Carolina Isle

  In the next second, they heard a loud thump from inside the bathroom. It sounded as though Ariel had fallen.

  “Ariel?” Sara said through the door. “Are you all right?” There was no answer. “Ariel?” Still no answer. She tried the doorknob. Locked. She rattled the door handle.

  R.J. stepped forward. “I don’t think we should wake our landlady.” He turned the doorknob hard, but it didn’t open. He looked at her. “Sometimes in these old houses, the same key works on all the locks.”

  He didn’t have to say more. Seconds later, Sara was back with a key taken from one of the bedroom doors and he inserted it into the lock. It wouldn’t go in. Squatting, he looked through the keyhole. “The key’s in the lock on the inside. I need to get it out.”

  “Let me try,” David said. He had taken a wire coat hanger out of a closet and twisted it open. Kneeling beside R.J., he worked the wire into the lock, and seconds later they heard the key hit the tile floor inside the bathroom. To their ears it sounded very loud and all three of them held their breath. Would Ms. Vancurren hear?

  When they heard nothing from downstairs, R.J. looked through the keyhole. Whatever he saw made his shoulders tighten and the back of his neck redden.

  “What is it?” Sara whispered.

  R.J. stood up while David put the bedroom key in the bathroom door lock. “Let’s get it open as fast as we can,” R.J. said and Sara knew that something was wrong with Ariel. A sense of panic came over her. If something was wrong, who could they call for help? The King’s Isle police?

  The key worked and David opened the bathroom door. Lying on the floor, clothed only in her underwear, was Ariel. She was curled into a ball, her back to them, facing the tub. David reached her first and pulled her into his arms. “Ariel, baby,” he whispered.

  Sara’s back was to the tub and the curtain was drawn across it. When she looked up at R.J. she saw that all the color had left his face. He was looking down into the tub, his eyes wide, his skin bloodless.

  As Sara turned her head, R.J. said, “No!” but it was too late. Lying in the tub, half-hidden behind the curtain, was John Fenwick Nezbit. His eyes were open and he was as ugly as when they’d seen him in the bar, but he had a hole in his forehead. He was dead.

  Sara was standing there, looking at that odious man and thinking what seemed to be rational thoughts, when R.J. grabbed her under the arms and pulled her upward. Without knowing it, she’d been sinking down toward the floor. Three more seconds and she would have been lying beside Ariel in a faint.

  David looked up when R.J. moved so swiftly, and R.J. nodded toward the end of the tub. Whatever David felt, he stayed calm. He looked at the dead man, then turned his attention back to Ariel, who was just coming to.

  “I’m fine,” Sara said, but when she tried to take a step, her knees gave way. R.J. swept her into his arms, carried her into the sitting room, and put her on one of the couches. There was no liquor in the rooms, but he got her a glass of water. Behind him came David, carrying Ariel. He set her on the couch across from Sara.

  “Stay,” R.J. said to both of the women, but they didn’t need the order. He and David went back into the bathroom and closed the door.

  Ariel looked at Sara and she looked back, but they said nothing. Sara reached across the coffee table and handed Ariel the glass of water. She sipped, then put the glass down on the table.

  They sat in silence, listening, but there were no sounds. If the men were talking, they were doing it so quietly that they couldn’t be heard.

  After what seemed like an eternity, David and R.J. came back into the room and took the chairs at the ends of the couches. Both of them looked older than they had an hour ago.

  “He’s dead,” R.J. said. “Shot through the head.”

  “It couldn’t have been us,” Sara said. “The whole town saw us at dinner.”

  “And they saw him,” R.J. said. “He was in the bar when we left so that means he was killed while we were walking back. Alone. Just the four of us. No outside witnesses.”

  “He was killed then carried up the stairs of that woman’s house,” Ariel said, sitting up. “She knows he’s here and she’s downstairs waiting for our screams.”

  They looked at her, blinking at the venom in her voice.

  “There aren’t going to be any screams,” R.J. said calmly. “There will be no screams and no hysterics. We’re going to treat this like it was a business deal.” He looked at them as though they might protest, but Sara knew that if there was one thing R.J. was good at, it was business.

  “How do we do that?” Ariel asked softly.

  “For one thing, we don’t let the enemy know what’s in our heads. And we don’t do what they expect us to. Right now it’s my guess that there are people hiding in the bushes outside, waiting for us to do something dramatic.”

  “Such as?” David asked. He was trying to sound cool and calm, but Sara could tell that he was as scared as the rest of them. Except R.J., that is. He didn’t seem afraid at all. He seemed angry.

  Chapter Ten

  “DON’T FADE OUT ON ME NOW, JOHNson,” R.J. said softly.

  He and Sara were in the bathroom, looking down at the body of John Fenwick Nezbit. They weren’t touching him, just looking, as though they couldn’t really believe what they were seeing.

  “I’m—” Sara began.

  “Scared out of your mind?”

  She nodded.

  “I am too.”

  “You?”

  “That surprises you?” R.J. asked.

  “Shocks me,” she said. “You go into deals that terrify other people, but you’re always calm.”

  He shrugged. “Money. What does it matter? You win, good; you lose, okay. But this …” He nodded toward Nezbit’s body. “This was planted here with the intention of our taking the rap, and the rap leads to prison, even to execution.”

  She was getting more scared now. “We couldn’t just tell someone, could we?”

  “What do you think?”

  “Not an option,” she surmised.

  He sat down on the closed toilet and motioned for her to close the door. “Look,” he said softly, “I figure that it’s you and me in this. Those two …”

  Ariel and David were in the sitting room, close to each other on the sofa, neither of them saying anything. R.J. had called Sara into the bathroom with him—and “Fenny.”

  “She’s in on it,” Sara said, motioning toward the door and meaning Phyllis Vancurren. “I know you and David think she’s beautiful, but I wish you could see her clearly.”

  “Give me a break. You’ve seen the women I date. Do you think I’d fall for some overused hag like Phyllis Vancurren? I knew she was up to something the minute I saw her.”

  “Ariel says there are some very expensive things in this house.”

  “More than you know. Your cousin isn’t the only one who can snoop. I opened a few cabinets. Looks like she knew we were coming far enough in advance that she hid some items of jade, porcelain, and the odd Ming vase.”

  “They’re making a fortune here, aren’t they?”

  “Someone is, and I agree that Vancurren is in on it, although I can’t figure out how much. One thing for sure is that they were waiting for us. They knew we were coming.”

  Sara’s head came up. “The ferry.”

  “Right,” R.J. said, smiling. “I didn’t tell anyone, but I looked for a schedule, but there wasn’t one. When we got to the water on the other side, there was no ferry in sight, but after we had lunch—”

  “And we’d told the waitress we were going to King’s Isle for the day—”

  “The ferry magically appeared.”

  “For your Jaguar. With that car, you might as well have put a sign on your head: I am rich.” Sara sat down on the end of the tub. The curtain hid the body from her. “And we were told that the ferry wouldn’t return until after the trial. Which could now be for murder,” she added.

  “I don’t think that was part of it. The we
bsites I read reported more than one tourist complaint, but nothing could be done because it was their word against the King’s Isle police and the judge.”

  “And then there’s the story about the couple who had to move to get away from Larry Lassiter. Do you think that was true?”

  “I don’t know, but when I get out of here, I’ll find out.”

  Sara looked at her watch—the one she now knew cost ten grand. It was just after midnight. “How do we get out of this?”

  “I have no idea. You’re the clever one, so what do you think?”

  “My first thought is to get rid of the body, but how? We can’t carry it outside or we’ll be seen. I think you’re right when you said people are out there watching us.”

  “They’re probably expecting us to walk down those creaky stairs carrying a rolled-up carpet.”

  “Three, six, eight,” Sara said.

  “What?”

  “Those are the numbers of the stairs that creak: three, six, eight.”

  “If I didn’t think you’d slap me, I’d kiss you for that.”

  “You told David I was a bad secretary. You said—”

  “Come on,” R.J. said, “let’s see if the others have calmed down now.” He got up and held the door open for her.

  Ariel and David were sitting close together on one of the sofas. David was holding her hand.

  “I don’t know how you can stand to be in there with that … that body,” Ariel said.

  “We’re trying to figure out what to do,” Sara answered.

  “Any luck?” David asked.

  “Only that we have to get rid of the body, tell no one, and that Sara here”—he patted her thigh—“knows which steps creak. I think we can get the body down the stairs without Phyllis hearing,” R.J. said.

  “She wouldn’t hear us anyway,” Ariel said. “She’s drunk.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “When I tried the telephone, I opened the cabinet by her bed. It was full of bottles of vodka. And I smelled it on her breath when we came back.”

  “You can’t smell vodka,” R.J. said.

  “I can,” Ariel said and gave him the look.

  “I’ve seen you before, haven’t I?” R.J. said, staring at Ariel.

  “Anyone have any ideas what to do? Besides call the police, that is?” Sara asked, meaning to distract R.J.

  “Do you think the police will come bursting in on us if we don’t do something soon?” Ariel asked.

  “Yes,” R.J. answered. He looked at his watch. “It’s been …” He looked at Sara.

  “Twenty-three minutes.”

  “Yes, it’s been twenty-three minutes since we found the body. They’ll be expecting us to do something soon.”

  “There’s a chest freezer in the basement,” David said and the others looked at him, wide-eyed. “Remember?” he asked R.J. “She told us.”

  “Right,” R.J. said, smiling. “On the stairs. She said her first apartment wasn’t as big as the freezer in her basement.”

  For a moment, the four of them looked at one another.

  “If the body is gone in the morning,” Ariel said, “they’ll know it’s in the house.”

  “Not unless they see us take it out,” Sara said, looking at R.J. “Remember when you got Mr. Dunkirk so drunk he had to be carried out?”

  “I didn’t get Charley drunk,” R.J. said. “He does it to himself every day. He—”

  “What are you thinking?” Ariel asked her cousin.

  Sara looked at R.J. “Could we fake it?”

  For a moment he just looked at her, then a slow smile crept over his face. “Two of us take the body downstairs, while two more make the people who put it there think we’re hauling the body out of the house.”

  “That’s exactly what’s in my mind,” Sara said.

  “We always were a good team,” R.J. said softly.

  “We should all stay together,” Ariel said firmly. “We shouldn’t separate.”

  “Ariel,” R.J. said, “I want you to go into Phyllis’s room and get something of hers to put on the body. Something identifiable. Maybe monogrammed. If the body is found I want it to look like Vancurren did it. It won’t fool anyone for long, but we need all the time we can get.”

  Ariel swallowed. It was one thing to snoop around her mother’s house, but quite another to snoop in a stranger’s bedroom—with the owner in it.

  Sara stood up. “Let’s get going. I fear we’ll be spending the night in—”

  “Don’t say it,” David said, standing up. “No one is to touch that body. No hair, no body fluids, nothing.”

  Sara looked at David and saw that there were little white lines beside his mouth, and there were circles under his eyes. If his ambition was to have a political career, it could be ending right now. She wanted to go to him and comfort him, but R.J. stepped between them. “Ariel, you go …”

  Sara could see that Ariel was scared to death. She walked with her to the door that opened on the stairs.

  “What if she’s awake?” Ariel whispered. She was glad there was a light over the stairs.

  “My guess is she wants to be asleep so she can’t be accused of knowing anything,” Sara said.

  “Or maybe she has a conscience,” Ariel said to Sara, then they looked at each other and shook their heads no. “Maybe her bedroom door is locked.” Again, they shook their heads no. The last door in the house to be locked would be Phyllis Vancurren’s bedroom.

  “Three, six, eight down, backwards coming up,” Sara whispered as she opened the door.

  “How am I supposed to count that?” Ariel said, then she looked at the wallpaper and smiled.

  Sara smiled back. “Roses,” she whispered. “Count the roses.”

  Ariel took a deep breath, then started down the steps. At the third step, she held onto the rail and stepped past it. No creak. Smiling, she looked up at Sara, who smiled in return, then Ariel looked at the roses on the wallpaper. One of the roses above the creaky step had been painted blue. It was something you wouldn’t notice unless you were studying the wallpaper, but it was there.

  Ariel pointed at the blue rose and motioned to Sara, but she didn’t understand. Ariel slowly went down the stairs, noting the blue rose each time there was a stair she was to skip. When she was outside Phyllis’s room, she looked up at Sara, still standing in the doorway, smiling encouragement.

  Slowly, carefully, silently, Ariel opened the bedroom door and breathed a sigh of relief when she saw the tiny night-light in the wall. When her eyes adjusted, she saw Phyllis Vancurren sprawled across the bed, snoring softly. Ariel thought she might be able to fire a shot and not wake her, but she didn’t want to chance it. She tiptoed over the carpet—antique Persian, she thought, and at least ten grand—and went to the woman’s chest of drawers. As she’d hoped, there was a hairbrush. Ariel took a tissue from the box, removed some hair from the brush, and put it in her pocket. Glancing in the mirror above the dresser, she looked at Phyllis, then Ariel silently opened a top drawer. Junk. Old hair clips, business cards, broken combs, a small box of cheap jewelry. She closed the drawer.

  The next drawer held underwear. Ariel couldn’t have been more pleased if she’d found gold. Clean underwear! She jammed the front of her shirt with half a dozen pairs of lacy underpants. The bras were, of course, useless to her and Sara, so she left them.

  The next drawer held a stack of nightgowns, all French-made, all nearly transparent. Ariel was tempted to take a couple of those, but she didn’t.

  In the bottom drawer, she hit pay dirt. There were monogrammed handkerchiefs and a handwritten card. I will love you forever. Phyllis, it read. She slipped a handkerchief and the card into the waistband of her trousers.

  As she shut the drawer, she noticed a tiny red beam in the mirror, like a light on something electronic. Turning, she scanned the room but saw nothing. She looked back in the mirror and there it was again, a red spot, but now she realized she was seeing it through a gap in the curtains. It
was outside.

  With her back against the wall, not daring to touch the curtains, Ariel looked through the tiny gap and waited. In a few moments the red showed again. It was the tip of a burning cigarette. Just as R.J. said, someone was hiding in the shadows, smoking and watching.

  Ariel tiptoed across the carpet, left the room, and went back up the stairs.

  “What took you so long?” Sara said. “I was beginning to worry!”

  “Look what I got.” Ariel pulled the underpants out of her shirt, the two monogrammed handkerchiefs, and finally the card.

  “Clean underwear,” Sara said in awe. “The greatest luxury in life.”

  “Where are they—and him? It?”

  “They left just after you and took it downstairs to try to find the freezer. I was left here to make these.” She stepped aside to show Ariel two long lumps of sheets and pillows, both of them tied together with burlap twine, into roughly the shape and size of Fenny Nezbit.

  “That’s very good. It’s—” Ariel broke off as the men came into the room. They hadn’t made a sound as they came up the stairs.

  “Did you find it?” Sara asked.

  “Yes,” David said, his face even paler than before. “This goes against everything I’ve ever believed in. We just hid a dead body—”

  “Yeah, and we had to take the frozen food out. It’ll thaw, then stink,” R.J. said. He was looking at Ariel. “Did you do okay?”

  “Brilliant,” Sara said. “She stole us some clean underwear.”

  When the men just blinked at that, Sara shrugged. “It’s a girl thing. But Ariel also got some evidence you can use to incriminate that woman.”

  “We’ll drop it off when we go out,” R.J. said, then looked at Sara. “How’d you do?”

  She stepped back to show the stuffed figures she’d made.

  “Excellent,” R.J. said, his eyes sparkling. “You always could put together anything.”

  “I saw a lit cigarette,” Ariel said. “Someone is standing at the back of the house and smoking.”