The Men of Thorne Island (2 page)

Leaving her car in the ferry lot, Sara boarded the large passenger boat midafternoon and arrived at South Bass less than an hour later. She was enchanted with the island’s primary village, Put-in-Bay. Quaint, refurbished cottages lined the narrow streets. A small business district boasted ice-cream shops, cafés and specialty stores. Visitors could choose from several inviting hotels. The island’s charm made Sara more anxious to see her own property. She inquired at the harbor about transportation to Thorne Island.

An employee of the ferry company gave her disappointing news. “There isn’t any boat that goes to Thorne,” he said. “Leastways, not a public one.”

“Then how do people get there?” she asked.

“People don’t,” he said. “Not tourists, anyway, though Winkleman goes there two, three times a week.”

“Wonderful. Where do I find Winkleman?”

“At the Happy Angler this time of day. You could set your watch by it.”

Having gotten directions to the local tavern and a description of Winkleman, Sara located the captain she intended to hire. She walked into his boisterous circle of friends and tapped him on the shoulder. “Pardon me. Are you Mr. Winkleman?”

He set a mug of beer on the counter and leaned back on a well-used bar stool. “Guess I could be,” he said.

“I’m looking for someone to take me to Thorne Island. I understand you go there.”

Winkleman removed a sudsy mustache from his upper lip with his index finger and pushed an old naval cap back on a patch of thick gray hair. “Was just there yesterday. Don’t plan to go again for two days.”

A two-day layover—even in charming Put-in-Bay—was not part of Sara’s plan. “I really need to go today, Mr. Winkleman. Is there anyone else who could take me?”

“Nobody else goes.”

The sailor’s succinct answer puzzled Sara. Why wasn’t there regular service to Thorne Island? She recalled the photos of the pretty harbor and the delightful Cozy Cove Inn. Surely these attractions should lure tourists to the island. “I’ll pay you of course,” she said. “More than your regular fee, if that will help to persuade you.”

He squinted at her from beneath scraggly charcoal eyebrows. “It’ll cost you twenty bucks.”

It sounded reasonable. “That’s fine,” she said. “I left my bags at the harbor office. Can we go now?”

“Gotta finish my beer first. Meet you there.”

Fifteen minutes later Sara decided that maybe twenty dollars wasn’t such a bargain, after all. The captain’s boat smelled of fish, and twice during the short ride to Thorne Island, she had to pull her bags clear of a steadily increasing pool of water seeping into the stern.

Conversation with her captain was practically impossible because of the roar of the engine. She tried to ask him about the people who lived on the island. Again he said very little, commenting only that everyone there was a close buddy of his.

When a patch of green became recognizable as a shoreline, Winkleman slowed the boat. Sara tucked her wind-whipped hair into what was left of the French braid she’d fashioned that morning. Then she turned her attention to her island.

She thought she’d recognize the tidy little harbor from the brochure and looked for the bright yellow mooring ropes spanning the length of its pier. Instead, she saw a dilapidated wooden platform jutting into the water on precariously tilted posts. Winkleman maneuvered into position beside one of them.

“Is this the main dock?” she asked.

“This is the only dock,” he said.

She climbed onto rickety boards that creaked under her feet. There was none of the usual activity one expected of a quaint village harbor. There were no shops or boats. The entire area consisted of a one-room clapboard bait house with broken windows.

“Oh, dear,” Sara sighed. “I hadn’t expected things to be quite this way.”

Winkleman tossed her bags onto the dock and
grinned up at her. “Nice, ain’t it? Some of these islands have begun to look pretty shabby. The fellows that live here keep Thorne up pretty good.”

Her gaze wandered to the clumps of overgrown plants that skirted the shoreline. A narrow, dirt pathway through a thicket of brush and trees led somewhere. “There is a hotel on the island, isn’t there?” she asked.

Winkleman appeared thoughtful. Finally a light dawned in his eyes. “Right. The Cozy Cove. It’s just up that pathway.”

Thank goodness.
Sara’s misgivings were replaced with a glimmer of hope. At least the delightful little bed-and-breakfast was real enough. So what if the dock needed some work? She could manage funds for a few minor repairs. She picked up her suitcases, anticipating her first evening on her island.

Winkleman untied his mooring line, took the twenty she offered and pushed away from the dock. “See ya.”

Apprehension suddenly dampened Sara’s enthusiasm. What if there was no phone on the island? In her rush to pack, she’d left her cell phone in Fort Lauderdale. And now her only link to the mainland was about to roar out of her life. “Wait! Mr. Winkleman, how can I reach you?”

He chugged back to her and took a ragged tablet from the console of his boat. “I’ll be back in two days,” he said while scribbling, “but here’s my number if you need to call. Doubt you will, though. The boys take care of things. Ol’ Brody has a cell phone. He’d probably let you use it.”

She set down a suitcase and took the paper before it could blow out of his hand and into the water. Then she shoved it deep into the pocket of her purse. All at once, that phone number and a cell phone belonging to someone named Ol’ Brody seemed absolutely vital to her existence. Winkleman was a hundred yards from the dock when she finally turned and headed up the pathway.

Following two twists in the lane, Sara came to a wood-sided building that appeared as weary as she suddenly felt. She leaned against the weathered picket fence surrounding the property and tried to associate the structure in front of her with the one in the brochure photo.

It was barely recognizable as the Cozy Cove Inn. Only a sign hanging by one rusty nail from a post at the front gate confirmed its identity. The front-porch roof sagged against the peeling white gingerbread molding of its supports.

Sara stepped onto the porch, dropped her bags by her feet and sank into a drooping wicker chair. She might have sat there indefinitely had she not noticed the baskets of blooming spring flowers hanging from the eaves. They were the only sign that someone still cared about the place.

She stood and paced the length of the veranda. Old wood planks groaned under her feet, but fortunately remained intact. With renewed optimism, she turned the knob on the door and entered
her
Cozy Cove Inn.

She stepped into a wide hallway furnished with only a guest-registration counter, a wall clock that had stopped at eight-twenty-two and a pair of Windsor
chairs scarred with what high-priced decorators might call character.

To her left was a large parlor. It was impossible to determine the style or colors of anything in the room. Every piece of furniture had been covered by a sheet except one wing chair and a small table by the fireplace. The walls were adorned with peaceful country prints and shelves of hardback books.

Feeling more like an intruder than a proprietor, Sara slowly backed out of the room. Unease raised the hair on her neck. The inn appeared empty, yet Sara had the distinct sense that she was not alone.

She’d never believed in the supernatural, yet the presence of another soul in this house was as real to her at this moment as was the newel post at the bottom of the thick banister. She curved her fingers around the post and willed herself to go up the stairs.

A center hallway veered to the left and right of the second-floor landing. Doors stretched the length of the hall. All of them were closed except one at the very end. Weak sunlight mixed with an artificial glow poured into the passage. Sara approached cautiously, ready to bolt at the first sign of trouble. Logic told her that she wouldn’t find any of course. Mr. Winkleman would have told her if there was something bizarre about the island. Surely he wouldn’t have left her alone…

The first unnatural sounds of Thorne Island floated from the room to Sara’s ears. It was a light tapping, almost like… Yes, that was it. Sara stood outside the open door listening to the harmless sound of someone pecking a computer keyboard.

She stepped over the threshold and had her first look at the other resident of the Cozy Cove Inn. It was a man and his back was to her. Dark, thick curls covered the collar of his knit shirt.

His hands halted above the keyboard. His back straightened and his voice, low and hoarse, reached her across the room. “If you’re trying to scare me to death, it’ll never work. So if you came to kill me, you’d best use a gun.”

W
HEN THE FULL IMPACT
of the man’s statement registered in Sara’s brain, she didn’t know whether to laugh or run from the room. She did neither, but instead spoke to the back of his head. “What a horrible thing to say.”

His ancient office chair squeaked as he turned slowly toward her. “Not to someone creeping around your house, it isn’t.”

Though he faced her, he was still in the shadows. She couldn’t detect any details of his features.

“Of course, I didn’t know at first that you were a woman,” he added.

Sara hated being at a disadvantage. The last amber rays of daylight speared through the louvered shutters at his back. He could see her clearly enough, but his form was nothing but an amorphous gray blob to her. “What difference does it make that I’m a woman?” she said. “I could still kill you.”

He stretched one leg, then settled his ankle on the opposite knee, a casual pose for someone who just a moment before had thought he might be taking his last breath. “Yeah, but you won’t. Women don’t like to murder people after they’ve looked into their eyes.”

“Then don’t get too confident,” Sara shot back, “because I haven’t seen your eyes yet.”

He deliberately moved his chair out of the shadow until sunlight fell across his upper body. “There, is that better?”

It was. The shapeless mass had transformed into an exceedingly acceptable-looking human. Except perhaps for his almost black hair, which was unstylishly long and untidy. It curled over his forehead to meet a slightly lighter pair of straight eyebrows. Much of the rest of an interesting face was hidden by at least two days’ growth of beard. He was fairly young, near her own age, Sara assumed, prompting her to conclude that she wasn’t looking at “Ol’ Brody.”

Once Sara had noted these details, the man’s shirt commanded her attention. She’d given her father a similar one at least fifteen years ago when he took up golf, and her sense of humor had been quite different from what it was now. A beige knit background hugged the man’s chest respectably, but it was the eighteen numbered golf flags fluttering around his torso that made Sara choke back her laughter.

Each flag had a different cartoon printed on its surface. Flag number sixteen, the one she could see most clearly, depicted a droopy-eyed fellow with an ice bag on his head and a thermometer sticking out of his mouth. The words “Feeling under par” were printed next to the caricature. Other clichéd golf references decorated the remaining flags. Sara covered her mouth with her hand, but wasn’t successful in stopping a chuckle.

The man plucked a portion of the shirt away from his chest and stared down at it. “What? You don’t like my shirt?”

“It would be all right if it were a cocktail napkin at the nineteenth hole.”

“Hey, it’s got a pocket. That’s why I like it. Try to find shirts with pockets these days.”

Sara’s limited experience with shopping for men’s clothes hadn’t included an awareness of shirt pockets, so she just said, “I know, and it’s a darned shame.”

“It is if you smoke.”

“Do you smoke?”

“Not anymore. But I like knowing I still have a pocket in case I start again. Basically I just hate it when manufacturers mess up a good thing after I get used to it.”

The hint of a smug grin lifted the corners of his mouth. This man obviously liked to have the last word. And once he knew he wasn’t about to be shot, there was no lack of confidence in his manner. “But we’re off the subject here,” he said. “What are you doing creeping around my place?”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake. I wasn’t creeping. What’s the point of trying to remain unnoticed after riding in that boat with the earsplitting engine? Don’t tell me you didn’t hear us arrive.”

“Of course I heard the boat. I just figured Winkie had forgotten the toilet paper or something and was dropping it off. I sure never thought that what he was leaving behind was a snooping female.”

Her eyebrows shot up. “So now I’m snooping
and
creeping?”

He raised his hands palms up as if his point was obvious. “Look, you came into
my
place without so much as a hoot or a holler and tiptoed up to
my
room like a typical nosy woman on your little lady cat’s feet…”

Suddenly his golf flags weren’t amusing anymore. They were just stupid. And his hair wasn’t untidy, it
was unkempt. And his attitude belonged way back in an era before golf was even invented. Sara’s index finger poked out at him as if it had a mind of its own, which it must have, since she hated for anyone to do that to her. “Now look,” she said in a voice that quivered with underlying anger, “first of all, this is
my
place, and I’ll walk around in it any way I please!”

That seemed to get to him. He gave her a dark look. “What do you mean,
your
place?”

“I mean this hotel is mine, this island is mine. In fact, every single place on this island—if there are any others—belongs to me.” For emphasis, she yanked the deed out of her purse and held it up to the challenge in his eyes. “Would you care to inspect this document?”

He stood up from the chair, all lean six-feet-plus of him, and glared at the paper in her hand with eyes that she saw now were startlingly gray. “What’s happened to Millie?” he demanded.

The mention of her aunt’s name gave him some credibility. At least he wasn’t a squatter. Sara softened her tone. “Millicent Thorne died last week.”

He squeezed his eyes shut and pressed his middle finger to the bridge of his nose. “Damn it. Why didn’t somebody tell me?”

His reaction caught her off guard. “You knew my aunt personally?”

“Millicent Thorne is…
was
your aunt?”

“Actually great-aunt, yes.”

“Well, of course I knew her. I’ve been living on her island for the past six years.”

“And not paying any rent for a good part of it, too.”

His eyes, which had only just registered the shock of bad news, now narrowed with irritation. “Now, hold on a minute. I haven’t missed a single month paying my rent. For your information, Millie stopped collecting my checks. She said she didn’t need the money. Told me to hold on to them and send a bunch all at once when she asked for them.”

“Why would she do that?”

He turned away from her and sat back down in his desk chair. “You’d have to ask Millie about that, which might be difficult at the moment, but I would suspect it had to do with a little something called trust.”

“She trusted you?”

He opened a desk drawer and pulled out a short stack of checks held together with a paper clip. “She did, and for good reason.” He thrust the checks at Sara, holding them at the level of her chest until she took them. “Those are my rent checks, every one of them for the last year, dated by the month. They’re all there in chronological order. Go ahead, see for yourself.”

She flipped through them. They were dated consecutively, made out to Millicent Thorne and signed “N. Bass.” She looked up. “Bass? That’s your name? After the island or the fish?”

“Pick one. It’s only a name.”

Sara returned her attention to the checks. Suddenly Mr. N. Bass’s name wasn’t important. The amount of the rent he paid each month was. “One hundred dollars?” she said. “You only paid my aunt one hundred dollars a month?”

He shrugged. “That’s what she asked for.”

The accountant’s hackles on Sara’s neck prickled.
“That’s ridiculous. You live here practically like a king of your own private domain, in a cozy little inn, which, by the way, you’ve allowed to fall into pitiful disrepair, for the sum of one hundred dollars a month?”

He nodded. “I’m not complaining about the deal.”

She thrust the checks and the deed into her shoulder bag. “Obviously not. Then I guess you won’t mind if I raise your rent to help cover the cost of repairs around here.”

He met her self-assurance with cool disdain. “Sorry. You can’t do that.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’ve got a twenty-five-year lease, with a clause prohibiting rent increases, and I’ve only lived here six of them.”

Mr. N. Bass must have thought he was dealing with an idiot. “That’s absurd,” she said. “My aunt had an attorney, and even if you had tried to talk her into such a financially unsound arrangement, he would never have allowed—”

Mr. Bass leaned back in his chair and crossed his legs at the ankles. “You talking about Herb Adams?”

Herb?
“You know Mr. Adams, too?”

“Sure. He was present when I signed the lease. He did, in fact, advise Millie against such generosity, but she insisted.”

N. Bass had the nerve to follow that statement with a short burst of laughter. Sara quickly changed the shocked expression on her face to one of outrage. His cocky smile faded, but his attitude did not.

“Never mind asking a bunch of questions I have no intention of answering,” he added. “I’ll just tell you that Millie and I were friends. I helped her out
once, and she repaid me.” That odd little grin, which under other circumstances might have been interpreted as somewhat endearing, twisted his mouth again. “Millicent was a fair woman. But then, you know that.”

Sara spied a chair a few feet from her. She stepped over to it and sank into its plump floral cushion. She had to think rationally. Sara prided herself on her ability to get to the fundamental truth of a situation. Finally she said, “Mr. Bass, this all may be true…”

“It
is
true.”

“All right. I don’t question your story, but the island belongs to me now, and any agreements you had with my aunt are no longer applicable. If I see fit to raise your rent, I am well within my right to do that.”

He clasped his hands in his lap and shook his head slowly. “Nope. You’re not. Millie assigned all lessee’s rights to her tenants in the event a new landlord took over the property. I’ll let you take a look at my lease. You might be able to fight it, but it would be expensive and time-consuming.”

“And with my luck someone actually would kill you before I won the case,” Sara said. “It wouldn’t be any fun unless I had the satisfaction of seeing your expression when I beat you.”

A genuine grin split his face for the first time, and Sara found herself disliking him a little less. But if she had to accept this man’s living arrangements on Thorne Island, then she and he were still a long way from bridging the gap from dislike to tolerance.

“Cheer up, Mrs….?”

“It’s Miss. Miss Sara Crawford.”

He leaned forward and rested his elbows on his
knees. “There you see, things could be a lot worse between us.”

“I don’t see how.”

“You could be married or ugly. And you’re neither one of those things. I think we’ve got a future, Miss Crawford.”

She gritted her teeth. “I think we’ve got a problem, Mr. Bass.”

“Nick! Nickie! Everything all right up there?”

A low, booming voice rolled up the staircase and down the hall to Mr. Bass’s room, and Sara nearly jumped out of her skin. “Who’s that?”

“That’s Dexter Sweet, former linebacker for the Cleveland Browns. He’s a big man with thighs the size of tires, but don’t let him scare you. The goodness in his soul could make nightingales sing. And that yelling thing he just did—
that’s
how you enter someone’s house.”

“Oh, please, will you—”

“Everything’s fine, Dex,” Nick Bass called. “We’ve just got company.”

An African-American male filled the doorway. Sara couldn’t tell anything about his soul, but the rest of Nick’s description was absolutely accurate, though he might have mentioned Dexter Sweet’s height. It was just shy of a California redwood.

Dexter spared her a quick, astonished glance before settling a worried gaze on his friend. “I heard Captain Winkie’s boat and thought something was wrong. He’s not due back till day after tomorrow. Then I couldn’t find Ryan, and Brody was still snoring when I looked in on him.”

Nick extended his hand to indicate Sara. “Dex,
meet Miss Sara Crawford, our new landlady. Sara, this is Dexter Sweet.”

Amazingly, despite his size, there was something about the man’s round boyish face that made his last name seem appropriate. She stood up, offered her hand and looked into Mr. Sweet’s perplexed brown eyes. “Did you say ‘Captain Winkie’?”

He nodded.

She couldn’t stop herself. Exhaustion and shock had taken their toll. Laughter bubbled from her throat and she could barely get her next words out. “I’m standing here with Mr. Sweet and Mr. Bass, and we’re all talking about Captain Winkie. Somehow I feel like I’m in the middle of a Saturday-morning cartoon.”

The two men exchanged a look that was part male commiseration and part she’s-a-woman-that-explains-it. Sara wouldn’t have been surprised if they both put a finger to the side of their heads and made circles.

“Tell me something, Mr. Sweet,” she said through a continuing fit of laughter, “do you pay rent on this island?”

“Yeah.” He dragged the word out with caution. “Been here almost six years now.”

“And how much do you pay?”

“A hundred a month.”

“Terrific. And are your checks stored in a drawer somewhere?”

“Yeah, Nick’s.”

Nick Bass opened the desk drawer, withdrew a stack of checks similar to his own and brought them to her. Each one was dated and signed by Dexter Sweet.

It wasn’t even enough to cover the back taxes, but
it was a start. “Thank you, gentlemen,” Sara said. “Now I think I’ll go find a room for myself. Do we have any fresh linens?”

“I’ll let you use mine,” Nick said. “The cupboard down the hall that they’re sitting in is yours. But the spare sheets belong to me. Share and share alike I always say. Pick any room you like, Miss Crawford. Make yourself at home.”

“I
am
at home, Mr. Bass.”

A
SHARP PAIN
shot up Nick’s leg. He limped back to the desk chair and sat down.

Dexter frowned at him. “Are you doing your exercises, Nick?”

“Sure, I’m doing them, just like you told me,” he said without looking Dexter in the eye. “But I figure after six years a guy’s just got to live with a little discomfort.” He gave his friend a crooked smile. “It beats the alternative, anyway.”