Island of Deceit (3 page)

“Have a nice day, Sheriff,” she mumbled. “I have to get my walk in before I go into the hair salon.”

It was several seconds before Barbara heard a car door slam and the car inch closer.

“You know I'm beginning to wonder about you. You aren't afraid of the law, are you? Or are you hiding out? Rob a bank, Barbara?”

He was hitting too close to the truth for comfort. Maybe she hadn't robbed a bank, but she planned to rob the Stones. “Of course not,” she replied smoothly.

“You're not putting your customers under a spell and robbing them blind when their heads are tucked under the dryer, are you?” He was so corny, but he could get away with it.

“Heard any complaints, Sheriff?”

“They're under your spell. How would they know to complain?”

Barbara laughed.

“One day you'll let me have my way.”

Barbara stumbled. Just the thought sent a pleasing ripple through her.

“I'm already under your spell,” he said. “Be careful, you hear? Have a good day.”

Harper pulled ahead and turned a corner before Barbara realized he still had her hat.

 

Three miles from Barbara, Trent Seaton cut the motor in his boat and paddled the rest of the way to shore. He'd rented the old house for four months and needed to get the lay of the land before he moved in. With his binoculars, he watched some asshole leave the house with a magazine tucked under his arm, scratch his belly, and amble to the outhouse as if he belonged there. What the heck was an outhouse doing there? The place had an indoor bathroom. But maybe the electricity hadn't been turned on yet. After all, he wasn't supposed to arrive for a few more days.

And the owner had said the house hadn't been rented out since the end of September. He'd also mentioned a brother-in-law who tried to sneak in freebees. Trent couldn't have that. He couldn't have some asshole walking in on him or spying on him. He was going to nip this shit in the bud right now.

Trent hunkered down in the marsh behind some bushes. Made him remember the old times when he was in the Marines. He waited ten minutes. A flock of birds flew south. A great gust of wind blew in, sending a shiver up his backside and bringing the stench of death with it. He shivered again. Must be a dead animal somewhere. Or else it was the unique stench of the marsh. He'd have to put up with it for the next couple months.

Was the guy going to read the whole friggin magazine in the stinking outhouse?

This had seemed the perfect place. Isolated. No houses in sight. Didn't have to worry about nosy neighbors getting in his business, trying to keep tabs on him, reporting his movements to what stood for pitiful law enforcement on this hick island. Now that part suited him just fine. He didn't need any jerkwater cop trailing him.

Trent took aim at the outhouse. It was time it came down anyhow. This was the twenty-first century for chrissakes, in the good old US of A. Trent fired over the man's head, peppering one end of the outhouse to the other.

The man yelled “Jesus H. Christ!” from inside. Was more than likely crouched on the floor. Trent emptied his gun, dropped the clip, inserted another one, and fired again.

“All right, for crissakes! I'm leaving,” the guy hollered out.

Trent stopped firing, and after a moment, the man gingerly cracked the door, probably to test the waters.

Trent had already reloaded, but he wasn't going to shoot the guy.

Pulling up his britches, and without even bothering to pack his gear, the guy sailed to the truck and fumbled the remote to unlock the door, all the while looking around like a scared rabbit, expecting to feel a bullet any second. Once in the truck, he jammed the key in the ignition and sent gravel spewing as he pulled off.

Trent had paid good money to rent the cabin and no SOB was going to encroach on his time. As soon as the loafer was out of sight, he retrieved the motorboat from its hiding place and started the motor. Soon he was bumping across the choppy water back to Norfolk. Good thing he had a cast-iron stomach, else he would have upchucked the breakfast he'd eaten at the IHOP.

Okay, so maybe his mother wouldn't have approved. She was always whacking him upside his head, telling him to use the brains the Good Lord had seen fit to give him.

He didn't take drugs or sell them, and he didn't steal. But his mama disapproved of his career choice. He felt so laden with guilt and grief he couldn't stand it. His mother loved him. And he'd never been a good son. Only brought her worry and heartache. To make up for all the deeds that made Mama heartsick, he was going to pay the sonofabitch back who took Mama's money.

“You're gonna be proud of me, Mama. I'm going to get some justice for you.”

He'd been away on an enforcement when some slick-talking dude had sweet-talked his mama out of her savings. She believed in putting away a little at a time. She'd attended secretarial school right out of high school. She'd waited tables to make the money to put herself through school and had started out working in a secretarial pool at a large corporation. She'd worked her way to the CEO's office.

“Hard work, Trent. That's the way to make it,” she'd drilled in his head. Sure he worked hard, but it wasn't quite the work she was referring to. He wasn't exactly the nine-to-five type.

He'd done a stint in the Marines. That was as close to an honorable job as he'd ever had. It made him tough at least. Tough enough to be a bouncer in nightclubs or an enforcer when people didn't pay the bookie on time.

He never killed nobody. Just broke a few arms, bloodied noses. Stuff like that. The worst he'd done was shoot a guy in the leg. Once you'd gained a reputation, they went to any length to get the money for you. And if they were dead or too incapacitated to work, you couldn't get your money. He wasn't all bad. At least Mama could be proud he wasn't a murderer.

But when those suckers cleaned out her bank account, they might as well have put a bullet in her head. She couldn't live knowing she'd lost everything—that she'd have to depend on others for basics like food and medicine. Social security didn't pay enough for a person to live on. And although she had her company retirement, she felt that she needed that extra money for emergencies. You never knew what life would turn up. She'd always been proud of the fact that she'd earned her own way.

Pain pierced Trent's chest. When he got through with them, they'd wish they'd never heard of Lucinda Seaton.

Right now, she lay in her bed nearly comatose. His sister was looking out for her. Maybe if he could get her money back, she'd come back to them.

He'd been monitoring the Stones for a month now. What he couldn't quite figure out was how Barbara Turner fit into the equation. His mother told him the old guy had a daughter. At first he thought Barbara was the daughter, but she wasn't a young chick and she was dating the guy's son. That didn't make sense to him unless she was really his son's girlfriend all along and just told his mother another lie. Elliot had said his son's girlfriend was younger than he was, but then, how could you count on anything Elliot had said being true? Still, why would Andrew want to date a woman so much older than he?

It also surprised him that Barbara worked, really worked hard. That lot wasn't known for hard work, only stealing. Anyway, he was going to try to get a job in the shop with her. That way he'd get the low-down on everything. Nobody talked like a bunch of women in a hair salon. It wouldn't take him long to learn everybody's business.

 

A man came barreling into the police station to report a shooting. After listening to him, Harper brought him back to his office and pulled out a form.

“Did you see anyone?” Harper asked. He knew who the guy was—the cabin's owner's brother-in-law. He'd stayed a week during the summer. The cabin's owner had asked Harper to keep an eye on things. Had even sent Harper an e-mail telling him he'd rented the place out for a few months to Seaton. This was not Seaton and the man had no business there.

“Are you staying on the island?” Harper asked.

“Oh, no,” the man said, shaking his head. “Like I said, I was just passing through. Thought I'd report what happened, though.”

“We're going to check it out. In the meantime, why don't you wait around?”

The deputy on duty saw to the man's comfort with a cup of coffee, and Harper called John Aldridge, his day-shift assistant.

“Scott, why don't you drop by there, too? Just in case there's trouble,” he said to Scott Lowell, a retired officer helping out while their lone detective was away on training. The place he mentioned was close to Barbara's. It disturbed Harper that someone was shooting that close to where she lived, especially since she went walking in the mornings.

He sighed. They'd just solved a string of murders. A funeral home owner who'd married one of the islanders had been a necrophiliac, and it turned out he was also a serial killer.

It was the end of October. Thanksgiving and Christmas were close. It would be nice if the island went back to its normal peaceful state when the sheriff's department's worst offenses were neighbors arguing over fences and speeding tickets. This was a small town—too small for all the activity they were having lately.

Now that Harper had dispatched Scott and John to the site, he was rifling through paperwork. And thinking about Barbara. He'd be the first to admit that he'd become complacent and uncompromising with the dating scene. Sure he spent time with women on the mainland—never on the island—because marriage wasn't on his mind and women here wanted marriage and expected marriage. They had families, voters actually, to back them up, and he had to run for office. When a relationship ended, he didn't want irate relatives knocking on his door, bringing up his dating experiences when election time came around every four years.

He'd given up on finding someone who interested him enough to bring him out of his isolation. And then Barbara had appeared and set his blood on fire. Made him dream of things he'd long forgotten, like having a woman in his home, a permanent fixture in his life. Someone who cared. He started to think bachelorhood wasn't all it was cracked up to be. Saying that she'd knocked him for a loop was putting it mildly.

Barbara was a big girl, but a beautiful woman. Her black hair had grown longer due more to lack of time to get it trimmed, he suspected, but it was always well-coiffed. Her face was the rich brown of gravy poured over chicken or turkey. And her warm eyes—he just wanted to see them light with desire for him.

Harper sighed in frustration. By the time he'd decided to pursue her, the island was riddled with murders and he was up to his neck in trying to solve them. It was the wrong time to pursue a new relationship, especially with a woman as skittish as Barbara. He needed time to woo her.

By the time they'd caught the funeral home owner, some snot-nosed kid had caught her attention. Harper shook his head. What a sophisticated woman like Barbara saw in that boy, he didn't know. But there it was.

It had been many years since Harper had had to work to get a date. Hell, since high school, women approached him. He stifled a groan. He had his work cut out with Barbara, though.

He wasn't giving up. He wasn't a stalker either, but as far as he was concerned, Barbara was his. The relationship she was in was doomed to failure. He was a long way from thinking of a permanent relationship, but Barbara wasn't from the island and wasn't encumbered with the problems islanders presented.

“John's on line one, Harper,” the dispatcher said on the intercom.

Harper picked up the phone.

“Got a dead body here.”

Harper tightened his grip on the phone. “Who is it?”

“Don't know. It's been here a while.”

“Shit.” Harper scooted back the chair. “I'll call the coroner.”

His second call was to another retired deputy to keep any crowd at bay so that he and his deputy could actually work the scene. Harper got there ten minutes ahead of the local doctor, who was also the coroner. Slipping on crime scene bootees and plastic gloves, he waded through the marsh to the water's edge, focusing on the scene around him.

John was snapping pictures and Scott had set cones out, blocking the driveway, but stayed well away from the body.

Harper looked for old tire tracks or footprints, wondering how the body had gotten there. It was a woman. Had someone merely dumped her off a boat? Even from ten feet, he could see red polish on her long nails and wondered if someone was walking around with scratches from when she fought him off.

There was one set of fresh footprints, made by John. Any older ones had long ago washed away with the rain. But something was there. There always was. And they'd find it.

Harper went closer and stooped near the body. One arm was caught on a bush—as if the bush had grown around her. Up close, the pungent odor of death and decay rose to his nostrils, the scent mixing with the natural decay of the marsh. Caught in the underbrush, the body had decomposed enough that the face was unrecognizable, although most of her body was intact. Birds had obviously attacked it, and animals, too, but not enough to drag parts away.

“If I hadn't been checking out this area, the corpse could have gone a lot longer without discovery,” John said. “Maybe eventually work loose in a storm to disappear into the ocean.” At six feet, John wore his uniform and a yellow county-issued coat identifying him as part of the Paradise Island Sheriff's Department.

“I'm thinking she's that missing woman, the one who worked for Mr. Hughes,” John said. “Sarah Rhodes.”

Harper nodded in agreement. She was the only one missing that they knew of. And since she wasn't from the island and her family hadn't pressed the fact that she was indeed missing when Hughes called them, they'd believed she had simply stopped working for the older man.