Island Intrigue

by Wendy Howell Mills

  “Yep,” Bicycle said again, sitting up and automatically reaching for his bottle.

  “Lima.” Stacey Tubbs pushed open the screen door. “Could you go down to the house and tell Daddy that I’m going to need more beer than usual? The Regatta really wiped us out. He’s making the order today, and he must already be doing it, because the phone’s busy.”

  “All right.” Lima stood up and made his way down the stairs, prodding Bicycle with his foot as he passed. “Bicycle!” he yelled. “I’ll be back in a while.”

  “Nope,” Bicycle said, and his head flopped forward on his chest.

  “Lima,” Sabrina called. “Where would I find a locksmith on the island? Lora’s cottage needs some locks on the doors.”

  Lima paused, looked back at her and then snorted with laughter. “You’re looking at him.” He pointed at Bicycle Bob who was snoring peacefully again, his bottle clutched in both hands. “Bicycle Bob’s the island’s locksmith and jack of all trades. Buy him a bottle of whiskey and he’ll do anything you want.”

  ***

  Later that afternoon she was digesting her excellent crabcake lunch, if she did say so herself, and putting away the fire extinguisher when there was a knock on the door. She opened the door to find Nettie Wrightly standing on her porch.

  “The lunch rush at the cookie shop is over.” Today Nettie’s robes were white, plain cotton with no symbols. Though she still wore the flashing tiara on her head, it looked more subdued, as if maybe the batteries were running out.

  “Come on in,” Sabrina invited.

  Calvin caught hold of Nettie’s robes and swept along with her as she walked into the living room. Nettie looked up at the dark smudges on the ceiling, and shook her head. “I meant to get Bicycle in here to repaint the ceiling. But he went on a real bad binge, and then you were on the way and I didn’t have time. I hope it’s not bothering you. We’re lucky the fire didn’t burn the whole place down.”

  “Fire?”

  “Yes. The night poor Lora fell and hit her head, she knocked over the candle burning on the coffee table. It set some magazines on fire, but it burnt itself out by the next morning when I came to bring Lora her new coffee cups.”

  “And you found her…deceased?”

  Nettie nodded. “She was partly paralyzed on her right side, you see. It was hard for her to get around. She must have just…fallen, and it was bad luck she hit her head so hard it killed her.”

  “You hadn’t thought about putting her in a nursing home? For her own safety?”

  “Nursing home?” Nettie frowned, and adjusted her robe so Calvin could climb up to her knee. “We don’t have any nursing homes on the island. I tried to get her to come and stay with us, but really, she was just down the road. Every time I brought it up she got upset. She was happy here, where she’d been living all her adult life.” Nettie stroked Calvin and he whirred with pleasure.

  Sabrina leaned forward and picked up the crayon pictures lying on the coffee table. Nettie accepted them and thumbed through them with a growing expression of horror on her face. “The poor, poor child,” she whispered. “Such hate, such jealousy…” She pressed a hand to her forehead and closed her eyes. She stayed like that for a few moments and then she opened her eyes and flipped through the pictures again. “If Rolo or Thierry drew them, I don’t remember seeing them before.” She placed them back on the coffee table, her nose wrinkling with distaste.

  “Lima said about twenty years ago the island had a bout of arsonist activity. Do you remember that?”

  Nettie frowned. “Seems like someone was setting trashcans on fire, but no one thought too much about it. Childish pranks, and it stopped after a while.” She started to say something and then stopped. She shook her head, as if refuting whatever was going on in her head.

  “Do you have any idea why Lora decided to look though her old school folders? Was she looking for these pictures in particular, do you know?”

  “I have no idea. Lora’s always kept in contact with her old students. They came and visited with her, showed off their kids and she painted them coffee cups. Lora was a memorable woman.” Nettie’s voice was sad. “She could be ornery and impatient, especially when she got frustrated with her bad side, but she truly had a great heart. I say that, even though she was my mother-in-law. I loved that woman as if she was my own mama.”

  “Painting coffee cups?” Sabrina asked in puzzlement.

  Nettie laughed, and pointed at the various coffee cups painted with simple, pretty designs sitting on tables and shelves all over the room. “That’s how she kept herself occupied. She painted pictures on coffee cups with her left hand, and Sondra and Kate sold them down at Sweet Island Music.”

  Sabrina gazed at the pretty mugs, and felt an intense connection with Lora Wrightly. Would her own students come visit her when they were all grown up?

  “She didn’t explain why she wanted to look at those old school folders?”

  Nettie shrugged. “She was impulsive. That’s one of the reasons she got irritated with people, when she had to explain something that seemed obvious to her.” Nettie stared at the crayon pictures on the coffee table with troubled eyes. “I don’t know why they bother me so much,” she said, almost to herself. “Whoever drew them is twenty-five years older now, an adult. But something about them…”

  Sabrina nodded, feeling the same. She wondered if someone had helped this child when he or she was younger, like she tried to help Tommy. No one had listened to her, and Tommy ended up trying to smother his little sister. Sabrina knew in her heart that Lora at least tried to help the child who drew those pictures. But why was she thinking about it twenty-five years later? Why was she looking at the pictures?

  “Why were they under the hurricane hatch?”

  Nettie stood and dragged the rug back from the hatch in the floor. She stooped and traced the uneven stain on the door. “I cut her some roses that day. She was always complaining that I didn’t trim her ‘ladies’ right. I tried, but she would sit inside and yell at me out the window that I was taking too much off here, not enough there…” Nettie smiled in remembrance. “It got to be almost a joke with us, though I know it saddened her that no one was taking proper care of her roses. She was working on a coffee cup set that day, but she was fidgety and impatient. She had me take the file crate back upstairs and told me to make sure I cleaned the living room good because she was expecting company. This was before I opened the shop, so I got her situated and then went to work. I came back after the store closed and gave her her medicine and made sure she had her dinner. She was fussing that night, more so than usual I think, now that I look back at it. She complained that my clam chowder was too runny and she told me my new hairdo was crazy-looking.” Nettie touched her tiara, a sad smile twitching her lips. “You get the picture. She was just fussy. I think she knew her death was near. I kissed her good-bye and left, and that was the last time I saw her alive. We think that sometime during the night she got up and overbalanced and fell. Why she lit a candle instead of just turning on the lights I have no idea, but Lora was never comfortable with anything high tech. When I found her the next morning she was lying on the floor. The magazines on the table and part of the coffee table were burnt, and there was soot all over the room, but everything else looked perfectly normal.”

  Nettie shook her head, and used the toe of her shoe to nudge at the rug. “The blood had seeped clear down to the floor, right through her favorite carpet. I had to throw it away and get another one, ”

  Sabrina looked at the stain on the hurricane hatch door. “When you found her, she was lying on top of the hurricane hatch, but the rug was over it.”

  Nettie nodded.

  “But why,” Sabrina asked, “were the pictures under the hurricane hatch?”

  Nettie shrugged, and stood up. “She had me open the hatch that afternoon. She said she heard noises and thought maybe a cat crawled under there to have kittens. I looked and didn’t see anything, so I know the pictures weren�
��t there the day she died. She must have put them there that last night, for some reason. I’m wondering…I’m wondering if maybe that’s why she had me open the hatch. So she could hide the pictures there once I left. The hatch hadn’t been opened for years, you see, and it took all my strength to break through the layers of paint and varnish to get it open. She couldn’t have done it by herself.”

  Nettie and Sabrina were silent, each thinking about the crippled old woman and what she had done the last night of her life. What had been going though her head as she gazed at those horrible crayon pictures? Why had she put them under the hatch?

  “I guess we’ll never know,” Nettie said sadly. “If only I had stayed with her that night. I knew she was feeling restless, maybe she wasn’t feeling well. If I had been here, I could have gotten her whatever she needed, and she never would have fallen.” Nettie sighed and then glanced at her watch. “I’ve got to get back to the store.” She stood and Calvin squawked in protest.

  After seeing Nettie to the door, Sabrina came back into the living room and flipped the rug back over the hatch. Then, after moment, she threw a magazine over the pictures so she wouldn’t have to look at them.

  ***

  An hour later, she stretched and looked around. She had been so involved taking notes on Romeo and Juliet that she hadn’t noticed that her neck was aching and her hand was cramped. If she didn’t watch out, she’d end up with carpal tunnel syndrome. She had brought a wrist brace—and a knee and neck brace, it was best to be prepared—in case she needed it.

  She went outside onto the porch into the sheer, bright sunlight. She was a little lightheaded from standing up so fast and she clung to the porch rail for a moment.

  Click-click.

  The sound was coming from around the side of the house.

  Click-click-click.

  “Ouch!”

  Sabrina hurried down the steps, around the side of the house, and stopped in stunned amazement when she saw a man holding a pair of clippers and sucking the edge of his finger.

  “Hello,” said Walk-the-Plank Wrightly, and smiled cheerfully.

  Chapter Eleven

  The man was dressed all in black, with a big black hat and a sword hanging at his side. A dark furry beard covered the slight smile on his face.

  “Hello,” Sabrina managed. She was almost positive that this was the man she had seen in the woods the night of the Regatta.

  “These poor ladies have been neglected shamefully over the years.” The man reached out and tenderly touched a velvety red bloom.

  “I—guess so.” Sabrina forced herself to walk closer, her eyes picking out details. Though at first glance she assumed the man was wearing some type of eighteenth century garb, on closer look she saw he was wearing black jeans and a long-sleeved black turtleneck with a black cowboy hat. Of course, the sword hanging at his side still did not fit anyone’s idea of a modern wardrobe, but maybe he was making a fashion statement?

  “Humans started cultivating roses a couple thousand years ago in China, but they’ve been around a lot longer than we have, you know. They’ve found fossilized rose flowers from thirty-five million years ago. ”

  “I have to admit,” Sabrina said, “I don’t know that much about roses.” She could see the light gray cat watching the man warily from under one of the rose bushes. Sabrina appreciated the way the cat felt. Who was he? Why was he pruning her roses?

  “Most people don’t,” the man said. “But I happen to think roses are the best of the flowers. Back in 600 B.C.,the poetess Sappho said—” He cleared his throat and intoned:

  “If Zeus chose us a King of the flowers in his mirth,

  He would call to the rose and would royally crown it,

  For the rose, ho, the rose! is the grace of the earth,

  Is the light of the plants that are growing upon it.”

  Sabrina smiled, charmed despite herself.

  “That’s Mrs. Browning’s translation of the poem, of course,” the man continued in his normal voice. “Roses have been domesticated, bred and tinkered with to produce a prettier rose, but this has hampered their ability to look after themselves. Just like with cats and dogs, now that we’ve domesticated the rose, we are responsible for taking care of them. To keep them healthy, you have to trim away the dead growth and the thin, tangled twigs to open up the center of the bush for circulation. I’ve had to do some radical pruning.”

  “I’m Sabrina Dunsweeney.” She advanced and held out her hand. The man seemed harmless enough.

  “I know,” the man said, shaking her hand. He did not offer his own name.

  “Well, I’m glad you have taken an interest in the roses. I’m afraid they were in rather bad shape.”

  “Very bad shape,” the man agreed. “My grandma loved these ladies. She taught me all about taking care of them. But I guess she hadn’t been able to take care of them these last years.” His face was sad as he looked at the bushes.

  “Your grandmother?”

  He nodded. “She used to live here. I practically grew up in this house.” He turned and clipped away some branches on the nearest bush. “Grandma Lora used to use horse droppings and fish bones to fertilize the roses. I remember telling her one day that we needed to get some of that stuff they sold in the store, and she just laughed at me. She said, ‘Boy, I’ve been growing these roses without help of chemicals for longer than you’ve been alive. I don’t need any of that stuff.’ And of course, she was right.”

  Sabrina watched as he took a step back from the plant and considered it before taking the next cut. He set the resulting dismembered branch, covered with creamy rose buds, onto a growing pile beside him.

  “I think I’ve seen your footprints on the beach,” she said

  “I’ve always enjoyed taking a walk at sunrise. It’s invigorating to watch the world wake up around you. I don’t get much chance to walk on the beach where I live now.”

  Well, that explained why she had never been able to surprise him on his daily walks. At sunrise, she was still fast asleep in her warm bed.

  He was pruning a large bush covered with silken white flowers streaked with vibrant crimson. He held the large pruning shears in both hands and was cutting with the precision of an artist creating a masterpiece. His face was rapt with childlike concentration.

  He seemed unsurprised to see her, so she could only assume that she had not caught him unawares. He meant for her to find him.

  Why?

  “Do you live on the island?” She leaned her hip against the stair post.

  “I used to.”

  An idea was taking shape in her mind, something he had said and snippets of conversation with Lima and Nettie congealing into certainty.

  “Rolo?” She was rewarded by his abrupt stare, the bushes momentarily forgotten.

  He turned back to the roses without answering, but she was sure she was right. This was Rolo, the long-lost Wrightly son who had gone away fifteen years ago. He had been running from a crime…theft? Rape? She couldn’t remember, but she didn’t feel very comfortable standing here alone talking to him.

  She heard a tapping noise behind her, and looked up to see Calvin in the living room window, tapping at the window pane with his beak.

  “I didn’t figure you’d know who I was,” Rolo said, and she turned back to find his brilliant blue eyes fixed on her. She should have recognized the thick black hair and bright blue eyes as distinctive Wrightly characteristics.

  “I wasn’t sure.” She ignored Calvin, who was still tapping.

  “I just wanted to talk to someone who—who didn’t know who I was,” he said, and Sabrina was touched by the sincerity in his words. “It’s a small island.”

  “Yes, I understand,” she said, and she did.

  Rolo Wrightly had come back to Comico after leaving ignominiously fifteen years before. The population at large must not know of his return, otherwise tongues would be wagging. Those who had caught glimpses of him had assumed he was the pirate Walk-the-Plan
k Wrightly because of the strange way he was dressed—though close up, she saw that except for the sword buckled at his waist, his clothes were perfectly ordinary. Rolo must have been hiding since his return, and he simply yearned for human company, someone who would ask no awkward questions.

  “I’m on a mission, myself,” she said, surprising herself. Rolo looked at her in query.

  “When I decided to come here, I decided to leave the old Sabrina in Cincinnati. She was shy, and dressed like a grandmotherly schoolteacher and would have been too scared to come all this way by herself. She’d never even thought of driving a red convertible. In fact, she let someone else do the thinking for her for so long she never even thought about what she really wanted to do.”

  Rolo studied her for a moment, then his face broke into a wide, approving smile. “So, what’s the mission?”

  “Why, to figure out who the real Sabrina is, of course. I’m not sure if I want to wear these new clothes, or drive a convertible, but I won’t know until I try.”

  They grinned at each other, and Sabrina reflected that sometimes it was much easier to talk to a complete stranger than a loved one. She also wondered if talking about oneself in the third person was a sign of mental illness. She’d have to look it up.

  “I hope you don’t mind my pruning the roses. My daughter and I always prune ours together at home, and I miss her.”

  “No, not at all.” Daughter? It seemed incongruous that this man, who was such an outcast on the island of his birth, could have a normal family life elsewhere. But obviously he did. “Your love of roses is a wonderful gift to pass on to your daughter.”

  She wasn’t sure what to think. Why had he come back? What had he been doing all these years? What exactly did he do fifteen years ago?

  “I saw you talking to Bradford Tittletott.” Rolo turned away from the roses and pinned her with his sharp blue gaze.