Carolina Isle (14 page)

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.”

“No police cars?” R.J. asked.

“I had half an inch between the curtain and the wall so I couldn't see much,” Ariel said. “Would you mind telling me the plan?”

Sara spoke first. “If the police are involved in this and are watching, we figure they'll stop us as soon as we leave the house with a big roll across our shoulders. But if it's an individual who's watching—”

“Or two,” David said.

“Yes, if a few people are watching, they'll follow us and see us dispose of what I hope will look like a body,” R.J. said. “Sara and I are to go one way, you and Jock here the other way.”

No one moved. They just stood there glaring at R.J.

“Okay. David,” R.J. said. “Ariel, you and
David
will go a second way.”

“We found some useful things,” Sara said to Ariel. “There's a treasure trove of stuff under the eaves.” She nodded to the little doors in the bottom of the slanting attic walls.

“Ready?” R.J. asked.

“I think it would be better if I went with
you
instead of David,” Ariel said to R.J.

When Sara looked at David, his face turned red. So
that's
what this whole thing is about, she thought in disgust. Another woman who wanted R.J. “I think that's a great idea,” Sara said, stepping closer to David.

The men looked at each other in silent, mutual agreement, then they traded places so they were back to where they had been.

“Sara and I know each other,” R.J. said in a
way that meant there'd be no more discussion of the matter.

“So do Ariel and I,” David said, sounding as though R.J. had been the one who'd asked Ariel to go with him.

R.J. turned to Ariel. “When we go out, play it suspicious, as though you're doing something bad.”

“We are!” David said. “We should have—” Breaking off, he looked at them. “Called the police” was not an option.

Ten minutes later, they were ready. Over David's shoulder was one of Sara's dummies wrapped in a small rug. He was bending his knees to look as though whatever was inside the rug was very heavy.

Sara had dressed the other dummy in clothes she'd found in a box under the eaves. She'd put a broomstick inside the dummy to make it stay somewhat upright, and they'd put the Ariel wig askew on its head. She and R.J. were going to try to walk the dummy out, as though they were carrying a drunken person between them.

As they started down the stairs, Ariel silently pointed out the roses marked with blue to show
the squeaky steps. It looked as though other people had stayed in the rooms with the barred windows, and they too had heard people sneaking upstairs.

At the front door, they paused and waited while R.J. went down the basement steps to deposit incriminating evidence on the body. He was back in a moment. He turned off the porch light, then cautiously opened the front door.

“It's showtime!” R.J. said.

“I
CAN'T GO ON WITH THIS,”
R.J.
SAID
quietly to Sara. “I want you and the kids to stay in the house and do whatever it is you need to to survive, but I have to …” He waved his hand to indicate that he had some ideas that he was going to keep to himself.

Sara was struggling with the limp dummy between them, trying to keep the floppy thing upright. If it weren't so dark outside, and if R.J. weren't leading them into an even darker forest, she'd never believe that anyone watching them
would believe they were carrying a dead body. “I have no idea what you're talking about,” she said. “We need to—”

“Get this body thrown over the cliff on the east side of the island. Yeah, I know that, but …”

“So help me, if you start keeping secrets, I'll drop this thing and start screaming.” She could feel R.J. laughing.

“I think I liked it better when you didn't speak to me. Was I really such a terrible boss?”

“The worst. You rule and no one else is allowed to have any input.”

“But it's my company.”

“Then run it all by yourself.”

“You
do
hate me, don't you?”

“Could we talk about this later? Right now I'd like to keep us out of jail.”

“Which brings us back to the beginning,” R.J. said. “I think there's more to this than meets the eye. I'm beginning to think all this has to do with my work.”

Sara hesitated, but she didn't stop walking. The dummy's feet were dragging and they had to shift its weight often. R.J. had put some rocks in the coat pockets and down the front so it
weighed quite a bit, but it wasn't enough. “What have you done at work that would make someone want to frame you for murder?” she asked.

“Nothing specific, but I wonder if this has to do with …” He trailed off and she could feel him shrug.

“For once in your life, I'd like to hear the truth out of you. What is really going on?” She could feel his smile and he took most of the weight of the dummy onto his own arms, giving Sara a break.

“Kids!” R.J. said. “They talk you to death, don't they? It's a good thing both of them are rich or they'd starve to death.”

She knew he'd changed the subject and hadn't answered her question, but then that's what he always did. “I assume you mean Ariel and David.”

“Exactly,” R.J. said.

“So what are you planning to do about them?”

“I left them a note saying I wasn't returning, that I'd see them in court on Monday—unless they could find a way to escape this place. I think that whoever planted this body on us, is after
me,
so I'm going to do my best to find out who did it.”

“On your own?” Sara asked.

“On my own. Just the way I run my company.”

“I see,” Sara said.

“Here,” R.J. said, turning into some trees.

“You seem to know this place well. Have you been here before?”

“Never, but I spent quite a bit of time reading about it on the Internet, remember?”

Sara swung around with the dummy and they walked into the dark, dense forest. “Does this lead anywhere?” she whispered. She wanted to talk, wanted to get angry at R.J., for the reality of the situation might make her collapse. Someone had killed Fenny Nezbit and that person was still out there. If he—or she—thought that R.J. and Sara were carrying a dead body, why shouldn't he/she shoot them too?

Sara and R.J. walked in silence for a few minutes and Sara began to think about the truth of their situation. She could be accused of being an accessory to murder. Or would she be accused directly? Did they execute two people for one murder?

“I want to drop this body off the east side of the island,” R.J. said softly. “There's a cliff there. When I read about it I thought of hang
gliding, not using it to discard a body, even a fake one.”

Sara didn't smile. She was thinking about what R.J. had said about going off on his own to find the truth. She didn't want to admit it, but she too wanted to get away from Ariel and David. How could that be? she wondered. Her whole reason for being on the trip had been to be near David.

“I'm going with you,” she whispered, then prepared herself for the fight she knew was to come. She'd have to argue with R.J. that she wasn't a “kid” like David and Ariel, that she could be of some use to him. But R.J. didn't say a word. When he didn't try to argue her out of it, she knew that he had something in mind.

“If all you want is a chance to try to seduce me—” She broke off at his suppressed laugh.

“You never give up, do you, Johnson? What have I done to make you think I'm the lowest of the low?”

“The women you seduce then abandon.”

“What should I do? Marry them? Do you think I don't know what they want from me? They want money, that's all. If I didn't have
money, they wouldn't give a short, ugly, old guy like me a second look. All those gorgeous young females would go out with gorgeous young males. Money is what gives old men like me a chance.” He stopped walking. “Let's toss him over here. Let's make a production of it, then when he's gone, you can pretend to cry and I'll comfort you.”

Sara ignored the last of his statement as she took the legs of the dummy and R.J. took the shoulders. They swung it back and forth several times over an edge that Sara hadn't even seen. She'd been listening so hard to what R.J. was saying that she hadn't even realized they were at the edge of a drop-off into the sea.

“Now,” R.J. said, and they let the body go.

She could see it fall down and down until it hit the rocks below. “Why didn't the killer just do that to the body in the first place?”

“That's what I want to know,” R.J. said, reaching out his arms for her.

Sara pulled back. “What are you doing?”

“Comforting you for a moment.”

“Even in a mess like this, you never stop coming on to a woman. I must say that you had me
going there for a moment with your sad little story about being rich and unloved.”

“You didn't believe me?”

“Not a word of it.”

“So I don't get a good-bye kiss?”

“I told you, I'm not going back. I'm staying with you, but before you get any ideas, I want to know what you're up to.”

“Let's get out of here,” he said, looking around the dark forest. They could see no one and the only sound was of frogs and mosquitoes. “I think that whoever is watching has seen all he needs to.”

“You feel it too?” Sara asked, rubbing her arms as the hairs were standing on end. It was probably eighty-five degrees but she felt cold. When R.J. started to put his arm around her, she pulled away. “I want to know what you're planning to do.” She didn't look at him but she knew that he was in a dilemma. For all that he called her, fifty times a day sometimes, he was still a very private man. For the first few months she worked for him, she thought that there wasn't anything in his life that she didn't know about. But then he'd announced a merger with another company and she
realized that she'd never heard a word about it. He'd done all the research and the paperwork by himself. If she knew nothing else about R. J. Brompton, it was that he was a man of many secrets. Now he was trying to decide whether or not to share his secrets.

Sara was silent as they walked back toward the town. She knew better than to try to force him to tell her what he was planning to do—or even to persuade him. He had to make up his own mind.

“I'm going to visit Mrs. Nezbit,” R.J. said at last.

“You're going to seduce the widow?” Sara asked, aghast.

“Could you get your mind above the belt for a few minutes?” R.J. snapped. “She'll know something. If nothing else, she'll know his enemies. Who hated him enough to kill him?”

Sara remembered the man's angry hostility when they'd seen him in the bar. “Based on my experience, I think maybe several people wanted to kill him. Even Ms. Vancurren said he was a liar and a thief.”