Island Intrigue

by Wendy Howell Mills

  “I want to check on Dock, people, and talk to Nettie. As soon as I do, I’ll come back and tell you what I can. Just give me a couple of minutes.” Jimmy pushed his way through the doors of the little medical clinic.

  The crowd waited, and Sabrina thought about going home. There was very little she could do. And Calvin had been very upset all afternoon, shivering, and making those strange noises, trilling and barking, at intervals. She hated to leave him at all, but when the sun started to sink, he had retreated to his cage and tucked his head beneath his wing.

  She thought about Rolo’s strange note. She couldn’t help but be flattered that he wrote a note to thank her. Despite what she heard about him as a boy, she really felt that he had changed his ways. He’d been up to something, though. There was no mistaking that wayward gleam in his eye which she’d seen many times in the eyes of a young boy up to no good. But he changed his mind, and that was probably for the best.

  Rain drops began to hit the ground, moving sluggishly through the thick air.

  Sabrina grimaced and stepped back further under the cover of the porch. She would see what the police officer had to say, and then she would go home and see how Calvin was doing. Maybe she’d even cook an Extravaganzo—talking to Gary this morning had really got her taste buds humming for one.

  “Nooooo!”

  Nettie’s cry rose from within the medical center, and the little group stirred in distress.

  “Maybe we better go in there. It’s not Doc Hailey in here, there’s no telling what that so-called doctor is doing to Dock. Sounds like he’s killing him.”

  Nettie’s voice rose again in a wordless cry. In a surge of movement, the group pressed against the door and burst into the waiting room of the center.

  “You just leave them alone!” one lady called out querulously. All they could see was the reception desk, and a woman in a cool white outfit staring at them in surprise.

  “Oh my stars, no, no, no!” Nettie cried from within the bowels of the center.

  The group surged forward again.

  “Sergeant McCall!” the receptionist called nervously over her shoulder, eyeing the ragtag group.

  “He was supposed to be there tonight. He said he was going to come and tell the truth about what happened all those years ago! He can’t be dead!” Nettie cried.

  Sabrina had an ugly feeling in the pit of her stomach. “No,” she whispered to herself. “No.”

  Someone, overhearing her and misinterpreting her words, took up the chant and soon all the Wavers were saying, “no, no, no,” in an elemental protest of the indifference of the receptionist, the presumed torture of Dock and the sterile, unfriendliness of the place.

  “People, people. Calm down.” Jimmy stood at the door, looking tired. He somehow seemed smaller than he had a few minutes ago, his shoulders drooping over his big belly.

  “What are they doing to him? What are they doing to Dock?”

  Nettie’s voice rose again in a wail.

  “Dock’s fine,” Jimmy said wearily. “They’re going to keep him overnight for observation. What Mrs. Nettie is upset about is something very different.”

  He paused, and Sabrina’s stomach turned.

  “She’s upset because I just had to tell her that the dead man in Dock’s boat was her son. It was Rolo.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  “Sabrina, can I come in?”

  “Cheep,” Calvin said, and Sabrina scooped the tiny bird off the floor. He immediately started into his repertoire of strange new noises. A weird loud cluck, then the trilling. It was unlike any sounds she had heard him make before.

  “Nettie,” Sabrina said warmly. “Please come in. How is Dock?” Nettie looked small and ordinary today, in normal clothes and no flashing tiara. Her face was drawn with grief, her eyes red and watery.

  “They’ve taken him to a hospital on the mainland. For observation.” Nettie’s voice was flat and emotionless. “They think he killed Rolo.”

  Sabrina ushered the old woman into the living room as she thought about what to say. She had spent the whole night thinking about Rolo. She was grieving for the strange, enigmatic man who had managed to touch her heart in such a short time.

  “Would you like something to drink?”

  Nettie shook her head, her gaze far away.

  “Nettie, I am so sorry about what has happened.” Sabrina decided that brisk was in order. “I’m sure Dock will be cleared quickly. Nobody could seriously think he’s capable of killing his own son?” Somehow the statement turned into a question.

  “He’s been acting so strange for the last couple of years, people think he’s capable of anything,” Nettie said dully.

  “But not killing his own son.”

  “They won’t let me stay with Dock. They say it’s best if I just stay here, and I do need to make the funeral arrangements. They took Rolo away to the mainland to cut him open, to determine the cause of death. I saw him last night. I made Jimmy take me to see him in the boat. It was sprinkling, and they had spotlights set up, and all these people were on the pier. And there he was, half covered with a ragged old tarp, lying there with those great big bloody holes in him. I overheard someone say he had been shot and stabbed. Why?” Nettie’s face twisted in agony. “But his face looked so peaceful. And I’m sure I saw his ghost sitting on the end of the dock. It wasn’t Rolo as I saw him last, it was a nine-year-old Rolo, sitting there with his fishing pole. And he smiled at me.”

  “He’s at peace now,” Sabrina murmured, letting the old woman ramble.

  “I’ve never met them, his wife and daughter. Rolo sent me a few letters over the years; he moved around a lot, and he’s never been good at writing letters. But I knew when he got married, and when his daughter was born. But he didn’t want me to go out to Oregon, and of course he couldn’t bring them here, so I never met them. I want to see them, but I don’t know how…” Nettie waved a hand.

  “We’ll figure out some way for you to see them,” Sabrina said gently.

  “And of course, I wrote him letters back. He’s my son, no matter what they say he did. Do you understand?” Nettie gave Sabrina a look of appeal.

  Calvin had fallen asleep on Sabrina’s lap, and she stroked his warm, little body.

  “Yes,” she said. “I think I do.”

  “It’s my fault he came back. I was the one who wrote and told him Bradford was running for president. He hates Bradford for what he did, but I always told him that he couldn’t trust those Tittletotts, and I was proved right. But he loved Bradford when he was a boy. Rolo was a wonderful person. He told me when he was twelve that he wanted to be just like his daddy when he grew up, wanted to be president of the Sanitary Concessionary, just like Dock. Rolo wanted to change things around here, like Dock wanted to. But the Tittletotts made sure Dock didn’t stay president for too long. After Rolo got in trouble, they ousted Dock and put Ninja Tittletott in his place, and then it was back to the old status quo again.

  “Rolo never wanted to leave the island. This was before he and Dock went through all that teen nonsense, of course, but even through that Dock and Rolo were close. I think that’s why Rolo came back, because I wrote and told him Bradford was running for president. He wanted to be was president, just like Dock. And then Bradford, this friend he now hated, was set to have the very thing Rolo had always wanted, you see?”

  Sabrina nodded.

  Nettie rose and began pacing across the floor, from the fireplace to the heavy sea chest and back again. She stepped nimbly over the hurricane hatch in the floor without even looking down.

  “I know that Rolo talked to you. He told me he liked you, and he’s right, I think you have a kind, old soul. I wanted to ask you, I wanted to know—did Rolo say anything to you that time he saw you? He told me he talked to you, but that was the last time I talked to him. I did see him yesterday, just a glimpse when I took him out some food, but he didn’t see me and I didn’t want to attract attention by calling out to him. If only I had!” />
  “What time did you see him?”

  “It was close to two o’clock. But what did he say to you? Can you tell me that?”

  Sabrina’s heart hurt for the eccentric old lady, and she was glad she had something that might help. She retrieved Rolo’s note from the kitchen and handed it to Nettie, who accepted it with trembling fingers.

  “He must have left it sometime yesterday,” Sabrina said. “I left the house around ten yesterday morning, and came back around three-thirty. The note was there when I got back.”

  Nettie read the note, and then her weary brown eyes moved up to the top of paper bag and she read it over again. She shook her head, tears coursing down her wrinkled cheeks. “I don’t understand. He changed his mind. And they still killed him.”

  “Who?”

  “The Tittletotts.” Tears splashed down onto the paper bag. “They killed my boy so he wouldn’t expose their dirty laundry. He planned to go to the rally last night, when Bradford was going to give his speech. He said he was going to tell the truth about the Tittletotts, and it wasn’t going to be pretty.”

  “Do you know what he was going to say?”

  Nettie shook her head. “I didn’t want to know. I—I knew it wasn’t right. And Rolo knew it too. As much as I dislike the Tittletotts, I was not put on this world to be their judge. The Good Lord will take care of that. Rolo is a good boy, he knew what he was doing wasn’t right.” She waved the note. “This tells me that he went to heaven with a clear conscience. He changed his mind before he died.”

  Sabrina thought back over her conversation with Rolo. It was clear that he was ambivalent about what he planned to do. But what did he know about the Tittletotts? Was Nettie right? Did he die because of that knowledge?

  “They killed him, and he had changed his mind!” Nettie cried.

  “Shhh, calm down, shhh.” Sabrina took the woman by her fragile, narrow shoulders and led her to a chair. “You’ve got to be strong, for your family, for Dock.”

  “Sabrina,” Nettie said urgently, grasping Sabrina’s hands in her cold ones and staring into her eyes. “I don’t know what to do. I’ve told Jimmy, and the other police about the Tittletotts, but they just shake their head, they think I’m a foolish old woman. Jimmy knows better, but he thinks that all I care about is the feud. It’s not true! When I was a child, you wouldn’t believe some of the things the Tittletotts and the Wrightlys did to one another. Shot holes in each other’s boats, fighting all the times. It was ugly. I don’t want that again. But I know what Rolo told me! He knew something about the Tittletotts, and he was going to tell the whole island! They killed him to stop him from telling, I know it.”

  “What was he going to reveal?”

  “I don’t know! I wish I did!”

  Sabrina made soothing noises, and Calvin imitated her, his bright eyes fixed on Nettie. Sabrina wasn’t sure what to say. She couldn’t help but think Nettie had spent her whole life thinking of the Tittletotts as her family’s personal boogieman. When something horrible happened, like Rolo’s murder, her mind automatically fixed on the Tittletotts as the culprits. But Sabrina couldn’t dismiss what Rolo had said to her. It was clear that he had carried a lot of anger toward the Tittletotts.

  “But what changed his mind?” She didn’t even realize that she had spoken aloud until Nettie answered her.

  “Because he was a good boy at heart.” Nettie said the words wearily. “He always was, despite what they say he did.”

  “Did he ever talk to you about that? The burglary, and setting the house on fire?”

  Nettie leaned back in her chair. She looked like an ancient crone, her face creased and ethereal. “He tried to, when the entire island was looking for him, after Bradford had told on him. But Dock was heartbroken, so hurt that his favorite son would do something so ugly. He told Rolo to leave, and never come back. So Rolo left. He took that silly sword that used to be Dock’s, the one Dock gave him on his eighteenth birthday, and he left.

  “I know Dock regretted telling him to leave, but he was too proud to take it back. Then Lora had her stroke, and there was nothing we could do about Rolo for a while. He wrote to me about a year after he left, and told me he wanted me to know he didn’t do it, and of course he didn’t. We never said much more about it. Didn’t seem any point to it. He never asked about his father, either, and Dock never asked about him, though he knew that Rolo wrote to me.”

  “Maybe that’s what Rolo was going to do: prove that he didn’t commit the burglary and set the house on fire,” Sabrina said hopefully. She didn’t want Rolo to have committed those horrible acts. She had liked him, and it bothered her that he could have done something so cold-blooded as set a house on fire with an unconscious pregnant woman inside.

  But Nettie was shaking her head. “I asked him about that. He said he didn’t have any proof of his innocence except his word, and that should have been good enough except he was a Wrightly not a Tittletott.”

  “I guess Rolo blamed Bradford for turning him in,” Sabrina mused. “That’s what made him so angry at the Tittletotts. He loved Brad like a brother, and Brad betrayed him. I wonder if Brad was the one who actually stole the silver and set the fire?”

  “Bradford couldn’tve done it. Sergeant Jimmy McCall saw Bradford over here in Waver Town that night, right after the fire would have been set. Bradford didn’t have time to do it, as much as I wish it was him that did it.”

  “That’s right. Hmmm. And fifteen years later, Rolo comes back to ruin Brad’s chances of winning the presidency.” She thought about that. Rolo, who had loved his father so much that he had wanted ‘to be just like his daddy’ when he grew up. Rolo, who never wanted to leave the island, but whose father had banished him. And Brad, running for president, living the life that Rolo had wanted for himself.

  “But he had a daughter, a family,” Sabrina protested. “Wasn’t he happy with them?”

  Nettie smiled. “He loved them, I know he did. He enjoyed his job, working with plants and trees, and even though he never could go to college, he read all the time and was very smart. But it was like a disease, this anger, gnawing away inside him all these years. He couldn’t get rid of it, no matter how many times I told him he had to, to ever be truly happy.” She shook her head.

  There was a moment of silence, broken only by Calvin’s self-absorbed chirping as he worked his way down Sabrina’s leg and waddled over to Nettie. She picked him up and held him against her face.

  “What was Rolo doing in Dock’s boat? Was he trying to leave the island? That’s how he left last time, he stole his daddy’s boat.”

  Sabrina glanced out the side window that overlooked the dense copse of woods leading to the pier where Dock’s boat was usually moored. “But why kill him if he was leaving?” Nothing made sense.

  “I told the police about the note, and they just patted me on the arm and told me they would take care of everything. I thought that maybe…but no, it couldn’tve been. No one believes anything I say, anyhow. They think I’m trying to protect Dock. I can feel their skepticism and their pity radiating off them in waves. Even Jimmy, who I’ve know since he was a little boy growing up a barefoot Waver, even he doesn’t entirely believe what I tell him.”

  “What note, Nettie?” Nettie couldn’t have told the police about the note Rolo left Sabrina. Nettie hadn’t known about it until today.

  “The note someone left under the door of the cookie shop the night before last. The note addressed to Rolo. They always knew I could get in touch with Rolo, so I really wasn’t surprised to see the note. I took it out to the spot where I’ve been leaving food for him, out behind the shop at the edge of the marsh, hidden from the road by trees. That was yesterday morning. I checked that afternoon to see if he had got it, and the blueberry muffins I made just for him. They were both gone.”

  “Someone left a note for Rolo under the door of the cookie shop? What did it say?”

  “I wish I knew! But I’ve never made a habit of reading Rolo’s
letters. And I don’t know who left it.” Calvin was perched on Nettie’s shoulder, murmuring as she spoke. He squawked as she suddenly leaned forward, and she reached up to catch him before he slid onto the floor.

  “Sabrina, I want you to help me. No one is listening to me. I’m afraid Dock is going to be charged with murder, just because Rolo was found in his boat.”

  Sabrina refrained from mentioning that Dock had also been covered with Rolo’s blood, from head to foot.

  “I know Dock isn’t all there, but he would never kill his own son. He loved Rolo. Can you imagine what this must have done to the poor man? He was going fishing. The police found his fishing pole and cast net lying on our dock. He walked out there and saw Rolo in the boat, and I think he probably jumped down into the boat to see if he could help Rolo. That’s why he was all bloody. And then he started the boat and went for help. He must have known, somewhere in that foggy brain of his, that I was at the school, because he drove that boat over to the New Harbor and came looking for me. And the police want to put him in jail for it. The man’s worked himself to the bone all his life to support me and our family. Now that he’s older, he deserves the chance to relax, go fishing and watch that awful television if he wants. Please don’t let them put him in jail. Please help me, Sabrina.”

  Before she had time to think it through, just to ease the look of anguish on Nettie’s face, Sabrina agreed to do whatever she could to help Dock. Nettie left not long after that, looking drained, but calmer than when she arrived.

  “What in the world does she expect me to do, Calvin?” Sabrina carried the bird into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. She knew it was too early for lunch, but she felt like doing something, anything, to take her mind off the subject of murder. “None of it makes sense. I’ve got so many questions, and no answers.”

  “Bark! Trill, trill, trill!” Calvin’s eyes turned wild, and he started trilling and clucking again. Sabrina had noticed that he made the strange noises mostly when he came into the kitchen. She lifted him off her shoulder and put him on the floor, and he immediately made for the plant by his windowsill perch.