Carolina Isle (29 page)

“Except the kid that wrote the paper,” Lassiter
had said. After he and Fenny had pulled their usual trick of having the rich tourists arrested, Lassiter had found David Tredwell's prizewinning essay and realized the boy had seen Fenny slipping into where his treasure was hidden.

For years, Fenny had dangled his treasure—“an endless horde,” he'd said it was—in front of everyone, but no one had been able to find it. The night R.J. had been arrested, Fenny, drunk as always, had nearly fallen on the targets, and Lassiter, fed up, had told him that someone else knew where the treasure was. Lassiter had only half believed it, but he liked, for once, having the upper hand. When Lassiter quoted some of the essay, Fenny had gone berserk. He ran to his truck, pulled out a pistol from under the seat, and threatened to kill Lassiter. That's when the attorney realized that maybe the kid's essay was true. There was a scuffle, the gun went off, and Fenny lay dead. Lassiter would have gone to the police, but Eula raised up from where she'd been sleeping in the back of the truck. She'd heard it all. Larry Lassiter had been nervous, afraid, but Eula was as cool as ice. She was thrilled to get rid of a
husband she'd hated. She came up with a plan instantly. They carried Fenny's body up Phyllis's stairs, dumped the body in the tub, and hid in the dark living room while Phyllis opened the door to her paying guests.

Eula and Lassiter ran outside and waited for the screams and chaos that would soon come. Lassiter stood at the edge of the woods and smoked one cigarette after another, but no screams came.

In the wee hours, the four city slickers carried what looked to be two bodies outside.

“They think they're clever,” Eula said when the two couples separated. “But I'll get them. I'll wait two days, then I'll start worryin' about what's happened to my beloved husband.” She turned to Lassiter.
“You
find the gold. Do whatever you have to, but find that gold.”

But their plan had backfired, and Eula and Lassiter were taken away in handcuffs. Fenny's body had been retrieved from the freezer by the coroner. Later, R.J. had had to do a lot of talking to explain why Phyllis Vancurren's hair was on the body, even though she was innocent. She had been exonerated.

When Ariel finished the script, she was shy about showing it to David. In the end, she'd shown it first to her mother. “David and I will live in this house with you, but the regime will change,” Ariel had said when she returned. She had at last come to understand how much her mother loved her. Her mother's fear had been that if Ariel didn't marry someone from Arundel, she might leave and live somewhere else.

Not that Ariel's mother softened overnight, but she did learn that she could no longer bully her daughter into submission. As Ariel told David, “When you've found a dead body in a bathtub, it puts your mother's bad temper into perspective.”

So her mother read the script first. “It's not to my taste,” she said, “but I would imagine some people would like it.”

That was the highest praise Ariel had ever received from her mother. The next day she showed the script to David, who loved it, and he took it to R.J. Sara saw it before R.J. could read it. She finished it that night and told R.J. that if he had to buy a studio, she wanted him to have it
made into a movie and she wanted to play both Ariel and herself.

R.J. didn't have to buy anything. He read the script, then sent it to an L.A. agent and Lifetime TV bought it immediately. By the time the movie was ready to start filming, R.J. and Charley Dunkirk had bought most of King's Isle, so the shooting was done there. During the filming, Sara'd been so upset when she was lowered into the cave again that R.J. had ordered she be given oxygen.

Now, in the pub, Sara raised her glass of juice. “To brilliant beginnings.”

She was referring to the way Ariel had started her script, with the story David had told her while he was in the hospital. The TV movie started with an eleven-year-old boy in a camp run by two marijuana-smoking hippies. There was no dialogue, only sixties-era music as the boy left camp and explored the island. When he saw a skinny little man with big ears slipping in and out of the rocks, David followed him. The camera showed David hiding and waiting, then when the funny-looking man left, David slipped between
the rocks and saw the cave. That was before Fenny's thirty-second birthday, so the cave was empty. The scene changed to show a young David in school, trying to come up with a story about what he did that summer. He remembered the cave and the skinny man with the big ears and wrote about it. The last scene was the story being awarded a prize and his proud mother posting the essay on the Internet.

After the opening, the credits came on and the first scene showed a spoiled, overdressed, overly made-up Ariel haughtily demanding that her sweet, overworked cousin exchange places with her. Ariel hadn't written the script to make herself seem a snob, nor had she portrayed Sara as such a dumpling of virtue—but, as Sara said, she'd “tweaked” it. Defending herself, Sara said she'd made Ariel into a reverse Pygmalion. “You mean I went from upper class to your class?” Ariel said, making Sara laugh. Somewhere along the way she'd lost her feeling of being an outsider. She'd been welcomed with open arms in Arundel, and at last she felt she belonged somewhere.

There had been one argument, which Sara
won. Right after the rescue, in a fit of giddy relief that they were safe, the cousins had laughed and cried—and told each other their stories. Ariel had told Sara about tearing apart her nightgown, then later tearing apart David's trouser leg. Sara thought they were good scenes and had added them to the script. An argument ensued, but the scene stayed.

On the night the movie aired on TV, R.J. put up a screen the size of a barn in front of the courthouse on King's Isle, then invited the whole town. When Ariel—played by Sara and seen from the collarbone up—tore open her nightgown and said, “I am a woman,” the cheers could be heard to Arundel. Ariel was so embarrassed she would have slid under her chair if R.J. and David hadn't each grabbed an arm and kept her upright.

The crowd again cheered when Larry Lassiter and Eula Nezbit were hauled off in handcuffs, but when Judge Proctor was later arrested, the townspeople set off fireworks. Neither David nor R.J. knew the fireworks had been planned, so they laughed and cheered with the others.

After the Lifetime movie, R.J. announced that his own private movie studio had made a short
film that he'd like to show them. Some people groaned because the barbeque was ready and a band was warming up.

Ariel and David looked at each other. Sara smiled knowingly.

What came on the huge screen was a black-and-white film that had been crafted to look like a 1930s silent movie. It even rolled a few times. With no dialogue and the movement choppy and awkward, there was Gideon being reunited with his grandparents. When R.J. had seen the beautiful, unique house the Nezbits were living in, he'd remembered seeing something like it at an art show he'd attended in New York when he was still in college. After the ordeal on King's Isle, R.J. found the name of the architect, then contacted his parents. They said they didn't know what had become of their son. After a breakup with his girlfriend, he'd said he wanted time alone and that he didn't know where he was going or what he was going to do. That was the last they ever heard of him. R.J. figured that was when the young man had stayed on King's Isle and built that house. His name was James Gideon.

No one knew what happened to him, but through DNA testing he was found to be Gideon's father. As yet, they didn't know who his mother was.

The film showed R.J. surrounded by books, as though deep in research. Of course the truth was it had taken him one ten-minute call to an old girlfriend to find out the name of the artist whose show they'd seen together so long ago.

The next scene was Gideon with his grandparents. He was great in front of the camera, alternately pantomiming great laughter, then huge tears. When R.J. handed Gideon a big book that said “Princeton” on it, the young man feigned more tears, then picked R.J. up. R.J. pantomimed loss of dignity so well that everyone laughed. By that time, there wasn't a person on the island who hadn't had some dealing with R.J. in purchase negotiations, so they knew him.

Next into the picture were the twins. R.J.'d had a big sign put on a derelict brick building that read
COUNTY ORPHANAGE
. A woman dressed like a Victorian matron was taking the screaming twins—who were great hams—from Sara. She was crying, pushing them away, then on her knees
talking to them. The dialogue card said, “You will be fine. I'm sure they will love you very much.” Sara stood up, then cried on R.J.'s shoulder dramatically, while the twins were pulled, screaming, toward the orphanage. R.J. held Sara at arm's length, and the dialogue card said, “No one can love them as much as we do. Let's buy them.” When Sara kicked him in the shin, the audience howled with laughter. The card said, “Sorry. Let's adopt them.”

The last scene was in color, a series of snapshots of Thanksgiving and Christmas. One picture was of David and Ariel with their new baby, Miss Pommy looking on in adoration. In her mind, she'd won. Another photo showed R.J. with Bertie on his shoulders, and Sara holding Beatrice. Gideon was with his grandparents at an absurdly long table, with masses of food before them. Sara, R.J., David and Ariel, and all the others were there.

The scene changed to motion and everyone at the table looked at the camera and raised a glass in a toast. “To King's Isle,” they shouted.

The roar from the residents of King's Isle
was deafening. When the film ended, they got up and started dancing before the band began to play.

That was a month ago and now, R.J. and Sara, Ariel and David raised their glasses and said, “To us.”

Atria Books
Proudly Presents

First Impressions

Jude Deveraux

Available in Hardcover from Atria Books

Turn the page for a preview of

First Impressions
.…

T
HE MOMENT HE SAW THE SMIRK ON
Bill's face, Jared knew he was going to be given a job he wouldn't like. So what did a man have to do to finally be able to choose his own assignments? he thought for the thousandth time. Get shot? Naw, he'd done that three times. How about getting kidnapped? That had happened twice. Hey! How about being home so seldom that his wife leaves him for some other guy, a used car salesman who is now the father of their three kids? Nope. That had happened too. So
how about getting too old for the field? Too late. At forty-nine, Jared felt that he'd reached that age about six years ago.

“Don't look at me like that,” Bill said, holding his office door open for Jared to enter.

Groaning, Jared put on a pronounced limp as he hobbled toward the chair opposite Bill's overloaded desk,
WILLIAM TEASDALE
on a plaque in front. Sticking his leg out stiffly in front of him, he ostentatiously rubbed his knee, as though he were in great pain.

“You can cut it out,” Bill said as he sat down behind his desk. “I have no sympathy for you, and even if I did, I couldn't let you out of this one.” He picked up a folder, then looked across the top of it at Jared. “Most agents are glad to get out in the field. Why not you?”

Jared leaned back in his chair. “Where should I begin? With pain? I was in the hospital for three weeks after the last job. And life. I like living. And then there's—”

“Got a new girlfriend?” Bill asked, his eyes narrowed.

Jared gave a bit of a grin. “Yeah. Nice girl. I'd like to see her sometimes.”

“She's a reformed what?”

“Stripper,” Jared mumbled, giving Bill a sheepish grin. “So sue me. After a wife like Patsy—”

“Spare me,” Bill said, and once again he was the boss. “We need somebody to find out something, and you can do it. Remember that agent we found out had been a spy for the last fifteen years?”

“Yeah,” Jared said, bitterness in his voice. He'd worked with the man about ten years ago, and had filed a report saying that something wasn't right about the guy, but he didn't know what. No one paid any attention. A few months ago, they'd found out that the agent was a spy and that he'd been feeding information to his mother country for years. “So what did you find out from him?”

“Nothing. Suicide before we could get to him.”

“Please tell me that you don't want
me
to travel to wherever he was from, go undercover, and find out—”

“No,” Bill said, waving his hand. “Nothing like that. The truth is that we can't figure out
what his last big project was. He knew we were coming about ten minutes before we got there, so he had time to destroy a lot of evidence. But we found disks hidden under the floors, and a list of names inside a lightbulb. He had time to get rid of it all, so why didn't he destroy it?”

“But he didn't,” Jared said, feeling the old wave of curiosity well up inside of him and trying hard to suppress it. Why? was the question that had caused most of the problems in his life. Even after a case was considered cold, Jared's “why” often made him continue. “What
did
he do?”

“He wadded up several pieces of paper into tiny balls and swallowed them.”

“I bet somebody had fun retrieving them.”

“Yeah,” Bill said with a half smile. “We lost most of what went down him, but forensics managed to get a name and part of a Social Security number.” He pushed a clear plastic folder across the desk, and Jared picked it up. Inside was a small piece of paper that seemed to have some writing on it, but Jared couldn't make it out.

“Eden Palmer,” Bill said. “That name and a
few numbers were the only things the crime lab could recover.”

“Who's he?”