Island Storms

by Sherryl Woods

  Brian led them to the area near the greenhouse along the outside perimeter of the garage. The building’s plants were brought here to recuperate. The area was filled now with a few small potted palms and trays of impatiens and two or three plastic sacks of potting soil. As far as Molly could see there was nothing sinister going on.

  “Was this the way it looked when you saw Mr. Winecroft here?” Michael asked.

  “I guess,” Brian said slowly. “We weren’t even in the greenhouse part.”

  Molly noticed the nearby hoses, kept there both to water the plants and for resident use in washing their cars. “You weren’t spraying each other with the hoses, were you?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Either you were or you weren’t.”

  Brian scuffed the toe of his sneaker along the cement. “Maybe just a little. It was really hot that day.”

  “You had an entire ocean and a pool, if you wanted to cool off.”

  Brian looked subdued.

  “Were you getting water on the cars?”

  “Maybe some of them,” he admitted.

  “Is that why Mr. Winecroft got mad?”

  “Maybe. I guess.”

  Molly and Michael exchanged a look. “So much for that,” she said.

  Michael nodded. “Maybe.”

  “You think it was something else?”

  “I’m not sure. I just can’t imagine him getting all worked up over a couple of cars getting sprayed.”

  “Maybe one of them was his.”

  “So what? All he had to do was ask the kids to dry it off. Remember what I was told, that he’d been so furious with Brian that you’d gotten even by stabbing him to death.”

  “How mad was he, Brian?”

  “Pretty mad. He was really yelling and stuff. He turned real red. He even said he’d have us all kicked out. I was gonna tell you, Mom, but I forgot.”

  “More likely you figured I’d punish you.”

  “Not really, because we didn’t do anything. Not anything bad.”

  Allan Winecroft apparently hadn’t seen it that way. Was it possible that Brian had seen something and just hadn’t realized it? She could tell from the speculative gleam in Michael’s eyes that he was thinking the same thing.

  “Did I help?” Brian asked.

  “Yes,” Michael said slowly. “Yes, I think you did.”

  As they started back toward the building, Molly heard a faint scrambling sound, a slight rustling. Michael and Brian apparently heard it too. They all looked back toward the greenhouse.

  “Probably just a raccoon,” she said.

  “Probably,” Michael agreed.

  He didn’t look as though he believed that any more than she did. Someone had been lurking in the shadows, possibly listening to discover just exactly how much they knew.

  CHAPTER 7

  Years ago, when she was still single and living alone, Molly had endured a series of harassing phone calls. They began benignly enough, just like the calls she’d been receiving the last couple of days. But the hang-ups escalated into obscenities, and eventually the nature and frequency of the calls went from the realm of nuisances into very real threats. The caller turned out to be a stranger, a man who’d stumbled on her number by accident and liked the sound of her voice. Even so, she was left with an odd sense of being watched. More than once, she had caught herself looking back over her shoulder, filled with a vague sense of unease.

  Since the first hang-up call she’d received after the murder, all of those old nervous feelings had resurfaced, leaving her thoroughly jittery at the sound of the phone. The incident in the shadowy garage tonight didn’t help a bit. She left the light on when she went to sleep.

  When the phone rang at 1:00 a.m., she sat bolt upright in bed. Instantly wide awake, she grabbed the phone and waited, saying nothing herself. She hung up, only to have it ring again at once. This time she said, “Hello.” She wasn’t surprised when no one responded to her greeting. Remembering everything she’d been told before about not challenging the caller, about not feeding the desire for a reaction, she quietly hung up. She did make a note of the time, and then she tried to go back to sleep.

  The next call came an hour later. Again no one spoke. Again she hung up, but she was losing her patience and her anxiety was mounting. When the fourth call came, though she was quaking inside, she said quietly, “I’m recording these calls for the police. I’d suggest you stop making them.”

  “You bitch!” The voice was a low, menacing growl. She couldn’t even make out whether it was a man or a woman. She considered trying to goad the caller into saying something more, but the line clicked dead.

  Her death grip on the phone had tensed the muscles across her shoulders. Anxiety sent perspiration trailing down her back. Every nerve on edge now, Molly pulled the pillows into a stack behind her, turned the radio on to the soothing sounds of WLYF, and sat up, waiting. As the minutes ticked by and then the hours, she realized there would be no more calls, not tonight. At dawn she finally fell into a fitful sleep.

  It was less than twenty minutes later when she was jarred awake again. Before she could grab the phone, the ringing stopped. She heard the faint murmur of a voice in the living room, then a crash as the phone clattered to the floor.

  “Mom!” Brian yelled, barreling through the door and throwing himself onto the bed, his expression panicky.

  His whole body shook as she clutched him to her and tried to soothe him. “Sssh. It’s okay. What happened? Who was on the phone?”

  “I don’t know,” he said and again his body shuddered in her arms.

  “Did he say something?”

  “He said…he said you’d wind up like Mr. Winecroft, if you didn’t stay away from the cops.” His arms clung even more tightly around her neck and his lower lip quivered. “Mom, I don’t like this. I’m scared. Maybe we should move. It wouldn’t be so bad changing schools again.”

  Molly could barely control her own trembling, but now hers was less fear than gut-deep fury. How dare someone terrorize her son like this! Instinctively, she thought of Michael. She picked up the card he’d given her, reached for the phone, and dialed his home number.

  A soft, musical, feminine voice answered, the accent distinctly Hispanic. So the detective was involved. It shouldn’t matter, but to her surprise it did. She didn’t like the shaft of pure jealousy that shot through her as she waited for him to take the call.

  “What is it?” he said seconds later, about the time it would take to pass the phone across a bed. There was no sleepy sensuality to his tone. It was fully alert and all business.

  “I think you’d better get over here,” she said. Her voice tripped in mid-sentence, then caught on a sob.

  “Calm down,” he said quietly, using the same soothing tone she’d used with Brian only moments earlier. “What’s happened?”

  She swallowed hard. “I’ll explain when you get here. I think it might be a good idea if you put a tap on my phone, while you’re at it.”

  After that he didn’t ask questions. “I’ll take care of it. You just sit tight.”

  Molly managed a faint smile as she ran her fingers through her son’s hair. “I wouldn’t budge out of this apartment right now if you paid me,” she said.

  She did, however, persuade Brian to take a bath so that she could shower, untangle her shoulder-length hair, and change. She had too much pride to compete, even just mentally, with that sultry-voiced woman while wearing a faded one-size-fits-all T-shirt with a tiger on the front.

  As soon as she’d dressed, she put on a pot of coffee and sat on the sofa to wait, Brian right beside her. They talked about everything except the call that had scared him so.

  Michael arrived in far less time than she would have anticipated. It was the first time she’d seen him in anything other than his impeccably tailored su
its. He’d obviously grabbed the first thing at hand, jeans and a dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up. He’d combed his hair with his fingers, a sure sign of his rush and his nervousness. Worried lines furrowed his brow. There was an ashen hue beneath his olive complexion and dark stubble lined his jaw. Under other circumstances, she might have indulged in several fantasies about the sexy masculinity of his slightly disheveled look.

  The scrutiny he subjected both of them to was thorough. He sat opposite them, legs spread, elbows on knees as he leaned forward to study them intently.

  “Are you okay? What the hell happened?”

  Molly’s response was succinct. “There were more calls during the night.”

  “How many?”

  “Five.”

  “Hang-ups?”

  “At first.”

  “At first? Why didn’t you call right away?”

  “I thought he’d give up.”

  He bit back a lecture, but not a low, heartfelt curse. “But he didn’t, right? What happened next?”

  “I said I was recording the calls for the police and the caller got nasty.”

  “You said the caller. Male? Female?”

  “I couldn’t tell. Maybe Brian could.”

  “Jesus, you let him answer the phone?” he muttered accusingly. “What were you thinking of?”

  “I was asleep,” she said defensively. “He got to it before I could pick up.”

  His gaze shifted to Brian and his tone immediately became gentler, more soothing. “Okay, so you took one of the calls?”

  Brian nodded, still clinging to Molly’s hand. “Like Mom said, she was still asleep.”

  “What did the caller say?”

  “That Mom would end up like Mr. Winecroft, if she didn’t stay away from the cops.”

  Michael held out his hand and Brian moved to him. “That must have been pretty scary. I know you’d probably rather not think about it, but could you try real hard to remember if it sounded like a man’s voice or a woman’s?”

  Brian bit his lower lip the way he always did when he was really concentrating on something. “It was real soft, like a whisper, but I think it was a man.”

  “Had you ever heard the voice before?”

  Brian shook his head with certainty. “Never. You won’t let anything happen to Mom, will you?”

  “Absolutely not, I promise. Now, how about giving your mom and me a couple of minutes alone?”

  Brian looked at her uncertainly. Molly said, “It’s okay, Brian. Go on and fix yourself some cereal and a glass of juice. It’ll be time to leave for school soon.”

  Alarmed blue eyes met hers. “I can’t go to school, Mom. Who’ll protect you?”

  “I will,” Michael reassured him. “I think going to school is a very good idea. I’ll drive you over myself.”

  Brian looked torn. “Do you have a police car with a siren and everything?”

  “Nope. Sorry. Just a Jeep. I do have a siren, but it’s only for emergencies.”

  “Maybe this is an emergency,” Brian said hopefully.

  Michael considered the suggestion seriously. “Maybe it does qualify at that,” he said. “Now get moving, so we won’t be late.”

  “Are you sure it’s okay to send him to school?” Molly asked as soon as Brian had left the room.

  “That’s the best place for him. I’ll speak with his teacher and the principal, just so they’re on the lookout in case anyone hangs around the building who shouldn’t be there. The thing to remember is that the caller threatened you, not him. Exactly how much snooping around did you do on your own yesterday? More than I know about?”

  “None after you left.” At his skeptical expression, she said, “I swear it.”

  “Then let this serve as a warning. You’ve already made somebody very nervous. No more conversations with the neighbors, no more secret trips to the scene of the crime.”

  She shot a startled gaze at him. She’d only walked by to see if the crime scene tape had been removed. It hadn’t been. “How did you know about that?”

  “They pay me for my astute observations.”

  “You weren’t anywhere near here.”

  He shrugged. “Astute observation. Lucky guess. In my business they pretty much add up to the same thing. Remember, sweetheart, I have years of experience at this. You have none. It’s no contest. I’ll outguess you every time.”

  “Dammit, we’re not playing guessing games. The killer is threatening me.”

  “Because you’re an easy target. Let me be the target. It’s what I get paid for.” He leaned forward, his gaze intent. “Please, Molly, let it alone. If not for me, then do it for your son. I know what it’s like to be a scared kid, to be terrified that you’ll never see your mother again.”

  She heard the surprisingly ragged emotion in his voice and knew that he was telling her the truth. Maybe she just needed to keep him talking. Maybe she needed to understand him, needed to understand this pull that had been there between them despite all the superficial differences and whatever his current involvement was with the woman on the phone. Mostly she needed to trust him.

  “How do you know something like that?” she asked. “Did something happen to your mother?”

  “Not exactly.”

  For a minute she thought he wasn’t going to say anything more. Something about the memories hurt him deeply. She could see the pain in the depths of his eyes, the hint of vulnerability that after all these years hadn’t gone away.

  “Thirty years ago I was just a kid in Cuba,” he began slowly, his voice quiet. “I lived with my mother and her family. We had no idea where my father was. He was an American GI stationed at Guantánamo. My mother wasn’t even sure of his name. She just remembered it was something Irish, so I wound up being Michael O’Hara, instead of Miguel Javier.”

  Suddenly Molly understood why there were so many incongruities in his personality. The flawless Spanish and unaccented English. The swaggering Latin persona, modified by an intriguing sensitivity. Though he’d never known his father, still he was caught between the cultures.

  “I don’t remember much about that time,” he said, a haunted, faraway expression in his eyes, “except that I was part of a big family and that I was loved. Then one day in 1962 my mother took me to the airport and put me on a plane for Miami. You’ve probably read about those flights, Operation Pedro Pan, organized by the Catholic Church in Miami and two people inside Cuba. Families packed up their kids and sent them away to save them from Castro, to give them a better life. Some of us were sent to relatives we’d never even met. Some went to live with strangers. Fourteen thousand in all, mostly young boys. I was barely five.”

  Molly tried to imagine what it would have been like for a small boy to be separated from everyone he knew and loved. It was impossible. She had grown up with a warm and loving family of her own. Though she sometimes felt her parents’ emphasis on high society had been misguided, she’d never known the kind of loneliness or fear that Michael was describing.

  “It was three years before I saw my mother again, before she was able to leave Cuba on one of the freedom flights,” Michael said. “For most of those three endless years I hated her for what she’d done. I was scared and lonely, even though Tía Pilar was good to me. It wasn’t until the day my mother arrived in Miami, until I saw how she had been aged by the pain of letting me go, that I realized she had done it because she loved me. You see, for the longest time I thought she’d sent me away just to be rid of me, because she didn’t want me anymore.”

  There was a telltale sheen in the brown eyes that clashed with hers. “Don’t ever intentionally do anything that could separate you from Brian. Okay?”

  Molly couldn’t seem to swallow past the lump in her throat. She simply nodded. “I’ll do whatever you say,” she said finally.

  “Go to work. Foll
ow your normal routine. Avoid discussing the murder with anyone. Most of all, don’t speculate about what might have happened. Do you have a friend you two could stay with for a few days?”

  “Yes, but I’d rather not. It hasn’t been that long since the divorce. The move out of our house shook Brian’s life up enough. I don’t want to disrupt things for him again unless it’s absolutely necessary.”

  “Where’s his father? Could he stay with him for a few days?”

  “Not a good idea,” she said tersely.

  “But feasible?”

  “Things would have to be a lot worse than they are right now for me to turn Brian over to my ex-husband.”

  “Is there a problem there?”

  “Not really. He’s just looking for an excuse to say I’m an unfit mother. He has this idea that a boy should be raised by his father so he won’t turn out to be a sissy. Real macho stuff. I mean, maybe he does have a point about a boy needing a male influence. I’m not denying him visitation rights. I’m going to make sure Brian gets involved in Scouts and Little League and all that sort of thing.”

  “Maybe Brian would like to play soccer,” Michael suggested. “I coach a team. Should I ask him?”

  As soon as the impulsive words were out of his mouth, he looked as though he wanted to take them back. For her own part, Molly considered the wisdom of allowing her life to become any more entangled with Michael’s. Then she thought of Brian and how thrilled he would be to be asked to play on a team. Whatever second thoughts either of them had, her son’s happiness had to come first.

  “I think it’s a wonderful idea,” she said.

  He nodded briskly. “I’ll take care of it, then. The boys seem to have a good time. A lot of them don’t have fathers around. I know what that’s like. This gives me a way to pay back a little of what I’ve been given.”

  “Given?” she said. “It sounds to me as though you’ve earned whatever you have.”