A temporary fling, I thought, with all these terrible consequences that would leave their stamp upon the future. Fern was still Poppy’s daughter, but she hadn’t yet been able to face the loss of Cliff as her father.
“What are we to do?” Iris sounded desperate.
“Give her time. We can both talk to her, try to help her. You’re still her sister. Besides, there’s going to be a way to trap Derek, if Marcus’s plans work out.”
We’d walked through the house to the front porch, and we stepped outside just as Marcus came up the steps. He saw Iris’s face and looked at her questioningly.
“I’m not going to marry Derek,” she said.
“I’m glad,” he told her gently.
I could sense his compassion, his sadness for her, even though this break with Derek was what he wanted.
“We won’t have to worry much longer about Derek,” he went on. “Sit down a minute, and I’ll tell you what’s happened. Laurel, does Iris know about last night?”
I sat in a porch chair, but Iris stayed where she was, near the door. “You said not to tell anyone, and I haven’t.”
“It doesn’t matter now.” Marcus drew Iris gently to a chair and sat down beside her before he turned again to me. “The police have picked up Jim Simpson—the man you followed last night. In order to save his own skin, he’s been talking as fast as he can. Derek staged the whole hijacking himself. A few of his own men were in on what happened, and they made off with the treasure. I gather they got rid of all those who weren’t with them. How, we may not know until some of them turn up.”
This was astonishing news, but good in a way, if it incriminated Derek.
“How did he dare to trust those men on board the Aurora?” I asked.
“They needed him and his contacts in order to sell the gold in South America. If he manages to skip the country, he’ll be free of his debts, and of the complications and interference that might prevent his doing what he likes with the treasure here. Right now, of course, this house is only a screen for him to hide behind until he can get away. Simpson came back to Key West to let Derek know where the gold is hidden. He and Derek were going to join the others, and they meant to get out of the Caribbean as soon as they could. But Simpson and Derek never hit it off very well, and last night there was trouble. When the police took Simpson in and he saw the gold chain we’d retrieved, he knew the game was over, so he began to talk. There may be murder charges, and he wants to be in the clear.”
“Derek’s down there in the garden right now,” I said.
“The police will move soon to arrest him. Even if he leaves the house, they’ll pick him up. He can’t get off the island. I’ve got to get back to the station now, but I wanted you to know—both of you.” He took Iris’s hand. “You’ll be all right, honey—just give it time. Derek’s mixed up in drug running too, and they’ll get him on that. This hijacking crime will hold him here for what’s coming next.”
I went down the steps with Marcus. “There may be another murder charge,” I pointed out. “Eddie could have seen Derek on deck that night with Cliff. He could have seen Derek push him into the water. If Cliff guessed what Derek was up to—” I paused because it was hard to go on. “I mean, if Cliff found out what Derek was up to, he could have had a heart attack before he went overboard. And if Derek guessed what Eddie had seen …”
“It’s all possible. Derek would have had his chance at Eddie when they were in the fort together. We’ll talk more later, Laurel. Just hang on.” He kissed me on the cheek and dashed off.
I went thoughtfully back to where Iris sat stunned, not moving. Speculation was still running wild in my head. It was even possible that it had been Derek who had shut Poppy into the orchid house and had started the whole terrible chain of events. If Poppy had decided to tell Cliff the truth to save Iris, Derek wouldn’t have stood still for that.
But right now I had to shake Iris out of the stupor she seemed to have dropped into. “Derek will be taken care of—but what about Fern? She’s the one who needs our help now.”
“There’s nothing more I can do,” Iris said limply.
That left only me.
I went to the porch and looked down into the garden. The table below, where Fern and Derek had breakfasted, was empty, their dishes and cups still uncleared. He was nowhere in sight, but as I stood there Fern came out from beneath the porch and walked to the door of the orchid house. The problem of Derek now belonged to the police, but Fern’s safety and sanity had to be my concern.
I ran quickly down the back stairs.
16
Fern stood looking sadly around at her orchids. She tried to smile at me as I came in. “It’s hard to tell them good-bye, Laurel. I don’t think they want me to go.”
Her words left me more fearful than ever, not knowing how to dissuade her. “Where are you going?”
“With Derek, of course. Wherever he means to take me. I guess he really is my father. I couldn’t accept that at first, but he’s been talking to me, and I think he wants to be my father. He’s never had a child.”
How was I to tell her that this happiness she reached for was only a mirage? Yet it must be done.
“There’s something you have to know, Fern. The police are going to arrest Derek very soon. That hijacking of the Aurora was staged. Derek must have planned to have us all on board so we’d serve as witnesses later. But it’s Derek who faked what happened, and he had all that gold from the Santa Beatriz taken to a Caribbean hiding place. And now—”
She broke in on me. “Yes, I know! Isn’t it wonderful? Wasn’t he clever to pull that off?” Her eyes glowed with admiration. “He’s a real pirate, Laurel!”
“Listen to me,” I said. “Please listen. We don’t know how many men may have died—that’s what’s ugly and real. And we think Derek has been running drugs up the keys besides.”
She didn’t care in the least. Nothing I’d said had impressed her. She touched the petal of a vanda lightly, and I knew she was still telling the orchids good-bye. Yet when she turned back to me, her lips were trembling.
“Now I have to let her go too—and that’s terribly hard. Laurel, look what I’ve found.”
She gestured toward a work shelf, and I saw with a sense of horror the object she had placed there. It was a monster orchid made of papier-mâché, painted pale green with a crimson lip and speckles of the same color cast across the green of upper petals. This was the very mask of the picture that had hung in Poppy’s room, and now I could see the entire head. All but the orchid face was an intricate mass of darker green leaves. It must have taken hours to create so beautifully, though now it was shabby and dusty, with tips broken from some of the leaves.
“I just wish she wouldn’t watch me like that,” Fern said. “I thought she’d be happier if I brought her here—but you can see the way her eyes follow everything I do. She’s still angry with me.”
Empty slits were visible just under the upper trio of curling petals—slits through which Poppy’s eyes had once peered. I felt chilled in the sultry air, and I knew I had to stop this.
“Fern, listen to me! That’s only a mask she made for a party a long time ago. It has nothing to do with your mother.”
She seemed not to hear me. “I found it in an old trunk with some of Poppy’s things. It’s a wonder it wasn’t completely crushed. I’ve been looking for it for a long time.”
I had to bring her back to the present. “You must listen! It’s what Derek has been doing that matters now.”
“I expect she really did love him more than she did Cliff.” Fern’s tone was dreamy, lost.
I wanted to shake her into awareness, and I took her by the shoulders to make her face me. “Eddie Burch was helping Marcus to expose Derek. That’s why Derek may have killed him at West Martello. Eddie could have seen Derek with Cliff that night on the Aurora, when he pushed Cliff into the water. So Derek had to be rid of Eddie. That’s what’s real, Fern. It’s even possible that Derek had somet
hing to do with shutting Poppy in here on the day she died.”
This time I’d caught her attention, and she was staring at me wide-eyed. Suddenly she began to laugh. “How silly you are, Laurel! Derek wouldn’t do any of those things—it’s ridiculous! I’m sure he’s lived a violent life, but he’d use a gun—or maybe a sword. Laurel, you aren’t even half a sister to me, so don’t start making up stories and telling me what to do.”
How could I reach her? A toolbox rested on a shelf, and I went to rummage through it. Someone had returned the steel chisel that Iris had shown me, and I took it out and held it up for Fern to see.
“Do you know how this was used?”
She shook her head, but her look was wary. She would be on guard against anything I might claim. Nevertheless, I went on.
“Derek could have been in here with Poppy the day she died. He turned up very quickly after they found her. Perhaps he saw her cut herself and took the chance to stop her from going to Cliff with the whole truth about him. He could have gone out, jammed this wedge into the door, and left her to bleed to death. That’s the terrible truth that you may need to accept about Derek.”
Fern snatched the chisel from my hand. “What a liar you are! None of that is true. Derek wasn’t even here that day. But I was, Laurel. So what do you think of that?”
I stared at her blankly. “You were here when Poppy cut herself?”
“Of course! I saw it happen. I was terribly upset with her. She was going to talk to Cliff. She said she knew something about Derek that would make Cliff send him away. This meant I would never see him again, and I couldn’t bear that. Poppy was transplanting seeds from a flask, but she was so upset that she didn’t wrap newspaper around the glass when she broke it. So she cut her wrist badly by accident. Probably because she was so nervous. Blood spurted all over the orchids, and they all started to whisper. It was as though they told me what to do. So I got this chisel out of the toolbox and wedged the door shut. When I was sure she couldn’t get out, I went back to the public library, where I was looking something up for Cliff.”
“You meant her to die! You left her to bleed to death!” I felt sick with shock—not only for the deed, but because Fern was lost in a terrible fantasy that put her beyond the reach of reason and reality.
She nodded at me in sad agreement. “I really didn’t think about it then. The orchids told me, and I—I just did what they said. I didn’t know how awful I was going to feel after she really died, and I knew it was my fault. I nearly died of grief myself then. And I was afraid someone would find out. I knew Alida took the chisel out of the door, and later I found it when I looked in her desk upstairs. So yesterday I put it back so I could worry her and make her stop bothering me about Derek.”
I had no words to deal with what Fern was telling me. There were no words to deal with madness.
“It was all sort of confused,” she ran on. “You have to understand that, Laurel. It was like the time on the Aurora when I found Cliff alone on deck just as the boarding started. That was when I told him Derek was my father. Alida had explained everything to me out on the island, and I couldn’t stand it. I was angry with Cliff for not taking better care of all of us. So when I told him, I just threw myself at him and pounded on his chest—and he went backwards overboard. There was only a flimsy handrail out where we were. I guess he was already dead from the shock of what I’d told him by the time he fell. I didn’t mean to hurt him, Laurel—not any more than I meant to hurt Poppy.”
I was convinced at last of this horror. Now I wanted only to get away—to find Marcus, who was sane and healthy and who would help me deal with something so horrible.
“I suppose you want to know about Eddie?” Fern sounded almost cheerful as she went on.
There was no help—I had to hear it all. “You’d better tell me,” I said.
“But don’t you see—that was different. I loved Poppy and I loved Cliff, but I hated Eddie. He was no good at all. He knew I was on deck with Cliff that night. He saw me. Alida did too, but she wouldn’t have told. He was trying to get me to pay him to keep quiet. To get away from him, I climbed the steps to the gun emplacement at West Martello. But he followed me right up there. He was plenty scared of Derek that night, but not of me. So I just had to push him off when I got the chance. And you know something, Laurel—it gets a little easier all the time. It took so little effort afterwards to fool everyone. Of course Derek doesn’t know any of this, and he mustn’t ever know. He’s my father, and he must love me the way I love him. Though maybe I always knew we were alike—deep down.”
“He’ll have been arrested by this time, Fern,” I said quietly. “You can’t go anywhere with him.”
“Do you think I’d believe anything you tell me? Do you think I’ll stand around and let you weave your lies about Derek—and about me?”
She could no longer tell the difference between what was real and what wasn’t. Yet I knew with a terrible conviction that all the earlier things she’d told me were so, and I wondered if she would try to stop me if I walked out of the orchid house. But how could she? I was bigger and probably stronger than she was. There was no way she could stop me physically.
However, she still stood between me and the door, and there was an eerie quality about her now, as though she were one with her orchids, the evil orchids of my dream—my father’s “murderous” orchids.
She put a finger to her lips and whispered. “Listen to them, Laurel. Hear them rustling? They’re terribly excited, just the way they were the day Poppy died. They know. They know it’s going to happen again—just the way it did before.”
Suddenly she broke off and turned fiercely toward the orchid mask.
“Stop watching me!” she cried. “I can’t stand it when you watch me like that!” She snatched up an empty brown pot and smashed it down on the fragile orchid head. It crushed with a brittle sound, and bits flew across the shelf and skittered on the floor.
I had to get away as quickly as I could. I tried to slip past her, but she flew into startling action. With a swift, graceful movement, she leaned toward a basket of trash under a shelf and brought out something that glittered in the sunlight pouring in from overhead. It was the neck of a broken glass flask, with naked, jagged edges. Almost in the same movement, before I realized what she intended, she snatched up my hand and brought the sharp daggers of glass strongly across my wrist.
I felt a tiny aching of pain and watched the pulsing of blood.
Fern rushed to the door and went through, slamming it shut behind her. I heard the sound as she jammed in the steel wedge that would hold me here in the orchid house.
There was an instant of déjà vu. This was my dreams—shut in among the orchids, with my blood spattering the petals. I could almost hear them whispering among themselves—these descendants of the blossoms that had once tasted Poppy’s blood. Now they were waiting for me to die.
I pushed the dream away. A box of paper towels stood on a shelf, and I caught up a wad and pressed it tightly over the artery. I held both arms above my head, still pressing as hard as I could with my uninjured hand. Poppy had panicked. She’d been too frightened to do anything but pound on the door and call for help. I wouldn’t panic, and I knew I could stop the flow of blood, even though I’d begun to feel a little faint and dizzy.
Orchids that had been white and pale mauve were streaked with drops of scarlet, and blood was trickling down my arm. I pressed harder, fighting my own weakness. I hadn’t lost much blood, so I was causing this reaction with my own mind—increasing the frightening weakness. Fear could destroy me, and I fought it back.
The orchids were harmless—only beautiful flowers. I mustn’t let them build this terror in me. Perhaps they did tremble and whisper in the face of terrible deeds, but they meant me no injury. I told myself over and over that the wound was closing, that my own blood was clotting to save me.
After a time I took my numbing arms down and removed the wad of paper cautiously. The-bleeding h
ad stopped. I took no chances. I applied pressure again, found a stool to sit on, and waited for what seemed an endless length of time. Like Poppy, I was shut into the orchid house, and I knew there’d be no use in trying to open the door—no way to attack the enveloping wire shield. I kept my eyes away from the bits of colored papier-mâché on the floor. I didn’t want to start imagining eyes watching me.
If I shouted, no one would hear, since they hadn’t heard Poppy, but I tried shouting anyway. No one came, but I was no longer frightened. The orchids around me seemed to have quieted, as my own mind quieted. I tried to remember things that would help me—that theme my father had been writing about in his book, and that I’d thought of so often lately. The way a single act, large or small, could start ripples that went on and on until they touched distant shores. The course of future lives could be changed in one tiny instant. Cliff’s neglect of Poppy, her brief infidelity to Cliff, had brought me here to be trapped by Fern—who was the result of that infidelity. Yet, as Marcus had said, this wasn’t inescapable destiny. Human beings could make their own choices. Perhaps Poppy had even chosen to die—we would never know. I, at least, chose to live, and the things I did from now on would affect other lives—so I’d better not act blindly. Since I’d come here, I’d been cutting across ripples that others had started. But it was possible to change the future before it happened. Children of mine would be born, and they would affect others because of my choice. Awesome, but inspiring as well. I felt a new surge of hope and energy.
Suddenly someone was at the door, pulling out the wedge of steel. Marcus and Iris were running toward me, and Marcus looked more frightened than I’d ever seen him.
“I’m all right,” I said. “My wrist was cut, but I’ve stopped the bleeding.”
They both put their arms around me, and Iris was crying.
“I shouldn’t have let you go and talk to her alone, Laurel. But I couldn’t help the way I was—I was dead for a little while.”
I could take no more right now, lest I go to pieces altogether, and I pulled away from them. “Where is Fern?”
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