Island Intrigue

by Wendy Howell Mills

  “But over the next couple of days, I couldn’t get him out of my mind. I knew he was still around, and I found myself wanting to talk to him, like we used to when we were kids. We use to tell each other everything. He was the best friend I ever had. I wanted to tell him about Stacey, and my campaign, all the things I had done over the past fifteen years. I think that’s when I realized how wrong I had been, and how much I wanted to make it all up to Rolo. So I left him the note at Nettie’s shop, and asked him to meet me at the treasure tree. The next day, I went to see Stacey and then I went to the marsh and saw Rolo. I told him it was all over, that I would tell everything at the rally that night. He didn’t believe me at first, but I convinced him. He planned to go to the rally anyway, and we agreed that he would meet me there, and I would tell what happened.

  “We—we made up, in a way. I think in time we could have been friends again. When I left the clearing at the treasure tree he was still there, sitting on one of the old bus seats, and smiling. I swear he was still alive when I left. And that night at the rally, I was going to tell the truth, I was, but Dock came in covered with blood. Then when I found out Rolo was killed, I couldn’t say anything, because I knew everybody would think I killed him to stop him from telling what happened.” Brad stopped, his chest heaving with his emotion. There was silence except for Brad’s gasping breaths, almost as if he was breathing for the entire group.

  Jimmy McCall broke the spell. “What really happened that night?” he asked quietly. “Fifteen years ago, you and your mother said Rolo told you he stole the silver, and when we went to his house it was in his closet. What really happened?”

  “I stole it,” Brad said, and the sun went behind a cloud, and shadows rippled across the blowing grass. “Rolo and I were always playing jokes on each other. Not just on each other, on the whole island too, I know. But we played them on each other as well. Rolo—Rolo had gotten it in his head that Walk-the-Plank Wrightly’s treasure was buried somewhere in the marsh around the treasure tree. He had a map that he said proved the treasure was buried there, somewhere.”

  Brad paused, and his eyes sought out Dock. Dock, who had given the diary to Rolo and pledged him to secrecy. And Rolo, young and trusting, had told his best friend Brad, who just happened to be a Tittletott. Dock returned Brad’s stare stonily.

  “We dug for it. We dug holes until our fingers bled from the blisters, but we couldn’t find it. So one day, I was over at Edie Lowry’s house. I was delivering a note from my mother, and Edie was polishing her silver. And it occurred to me, what if I planted treasure for Rolo to find? Wouldn’t that be a hoot? That night, when I stole the silver, I didn’t know Edie was in the house, I thought she had gone to my mother’s Oyster Cram party. And of course everyone knew Edie’s husband was out to sea. I swear I didn’t know she was there until I looked up and she was standing in the doorway. It was dark, and I didn’t think she could see me, so I jumped up. She backed away from me until she was standing at the top of the stairs leading outside. I pushed by her, not hard, just trying to get by her. I guess she fell. I was running so fast I didn’t realize that she had fallen until the next day. I buried the silver, and Rolo and I went later that night to dig for the treasure, and he found the silver. He was excited, he really thought it was Walk-the-Plank’s silver! I was going to tell him eventually, and put back Edie’s silver, but I wanted the joke to last a little longer. Rolo took the silver and I went home. The next morning I heard about Edie’s fall and that her house had caught on fire. And then someone called and blamed the whole thing on me! I swear I didn’t set Edie’s house on fire. It must have been an accident. I didn’t do it. All I could think was that Rolo had found out I tricked him, and had made that phone call. I felt so horrible about it, but I was so young…I didn’t know what to do.” Brad looked up and locked eyes with Elizabeth Tittletott. Her eyes were narrow, and two spots of color flared high on her cheekbones. Brad turned away. “I was scared. I was stupid. I told the sergeant that Rolo did it. I’ll live with that mistake the rest of my life.”

  Stacey had slipped to Brad’s side again, and he didn’t protest as she took his arm. He stared at the ground now, his posture defeated. Around him voices broke out in excited conversation.

  “I’ll just need to get an official statement, Brad.” Sergeant Jimmy McCall reached over and took Thierry’s gun. Thierry didn’t protest as he stared at Brad in bewilderment.

  Sabrina took the opportunity to make her way through the crowd to Brad.

  “One question,” she said in a quiet voice, and Brad looked at her in surprise.

  “Did Rolo threaten anything else? Weren’t you just as worried about the Tittletott deed as you were about your reputation?”

  Brad looked over at Stacey who was arguing with her father. “I’m not going to even ask how you know about that,” he said in a low voice. “Yes, Rolo had proof that the Wrightlys were the rightful owners of all the Tittletott land. He told me about the pirate’s diary years ago, when we were kids. Back then I told him that when I got control of the Tittletott property I would give back half to the Wrightlys.” He smiled and shook his head. “Kids are so idealistic, aren’t they?”

  “Why did Rolo decide to come forward now, though? The Wrightlys have had this information for three hundred years.”

  “A lot of people live on Tittletott land—including most of the extended Wrightly clan. The piece of land with your cottage and the New Wrightly House is on Wrightly land, but Nettie rents the cookie shop from us and a lot of Wavers have been renting from the Tittletotts for generations. The Wrightlys have been scared, plain and simple. If they challenged us and lost, they were afraid they would lose everything.” His face grew sadder. “Rolo hated me so much and was so angry that I was going to be president, he just didn’t care anymore.

  “That day at the rally, I was going to admit the truth about the silver. Rolo promised if I did that he would keep quiet about the diary until my mother passed away. I asked him that favor, and God knows he didn’t owe me anything, but he agreed. Since I’m the sole heir of the Tittletott property, I was going to start making over deeds into the Wrightlys’ name. It was the only thing I could do.”

  “You never saw the diary? You don’t know what happened to it?”

  Brad shook his head, and then Jimmy took him by the arm and led both Brad and Thierry down the hill.

  “Ahem,” Nettie coughed. “This is still a funeral. I’m glad Bradford Tittletott saw his way clear to telling the truth about Rolo. Now all of you know that he really was a good boy.” Nettie turned to face the coffin. She placed the old wooden fishing pole she carried inside the coffin with Rolo, and leaned down to kiss his face. Then she lowered the coffin lid as Bicycle Bob moved forward with a shovel.

  “One more thing.” Nettie gestured to Terry and little Nettie who picked up two potted rose bushes lying in the shade of a nearby bush and brought them to their grandmother. “Rolo loved his grandmama Lora’s roses. These are from Lora’s house and they’ll be planted on his grave.”

  Sabrina closed her eyes, feeling the sting of tears behind her eyelids. She was glad she remembered to tell Nettie what Rolo had said.

  When I die, and my body’s lying under that cold, wet dirt, I hope someone plants roses on my grave. That way, part of me can grow into that rose and bask in the sunlight.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Sabrina had never been to a wake quite like the one held after Rolo’s funeral. She was puzzled by the jackets most of the islanders wore to the funeral, considering the mild temperature, and even more puzzled by the identical bulges in each of the pockets. As they filed into Nettie’s big green house, she was astonished to see person after person pull a bottle of liquor out of his or her coat and place it on a table set up by the front door, which was already groaning with its heavy load of bottles.

  Lima saw Sabrina studying the growing pile of liquor in perplexity.

  “Don’t have nothing like this in Sin-city-nati, huh?” Lima s
waggered over to Sabrina, munching on an hors’ doeuvre.

  “Not quite,” Sabrina said, accepting her defeat gracefully. She just wished she could take the old man to Cincinnati and see how he felt in the big city. She was still absorbing Brad’s amazing story, and from what she could hear, so was everybody else.

  “Weell,” Lima said in satisfaction. “There was a day when there was no money on the island to speak of. We didn’t need it, you understand? We had our gardens, the cows and goats in the marsh, and the bounty of the bitch in blue. The ocean.” Lima explained quickly, seeing Sabrina’s disapproving look. “We had everything we needed right here. Except liquor. That we had to ship in. Of course, you had your random stills and toxic moonshine, but it wasn’t quite the same thing. Liquor became more precious than gold. Whenever anybody died, the people would all get together and chip in for a bottle of liquor, and gave it to the bereaved. It was better than money, you see. Now, we all give a bottle of liquor to show our respect. Every day before a funeral the liquor store’s wiped out completely.”

  All these old traditions were making her head spin. “What,” she asked, “does Nettie do with all this liquor?”

  “We’ll open it before too long, don’t you worry,” Lima said, winking.

  “I see.” Sabrina gazed around the room. None of the Tittletotts were in sight. Apparently the truce between families only lasted through the funeral. Either that, or the scene at the funeral had changed their plans. It was too bad, because Sabrina wanted to talk to them.

  Lima and Sabrina went through the crowded front room to the kitchen, where a fire was blazing and the counter was laden with plates of food in mismatched plates. She could see her own coconut and saffron rice pudding at the dessert end of the table. While she watched, Bicycle Bob loaded a scoop of the pudding on his plate and took a big bite. He burst into a coughing fit, his eyes watering.

  “Cut out your heart,” Horatio crooned, swaying back and forth on his perch and unfurling his top feathers. “Raawk! Here kitty!” Horatio glared at a child who strayed too close to the cage.

  Sabrina tsked in the bird’s direction and loaded a plastic plate with food.

  “Um, Lima? What’s this?” Sabrina held up a dark gray ball studded with what looked like nuts.

  “Oyster ball.”

  Sabrina took a tentative bite and then a larger bite. She went through her plate, asking Lima to identify the more bizarre items and ate with gusto. Dock was wandering around the kitchen, drinking from other people’s cups and digging into the food on the serving plates with his fingers. He seemed oblivious to the people around him and was making sounds in his throat that sounded like: “Bugabugabuga.”

  “Have you got your costume for tonight?” Lima asked. “I’m going to be Elvis, in honor of Rolo. He loved Elvis when he was a kid. I got a purple leisure suit and I’ve been practicing my sneer. What do you think?” He twisted his face into a grotesque grimace.

  “Er—yes, Lima, very nice. You don’t think it would be disrespectful to celebrate Halloween when someone’s just been buried?”

  “Oh Lordy. Nothing could stop Halloween. We don’t get much of a chance to let loose around here, so when we do, we go all out.”

  Sabrina hid a smile. From what she could see, the islanders got plenty of chances to let loose, and they took advantage of every occasion.

  “On Comico, Halloween’s more for the adults than the kids. The kids go around to the houses and trick or treat from five to six-thirty or so, but then they go home and their parents go out. We all get to pretend we’re someone else for the night. You don’t get too many opportunities like that.”

  Sabrina nodded thoughtfully and chewed on a scallop pancake.

  “I’ve got a question,” she said after a moment, aware that both she and Lima had stayed far away from Brad’s confession. It was still too fresh. “Who is Shelby? And why did Nettie put his fishing pole in Rolo’s casket?”

  “Weeell, back in my great-great grandpappy’s day, there was a huge storm that hit the island, nicknamed the Black Friday Storm because the sun never came up that Friday, or at least not that anybody could see. Shelby Wrightly was out on his boat, and while he was trying to get back to harbor, a big wave came up and swamped his boat. Shelby was washed away by the waves, and he knew as sure as grits ain’t groceries that he was going to drown. He drank so much of that ocean that afterwards he never drank a glass of water again. Right about that time come a casket just a bobbing along—this was before they started putting skillets in the caskets, you understand, so it was floating along just as pretty as you please. So, Shelby, he grabbed onto that casket and held on to the handles for dear life. Well, the storm rolled on for that day and then the next, but eventually it died down and Shelby looked around and found himself far out to sea, just a-bobbing on top of that casket. Well, days past, and Shelby grew awful hungry and thirsty, and the day came that out of pure desperation he opened up that casket while it was floating on the sea. And lo and behold he found a fishing pole next to the dried up old corpse. Someone had buried the man’s favorite fishing pole with him, and it saved Shelby’s life. He used that pole to catch fish, and rain came and he drank. After a month, he finally washed up on shore. And the only reason he stayed alive was because of that fishing pole. After that, everybody thought it was such a fine idea that they started burying a man’s favorite fishing pole with him when he died. And who knows, if ever those skillets don’t work, some poor adrift soul might need to use that pole to catch his dinner.”

  Lima took a bite of Sabrina’s rice pudding. His eyes got wide, and his face turned red as he swallowed.

  “What in the hell is that?”

  “It’s coconut and saffron rice pudding. Do you like it? I made it. Here, there’s plenty left.” Sabrina ladled another heaping spoonful onto his plate and went over to help with the cleanup in the kitchen.

  ***

  It was almost three o’clock when Sabrina hurried toward town.

  The afternoon was glorious, the cool breeze adding a salty tang to the golden air, like a perfect margarita. Sabrina strode through Waver Town, over the bridge and along the harbor where the pubs were doing brisk business as people geared up for Halloween. Sabrina was still not done with her costume, and she needed one last touch to make it perfect.

  “Miss Sabrina!” a voice called, and Sabrina turned to see Sergeant Jimmy McCall bearing down on her, as unstoppable as a dump truck.

  “Hello Sergeant.” Sabrina stopped on her way up the Tittletott sidewalk. “How is Thierry?”

  “Upset. We released him into his mother’s custody a little while ago. We’ll have to charge him with something, but nobody wants to see him go away for this. He genuinely thought Brad was responsible for killing his brother.”

  “And did he?”

  Jimmy shrugged his massive shoulders. “What Brad did fifteen years ago is despicable. And whether or not he actually set Edie’s house on fire, we’ll never know, though someone did it on purpose, I know that much. But it doesn’t mean he’s Rolo’s killer, though it certainly gives him a motive. As it is, we’ve got no proof. They’re still questioning him at the station, but he’ll be out soon.”

  Sabrina nodded.

  “Hmph. Well, what I wanted to tell you was this: be careful. I’m not sure if you meant to or not, but your eulogy made it sound as if Rolo told you something, maybe the something that Rolo was killed for. Do you follow my drift?”

  Sabrina thought back on her words, and remembered Jimmy McCall’s frantic hand waving. She hadn’t meant to imply anything, of course, but she saw what the sergeant meant.

  “My goodness. I did at that, didn’t I?”

  “What are you doing here?” Jimmy glanced up at the Tittletott House.

  “I came to give my condolences to the family.”

  Jimmy narrowed his eyes. “Lady, you haven’t been here two weeks, and already you’ve got your fingers in every pie on the island. I can’t imagine what would happen if you lived
here full time!”

  Sabrina waved good-bye to the sergeant and went up the sidewalk, letting herself in the front door.

  Virginia looked up as she entered. She was still wearing the slate gray dress she wore to the funeral, and her eyes were red and puffy.

  “Hello, Sabrina.” Virginia leafed through some papers on the desk and dabbed at her eyes.

  “I’m so sorry for your family, Virginia. This must be hard for you.”

  “I’m just glad the truth’s out about Brad.”

  “You knew?”

  Virginia nodded, and picked up a pen and wrote something.

  “How long have you known?”

  Virginia looked up, and Sabrina saw that her beautiful eyes brimmed with tears. “Brad told me years ago, that night we were together. I didn’t know what to do, who to tell.” Virginia shook her head. “What could I do?”

  Sabrina said nothing. “Is Elizabeth here? I’d like to talk to her.”

  Virginia nodded. “She’s supervising the girl cleaning a room for a check in. Come on, I’ll show you.”

  Sabrina followed Virginia up the wide stairs. The dim hallway stretched the length of the house and doors marched down the white walls. Floor boards creaked under their feet, and sounds from a TV floated from behind one of the closed doors.

  “Gary, would you mind watching the desk? I need to get dressed.” Virginia paused before an open door. Sabrina glanced over Virginia’s shoulder at the large luxurious bedroom, complete with fireplace and sitting area. Gary was feeding another log into the fireplace.

  “I’ll be right down.” Gary’s voice was devoid of emotion. He had changed from his funeral clothes into threadbare khaki slacks and a rumpled shirt.

  “Don’t be too long,” Virginia said irritably.

  Sabrina saw a costume, white toga, black wig, golden mask and serpent bracelet, laid out on the bed and whistled in admiration. “Is that what you’re wearing tonight, Virginia?”