Murder at five finger light

by Sue Henry

  As Jessie stepped forward to retrieve it, something crunched grittily between her shoe and the concrete. Stepping back, she glanced down at a small spot of white just larger than a quarter on the floor. Spilled sugar, she thought, or salt. But both of those, she knew, were kept in tins upstairs in the kitchen, where they would stay dry. What was this then? Curious, as always, she bent, moistened an index finger with her tongue, reached down to touch the white spot, and examined the powdery crystalline stuff that clung to her fingertip. Baking powder? she wondered, or, perhaps, soda? The basement floor was an odd place for either of those as well. As she lifted the finger to her mouth and tentatively tasted, the idea of rat poison entered her mind—too late.

  Alex would definitely not have approved the action. But immediately she remembered his description of the taste of cocaine: medicinally bitter, with a numbing, tingling sensation on the tongue. Could it be anything else? That was possible but, she thought, unlikely. Would Jim and Laurie keep cocaine in the basement cooler of their lighthouse? If so, where was the rest of it? The idea stopped her cold. After all, how well did she know them from one trip together down the Inside Passage? They were theatrical types, but typecasting theater people as drug users was as absurd as stereotyping all churchgoers as chicken-on-Sunday folks. Besides, they weren’t the only people who might have brought an illegal substance with them to the island. There were five others—counting Sandra, but not counting herself—who could be responsible, and Jim and Laurie could be completely unaware. Thinking back, she couldn’t recall anyone exhibiting signs of drug use, though Curt was the one who spent the most time in this lower part of the building—another assumption she was unwilling to make.

  Giving herself a mental shake, she remembered that Laurie would be wondering what was taking her so long in the collection of one bowl of salad. A glance at it told her there was plenty left for tonight’s dinner, so she took it, picked up a large bottle of dressing, pulled the box forward enough to cover the substance on the floor, turned out the light, and went back upstairs, thinking hard as she did so.

  Could this have anything to do with Sandra’s disappearance?

  That was probably a stretch, but she couldn’t help equating the two things in her mind, probably, she thought, because they happened in close proximity. Still, given the circumstances, asking Jim wouldn’t be a bad idea, though she thought it could wait till a more opportune time than around the dinner table.

  There was a little more discouraged discussion, but no new ideas, over the meal that no one really enjoyed. Don merely shoved food around on his plate, but drank two glasses of wine.

  “Look,” Jim said, when they had finished and it had grown dark enough for the light in the tower to automatically begin its nightly revolutions. “I can’t think of anything else we can do tonight. So let’s get some sleep and we’ll work out something in the morning. Tomorrow some boat will pass that we can flag down from the tower.”

  They agreed, and Whitney went to take care of cleaning up the kitchen, leaving the rest still sitting disconsolately around the table as if feeling more secure as a group. Laurie had made Don a cup of tea and Aaron was listening closely as Curt explained details from the preservation handbook on how to restore some part of the lighthouse.

  Encouraged by a tilt of Jessie’s head toward the door, Jim nodded and joined her outside. Starting automatically for the helipad steps, he turned and followed her down the stairs to the lower platform and into the basement cooler room when she beckoned.

  “What? Something about Sandra?”

  “No—well, I don’t think so, just something I found that I think you should see.”

  Moving the box she had used to cover the white substance on the cement floor, she pointed it out to him.

  “Do you know what this is?”

  “Probably flour somebody spilled. Why?”

  “Take just enough to taste it, Jim.”

  He did, and his questioning expression quickly shifted to a deep frown of concern and anger.

  “Is it what I think it is?” Jessie asked.

  “Cocaine?”

  “I think so too. Yours? Tell me the truth, Jim. I need to know.”

  “Not a chance! Neither Laurie nor I would have anything to do with the stuff,” he assured her and went on indignantly. “And somebody brought this shit onto our island?”

  It was hard not to believe him.

  “Remember when Sandra wanted to tell you something last night? We were talking about Karen and she came up from the basement with that bottle of wine you asked for.”

  “I had forgotten all about it. I never got back to her.”

  “Could this be part of that?”

  “I don’t know, but it’s possible, I suppose. But Sandra’s not the type to be mixed up with drugs. I am sure of that.”

  “Any idea who could be?”

  “Not a clue, but I don’t like it one bit. They’re all still up there. Shall we go ask?”

  Jessie shook her head reluctantly, frowning.

  “I don’t think so. We might not get anywhere by asking, when they can just deny it. Everyone is worn out tonight, so let’s not toss another piece of trouble at them. Let’s think it over, get some rest ourselves, and see what we can find out tomorrow. We might learn more if we just wait and watch.”

  Unhappily, Jim agreed, but said he intended to tell Laurie in confidence. They went back upstairs, after tossing the paper towel that they used to wipe up what was left of the drug from the floor into the trash.

  Not long afterward they all went to bed, worn out with the day’s extraordinary events. Curt and Aaron disappeared first to their singular sleeping spaces, with Jim and Laurie following soon after.

  Jessie yawned and turned to Whitney. “I’m inclined to move out here tonight and leave Karen the bedroom. You?”

  “Good idea. I’ll get my things out of there.”

  “Take our room, why don’t you?” Don suggested. “I’d rather stay out here, if you don’t mind.”

  Making sure he meant it, Jessie and Whitney collected their things and appropriated Don and Sandra’s room, as suggested. Karen was either already asleep, or wanted them to think so, for she didn’t move while they were there. Jessie left the doors to their new room and to Karen’s open a crack, hoping to hear if she once again went out in the night.

  Everything was dark and quiet when she realized that she had not called Alex as promised. But without her cell phone there was nothing to be done about it. She could only hope that he would remember what she had said about connection problems and that she had always been capable of taking care of herself. Still, she would have liked to talk to him.

  She heard Don quietly moving in the common room; then the kitchen door was opened and closed as he went outside. She hoped he wasn’t going out hunting again in the dark.

  It bothered her that she didn’t know what was going on. You could deal with what you knew and understood. The unknown left you off balance and, possibly, unable to defend yourself. There was a dead man, after all, and someone had killed him. Who—and why? And where in the world was Sandra? Not knowing made her absence even more worrisome.

  An odd sound brought her suddenly out of the half-doze she had been drifting into. Listening carefully, she had to smile when she identified it as coming from the bed next to her. Her last thought before falling asleep was to wonder if Whitney knew that she snored.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  BETWEEN THE LIGHTHOUSE AND THE WOODS THAT TOOK up the southern two-thirds of Five Finger Island, at the edge of the hill that fell away to the concrete platform below, Joe Cooper had stayed quietly hidden in the tall grass and watched the lights go out inside the east-facing windows. Another light had glowed briefly in one of the rear windows, but that too had been quickly extinguished and all had grown dark and still.

  Earlier, a younger man had come out onto the lighthouse roof below the tower for a few minutes, but he hadn’t stayed long. Before the light in the base
ment section was turned off, an older man had walked out to the edge of the platform and stood for a minute or two looking down into the small cove where the boat lay sunk beneath the water. Going back, he closed the two large doors and that light momentarily went off as well.

  When all was dark and quiet, Cooper rose from where he had spent the last hour and a half, stretched to rid himself of the slight stiffness that had resulted from lying on damp ground, and made his way not toward the trail through the trees, but around to the rocky eastern shore, taking care not to betray his presence by too much rustling of the dry fall grasses through which he passed.

  Though he had not seen the woman, he was satisfied that she was there, knowing that he had time to decide when to do something about it. With their boat beyond use, with the exception of something totally unexpected and unlucky, none of them were going anywhere.

  For a time he stopped and stood beside a tree above the first of the rocks, looking east across the water at the pale white of the snow that topped the peaks above the dark wooded slopes below, reluctant for some reason he couldn’t name to go back to where he had tethered and left Tim’s boat to rock gently in the sea.

  Bitter regret swept over him again about Tim. It had been a shock to return from a reconnaissance the night before and find him, not comfortably asleep in his bunk as expected, but outside on the rocks, with the back of his skull crushed. In examining the body with a light obtained from the boat, he had realized his error in the selection of jackets, for Tim’s blood had been spilled, not on his own tan coat, but across Cooper’s gray one. So it was possible that, having mistaken one for the other, the killer either believed Cooper dead, or had recognized her blunder and would still be hunting him. Her! It had to have been her. Who of the rest knew him or would have wanted him dead? None.

  Furious, he had returned to the lighthouse end of the island where, without hesitation, though he heard distant voices from the helipad, he had quietly ventured out onto the platform, down onto the rocks that formed the cove, and, with a little mechanical tinkering, made sure the Seawolf would remain where it was, impossible to start, and that the radio was inoperable as well. Until he had satisfaction, none of them would leave the island or call for assistance.

  On this second night, he had been astonished to see that the boat was no longer there and assumed for a few minutes that it had been fixed and someone had taken it away from the island. Then he had seen that it now rested on the bottom of the cove. Nothing he had done would have caused it to sink, but clearly someone had found a more effective way to render it unusable, which suited his purpose as well. Still it seemed wasteful to spoil such a fine craft that was, from what he had seen, practically brand-new. He had thought about it as he went back through the sheltering of the trees, questioning the necessity of the submersion and who had accomplished it.

  Reaching Tim’s boat, he wondered if he should motor out across the sound to the mainland, as he had the night before, to spend the rest of the night anchored up there, staring back across the wide stretch of waters between him and his objective. Instead he decided to stay where he had anchored the boat, on the east, least likely to be seen, side of the island. If she had been out and prowling last night, she might be again in this one. He could keep watch and hope, letting anger and resentment work at him until morning, for he was determined that this time she would not escape him.

  They had once been three. Now because of her there were only two. Soon, however, he intended that there would be only one left in the game.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  IT HAD BEEN A LONG AND STRESSFUL DAY, AND JESSIE, physically and mentally tired, slept more soundly than she intended once she had fretted herself to sleep with the unanswered questions that kept running through her mind. More than half asleep and groggy, she had no idea what had roused her sometime very late in the dark of what had been Don and Sandra’s small bedroom. She lay facedown, eyes shut, listening without moving in the snug warmth of her sleeping bag.

  She remembered that as she had drifted off she had heard Don quietly leave the common room, where he had evidently been unable to sleep, and go outside, closing the kitchen door behind him. Poor Don. It was evident that he sincerely cared for Sandra and she for him. They made a nice couple. It had to be terribly frustrating for him to find himself more or less at a dead end in terms of finding Sandra or learning what had happened to her, particularly with no way to contact anyone who could help mount a more extended search. Hearing him go out she had been tempted to go join him so he wouldn’t be alone with his dark worries and speculations, but sleep had swallowed her while she was still wondering if he would welcome company, or not.

  She had a feeling that she had almost subconsciously heard other stirrings during that period of sleep, but couldn’t remember for sure and had no idea who or what had made them—Don, Karen, someone else?

  She was considering going to see if Karen was still in her bed when, awake and listening in the dark, she heard someone bump a chair that moved with a small screech on the tile floor of the common room.

  Probably Don coming back inside, she told herself, wondering what time it was. She could understand why he couldn’t sleep for worrying. Sandra’s absence disturbed her too. The most reasonable and discouraging answer was that she had somehow fallen into the sea and drowned, only to be swept away in the tide as it moved through the sound. The sinking of the Seawolf made it impossible to search the waters around the island.

  Jessie thought again of the cocaine on the floor of the cooler. Happening within hours, it seemed that somehow it must all be connected—but how? With the Seawolf in her moorage, out of sight below the platform, there was no way of knowing when she had been sunk—or who had sunk her, for that matter—if it had not happened by accident somehow, which was a slim possibility. But a purposeful sinking must have been done by some member of the work crew. No, she decided, that wasn’t the only possibility. Tim, the dead man at the other end of the island, could have accomplished it before being killed, whenever that had been, the night before. But why would he or any other person have sabotaged Jim’s boat? There had to be a reason someone, part of the crew or not, wanted them to be stuck on the island without communication or possibility of escape. Why? And who . . .

  There was suddenly another screech of the chair moving, then a muffled human sound from the common room—the sort of hm-m that is made with lips closed.

  Hit his toe on it, Jessie thought.

  Whitney sighed and turned over in her sleep, obscuring another small sound of motion in the common room.

  Jessie rolled over and sat up in bed, listening intently. Something was going on out there with someone besides Don, for she could now hear the murmur of voices.

  Well . . . as long as I’m awake anyway, she told herself, unzipped her sleeping bag, and swung her legs over the side of the bed onto the cool floor.

  Quietly barefoot, she padded to the door and peered through the crack she had left open into the hallway. It was very dark, but as the beacon swept around in the tower overhead it cast enough vague secondary light through a rectangular kitchen window to make silhouettes of two figures coming toward her. She stood still and watched as the nearest figure opened the door to the stairway that led to the basement and disappeared through it, followed by the second person, and the door closed behind them. She thought the first had been Don, but the open door had concealed, and kept her from identifying, the second. Maybe it had been Curt, she decided. Hearing Don moving overhead, he must have invited him down to the basement to talk where their voices wouldn’t wake those sleeping upstairs. If so, it was thoughtful of him to keep the bartender company. Nice guy, Curt, if a bit quiet and watchful.

  Without further thought Jessie opened the door, slipped across to the door to Karen’s room, and opened it as well.

  Dummy! she told herself, realizing that without her flashlight she couldn’t see if Karen was still there or not. Careful not to stub her own toes on the bed leg
s or Karen’s suitcase, she crossed the room and stood still and silent, holding her breath to listen for that of the supposedly sleeping woman. Not a sound. With care, she laid a hand very lightly on the woman’s bed and found nothing but a jumble of blanket and sheet. The bed was empty. Karen had clearly once again abandoned sleep to roam the night.

  Hurrying back to her room, Jessie yanked on her jeans, crammed her feet into socks and running shoes, grabbed her jacket, a flashlight, and her daypack before starting out the door.

  “Hey,” Whitney said in a half-awake voice from her bed across the room. “Where ya goin’?”

  “To see where Karen’s gone,” Jessie told her. “Go back to sleep. I’ll be back shortly.”

  “N-kay,” muttered Whitney, and Jessie heard her turn over and snuggle down again. “Have a good time.”

  A good time? Jessie questioned that as she closed the door behind her and headed down the hall to the kitchen door, willing to bet she wouldn’t find Karen on the helipad this time, or inclined to make time pleasant. Leaving the flashlight off so as not to spoil her night vision, relying on the limited amount of ambient light from the tower, she stepped outside and closed the door behind her, heading for the helipad. Might as well start there.