Carolina Isle (10 page)

“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?”

“I vote that we go to that place where we saw the sign, ROOMS TO LET, and see if we can get some accommodation for the night,” Ariel said as she held up a gold necklace with four pearls on it.
“Do you think this will buy us a couple of rooms for a night? Or two?”

“One night is all we need,” R.J. said. “Tomorrow I'll find a telephone and get us out of here. What say you, my lords and ladies, that we join this play?”

Ariel grimaced. “What I want to know is, is it a tragedy or a comedy?”

“Life is what we make of it,” David said. His tone was so exaggeratedly happy that Sara and R.J. groaned. “Okay, so maybe in this place we have to work a little harder to be able to see the good.” He wiped his hands over his eyes. “I could almost believe that none of what happened did. Are we really to appear in court on Monday morning to answer a charge of killing a dog?”

“No,” R.J. said firmly. “Once I get hold of my lawyer, he'll send half a dozen men down here and drown the entire police force in paper. There won't be any court hearing on Monday.” He glanced at Sara and gave a little smile to let her know that his plan was exactly what she'd told the cops would happen.

Sara had to turn away so R.J. wouldn't see her
smile. She knew how his mind worked. So maybe she'd been wrong to try to strong-arm the police here on little King's Isle, but it was the way she'd learned from watching R.J. He had power and he knew how to use it. She had every confidence in the world that R.J. would get them out of this ridiculous situation.

“Shall we go to the rooming house?” Sara asked. “We might as well enjoy our time here,” she said, then her stomach gave a growl. “Sorry.”

“My stomach thinks my throat's been cut,” R.J. said, making Sara look at him in surprise. Usually he was careful to not show his country upbringing, so he never used old sayings like that one.

“Do you think they sell cosmetics in this town?” Ariel asked. “Lancôme or Estée Lauder, maybe.”

“Maybe Maybelline,” Sara said as they walked down the main street and headed toward where they'd seen the house with the sign.

People smiled at them as they walked, but no one stared. It all seemed so normal that with every step they took, it was harder to remember the events of earlier that day.

“Were we really in jail?” Sara asked softly. “Or did we make that up?”

Ariel looked at her cousin as though she'd lost her mind. “We have no car and no money. We have to spend the night here, but we have no luggage. How can you think that we made anything up?”

“It just seems so … I don't know … normal, I guess.”

“It doesn't seem normal at all,” Ariel said. “One minute the town is empty and the next it's full of people who are doing their best not to look at us.”

“She's right,” R.J. said. “The sooner we get out of here, the better.”

“I agree,” David said.

Sara sighed. “I'm just so glad to get away from work for a few days that—” Breaking off, she glanced at R.J. “Sorry.”

“No need to be,” he said. “I'm glad to get away from work too.” They could see the house with the faded sign just ahead of them. R.J. looked at David. “At work, I have an assistant who is quite efficient—”

“Except that she can't type or take shorthand,” Sara said.

“Right. But she can remember things. She's better than any of those talking machines that you have to type things into.”

“So what's wrong with her?” David asked, opening the little gate in front of the house.

“She hates me. Pure and simple hates me. Most of the time when I ask her a question she won't even answer.”

As David let the others go through the gate, he looked at Sara. “Is that true? Does his assistant hate him?”

Sara gave him a little smile, but when she didn't answer, R.J. laughed. “See what I mean?”

They walked up the stairs to the porch of the big old house and R.J. knocked on the front door. They heard nothing.

“The owner's probably in the streets with the other residents pretending to be something he's not,” Ariel said.

Sara raised her hand to knock again, but the door was opened by a woman—and the four of them were shocked into speechlessness. She was tall, good-looking, in her early forties, and dressed in cotton trousers and a shirt. It would have been an ordinary outfit if it hadn't been so tight. Buttons
bulged over her large breasts. She'd tied the tail of the shirt around her waist so there was an inch of trim, tanned flesh showing. Her trousers were tightly belted and so snug around her hips that if she'd had a tattoo you probably could have read it.

But it was her expression that was the most lascivious. She looked greedy as she smiled warmly at the two men. The women stepped back and the men stepped forward.

“Hello,” David and R.J. said in unison. They were in front of Sara and Ariel, blocking their view. “We've come about—” Again, they said the words together.

The woman laughed. “I know who you are and I can guess why you're here. Come in, please, but don't mind the way I look. I've been painting the back hallway.”

David and R.J. stepped through the doorway, their eyes on the woman and hers on them.

Ariel looked at Sara as though to ask if they should dare enter the house. “As long as she doesn't try to get in the bathtub with me, I don't care what she looks like,” Sara said, following the men into the house.

When the four of them were inside, the woman said, “I'm Phyllis Vancurren and welcome to King's Isle, although I imagine you wish you'd never set foot on the place.” Turning, she started down the hall, motioning for them to follow. “I just made some tea. Would you like some?”

David and R.J. practically ran after her, but Sara and Ariel held back. “I like Larry Lassiter the lawyer more than I do her,” Ariel said.

“I'm sure she's a fine person and has nothing on her mind except giving us food and a place to stay.”

When Ariel looked at Sara with wide eyes, Sara grinned. “If they're casting a play for the woman who looks in the mirror to see if she's the most beautiful, then kills the girl who's prettier than she is, there she is.”

“Come along, girls,” Phyllis called over her shoulder. “By the time you two slowpokes get to the kitchen the tea will be all gone.”

“Who do you think she wants?” Sara asked under her breath.

“David,” Ariel said instantly. “She wants David.”

“I don't see why. R.J. is smarter.”

“You don't think about smart when you want to go to bed with someone.”

“True, but the morning
does
come,” Sara said.

The two women walked into the kitchen to see R.J. and David sitting at a big oak table drinking iced tea out of tall glasses.

“I was beginning to think that the two of you got lost,” Phyllis said, her voice a sort of purr.

“Do you have a telephone?” Sara asked.

“I already told R.J. that no one on the island has a working phone right now. And we won't have any for about ten more days. A trawler hit the underground cable and cut it in half.” Phyllis filled more glasses with ice and tea. “Usually we're quite modern here on King's Isle. We have telephones and even the Internet, but right now we're in the dark ages. The dark ages with electricity and flush toilets, that is.” She looked at R.J. and David as though she'd made a very funny joke. They laughed as though she had.

“Do you have rooms to rent?” Ariel asked.

“Honey, as you can see, that's all I do have. I have rooms and rooms and more rooms. They all need painting and fixing up, but I do have them.”

Again the men laughed as though she'd said something witty.

Sara gave a fake smile. “So how much do you charge?”

“Whatever you have. Or you can send me a check when you get back to the mainland. I'm flexible.” She looked at R.J. with lowered lashes. “You look like a man who pays his bills.”

“Yeah,” R.J. said in a husky voice. “Actually, Sara pays them, but I put the money in the bank.”

Phyllis looked at Sara. “So you
work
for him. I thought maybe you were couples.” She looked at David. “What about you? Married?”

“He's engaged to me,” Ariel said too loudly.

Phyllis looked Ariel up and down. “Interesting. You two girls certainly look alike. I can hardly tell you apart. I guess you're sisters.”

“Cousins,” Ariel said. “Is there somewhere I can freshen up?”

“You want the toilet, don't you? There's no use being fancy around here.”

Ariel's face turned red as she gave Phyllis the look, but the older woman didn't seem to notice.

“Come on,” Phyllis said, “I'll show you your rooms. I've put you in the nanny's suite. I hope
that's all right. The man who built this house had eight kids and he didn't want to see or hear any of them, so he made a whole suite in the attic. There're a couple of air conditioners up there so you won't be hot. It's two bedrooms, a big bathroom that you'll have to share, and a little sitting room. Come along. Follow me.”