Carolina Isle

by Jude Deveraux

  “I didn’t kill any dog,” R.J. said softly, but in a voice that carried weight.

  Lassiter stepped closer to the bar and narrowed his eyes at R.J. “I’ve known John Nezbit all my life and I know that he has responsibilities that would weigh heavy on any man. He has a wife and six children, all of whom he struggles to support. That dog of his …” The man paused and swiped at his eyes as though wiping away a tear. “He raised that dog from a puppy and it was a companion to his children and to him. That dog guarded his family from danger and watched over them while they slept. That you mainland people would maliciously run over that dear animal again and again, all while hanging out of the windows and laughing, is beyond anything we’ve ever heard of about you people.”

  When David started to say something, Sara saw R.J. put his hand on the younger man’s arm. R.J. was watching the lawyer with narrowed eyes. Sara had seen that expression on R.J.’s face only twice before. Both times the recipient learned why R.J. Brompton was called “ruthless.”

  “That poor dog,” the lawyer said, then pulled a handkerchief from his back pocket and wiped his nose. He lifted his chin and gave a little smile, as though he was smiling through his tears. “Oh, well, all we can do is warn our children about you people and hope that the stories will make them stay at home where they belong. So! Now it’s done and you must pay the price.”

  “And how much would that be?” R.J. asked in a voice that made the hairs on Sara’s neck stand on end.

  “I have no idea,” Lassiter said, his eyebrows raised, as though R.J. had asked him an odd question. “That’s up to the judge to decide. How much is the safety of a man’s family worth?”

  “We’ll buy him a new dog,” David said. “A trained guard dog. A rottweiler. Or a Doberman.”

  “I guess if it had been one of his children you’d buy him a new kid too, right?” Lassiter said as he looked at Ariel, who was staring at him, her face flushed, her eyes wide. “Or maybe you’d let one of these beautiful young ladies have a baby with him to replace the child you killed.”

  David grabbed the bars. “Is that the case you’re going to present to the judge? That we might as well have killed a child?!”

  “When do we see the judge?” R.J. asked quickly.

  “Monday morning,” Lassiter answered.

  All four of them gasped. “Do you mean we have to spend three nights in here?” Sara asked. When she felt Ariel take her hand, Sara clung to it.

  R.J. moved closer to the bars. “If your case with Nezbit doesn’t start until Monday, that means you’re free to help us now. For a proper attorney’s fee, that is.”

  “Wish I could help you there, but I can’t,” Lassiter said, chewing on his gum. “You see, everything you brought with you, including that fancy car, has been impounded by the independent government of King’s Isle. The way things stand now, you only have the clothes on your backs, so how could you pay me?” Again, he looked at Ariel.

  “I can have money wired to you,” Sara said.

  “Wired?” Lassiter chuckled. “Like Western Union? You know what happened the last time I tried to help some tourists that were in a similar situation to yours? They gave me a check, but when they got back to the mainland, they canceled it. I called them, but you know what they did? They changed their phone number. When I went over to the mainland, I found out that they’d moved and left no forwarding address. Can you imagine that?”

  For a moment they were all silent as they thought about what he’d said. To get away from him—or was it to get away from King’s Isle?—people had had to leave their home.

  “If we could get you money, cash,” R.J. said, “could you get us out of here?”

  “Sure. It’s not like you can go anywhere, is it? There’s no ferry until Monday afternoon and no one in town is gonna help you. Not after what you did to Fenny’s poor dog.”

  “Fenny?” R.J. asked. “I thought his name was John.”

  “John Fenwick Nezbit. Good old name.” He looked at David with a sneer. “Of course it’s not like the names in Arundel that carry old money with them, is it?”

  For the first time, Ariel moved close to the bars and smiled at the lawyer. “Personally, I hate coffee,” she said in the sweetest voice anyone had ever heard. “And, Mr. Lassiter, I understand your reluctance to trust people who didn’t grow up on your beautiful island. Perhaps this would persuade you to help us.” She pulled off her ring and handed it to him. It was small but exquisite: a sapphire surrounded by diamonds. Sara guessed that the ring was worth at least twelve grand. Smiling in a gracious way, Ariel handed the ring through the bars to the lawyer.

  Sara held her breath. She could believe that he’d take the ring and they’d never see him again. But he smiled at Ariel, then yelled, “Ike!,” and a policeman came through the door and unlocked the cells. Sara knew she’d never heard anything in her life as good as the key turning in that lock!

  As soon as the door swung open, Sara wanted to run out into the sunshine, but R.J. and David held back, so Ariel and she stayed with them. “If you represent Nezbit, who represents us on Monday morning?” R.J. asked.

  The man looked David up and down, his upper lip sneering. “He looks like a lawyer in the making. Let him defend you. As for the rest of you, an apology and a fine should do it.”

  “What did Ariel do?” David asked.

  “Illegally parked,” the lawyer said quickly. “She was in a car that was parked on the courthouse steps. The whole town saw it. Well, that’s all the help I can give you for now. Just show up Monday morning.”

  “Where can we stay?” Ariel asked. “Sir. I mean …”

  He smiled at her. “There’s no hotel here, if that’s what you mean, but there is a boardinghouse. But the landlady wants money and yours is being kept for the moment.” He shrugged.

  “That’s illegal!” David said, taking a step toward the lawyer. Again R.J. caught his arm.

  “Let me give you some advice, Mr. Rich Kid from Snooty Arundel: Keep your mouth shut. Don’t ask any questions of anybody. You know how to mow a lawn? Paint a house? Then get a job and let people pay you in food and a bed. Come Monday morning, show up here at nine A.M. sharp and say ‘yes, sir’ and ‘no, sir’ to the judge. Pay your fine, then get off King’s Isle, and never come back. You understand me?”

  “Yes, sir, he does,” Ariel said quickly. “We all understand you and we’re going to do just what you said. Aren’t we, David?”

  Sara could see the conflict on David’s beautiful face. She doubted if he’d had much bad happen to him in his life, so he believed in the goodness of people. He probably believed that if you talked to a person and explained the situation, he’d see your point of view. Sara wanted to put her arms around him and comfort him.

  When she glanced at R.J., she could see that he was trying not to look at the lawyer with hostility as that would only hurt them. “Is there any possibility of a sentence other than a fine?” he asked the lawyer, who was at the door.

  When Lassiter turned, his face showed his gloating. He loves this! Sara thought. “Yeah, sure. You could get six to eight months in jail. Depends on the judge’s mood. And how good a case against you I present, of course.”

  “You can’t—” Sara began.

  Lassiter cut her off. “Can’t what, little New York missy?” His eyes were angry, full of hate. “Can’t send a rich man to jail? I can assure you, missy, that our courts here may be small, but they’re legal. For all that we protest, we pay taxes to your American government so we are, on paper, part of it. By the time your lawyers prepare a case and by the time our one and only judge who, by the way, is Fenny Nezbit’s uncle, has time to hear the case, your sentence will be up. Tell me, Mr. Rich and Powerful”—he looked at R.J.—“do you think we’re so stupid that we can’t delay a hearing a whole eight months and keep you in jail that entire time?”

  When R.J. didn’t answer, the lawyer left the jail area laughing.

  David, R.J., and Sara stood where they wer
e, staring at the closed door with their mouths open, their brains in a state of shock. Eight months in a jail cell!

  It was Ariel who started toward the door and the rest of them followed her. What had to be the entire police force of King’s Isle was in the outer office and smirking in triumph. They held their heads high and walked out without a word. Once they were outside, they looked at one another, then without a word, they grabbed hands and started running.

  They ran down the main street of the island toward the narrow road that led to the ferry. Sara didn’t know what they were thinking. That maybe the ferry would be there and they’d jump on it, sail away, and forget that this ever happened?

  But when they got to the ferry landing, the dock was empty. They separated, feeling a bit embarrassed about holding hands and acting so childish, and each person found a place on the dock to be alone and to collect him/herself. They were in a state of shock. They had no car, no money, and they had to appear before a judge in two and a half days.

  Chapter Seven

  “WHY WERE YOU SO AFRAID OF THIS island?” Sara asked Ariel.

  “Afraid of the place?” R.J. asked, looking from Sara and Ariel. “Who was afraid of it?”

  Sara nodded toward Ariel. “In New York she told me she was terrified of it and didn’t want to go.”

  R.J. stood up and looked out toward the water, as though he might be able to see the ferry. There was nothing, not so much as a fishing boat in sight. He looked back at Sara. “When you two were in New York and planning this charade to dupe me into believing that you weren’t who you were, is that when she told you information that you could have passed on to me?”

  “I’m sure that if I’d told you that my cousin said King’s Isle was a bad place, you would have called off your plans to go.” When R.J. said nothing, Sara looked at him harder. “You knew, didn’t you? You researched this place by yourself. You don’t do anything by yourself, but you researched this island without me.” Standing, she advanced on him. “What did you see that you didn’t want me to see? And why didn’t you tell me there was a possibility of problems?”

  R.J. looked at David and Ariel as though for support, but they were looking at him with interest. “A few websites mentioned that past visitors had had some problems here, but it wasn’t something that I concerned myself with.”

  “You were concerned enough that you hid them from me,” Sara said, still advancing on him. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Why didn’t you tell me that you wanted to get away from me so much that you were willing to treat me like a fool and wear that stupid wig and those clothes? Who made that jacket?”

  “Chanel,” Ariel said. “Don’t blame Sara, it was all my idea.”

  “But she went along with it. Is this why you were so tired for the last weeks? You and your cousin figuring out how to make me look like an idiot? Is that what you think I am, Sara?”

  “Don’t you turn this on me!” Sara said. “Ariel and I did this—” She waved her hand in dismissal. “Why we did it doesn’t matter now. The point is that you kept vital information from us and that’s why we’re in this situation now.”

  “You wouldn’t have listened to me,” he said. “Since when have you been interested in scary stories?”

  “He’s right,” Ariel said. “I tried to warn you, but you wouldn’t listen to me either.”

  Sara sat down on a piling and looked out at the water. “I guess everything is my fault.” When no one spoke, she looked up at them. Ariel and R.J. seemed to agree with her, but David was frowning.

  “I’d say it was Ariel’s fault,” he said. “After all, she was the one who got Mrs. Dunkirk to get her husband to—”

  “What?!” R.J. shouted. “How could you manipulate a man like Charley Dunkirk?” He stopped talking and looked at Ariel in speculation.

  She, in turn, only looked at her hands.

  David stepped forward and looked at R.J. “Blaming people isn’t going to help. We need to think about how we’re going to live for the next few days. We’re in a hostile town, with no money, and no outside communication. And as for Ariel, yes, she warned us.”

  “But no one said anything to me,” R.J. said, sounding sulky and left out.

  “And you told no one what you knew,” Sara snapped back at him.

  “I think I liked it better when you didn’t talk to me,” he said.

  “You should be so lucky.”

  “Could you two stop arguing for a minute?” Ariel said. “We need a place to spend the night. What about that house we saw with the sign in the window? Maybe we can bargain for a room.”

  “Let’s pool our resources and see what we have,” R.J. said.

  “I have a watch,” Sara said as she unfastened the little gold band and placed it on top of the piling. She looked at R.J. “It was a gift so I don’t know how much it’s worth.”

  “Ten grand,” he said, taking off his own watch and putting it beside hers. “My watch is worth about thirty-nine dollars. Or was worth that when I bought it five years ago.”

  Sara was glaring at him. “You gave me a ten-thousand-dollar watch as a Christmas gift?” she said to R.J. “That’s not what you’re supposed to give to your employees.”

  “It’s my money so I’ll do what I want with it. You,” he said, nodding to David, “what do you have?”

  David reached inside his shirt and pulled out a gold chain. “This is worth a few hundred,” he said as he added it to the pile.

  “I didn’t know you wore a necklace,” Ariel said, looking at David.

  “Believe it or not, there are a lot of things you don’t know about me.”

  “I doubt that,” Ariel said as she removed her earrings. “Diamonds. Worth about five thousand. The necklace is valued at twelve thousand,” she said as she started to unfasten the clasp. When David reached out to help her, Ariel turned to R.J. “Would you, Mr. Brompton?”

  “Sure, honey,” he said, undoing the clasp to her necklace.

  “Don’t let him touch you,” Sara said, still glaring at R.J. “I want to know why you gave me a ten-thousand-dollar watch for Christmas. That is not an appropriate gift.”

  “You like it, don’t you?” R.J. said. “It keeps good time, doesn’t it? And you’ve worn it every day since you got it, so what’s the problem?”

  “The problem is that I work for you and you shouldn’t give such an expensive gift to an employee. You give a watch like this to your girlfriend.”

  “Good heavens, Ariel!” David said as she put her fourth piece of jewelry on top of the piling. “How much jewelry are you wearing?”

  “Counting the ring in my navel?”

  All three of them looked at her in astonishment.

  Ariel smiled sweetly. “What I have or do not have in my navel is no one’s business.”

  “Good for you,” Sara said. “Don’t let them boss you around.”

  “You know,” R.J. said slowly, looking at Ariel, “you looked just like Sara when you said that. It’s that haughty, I’m-better-than-you look that she gives me when she doesn’t want to be bothered.”

  “Which is pretty much all the time,” David said.

  “Exactly.” R.J. tipped his chin back and lowered his lashes. “‘Leave me alone. I’m divine and you’re not.”’

  David laughed. “Perfect. Even if they didn’t look alike, I’d know they were related. Tell me, does Sara let you know that only she can do it correctly, whatever ‘it’ is?”

  “All the time. My only defense is to pile work on her. ‘Here, if you’re so good at managing the world, I’ll let you do it.’ If only she could type …”

  “Yeah, Ariel too.”

  Both men were laughing. They were sitting on opposite sides of the weathered piling, their legs crossed, the women sitting on either side of them.

  Ariel grabbed the pile of jewelry, leaving behind the two pieces the men had contributed and giving Sara back her watch. Without a word between them, the two women stood, locked arms, and
started down the road into town.

  “I hate both of them,” Sara said.

  “Me too,” Ariel said, then sighed. “Sara, as much as I love this female bonding, what are we going to do? We need to make arrangements about eating and sleeping, that sort of thing.”

  “I don’t know what to do, but let’s not tell the men that.” She glanced over her shoulder, disappointed that the men hadn’t come after them.

  Ariel slowed her pace, still holding onto her cousin’s arm. “I don’t think that what they did to R.J. today was unusual. I’ve heard that these islanders accuse people of a crime they didn’t commit in order to get money from them.”

  “I’ve already figured that out, but don’t worry, R.J. will fix it. By tomorrow he’ll have helicopters here and more lawyers than can fill an ocean. He’ll call Charley Dunkirk and he’ll fix everything. I think we should find a place to spend the night, get some food, then—”

  “Look! I hear people!”

  They were standing near the junction to the main street of King’s Isle and they could hear people talking, as though a crowd was moving toward them.

  Sara held onto her cousin’s arm. “Do you think it’s a lynch mob coming for us?”

  “I don’t know how you can make jokes after what happened.”

  For a long moment, Sara and Ariel stood still, arm in arm, looking at the street that earlier had been like a ghost town. Perfectly ordinary-looking people, dressed in perfectly ordinary clothes, were milling about. Some were opening shops and some were walking down the street. There were a few children running, throwing dirt and being yelled at by their mothers. Girls, boys, men, and women, all moving about, laughing, talking. Ordinary, except that not one of them glanced at them.

  At last the men caught up with them. “It’s like the curtain going up on a play,” David said. “One minute the stage is bare and quiet, then the curtain goes up and there are lots of people.”

  “It’s too much like a stage set for my taste,” R.J. said, looking hard at the people in front of them. “Do you think they don’t see us? Or have they been told to ignore us?”