White Wedding

by Jean Barrett

  “You’re like all the others. You think I’m being defensive and unreasonable. Well, I won’t stand by and see him crucified.”

  “You’re right. Allison, I’m sorry I ever brought it up. Just forget that I...”

  Lane didn’t stay to hear anymore. Remorseful, she backed away into the depths of the lounge until she was out of listening range. She had managed to overcome the longing to eavesdrop. She could do nothing, however, to control her curiosity about the mystifying exchange she had just overheard.

  A moment later Allison returned alone to the lounge. She looked distracted and unhappy as she glanced in the direction of the kitchen. “I suppose I’d better go talk to Dorothy,” she murmured. “She’ll want to know about to- morrow. Whatever’s happened, people will still need to eat.”

  Lane didn’t try to stop her when she went off to the kitchen. Nor did she detain Ronnie when she reappeared with her brandy glass, wanting to know, “Where’s our hostess?”

  “In the kitchen.”

  “Think I’ll join her.”

  Apparently Ronnie had no desire to be alone with her. That suited Lane just fine. She couldn’t think of a subject the two of them might have in common. Unless it was Jack, and she certainly had no intentions of sharing her impressions in that direction. Least of all with Veronica Bauer.

  Ronnie left. Lane was alone once more. And restless. She almost wished she had joined the men in their search. She wondered what, if anything, was happening with them. She could hear no activity overhead. The lodge was too solidly built. And the lounge, except for the ceaseless wail of the wind outside and the soft popping of the fire in the grate, was suddenly too quiet.

  Lane decided she didn’t want to remain in the room. She couldn’t bear another minute of this empty waiting. She went out into the foyer and stood at the bottom of the massive staircase, listening. Silence.

  She turned away and noticed that the door to the Viking banquet hall hadn’t been closed. The room was too cavernous to be adequately heated. Cold air from the place invaded the foyer. Lane went to shut the door, and instead found herself venturing into the great room.

  The soaring, raftered hall was a well of darkness. Her hand groped for a light switch on the wall inside the entrance. She failed to find one. It didn’t matter. There was a kind of grilled hatch in the wall that backed up to the library. Light from the library on the other side spilled a weak glow into the hall. It was just sufficient enough to permit her to make out the nearest objects in the gloom.

  Lane could see the poinsettias massed on the long table. She could also make out an enormous sideboard where Teddy Brewster had arranged a collection of Father Christmases garlanded with holly and ivy. They were another depressing reminder to her that this was Christmas Eve. The members of the house party were supposed to be in the lounge drinking punch, decorating the tree, sharing a lively anticipation for tomorrow’s wedding. Instead, they were dealing with murder.

  It wasn’t the cold in the hall that made her shiver. It was the sight of the poinsettias on the table. They were as red as blood.

  Mistake, she thought. I should never have wandered in here.

  Lane turned sharply and started to leave. Instead, she collided with a shadowy figure who had slipped in behind her. She gasped with alarm, prepared to scream the house down, as a pair of hands reached out and gripped her by both arms.

  “Easy,” muttered a deep voice.

  He was no more than a silhouette against the light from the foyer. But she recognized that rich baritone. Though she hated to admit it, she was immediately reassured.

  “Jack! You might have warned me instead of sneaking up on me like that.”

  “Sorry. I didn’t know it was you I was investigating in here until you turned around.”

  “Then you had no reason to grab me.”

  “I wasn’t grabbing. I was steadying.”

  His hands were still on her arms, and the sensation of his strong fingers scalding her flesh was decidedly unsettling.

  “Well, you can unsteady me now.”

  She could sense his reluctance as he slowly released her. “What are you doing in here, anyway?”

  “Just waiting for an all clear from the search party. Where are the others?”

  “Still playing hide-and-seek upstairs. I got tired of the game.”

  “Did you find anything?”

  “Yeah, a hell of a lot of dust bunnies.”

  She hadn’t expected otherwise. “Then can I go to my room? I don’t know about you, but I’m ex—”

  She never finished her plea. Jack silenced her with a shake of his head and a rapid finger against his mouth. She noticed that his attention was suddenly riveted on something over her shoulder. Her head swiveled in bewilderment, and then she saw it, too.

  The lighted opening revealed someone stealing into the library on the other side, carefully closing the lounge door behind him. There was a definite furtiveness about the scene framed by the glowing hatch.

  Jack seized her by the hand and drew her quietly toward the light.

  “What are you doing?” she murmured.

  “It’s called spying,” he whispered.

  “You can’t,” she whispered back.

  He ignored her warning. “This is far enough,” he breathed into her ear. “There’s glass under that grille and no light on this side. If we’re careful, he’ll never know we’re here.”

  Lane decided not to challenge him any further. The activity in the next room was far too intriguing. The figure that had slipped into the library was Chris Beaver.

  They watched him as he moved swiftly to the open bookshelves. From a cabinet underneath, he extracted a thick volume, which he placed on a table directly in line with their view of the room. It wasn’t until he began flipping through its pages that Lane recognized the book as a photo album. He found what he was seeking seconds later. From its clear, protective envelope he removed a sizable snapshot. Lane, holding her breath, saw him grimly study the photograph for a long minute. From this angle and distance, there was no way to identify the subject.

  As they continued to stare, Chris tore the snapshot into halves, then quarters with a slow, deliberate purposefulness. He went on tearing until the picture had been reduced to scraps. The bits he buried in a wastebasket under other discarded paper. Replacing the album, he left the library as silently as he had arrived.

  “What was that all about?” Lane wondered.

  Jack said nothing for a few seconds. The he pulled at her hand. “Come on.”

  “What now?” she demanded.

  “What else? We’re going to work a jigsaw puzzle.”

  Chapter Four

  “Don’t you have any shame about snooping?” Lane challenged him.

  “No,” Jack answered from his hunkered position on the library rug as he went on sifting through the contents of the wastebasket. “Unearthing evidence is my business, remember?”

  “Jack, this isn’t a dinosaur dig in Montana.”

  “You’re right. It could be something more important. Ah, the last piece, I think.”

  Getting to his feet with the rescued scraps, he began to arrange them on the surface of the library table. Lane watched him, though she kept casting nervous glances over her shoulder. She was afraid the others would return at any moment and find them. There would be questions she didn’t want to answer. On the other hand, while she refused to admit it, she was every bit as curious as Jack to know what Chris Beaver had so earnestly needed to destroy.

  “Don’t just stand there,” Jack complained. “Help me.”

  “You’re the expert at reassembling fossils. I’m just an innocent bystander. Hold it, that bit is wrong. It goes over on this side.”

  She was involved in the puzzle before she realized it. They worked swiftly, and within minutes the photograph had been pieced together again. Lane clapped a shocked hand to her mouth as they gazed down at the revealing snapshot.

  It depicted two men posed somewhere
outdoors. One of them was Chris. The other, younger man bore such a close resemblance to him that Lane was prepared to assume it was his brother. Head turned, Chris grinned gleefully at his companion. Mike Beaver had an upraised, bloody tomahawk in one hand. In the other he triumphantly clutched a human scalp.

  “No wonder he didn’t want the picture found,” Lane murmured. “After what happened down in the cave, this could be—”

  “As incriminating as hell.” Jack finished the observation for her.

  “Do you suppose this is his brother and that Chris is trying to protect him?”

  “It’s Mike Beaver, all right,” Jack said without hesitation.

  Lane was about to ask him how he could be so positive when the lounge door opened behind them. They turned to find Chris hurrying into the library with a fireplace lighter in his hand. He halted just long enough to understand the situation. Then he advanced on them, a menacing expression on his bronze face.

  “I was a fool to bury it in the wastebasket,” he muttered. “I should have burned it in the fireplace to begin with.”

  He reached them, snatching up the pieces of the photograph from the table and shoving them into his pocket.

  “Hiding it won’t do you any good now,” Jack observed. “We’ve already seen it.”

  “Then you can just forget what you’ve seen,” he ordered them angrily. “I won’t have Mike involved. He’s innocent.”

  “That photograph didn’t look so innocent,” Jack insisted.

  “Like hell! It was a joke. The whole thing was just a joke. The blood wasn’t real, and the scalp wasn’t real. We were just fooling around, okay?”

  “Then why did you need to destroy it?”

  “Because after what’s happened it would be misunderstood,” he said bitterly. “We’re Menominee, remember? Well, I won’t have Mike dragged into this, because he was nowhere near Thunder Island when the florist was killed last night.”

  “Yes, I know,” Jack said.

  Again Lane was puzzled by his certainty. And just like before, she missed the chance for an explanation. This time it was the other men returning from the search who arrived on the scene, interrupting them.

  Allison, entering the library at the same time, immediately sensed the stressed atmosphere. Her gaze flew from Chris to Jack. “What now?”

  His gaze resting thoughtfully on Chris, Jack assured her placidly, “Not a thing.”

  Lane helped him by asking the men a quick and distracting question. “Did the house check out okay?”

  “All clear and safe,” Dan reported.

  She could feel Jack eyeing her now, and she knew what was coming. In another minute he would take her aside and want to talk to her privately. Not about the murder, either. He still meant to have that personal discussion about them. And Lane meant just as obstinately to avoid it. She decided the answers to everything else could wait because, at this point, her ex-husband was still the most serious risk for her on Thunder Island.

  “Then, if no one minds,” she said, “I’ll say good-night.”

  She was on her way out of the room before Jack could stop her.

  * * *

  LANE WENT TO BED. She did not go to sleep. Not for a long while, anyway. The wind battering the island kept her awake, making her apprehensive about Nils’s chance of reaching the mainland tomorrow if the phone still proved useless. Nor could she shake the ghastly image of Teddy Brewster huddled in death beneath the house.

  Fatigue finally overcame her, and she drifted off. Christmas, the wedding, murder. They generated bizarre scenes that tormented her in her dreams.

  It wasn’t a nightmare, however, that brought her sharply awake in the blackness of her room sometime later. Lane knew instantly that she wasn’t alone. She could hear no sound, detect no movement in the darkness, but she could sense another presence. Someone had entered her bedroom, someone was here with her now!

  Heart racing with alarm, she lay rigidly still, afraid to betray her alertness. Without a weapon, she had two choices. Scream her head off or dive for the door and pray she didn’t encounter her phantom visitor on the way.

  Lane did neither. Her invader moved first, creeping toward the door that connected to the unoccupied bedroom adjoining hers. She started to ease silently off the side of the bed that was away from him, prepared to avoid him in the darkness until she could reach the hall outside.

  What happened instead was a collision. His with a chair. She heard it clattering to the floor, then a muttered curse. Immediately following came a mumbled but exasperatingly recognizable voice. “Where do they keep the damn lights in here, anyway?”

  Lane obliged him by reaching for the switch on her bedside lamp. The welcome glow revealed a startled Jack Donovan massaging a wounded shin.

  “Are you planning to make a career out of terrifying me?” she challenged, hiking herself against the headboard. “This is twice in the same night.”

  Jack’s gaze went from her to the connecting door, then back to her. He frowned. “What are you doing in here?”

  “That’s my question.”

  “I thought you were next door. I could have sworn that was your room next door. Didn’t I see your luggage in there during the search?”

  “You saw it in here.”

  “Oh. Well, I didn’t want to knock from the hall. You know, in case one of the others heard and looked out. I didn’t think you’d appreciate that.”

  “No, I wouldn’t.”

  “So I came in here, meaning to knock on the connecting door.” His frown deepened. “Come to think of it, how was I able to just walk in? Why isn’t your door locked?”

  “Because I had no reason to lock it. The house is supposed to be safe now, remember? Of course, if I’d had any idea you were going to be prowling around in the middle of the night... What are you doing up here?”

  “Couldn’t sleep.” He moved toward the bed. “Worried about you.”

  She eyed him warily as he leaned against a bedpost. His black hair was uncombed, his attire sloppy. Worn jeans and a sweatshirt that should have been discarded in the past decade. There was a stubble of dark beard on his jaw. He had never looked so intimately, disarmingly sexy.

  “Damn you, Jack, stop playing guardian angel! I’m no longer your responsibility.”

  “Come on, Eastman,” he coaxed, completely ignoring her panicked objections, “let me spend the night.”

  Her laugh was shaky, but at least she wasn’t weeping with frustration. “You’re slipping, Donovan. You didn’t used to be so blatant with your technique.”

  “I didn’t mean here. I’ll sleep in the bed next door. I just want to make sure you’re all right.”

  “No, I’m not all right. But I would be if you’d stop treating me like the little teenage bride needing your mature, experienced protection. Or have you forgotten that was one of the problems in our marriage?”

  “I know,” he said with a carelessness that convinced her he didn’t understand at all. Then he went on to complain, “It’s cold in here.” He stood away from the bedpost and hugged himself as he longingly eyed her under the warm covers. “I don’t suppose you’d invite me...”

  “When pigs fly.”

  He didn’t argue. He just stood there looking so endearingly miserable that she could have smacked him. Instead, she snatched up the extra quilt from the foot of the bed and tossed it to him. “Here. Wrap yourself in this.”

  “Thank you.” He dragged the quilt around his shoulders, bundling himself into its thickness.

  “I ought to send you straight back to the guesthouse. And wipe that smug grin off your mouth. That quilt isn’t a victory for you.”

  “Okay.”

  “It isn’t a sign that you’re making progress in this campaign you seem to have mounted.”

  “No.”

  “All it means is that I don’t want you to freeze while I take a few minutes here to get some things straight with you.”

  “All right.”

  “I m
ean, since you’re already here, I might as well go ahead and make you understand— What are you doing? I didn’t tell you you could sit on the bed.”

  “I’m just perching on the edge down here. I can listen a whole lot better if I’m sitting.”

  “You see, that’s exactly what I mean, Jack. I’m not the starry-eyed, insecure girl you married. You can’t just walk back into my life with this overbearing, overprotective swagger of yours.”

  “You’re right. Don’t worry, I respect your indepen- dence.”

  “Of course you do. That’s exactly why you coaxed Allison into that little conspiracy to play best man for Hale. Just so I’d be trapped into a situation where I couldn’t get away from you.”

  “That’s not being overbearing.”

  “No, that’s just being underhanded. And stop inching toward me. Stay at your end, or get off the bed.”

  He retreated with a look of injury.

  “Underhanded,” she repeated. “Just like that little performance back at the dock in Ephraim this afternoon.”

  “What performance would that be?”

  “You know the one. Trying to lure me into riding with you with that invention about not trusting the situation because of something mysterious you’d learned last night. If you don’t call that being manipulative—”

  “I call it the truth.”

  Lane stared at him. There was an expression of such earnestness on his face this time that she regretted her accusation.

  “And,” he added, “if you hadn’t either bolted or bristled every time I got near you, I would have explained it.”

  She didn’t want to be unfair. “I’m listening now,” she urged him.

  “I spent last night and part of today down in Fish Creek visiting with one of my old professors. He’s retired on the peninsula. Allen Scorvino, remember?”

  She nodded.

  “That’s why I was late getting up to Ephraim. Well, that part doesn’t matter. The thing is, there’s this tavern next to the motel where I stayed the night. Because I was registered as Dr. Donovan, someone figured I had to be a medical man. They stopped me outside the motel when I got back late in the evening from Allen’s place. Before I could sort it out, I was dragged into the tavern to look at this guy who’d suddenly gotten very ill on nothing but a couple of beers.”