grandmama, but he said he could do what he wanted because they were getting married. I saw him push her dress up, and then he unfastened his trousers…”

  “Oh my God.” Lizzie breathed. “He raped her. The bastard raped her.”

  Marie was clutching her napkin in both hands, twisting it into a rope, her face ashen. Brooke reached over and touched her shoulder, but her mother didn’t seem to notice.

  “He didn’t get the chance,” Varina said. “Right about that time, Mr. Gardiner came busting in on them. I think he must have followed her out of the ballroom, because just before that, I saw him standing on the veranda, like he was looking for somebody. I guess he caught sight of Millie’s dress, because he ran right over to them. He yelled at that man to stop it, and the bad man told him to mind his own business because he could do what he wanted, and the next thing I knew, Mr. Gardiner yanked him clean away from Millie. They had a fight, and even though the other man was way bigger, Mr. Gardiner punched him in the face and the gut and knocked him clean off his feet.”

  “Good for him,” Lizzie said. “What happened after that?”

  “Mr. Gardiner had already told Millie to go on back to the house. So then he told that bad man he’d better leave this island. He told him if he was still there in the morning, he’d kill him. And then he left.”

  “Gardiner really was a hero,” Josephine said, sighing. “Not just a war hero, although he was that too. He was all our heroes. The best brother a girl could ask for.”

  Her face sagged, and her speech was slightly slurred. The pain meds, Brooke thought, must be kicking in.

  “Did he … make it through the war?” Lizzie asked.

  “No. He didn’t,” Josephine said. “His plane was shot down at Midway. Gardiner was a gun jumper, you know.”

  “What’s that?” Felicia asked.

  “He got tired of waiting for the United States to get into the war. He’d gotten his pilot’s license just about the same time he got his driver’s license. Gardiner hated what was happening in Europe. After Hitler marched into Poland and then Holland and Belgium, his mind was made up. He and Papa had terrible fights about it because my father was still an isolationist at that point. Anyway, Gardiner decided to join the Royal Canadian Air Force. The morning after the engagement party, he took the early ferry to the mainland, and from there he took the train to Canada.”

  “You must have been so proud of him,” Marie said.

  “At the time, I thought it was terribly romantic,” Josephine said. “And heroic. Of course, that was October, and in early December, Pearl Harbor happened, and the United States did get into the war.”

  “Did you ever see Gardiner again?” Marie asked.

  “Just once, and only for a few hours. He came home briefly, after training and before he was shipped out. By then, Papa had closed up this house. Most of the men on the island, including all the Shaddix boys, went off to fight the war, plus German U-boats were prowling the coast, and he didn’t think it was safe for us to stay.”

  Gabe looked up from his glass of port. “I never heard that before.”

  “Oh yes. In 1941, at least five Allied merchant ships were torpedoed by the Germans between here and Savannah, and I believe four or five U-boats were sunk, right off the coast here.” Josephine drained most of her port and, setting the glass down, tipped the rest onto the tablecloth, watching idly while the deep purple stain pooled on the white damask.

  “I should really be getting to bed,” she said. Her eyelids drooped, and she slumped back in her chair.

  “Oh no,” Lizzie objected. “You still haven’t told us how Russell Strickland disappeared.”

  31

  Louette hovered in the doorway, anxiously observing her employer’s body language. “Y’all need to let her go to bed now,” she warned as she mopped up the spilled port. “She’s flat wore out.”

  Josephine’s eyelids fluttered, and she seemed to struggle to stay awake. “No,” she protested, raising a bony hand. “No, it’s all right.” She coughed, then recovered. “I owe them this much. Go back out in the kitchen, Louette, and leave me be.”

  “You were saying?” Lizzie prompted.

  “We all slept late the morning after the party, but at breakfast, Millie seemed different. She was edgy and agitated. Of course, at the time, we had no way of knowing what had gone on the night before. As Varina said, it was a full moon. We had this silly custom—a ritual, I suppose you’d call it—of skinny-dipping on a full moon at high tide if we were near a beach. We called ourselves the High Tide Club.”

  Josephine’s fingers found the brooch on her collar, and with trembling fingers, she managed to unfasten it and hold it out in the flat of her palm for the others to see. “Millie had these made for Ruth and me, as bridesmaid’s gifts.”

  “She gave me one too,” Varina said proudly, pointing to the pin fastened to her chest.

  “Mom? Did Granny have a pin like this too?”

  “May I see it?”

  Josephine handed the pin to Ma
rie.

  “No, at least I never saw her wear one like this, but then she never wore much jewelry. Just her wedding band and engagement ring. Is that a diamond … on her nipple?” she asked, raising an eyebrow. “I never knew Mama had a naughty side to her.”

  “Yes,” Josephine said. “She could be as silly as the rest of us. We were just girls. Anyway, we’d skinny-dipped at Millie’s grandmother’s beach house and at Ruth’s family house at Palm Beach and at Cape Cod, all during the full moon, and that weekend seemed like the perfect time. The moon was full and high tide was around nine that night. Millie claimed she had a headache and didn’t want to go, but Ruth and I pestered her until she finally gave in and agreed to come with us.”

  Felicia gave her great-aunt a sideways look. “Auntie Vee—did you skinny-dip too? I’m shocked!”

  Varina ducked her head and then looked away.

  “It was peer pressure,” Josephine said. “We took Gardiner’s roadster, picked Varina up at Oyster Bluff, and sweet-talked her daddy into letting her go with us. We said we were having a beach picnic, which was true, but we left out the part about skinny-dipping.”

  “My daddy was a Church of God preacher,” Varina told the others. “He never would have let me go if he’d known what those fool girls were up to.”

  “There’s a place on the island—not far from the lighthouse, a little secluded spot that we named Mermaid Beach. That’s where we were headed,” Josephine said. “I’d gotten the cook to fix us a picnic basket, and I snuck in a bottle of champagne and a bottle of Gardiner’s bourbon. We had a fine supper, but when it came time to go swimming, Millie flat refused.”

  “Mama was always so modest,” Marie said. “I don’t think I ever saw her undressed the whole time I was growing up.”

  “It wasn’t just that,” Josephine said sadly. “Ruth and I had both been drinking, and we were sort of teasing Millie, telling her she had to swim, and I guess I pulled at the jacket she was wearing—long-sleeved, even in the heat—and that’s when we saw the bruises.”

  Brooke felt herself recoil at the thought of Millie, just a girl of nineteen, and a victim of sexual abuse.

  “She had bruises up and down her arms and on her shoulders and thighs,” Josephine said. Her eyes filled with tears. “Our dear, sweet Millie. That’s when she broke down and told us what that bastard Russell had done to her. She as much as told us Russell violated her whenever he was drinking—and he drank a lot. He was a violent, abusive drunk.”

  “Dear God,” Marie said. She was clutching the edge of the table like a life preserver.

  “Ruth told her she couldn’t marry Russell. So did I. We both tried to talk her into breaking the engagement, but she said it was too late. She said it was the only way out of her mother’s money problems.”

  “I’d never heard of rich people with money problems before,” Varina said. “I thought rich folks didn’t have problems like the rest of us.”

  “Millie insisted there was no way out of her predicament. She drank some more, and then we all went skinny-dipping and finished off the champagne and the whiskey,” Josephine said. She looked over at her old friend, sitting at the opposite end of the table.

  “You too, Auntie?” Felicia said, her eyes widening in disbelief.

  “I’d never had a drop of alcohol before,” Varina said. “That whiskey tasted nasty and burned my throat, but the champagne, that was a different story.”

  “It was very good champagne,” Josephine added. “Moët & Chandon.”

  “I did like that champagne,” Varina admitted. “It had bubbles like a Coca-Cola, only it tasted different. I didn’t have but maybe a whole cupful.”

  “But you were so small, it didn’t take much to get you drunk,” Josephine said.

  “My first and last time drinking alcohol,” Varina said. “I guess I was cutting up pretty bad.”

  “It had gotten late, after midnight. And we didn’t dare take her home drunk,” Josephine said. “And anyway, none of us wanted to go home. We had this crazy idea about staying out all night—under the stars. Millie wanted to do it. She thought it would be her last night with all of us before she got married.”

  “But the bugs … oooh, the bugs were bad back then,” Varina said.

  “And it started to rain. Then I remembered the old lighthouse keeper’s cottage. The government had decommissioned it several years earlier, but I knew Gardiner had a key to the cottage hidden under the roadster’s doormat. So I drove us over there, the key worked, and we all piled onto the only bed in the place.”

  “Four girls in one bed?” Lizzie wrinkled her nose at the idea.

  “Four very drunk girls,” Josephine said. “I was the tallest, and Ruth wasn’t exactly tiny, but Millie and Varina were so petite, they didn’t take up any room at all.” She yawned, not bothering to cover her mouth. “Oh my. Maybe I overdid it tonight. Or maybe it’s just these damn pills.” The old woman shook herself slightly as though she were shaking off her weariness. “I can’t remember who woke up first, but I know it was early, because that bed was facing east, so the sun was shining right in our eyes.”

  “Y’all didn’t hear me creeping out of that bed, getting sick in the middle of the night, I guess,” Varina said. She held her head between her hands at the memory of it. “Ooh, I had a headache, and I’d never been so sick in my life.”

  Felicia laughed. “I’m sorry, Auntie. I just can’t picture you hungover.”

  “Girls do lots of crazy things when they’re young,” Varina said. “I seem to remember your mama and daddy putting up with all kinds of foolishness from you.”

  “That’s true,” Felicia agreed. “I was a real handful.”

  “We were all a little worried, because it was Sunday morning, and we didn’t want Varina to get in trouble for missing church, so we got dressed and hurried back to Oyster Bluff. We hadn’t gotten very far when I spotted something up ahead, in the middle of the road. As I got closer, I could see it was buzzards. Three of the biggest, boldest buzzards I’d ever seen. There was another, pecking at something off in the tall grass. And they didn’t fly off, even when the car was almost on top of them. At first I assumed it was a dead animal, like a deer or a feral hog or something. But as we got closer, I realized it was … a person.”

  “I’ll bet it was Russell Strickland,” Lizzie said.

  “Was he…?” Marie’s hand reached for her wineglass, but it was empty.

  “Yes. He was dead.” Josephine looked back at the sideboard, where another bottle of port rested on a silver trivet. She pointed at Gabe. “Be a dear and fetch that, will you? We’re all going to need another drink.”

  * * *

  When everyone but Varina had a refilled glass, Josephine went on talking.

  “He must have weighed nearly 250 pounds, and of course, all of it was deadweight. I still don’t know how we managed to lift him. I suppose it was adrenaline or something. Somehow, we got him into the rumble seat, and then, of course, we had to figure out what to do with the body.”

  “Wait! Hold the phone,” Felicia said, her voice rising. “How did he die? Who killed him? Are you saying you just hid the body?”

  “Mmm-hmm.” Varina nodded calmly. “That’s right.”

  “But how did he die?” Lizzie persisted. “It was Russell Strickland, right? So who killed him?”

  “Yes, it was him. He’d been shot. He didn’t tell us who did it, and we didn’t ask,” Josephine said.

  Gabe had been silent throughout most of the dinner, but now he was shaking his head. “You didn’t notify law enforcement?”

  “We did not,” Josephine said.

  “Why not? He’d been murdered. A crime had been committed.”

  “Russell Strickland was a monster,” Josephine said, her voice cold, detached even. “We’ve already established that. Varina saw him assault Millie. He was twice her size! He would have kept on assaulting her, and nobody could have stopped him. Whoever killed him did the world a favor.”

&nb
sp; “So you got rid of the body. Just like that?” Gabe reached for the port bottle. “You didn’t wonder who the murderer was?”

  “It didn’t matter. The four of us—Millie, Ruth, Varina, and me—we all agreed not to ask any questions. And never to tell what had happened. And we didn’t.”

  “Until tonight,” Brooke said.

  “Do I dare ask what you did with the body?” Gabe asked.

  Josephine regarded him with cool dispassion. “Why do you want to know? Are you going to report me to the authorities?”

  “I am an officer of the court,” Gabe said. He nodded toward Brooke. “And so is she. Did you kill him?”

  “If I had, I wouldn’t tell you,” Josephine said.

  “Do you know who killed him, Auntie?” Felicia peered at her great-aunt.

  “Maybe I do, maybe I don’t. We swore that night, and I won’t go back on my word,” Varina said.

  “It couldn’t have been you,” Felicia said forcefully. “You’re the most God-fearing woman I’ve ever known. You wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

  Varina gave her an indulgent smile. “Child, we are all sinners in this world. I have tried to live the Lord’s word the best way I know how, but the Bible tells us we are all born sinners, craving the Lord’s forgiveness.”

  “It couldn’t have been Granny, no matter what he did to her,” Brooke said. “I bet she didn’t even know how to fire a gun.”

  “We all knew how to shoot,” Josephine corrected her. “We learned to shoot sporting clays at summer camp. And of course, Gardiner taught me how to hunt.” She pointed at a pair of impressive deer mounts on the wall above the sideboard. “That eight-point buck is one I shot when I was twelve. That one”—she pointed to the mount on the right—“Gardiner shot just a week before the party.”

  She nodded at Varina. “You know how to shoot, don’t you?”

  “Oh yes,” Varina said. “On an island like this—with rattlesnakes and gators and wild hogs, every family has a gun and every child learns how to shoot it, even little bitty girls like me. My daddy had a big ol’ pistol, and he made me learn how to use it.”