Rebel Island (4 page)

Now, twenty-five years later, Alex and I climbed back up
those steps together. The tower groaned in the storm. In the yellow beam of Alex’s flashlight, the limestone walls glistened with moisture.

At last we reached the lantern room—a circular platform surrounding the huge golden chrysalis that was the Fresnel lens. There were no wood shavings on the floor this time, nothing but a couple of crushed beer cans. The gallery’s outer walls were storm-proof glass, but I could see nothing through them. With the rain slamming against them, they looked more like marble.

The radio sat on the table in front of us.

I knew almost nothing about shortwave radios, but I did know how to tell when one had been smashed to pieces. This one had been.

I started to say, “Don’t touch—”

But Alex picked up the ball-peen hammer. “How…what the hell—”

“Who else knew about this radio, Alex?”

“Nobody! I mean, just me and the staff.”

I thought about that. I thought about fingerprints. Whoever had shattered the radio had left the hammer behind, which meant he was either sloppy and rushed or unconcerned about being identified. Either way, I didn’t like it.

“Alex, when Longoria arrived on the island, did he come alone?”

“I—I don’t know. I told you, Chris checked him in.”

“It’s your hotel. A small hotel. But you don’t know?”

Alex stared at the window. Outside the storm was a blur of gray and black, like ink coming to a boil. “Look…Longoria wanted a first-floor room, away from the other guests. He wanted a private exit. That’s what Chris said.”

“There were handcuffs on the bed.”

“Tres—”

“Longoria was a U.S. Marshal. Was he, by chance, transporting a fugitive?”

Alex stared miserably at the radio. It was hard to believe he was the same person I used to be afraid of as a kid—the same Alex Huff who had pointed a knife at my face.

“Longoria came in late last night,” he said. “A charter boat brought him in from Rockport. Chris arranged it. I had nothing to do with it.”

“And?”

“And I didn’t see him come in. I don’t know if he was alone, Tres. I didn’t want to know.”

Lightning gilded the windows silver. The whole tower seemed to sway beneath me.

“We need to find Chris,” I said. “We’ll talk in the parlor.”

“You’re not going to tell the other guests?” Alex looked horrified.

“That we might be stuck on this island with a fugitive who just murdered a U.S. Marshal? Yeah, Alex, I kind of think they need to know that.”

6

To get away from the old man, Chase pulled his friends into
an unused bedroom.

“Well?” he said. “What the hell do we do now?”

Markie rubbed his chin. He was a big guy, usually good in bad situations, but even he looked shaken. “That was a cop. Did you know he was a cop?”

“How was I supposed to know?”

“We’ve got to get out of here.” Ty’s face was pasty. He seemed to be having trouble swallowing.

“Nobody’s going anywhere,” Chase told him.

“Listen to the storm, man,” Ty insisted. “There’s no way we can do this.”

“We will,” Chase said. “We’ve got no choice.”

Markie and Ty said nothing. They knew damn well he was right.

Chase had done his best to pretend the murder didn’t bother him. It was critical that the other guests believe the three of them were just stupid college guys. But he couldn’t shake the image of the bullet hole in the marshal’s chest. He couldn’t help thinking it was a warning. If this weekend didn’t go right, he could end up just like that.

He studied Markie’s face, trying to gauge his loyalty. They’d been friends, if you could call it that, for almost three years now. But what they would have to do this weekend…things like that could strain loyalties, make business relationships unravel. Chase would have to watch his back. And Ty—shit, the guy was a basket case. Chase shouldn’t have brought him along, but he didn’t trust Ty to stay quiet otherwise. He wanted the bastard where he could keep an eye on him.

Chase had worked his way up from nothing. He’d gotten himself into college. He supported his whole fucking family back home. He’d learned how to make a lot of money and deal with hard people. He wasn’t going to let anyone mess up his plans.

“All right, look,” he said, trying to sound calm. “It’s got to happen tonight. I don’t give a crap about the storm. We’ve got no choice.”

Markie looked like he wanted to say something, but then changed his mind. He nodded.

“Come on, Chase,” Ty pleaded. “You know I can’t—I can’t stand this much longer. You know how I get.”

“You’re
gonna
stand it.” Chase pointed a finger at Ty’s face like the barrel of a gun. “You’re gonna help us. Or you’re gonna end up like the cop in there.”

Ty shuddered. “All right, I’m just saying—”

The old man, Benjamin Lindy, appeared at the end of the corridor. “You gentlemen coming or not?”

The old man gave Chase the creeps, but he tried for a light tone. “Yeah…uh, sir. We’re on the way.”

Mr. Lindy scowled, but he started down the hall.

“We’ve got to play along,” Chase said. “And for Christ’s sake, Ty, stop looking like you’re going to throw up.”

“I feel like that.”

“Well, don’t. Nobody else here knows shit about what’s going on. I want to keep it that way.”

“What about the dead cop?” Markie asked. “And Chris Stowall?”

“We’ll figure it out,” Chase said. “Believe me. Stowall is
not
going to fuck with me again.”

He led his friends to the parlor. Anger made red spots dance in front of his eyes. He’d been played for a fool. This whole setup sucked. But he was going to make the best of it. He would come out of this weekend in one piece, even if he was the only one who did.

7

Even when I was a child, the hotel’s parlor was decorated
in dead fish. A five-foot-long marlin curved over the fireplace. Redfish and bass lined the walls. Their frozen eyes and gasping mouths used to scare the hell out of me—almost as much as the hotel’s owner.

Every time we arrived at the hotel, my parents would make me sit with them in the parlor while they “caught up” with Mr. Eli. Garrett was excused from this ritual, theoretically because he was helping Alex Huff with the luggage, which I resented to no end.

Mr. Eli had bought the hotel at public auction after federal agents seized it from its previous owner, a Thirties bootlegger who had been South Texas’s answer to Al Capone.

Eli was eccentric in a different way. He was an old bachelor who never wore anything but pajamas and a Turkish bathrobe and slippers. He smelled faintly of lilacs. His skin was milky, his hair as black as an oil slick, and he had a strange mustache shaped like a seagull’s wings on his upper lip. Years later, I realized that he must’ve been gay—one of those men who choose, for whatever reason, to live in a climate as hospitable to them as the Arctic is to a tropical plant. That wasn’t what scared me. It was the fact that he seemed able to read minds. He would look at me with his watery green eyes and say “I believe young Tres is thirsty for lemonade,” or “I see you had a hard year at school,” or “Don’t worry about Alex. He means well.” Whatever happened to be troubling me at the moment.

In all, Mr. Eli seemed like the sort of man my father would detest, but my father always showed him the greatest deference.

On our last visit to Rebel Island as a family, Mr. Eli greeted my father in his usual manner. “Sheriff Navarre, shot anyone lately?”

“Not lately, sir,” my father replied. Whether it was true or not, I didn’t know.

We sat in the parlor with all the glassy-eyed fish staring down at us. My mother told Mr. Eli he was looking well. In truth the old man looked paler and thinner every summer, but he accepted the compliment with a nod. My father and Mr. Eli talked about the weather and fishing conditions. Mr. Eli seemed to know everything about the sea, though as far as I could tell he never set foot outside the hotel.

After a while, Mr. Eli asked what we would like to drink, and my father requested whiskey.

“Jack,” my mother chided. “Remember?”

I didn’t know what she was talking about, but apparently my father did. His face flushed. He could be a scary man, my father. His huge girth was intimidating enough, and when he got angry his eyes were as bright as a hawk’s.

“I’ll have a drink with our host,” he told my mother.

“Jack, you promised.”

My father rose from his chair. The air in the room was as sharp as broken glass. He turned to Mr. Eli and said, “If you’ll excuse me, sir.”

Once he left, my mother muttered a quick apology to Mr. Eli. “I’d better go, ah, talk to him. Tres, stay here, will you?”

That was the last thing I wanted—but my mother left me alone with Mr. Eli.

The old man smiled so his seagull mustache seemed to spread its wings. “Let’s get you a soda.”

He called for the maid, an elderly African American woman named Delilah. She brought me a Coke over ice with a maraschino cherry. Delilah had scars on the inside of her wrists, crisscrossed swollen pink lines like Chinese words. I’d asked my father about those scars once, and he’d told me that Mr. Eli had saved Delilah’s life. He wouldn’t explain how.

I sat on the sofa, drinking my soda and trying not to look at Mr. Eli. I wanted to leave, but my mother had ordered me to stay here. For once, I hoped Mr. Eli would read my mind: take pity on me and tell me to go away.

“Alex fixed the fishing boat,” he said. “Perhaps he can take you out.”

“Maybe,” I said halfheartedly.

“You don’t like Alex,” Mr. Eli said. “But you must be patient with him.”

“Why?”

Mr. Eli nodded. “Fair question. Alex and his father have had a hard life, Tres. A lot of tragedy. But they’re good people. Loyal and compassionate.”

I couldn’t believe Mr. Eli was talking about the same kid who stuck bottle rockets in my shorts.

Mr. Eli smoothed a fold in his bathrobe. “Tres, I take in all kinds—all sorts of wounded souls. Enough time on this island can heal most scars eventually. Alex, as far as I know, is the only person who’s ever been born here. That makes him special, in my opinion. I have a feeling someday Alex is going to pay me back many times over.”

“Pay you back for what?” I asked.

Mr. Eli smiled benignly. “I think it’s safe to go to your room now, Tres. 102, as usual, but I’d knock first.”

And so I left Mr. Eli in the parlor. Years afterward, I wondered if he’d been including the Navarre family among the wounded souls he’d invited to Rebel Island. I decided he probably had.

Now, so many years later, the same marlin hung over the
mantel. The trophies were a little dustier, but they had the same glassy eyes and surprised expressions, not too different from the half-dozen guests who were milling around the room.

I looked at Alex. “Where’s Chris?”

He chewed his thumbnail. “I’m not sure. Jose, the cook, said he was helping move the body—”

“
They
moved
the body?
”

Alex blinked. “Hey, I didn’t—they just—”

“Whose brilliant idea was that?”

Next to me, Garrett tugged on my sleeve. “Yo, little bro. Come here a sec. Alex, man, go get yourself a drink or something.”

Garrett wheeled himself into the hallway and waited for me to follow. “Back off Alex, okay? He’s having a tough time.”

“He’s being evasive,” I said. “And he’s being stupid. His staff just ruined a crime scene.”

“You never liked him, did you?”

“Garrett, that is
not
the point.”

He wheeled his chair back and forth, digging tracks in the carpet. “Little bro, Alex is having some trouble. I mean, even before tonight. I didn’t ask you down here just for the honeymoon.”

“My brother had a selfish ulterior motive? What a surprise.”

“Yeah, well. The truth is—”

Maia came up behind him and placed her hands on Garrett’s shoulders. She looked better after lying down. The color had returned to her face.

“I hate to interrupt,” she said, glancing inside the parlor, “but it looks like your audience is ready.”

If they were my audience, I needed a warm-up act.

The upset blond lady sat in an armchair. She was wearing pink silk pajamas and hugging a pillow like she was afraid I’d hit her. The three college kids stood at the wet bar, browsing the labels on liquor bottles. There was the redheaded guy, a big bald dude and a skinny Latino kid with nervous eyes and shaggy black hair. Two staff members—the cook and the maid—were casting me worried glances from the steps by the pool table. The only person who seemed at ease was the old man, Benjamin Lindy, immaculate in his charcoal suit, sitting cross-legged on the sofa next to Alex, and even Lindy was looking at me warily, as if I might try to sell him something.

Then there was the storm, which was an audience member as much as any of the people. It resonated in the timbers of the house, making the walls creak and the floor vibrate. There were no outside windows in the room, but I could feel the storm grinding, like a surgeon’s saw cutting into bone.

“So,” I said. “My name is Tres Navarre. I, uh—”

“You a cop?” the redheaded college kid asked.

“No.”

“Then why the hell are you in charge?”

“Nobody said I was in charge.”

“Because he’s a private investigator,” Alex offered.

“
Was
a private investigator,” I corrected.

“And he knows a lot more than any of us about what to do when there’s a murder.”

The storm kept sawing into the timbers.

The cook raised his hand. “Señor, it was for sure, then,
homicidio
?”

His accent was borderland Spanish—Laredo, maybe, or Juárez.

“You’re Jose?” I asked. “The one who moved the body?”

He glanced at the maid, then nodded. Something about the way the two of them sat together, leaning toward each other as if for protection, told me they were married. As mad as I was about Jose moving the body, I decided I’d better not berate him too badly in front of his wife.

“All right, Jose,” I said. “You noticed the gunshot wound in Mr. Longoria’s chest?”

“
Claro,
señor.”

“Did you happen to find a gun when you were in the room?”

“No, señor.”

“Then we can be pretty sure it was murder. A person who commits suicide doesn’t normally hide the weapon after he shoots himself. Besides, Longoria was a U.S. Marshal. He’d rented a room with two beds. There was a pair of cut handcuffs on one bed.”

“A prisoner?” the blond lady asked. “You think he was escorting a prisoner?”

Her tone surprised me. I expected hysterics, but she sounded calm and alert.

“That’s possible,” I admitted.

“But…” She looked around, like she was afraid to say more. “That can’t be it.”

“The young lady is right,” Mr. Lindy said. “It doesn’t make sense. Why would a marshal escort a prisoner here? Rebel Island isn’t on the way to anywhere.”

“I’d like to understand that, too,” I said. “Did any of you see the marshal when he arrived? Was he with anyone?”

No one answered.

Jose and the maid shook their heads.

The redheaded college kid cleared his throat. “So let me get this straight. You’re telling us there’s, like, an escaped fugitive on the island.”

Alex was silently pleading with me to tone it down, to avoid further panic in his hotel.

“That,” I said, “is a distinct possibility. At any rate, whoever shot Longoria is stuck on this island until the storm passes, and we have no way to contact the mainland.”

“That’s whacked,” declared the college kid, which I thought covered the situation pretty well.

“Has anyone seen Chris?” I asked. “Chris—What’s his last name?”

“Stowall,” Alex answered miserably. “Chris Stowall.”

“The manager?” Mr. Lindy asked.

“Yeah,” the college guy said. “That freak who told us to turn down our music.”

“We need to find him,” I said. “He checked Longoria in. He may have some answers. Who saw him last?”

The blond lady developed a sudden interest in her pillowcase.

“We’ll find him,” the college guy said. “Beats sitting here.”

“Don’t go anywhere alone,” I said. “And don’t try to go outside.”

“Yes, mother.” The guy nodded to his friends and they headed off. The shaggy-haired Latino kid looked a little nervous about it, but the big bald dude put a hand on his back and kept him moving.

Mr. Lindy spread his arms across the couch. “So, Mr.
Navarre. What do you suggest we do now?”

“Stay in here, together, as much as possible. If anyone has to go somewhere, go with someone else.”

“Hell, little bro, we don’t need bathroom buddies,” Garrett grumbled. “We’re grown-ups.”

It was the first time I’d ever heard my brother claim to be a grown-up, which in itself was pretty disturbing.

“The killer has no place to go,” I told him. “At least not until the storm passes. Cornered people tend to be desperate.”