There was a long, long silence. It last so long, Pete began to feel as though he was all on his own.
“Come down, asshole!” he yelled at Damien. “She’s not up there.”
He heard a crashing noise and Damien stumbled onto the beach, giggling. Why did he always have to giggle like that?
“Maybe she went into the forest.”
“Jeez, man, I hope not,” said Damien. “I don’t like the idea of going in there at night. A guy could get lost.”
“Let’s just stand there and yell. If she did go in there, she can use our… our voices to find her way back.”
Damien let out a wild laugh. “Man, you are so wasted you can’t even think of words.”
They left the cliff path and walked towards the forest. Chuck stood at the water’s edge looking stupidly out to sea. Like he was going to find her there.
As they walked, Damien kept throwing glances over his shoulder at the cliff path. It was like it was magnetic or something.
“Come on Chuck - you dickhead,” Pete shouted. “We’re going to look for her in the forest.”
Chuck lurched along the beach to join them. Damien doubled over with a fit of giggles.
“Dude… did you expect to find her coming out of the water? Like… like that Roman bitch we learned about at school. What was her name again?”
“Venus,” Chuck said thickly. “How did you even pass high school? No, I did not expect to find her there. I went down there to barf, if you must know.”
This struck Damien as so funny that he had to stop walking because he was giggling so much.
A gust of wind blew in from the sea, and suddenly Pete was starting to shiver. He knew without looking at the time that it was after two. Every Prince William Island native knew that the temperature dipped at two o’clock and didn’t pick up again until sunrise. Even in the middle of summer, you would feel that chill ripple across your flesh.
They got to the edge of the forest, a narrow wedge of trees that ran down to meet the beach. Pete knew that it widened out into a forest that covered most of the little cay. You didn’t want to go in there without a guide. That was something else that every Prince William Island native knew. The forest would swallow you up and keep you forever. They would find your bones decades later picked clean by crabs and insects.
He shivered.
“Jessica!”
“Jessica!”
“Where the hell is she?” Chuck muttered.
“They’ll look after her,” said Damien. “They won’t let anything happen to her.”
“Who?” demanded Chuck.
Damien gave another wild laugh. “The ghosts!”
They stumbled back to the fire to warm their hands as the sea wind picked up strength. But the fire was dying fast – the dry brush burning up like paper.
A heavier cloud moved across the moon, robbing them of even the greyest semblance of light. The whining of the wind rose to a shriek that made Pete jump.
Something hard and heavy slammed into his body and clutched at his clothes. As he shouted and stumbled backward, he heard similar yells from Chuck and Damien. He tried to pull away, but the hold on his clothes tightened.
Pete fought back but encountered nothing – nothing except the yielding air. The smell of sweetness, of rottenness, tickled his nose.
A cold and clammy something seized him by the neck and tightened its grip. Gasping with horror, he fought like a tiger. He kicked and flailed, desperate to free himself.
Pete managed to pull himself away, coughing and choking against the compression on his neck. He turned and ran blindly towards the sea.
Where was the boat? Where was it?
He heard the thump of running feet behind him, and the heave of labored breathing. With a thrill of horror, he thought the thing was pursuing him. But the feet drew up alongside, and he realized they belonged to his friends.
Legs flying, arms pumping, eyes rolling whitely in their heads, they pounded the sand as they ran towards the sea – towards their boat.
Behind them, that terrible shriek was starting up again, and getting closer all the time.
Eulalie woke up coughing and choking, clutching at her throat.
She sat up and gasped for breath, sucking it into her lungs as though she were inhaling through a tight straw.
Her chest heaved, and her heart raced. She fought to control it – to bring it all back down to normal. The moment she could move, she jumped out of bed. But instead of going to her desk to write it all down, she went to the mirror.
Golden shafts of morning light pushed their way through her shutters. She looked at herself the mirror and was unsurprised to see bruises on her neck.
Had she caused them herself by clutching at her throat in her sleep? Had the dream caused them? Or had the power of her mind ruptured her own capillaries and caused that subdermal hemorrhaging?
She went to her desk and wrote down everything she could remember of the dream.
Eulalie was extra gentle with herself as she got ready for the day. She took a long, hot shower, and dressed in her favorite jeans, soft leather boots, stretchy tank top, and tailored blazer. She blow-dried her hair, pulling it straight with a round brush so that it fell below her shoulder blades.
She did her makeup with extra care and made herself an indulgent breakfast of pancakes with syrup. After a mug of strong coffee, she began to feel human again. The pain in her neck was already fading.
She lingered over her second cup of coffee, reading the news on her phone and watching the morning sunlight creep across her kitchen floor. This was the only advantage to being woken up early by a dream. It gave her time for a leisurely start to the day.
A reminder popped up on her phone that she had a nine o’clock with Peter Costello at the Costello Paints superstore out on the Coast Road.
It turned out that Pete Costello had also gone into his father’s business. But whereas the Hodges were selling off property to keep themselves afloat, the Costellos had gone from strength to strength. Their paint business was booming. The building trade on Prince William Island had exploded over the past few years, which had a knock-on effect for businesses like Costello Paints.
Unlike Damien Hodge, Pete Costello had started at the bottom of the business. He began his career painting low-budget housing on an estate next to the suburb of Sea View. He had steadily worked his way up in the company and was currently the Vice President in charge of sales. He was certainly being fast-tracked, but he had paid his dues to get where he was, unlike his old boarding-school friend.
After breakfast, Eulalie took her Vespa out on the Coast Road, heading north. This was the part of town that turned into strip malls and value-marts. Wholesale was king out here. This was where Queen’s Town came to look for bargains.
Costello Paints was no exception. It offered forty percent off normal retail prices, as well as an array of daily specials and reductions.
Eulalie announced herself at the information desk and was shown upstairs to an office area above the main shop floor.
She had thought that her meeting with Damien Hodge had been strange, but this promised to top that. It wasn’t every day you met the man whose memories had been occupying your dreams.
Chapter 9
The office area at Costello Paints was unpretentious. This wasn’t a place to impress clients or wow investors. It was a place where work got done. A busy administrator sat in the open-plan area, and there were several small offices lined up against the walls. Phones rang almost continuously, and there was a general buzz of activity and industry.
“Eulalie Park to see Peter Costello.”
The administrator tapped at her keyboard and checked her screen. “Ah, yes, you’re his nine o’clock. Take a seat, Ms. Park. He will be out in a minute. Can I offer you tea or coffee in the meanwhile?”
“Coffee would be great, thanks. Cream, no sugar.”
The coffee had just been put in front of her when Peter Costello came out of his offi
ce to invite Eulalie in. It was nine o’clock on the dot.
It was almost shocking to realize that she didn’t recognize him at all. She had spent so much time inside his memories that she felt as though she knew him. This was a good reminder that she didn’t.
He gave her a warm, salesman’s smile and a firm handshake, and led her into his modest office. He was a young man of medium height and slightly stocky build. He had a neat cap of brown hair and an open, boyish face. His suit was off the peg from one of the cheaper department stores. He looked like someone who took himself seriously and knew he was on an upward trajectory in his career.
He occupied a small corner office with a view of the strip mall parking lot and a tiny glimpse of the sea in one corner.
They sat down, and he gave Eulalie a wry smile.
“You want to talk to me about the worst day of my life. I can’t say I was delighted to hear from you, but I’m happy to help in any way I can. I’m glad the investigation isn’t dead.”
“As long as you understand that I am a private investigator, working for a client who wants to find out what happened to Jessica Manilow. But the police are also still working on the investigation, if that sets your mind at ease, Mr. Costello. The file remains open.”
“Call me Pete. Everyone does. Yes, it helps a little, I guess. But nothing will ever erase the guilt, you know?”
“The guilt?”
“We left her there, man. We straight up abandoned her on that crazy island, and she died. Of course, I feel guilty.”
“Is that what you think happened to her? You think she’s dead?”
“Of course, I do. The cops do too. What, you think she’s been secretly living on Monk’s Cay all this time? Maybe picnicking among the ruins? She’s dead. She probably died that night.”
“Why do you think her body was never found?”
“Who knows? It has probably been eaten by now.”
“By what, though? There are no crocodiles on Monk’s Cay. The colony that lives up-river in the deep forest has never been able to cross the open sea to reach the cays.”
“Not crocodiles, man.” He touched his neck. “Something else.”
Eulalie sat back and smiled at him over the rim of her coffee cup, as though she were changing the subject. “You must have visited Monk’s Cay a couple of times as a kid, right? You grew up here on Prince William Island.”
“Sure, I did.” He sat back as well, unconsciously mirroring her body language and looking more relaxed. “I went to Queen’s Town School before my parents put me into St. Michael’s for high school.”
“Did you ever see or hear anything odd when you went there?”
“No… not exactly. I mean, it’s a creepy place. If you’ve ever been there yourself, you’ll know what I’m talking about. And there were always kids who claimed to have seen the ghost of a monk or whatever. We used to try and wind each other up with spook stories. It drove the teachers crazy.”
“Those local legends must have been on your mind the night you went to Monk’s Cay with Damien and Chuck and Jessica. You were probably all a bit spooked.”
“We were dumb kids, that’s what we were. And we were wasted too. We’d been drinking all day. We weren’t thinking about ghost stories. Not then. Why, do you think it was a kind of mass hysteria?”
“It’s a theory.”
“I suppose it’s possible, but that’s not how I remember it. We were all in a bad mood because Chuck had been moving in on Jessica, contrary to a pact that he insisted we make. Damien and I got pissed about it, so Chuck backed off. Then Jess burst into tears and ran away.”
“Which way?” asked Eulalie. “Which direction did she go in?”
“I’m not sure, man. Just up, you know? Up the beach, away from the water.”
“Was it towards the forest side or the cliff path side?”
He frowned. “I didn’t see. We were happy to let her go and cool off. We were still bickering among ourselves, the three of us. None of us paid attention to Jess. It was only when Chuck walked off towards the water that we realized she hadn’t come back. Then we started looking for her.”
“Which way did you think she had gone?”
“I didn’t know, man. The… the beer was really starting to hit me by that stage. It was all I could do to stay on my feet. I guess I thought she had followed the curve of the beach and was out of sight. I mean, she wouldn’t have gone into the forest, right? Nobody would. Especially not at night.”
“I suppose it would depend on how much she’d had to drink.”
“That’s the thing,” said Pete. “She’d had less than the rest of us. She’d been pacing herself the whole day – drinking lots of water, you know?”
“Still, she wasn’t from around here. You and Damien Hodge probably grew up being told never to go into the forest.”
“Hell, yes. My mom used to scare the shit out of us with stories of little children who went into the forest and were never seen again. The river as well. Especially that part that loops down near Queen’s Town School, you know what I mean?”
Eulalie nodded.
“You show me one kid who grew up on Prince William Island who would put their big toe into that river, am I right?”
She had to agree with him. She had been afraid of that part of the river herself. “That’s exactly my point. People who grew up around here know about that. Tourists don’t. That’s why there are so many warning signs all over the place. There are even some on Monk’s Cay, or at least there were when I was a child. But at night you wouldn’t see them. Don’t you think it’s possible that Jessica wandered off into the forest and got lost?”
“It’s possible. Yeah, it’s possible. I wouldn’t have thought she’d be so stupid, though – not a girl like that.”
“What was she like?”
He looked down at his desk, drumming the cover of his laptop with restless fingers. When he looked up again, it was as though he were staring into the past.
“She was lovely. Just lovely. That’s the only way to describe her. Everything about her was lovely. She was a beautiful girl. You must have seen the photos? They were all over the media.”
Eulalie nodded again. She remembered a blond girl with blue eyes and a sunny smile. She had looked like what she was – the girl next door with a charming air. She didn’t have film-star looks, but Costello was right. She had been lovely.
“It wasn’t just her looks, man. It was the whole package. She had a really sweet nature. She was kind and giving, and fun to be around.”
“You haven’t told me anything to suggest that she wouldn’t wander off into the forest by mistake. It’s the kind of thing any tourist could do.”
His eyes snapped back into focus. “No, but that’s the thing. She wasn’t just sweet and all of that. She was clever too, and sensible. She was always talking us down from doing stupid things. Chuck or Damien or I would get some dumb idea into our heads to do something and she would talk to us until she changed our minds.”
“Not about stealing the motorboat, obviously,” said Eulalie.
“No, not about that. She tried to persuade us not to, but we were determined. Also, we convinced her it was going to be fun. Damien even told her that it wasn’t really stealing because it was his dad’s boat we were taking. That was a lie – it wasn’t, but it made her stop nagging.”
“Pete.” Eulalie leaned forward and lowered her voice. “Did you ever get the feeling that Damien or Chuck knew more about what had happened to her than they were prepared to say?”
His eyes flickered from left to right before coming to rest on hers.
“No. Why do you say that? We told the cops everything we knew.”
“That’s funny, because Damien says he always had the feeling you were the one holding something back.”
Indignation showed on his face. “He said that? Son of a bitch. He’s lying. He was the one who…”
“He was the one who what?”
“Nothing. I forgot
what I was going to say.”
“What was the deal with the cliff path? Why did he keep glancing over at it?”
He gaped at Eulalie. “How the hell do you know that?”
“It was something Damien said. But he wouldn’t elaborate on it.”
“I have no idea. It’s true – he did keep looking at the cliff path, as though he expected her to appear there at any moment. But I have no idea why. I know the cops searched it thoroughly. They even took impressions of recent footprints along the path. They searched the whole damn island.”
“And what did he mean when he said that ‘they’ would take care of her, that they wouldn’t let anything bad happen to her?”
Pete shoved his chair backwards.
“What is this? How can you possibly know that? And don’t tell me Damien told you because he doesn’t remember saying it himself.”
Eulalie watched him with interest. Until the words were coming out of her mouth, she hadn’t been sure she was going to ask him that.
“He might not remember it, but he remembers you asking him about it afterwards.”
“I don’t believe you. Damien would never talk about that, especially not to an investigator.”
“How else would I know about it?”
Peter Costello looked into Eulalie’s eyes and recoiled, as though to stop himself from falling.
“I don’t know. It doesn’t make any sense. I want you to go now.”
Eulalie stood up. “I’ll see myself out, Mr. Costello. I can assure you I am going to get to the bottom of this. Any little details you and Damien Hodge might have seen fit to leave out of your stories are going to come to light. I can promise you that.”
She turned and left his office.
Eulalie’s next appointment was already flashing on her phone as she left Costello’s Paints. Rajesh Dev of the harbormaster’s office was expecting her in just over half an hour. The trip to the harbor would take her less than ten minutes on her Vespa. She decided she’d had enough coffee for one morning, so she used the intervening time for a head-clearing walk along Cinq Beach.
The Eulalie Park Mysteries Box Set 1 Page 51