Anyway, I had all last night to worry about explaining the fiasco with Thelma. I wanted to make up a good story about it, so I wouldn’t look totally stupid and gullible and perverted.
Also, there was a whole lot I didn’t want to talk about.
But I couldn’t concentrate very well. I was lying there on my ‘bed,’ trying to focus on coming up with a good lie, but all I could think about was what had actually happened. I kept reliving everything in my head. Not just remembering, but sort of feeling most of it - the confusion and fear and excitement and revulsion and arousal and terror - though in milder forms than when all of it was going on for real. And in jumbled order.
I couldn’t even get away from Thelma by falling asleep. My nightmares were worse than what had really happened. I don’t remember much about them, just that they had a lot to do with sex and razor blades, and that they were awful.
I was glad when morning came, so I wouldn’t have to suffer through any more nightmares.
After everybody was up, we gathered around the fire and ate the last of the canned ham for breakfast.
Have I mentioned the canned ham before? It was one of the things Keith and Andrew salvaged after the explosion. We got into it for the first time a few days ago when we didn’t have any fish. Anyway, now it’s gone - and we’re starting to get low on things to eat.
We’d started off on the trip with a lot of stuff, a great deal more than eight people could hope to finish off during a week at sea. The explosion happened when we still had four days left, and I guess that Keith and Andrew recovered about half of the food that was left. Including some good stuff like the canned ham.
They didn’t fare nearly so well with the drinks - we must’ve had enough soda, beer and hard stuff on the boat to keep an army happy. All that survived the explosion, though, were a few bottles of booze. (Nothing carbonated - soda, beer and champagne - survived the explosion. They all blew.)
Anyway, I’d say we were pretty lucky to end up with as much as we did.
For most of the time here, there have been only four or five of us to share it. We eat fish whenever possible. So we’ve stretched out our food supply pretty well. It should last a few more days, if we’re careful. Then we’ll have to concentrate on fishing, hunting, gathering edible fruit and vegetables from the jungle, etc.
That shouldn’t be much of a problem, except that we have to contend with Wesley and Thelma. With them out there, getting enough food isn’t exactly on the top of our priority list.
Man, this was a lengthy digression. I think I’m loopy from so much writing today.
After we finished the ham, it was time for the Inquisition.
‘You want to tell us what happened last night?’ Kimberly asked.
‘Not especially,’ I said.
Nobody appeared amused.
I sighed. ‘Where do you want me to start?’
‘Why did you untie her hands?’
Relief. An easy one. ‘I had to. You know how you untied her before she went to the latrine last night? Well, when you tied her back up again, you made the rope too tight. It was digging into her wrists.’
Kimberly frowned at me. ‘That’s nonsense.’
‘It isn’t. I checked. The rope was way too tight.’
‘Not when I tied her up. I was very careful ...’ She glanced from Billie to Connie. ‘Did either of you retie her last night?’
Billie shook her head.
‘If I was gonna do anything with her rope,’ Connie said, ‘I would’ve strangled her with it.’
‘Maybe she tightened the rope,’ Billie suggested. ‘Did it herself, so she’d have a reason for asking Rupe to untie it.’
‘How could she do that?’ Connie asked.
‘With her teeth?’ Billie said.
‘I guess it’s possible,’ Kimberly admitted. She frowned as if thinking for a few seconds, then said, ‘Shit, it sounds exactly like something she might pull. She goes around acting like a lame-brain, half the time, but she can be ... crafty. Very crafty. She used to be, anyway. Maybe she’s changed, but I doubt it. Once a sneak, always a sneak.’
‘What sort of things did she do?’ I asked. I was somewhat interested in hearing about Thelma’s sneaky ways, but mostly I hoped to delay the interrogation.
‘She was always doing stuff. But ... one time when she was pissed off at me, she chopped up her own Barbie doll - cut off its hands and feet and head - and hid them under my mattress. Then she acted all innocent, went around and asked Dad if he’d seen her Barbie doll anywhere. When it finally turned up, I caught living hell.’
‘From your mother?’ Billie asked.
Kimberly shook her head. ‘From Dad. This was after Mom had died, and before he met you.’
‘Did he beat you?’ I asked. I was suddenly breathing harder than a second ago, and my heart was thudding.
‘Who?’ Kimberly said. ‘Dad?’
‘Yeah. You said you caught living hell.’
‘Right.’ She looked a bit offended. ‘He didn’t beat me, though. Are you kidding? Dad? He gave me a talking to. Which made me feel lower than a snake, and I hadn’t touched the damn doll. You should’ve seen Thelma. She was so proud of herself for pulling it off and getting me in hot water.’
‘Did you get even with her?’ I asked.
Kimberly gave me an odd look - as if she suspected that something was up. ‘Yeah. What’re you getting at?’
I could hardly force the words out, but I managed. ‘She said you used to beat her up.’
‘What?’
‘That you’d ... you were always forcing her to wrestle with you. You’d throw her down on the floor and put head-locks on her ... make her cry out for mercy ... stuff like that.’
Kimberly smirked and shook her head. ‘She would’ve liked that.’
‘You didn’t wrestle with her?’
‘She’s five years older than me. She always outweighed me. And she had a cruel streak. There’s no way I ever would’ve wrestled with Thelma. The one time we actually had a fight, I pulled her hair and she stabbed me in the arm with a pencil. It went in. I had to go to the doctor and get shots.’
‘She said you used to wrestle with her all the time.’
‘Really?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Maybe in some alternate universe.’
I was tempted to go on and explain that they’d been naked and their father had joined in - that the matches were supposed to be some sort of sadistic sexual romp.
Already, though, I figured Thelma must’ve made up the whole wrestling business.
‘So you two were over here last night talking about make-believe wrestling matches between me and Thelma?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Why did she tell you that stuff?’
‘I don’t know. We were just talking.’
I felt sort of cornered, and wished I hadn’t brought up the subject. It was a relief, though, to discover that Thelma’d been lying. If she’d lied about the wrestling, it stood to reason that the torture and incest stuff probably hadn’t really happened, either.
I felt a little cheated, a little disappointed. Part of me had gotten sort of excited, picturing Kimberly mixed up in that sort of thing. Mostly, though, I was relieved.
‘She must’ve had a motive,’ Kimberly said.
‘Not that I ...’
‘I know,’ Connie said. She gave me one of her snotty looks. ‘I bet Thelma was trying to get him to wrestle with her.’
I almost denied it. But the idea seemed to have some merit. I sure didn’t want the truth coming out. ‘Well... That’s sort of ... She did want me to have a wrestling match with her.’
‘What on earth for?’ Billie asked, half of her mouth rising in a crooked smile as if she were amused but baffled.
‘She made it a challenge,’ I explained. ‘If she won, I’d have to let her get away. If I won, she’d let me tie her hands back up. See, she’d pulled them away when I tried to loosen the rope for her.’
‘That’s when you should’ve called for help,’ Kimberly said.
‘Sure, and have everyone think I was some kind of a worthless jerk for being dumb enough to untie her.’
Kimberly grimaced a bit. She lowered her eyes and looked ashamed. She didn’t actually apologize, but she regretted being so sharp with me last night. You could tell.
‘Boy,’ Connie said, ‘that Thelma read you like a book.’ I looked at her and didn’t make the mistake of asking, ‘What do you mean by that?’ I kept my mouth shut, but it didn’t help.
Billie asked, ‘What do you mean?’
‘She knew just which buttons to push. Amazing. Rupert’s got sex on the brain. There’s no way in the world he’s gonna miss out on the chance to wrestle with a woman.’
I felt like my face might go up in flames. I said, ‘That’s bull. We’re talking about Thelma. God almighty, she’s the last woman I’d ever want to wrestle with.’
‘Yeah, right.’
‘She’s disgusting.’ .
‘As if you’d let a little thing like that get in your way.’
‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘look at you.’
‘Go fuck yourself.’
Kimberly raised a hand. ‘Let’s not get sidetracked here, kiddies.’
Connie sneered at her and gave her the finger.
Kimberly ignored it. To me, she said, ‘So, did you agree to have this wrestling match?’
I frowned and tried to decide on the best way to answer. After a while, I said, ‘Well... she pushed me into it. She called me a chicken, and said I was too much of a wimp and a loser to beat her in a fair fight.’
‘So you went for it?’ Kimberly asked.
‘I had to.’
Billie sighed. ‘You didn’t have to prove anything to Thelma. She was just manipulating you.’
‘I guess ... Well, not all the way. I mean, at first I agreed to wrestle her. But then she started to take off her clothes. She wanted us doing it naked.’
‘You figured you’d died and gone to Heaven,’ Connie said.
‘I did not! I told her no. I said the deal was off, there wouldn’t be any wrestling match, and I wanted her to hold out her hands so I could tie them. She wouldn’t listen, though. She didn’t pay any attention, and started taking off her clothes. It was like we were going to wrestle, no matter what I said. Before I knew what was happening, she had her blouse wide open and her shorts down. I didn’t know what to do.’
‘Probably had a boner on you the size of the Washington Monument.’ Connie said that. Who else?
‘I did not.’
‘Yeah, right.’
‘Leave him alone,’ Billie told her.
‘The thing is, that’s when I knew it had all gone too far. I started backing away from her. I was planning to go for the ax, and make her quit messing around, but all of a sudden she attacked me with a straight razor. She almost killed me.’ I met Connie’s narrow eyes. ‘If you don’t believe me, we can probably find the razor. I knocked it out of her hand. It’s probably in the sand around here someplace.’
Kimberly, who was wearing Keith’s Hawaiian shirt this morning, slipped her hand into its left breast pocket and pulled out the razor. She flipped the blade open.
Billie pursed her lips and made a ‘Whuuu’ sound.
I grimaced, myself, getting a good look at it in daylight and realizing how close it had come to slicing me up the middle.
‘Has anyone ever seen this before?’ Kimberly asked. She held it between her thumb and forefinger so that we could see the handle - which looked like mother-of-pearl.
Connie shook her head.
Billie said, ‘Wicked-looking thing.’
‘Do you recognize it?’
‘Me? No. I haven’t seen a razor like that in years. My father had one that folded like that, but his had a green handle.’
‘How about you, Rupert?’
‘I saw it last night. When she came at me with it.’
‘It’s probably Wesley’s,‘ Connie said.
Kimberly nodded. ‘Maybe. It might even be Thelma’s, for that matter.‘
‘She didn’t have it when I frisked her,’ Billie said. ‘I couldn’t have missed a thing like that.’
‘Well,’ Kimberly said, ‘she sure got hold of it somewhere.’
‘Why didn’t she just use it?’ Connie asked.
‘She tried,’ I pointed out.
‘No, I mean to cut herself loose?’
‘Maybe she couldn’t get to it while her hands were tied,’ I suggested.
‘But she must’ve gotten her hands undone before she came over to you,’ Billie said. ‘If we’re right that she’d retied the rope to make it too tight, she would’ve probably had to untie it first.’
Connie scowled. ‘This is getting too complicated.’
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘We’ve got her untying her hands so she can tie them more tightly so she can come over here and trick me into untying them for her. That doesn’t make any sense at all.’
‘Yeah. It does.’ Kimberly nodded and nibbled her lower lip for a few seconds. Then she said, ‘Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. We’ve been looking at it wrong. This wasn’t about Thelma getting herself untied so she could escape. This was about killing Rupert.’
‘Terrific,’ I said.
She raised a finger. ‘Here’s what I think happened.’ Looking at me, she said, ‘Back at the lagoon, Thelma tried to kill you by throwing that rock over the falls. She missed you, and hit Connie by mistake.’
‘That’s according to Thelma’s version of what happened,’ Billie pointed out. ‘Might not be the truth.’
‘Whatever Wesley has in mind, he wants all the men dead is, he was too injured to try for Rupert, himself, so he ordered Thelma to do it. She screwed up and hit Connie Then - her story - Wesley trashed her, so she killed him and came back to join up with us. I don’t think so.’
‘You don’t think he trashed her?’ Billie asked.
‘Somebody sure did,’ Connie said.
Kimberly nodded. ‘Yeah, Wesley probably did it to her Or some of it. I bet most of it was self-inflicted.’
‘Would she do that?’ Billie asked.
‘Beat herself up? Maybe. I don’t know. It wouldn’t surprise me.’
‘You think she’s a masochist?’ Billie asked.
Connie snorted. ‘She’s gotta be, she married Wesley.’
‘She couldn’t have bitten herself in all those places,’ I pointed out.
‘Not in all of them,’ Kimberly said. ‘I think it was probably a joint effort. The beating was supposed to be Thelma’s excuse for killing Wesley, so it had to look good. She almost had to do some of it, herself. The beating was just too severe for Wesley to manage it by himself. In his condition? He might’ve given her some bites, but he couldn’t have slapped her around and whipped her like that. She had to do that to herself. Most of it, anyway.’
‘Sick,’ Connie said.
‘It was her ticket into our camp,’ Kimberly pointed out.
‘She could come in, show us those terrible wounds, and we’d be all set to believe she’d paid Wesley back by killing him.’
‘But we didn’t believe her,’ I pointed out.
‘No. Not entirely. I had my doubts all along that Wesley could’ve done that to her. But what I suspected - and I think the rest of us did, too - was that she’d been sent in here to set us up. If we believed her about killing Wesley, we’d let our guard down. That’d leave us open for a surprise attack. We also suspected that she might try to lead us into an ambush when we went looking for Wesley’s body.’
‘Right,’ Connie said.
‘But we were wrong. Completely wrong. She didn’t come in to distract us or lead us into a trap so Wesley could nail us. You know what it was? From the very start? It was a one-woman mission to take out Rupert.’
‘Kill me?’
‘Right.’
‘What does it mean?’ Billie asked.
‘Means, for one thing, Rupert’s a very l
ucky fellow.’
‘That’s me, lucky.’
‘Also means that Thelma’s in this all the way with Wesley. She’s perfectly willing to commit murder for him. She’s a lot more dangerous than we thought.’
‘And trickier,’ I said.
‘I always knew she was tricky,’ Kimberly said. ‘I just didn’t know she was homicidal.’
Billie, frowning, shook her head. ‘Do you think she was in on it with him?’
‘In on what?’
‘Setting us all up. Blowing up the boat. Trapping us here. Is it possible that Thelma helped Wesley plan it? I mean, I’m beginning to wonder. For that matter, maybe this whole thing was her idea.’
‘I tend to doubt it,’ Kimberly said. ‘She might be a hell of an actress, but I think she really and truly believed that Wesley got killed in the explosion. She didn’t know what was going on. She just got into this whole mess when she found us trying to ambush her husband. That’s the way I see it, anyhow.’
‘If Thelma wasn’t in on the plan,’ Billie said, ‘then all this was Wesley’s idea like we thought in the first place. So how does Thelma fit into it?’
I saw where she was heading. ‘If we’re right about Wesley’s motives,’ I said, ‘she’ll be killed like the rest of us.’
‘He can’t possibly let her live,’ Billie added.
‘That’ll be her tough luck,’ Kimberly said. ‘But he won’t kill her as long as he has uses for her. And maybe he doesn’t intend to kill her at all. We suspect he’s doing all this so he can be the sole survivor and inherit and so forth, but we don’t really know what the hell his reasoning is. Or what to expect from him.’
‘I expect he’ll try to kill me again,’ I put in.
‘I suspect you’re right,’ Kimberly said, and smiled at me. ‘We’ll try not to let that happen.’
‘Thanks,’ I said.
‘So, what do we do?’ Connie asked.
‘Nothing,’ Kimberly said. ‘Not today, anyway. You’re in no condition to go on another hunt for those two. I’m sure Rupert has a lot of writing to do in that diary of his.’
‘Big deal,’ Connie muttered.
‘It is a big deal,’ Kimberly told her. ‘I want him to keep current with it. I want there to be something - a record of what’s happened here. In case we don’t make it.’