Carolina Isle (7 page)

“‘No twenty-grand-a-year, Mom-and-Pop-with-the-kids place,'” R.J. said in Charley Dunkirk's voice. “‘I want celebrities. Multimillionaires who crave privacy. This King's Isle is the only island left that hasn't already been exploited.
It's like the place has been left for me. It has flat land on one end that could be used for an airstrip. There's no beach, but what's a beach? Sand, right? So we bring in some sand.' “

Sara had to look away again to keep from laughing, but R.J. saw the muscle in her jaw twitching so he went on.

“‘I was thinking of an island in the Caribbean, but Kat wants North Carolina, so that's what I'm gonna give her. Maybe she wants a business to run after I'm gone. Maybe that's it. I don't know why, but she wants
you
to go look at the place for me. You'll do it?'”

R.J. returned to his normal voice. “I told him I'd look at the island and that I'd even take my camera.”

“‘Vacation,'” R.J.-as-Charley said. “‘This could be a vacation for you. I'm gonna take one of those one of these days.' Sure you are, I told him. We all are. One of these days.”

Sara kept looking out the side window. She remembered the day she'd seen Mr. Dunkirk half carried out of R.J.'s office. She'd thought then that R.J. had made the old man drunk on purpose, but maybe Charley Dunkirk was just a drinker.

“So you agreed to help an old friend,” she said.

“Not without doing a lot of research first. It took a lot of work.”

Sara had a vivid vision of R.J. stretched out on the big leather couch in his office, his laptop on his chest. Lot of work, indeed! “Didn't Sara write me about helping you find out about the island?”

R.J. looked in the rearview mirror at David and Ariel, then lowered his voice. “Naw, she was too busy helping me tie up loose ends so I could go. I did the research by myself.”

“And who said Hercules had a lot of tasks?”

He laughed. “Yeah, okay, so I dump a lot into her capable hands, but I did find out about King's Isle myself.”

“And what did you discover?”

“Nothing that you, as a resident of Arundel, don't know.”

“It's always nice to hear an outsider's point of view,” she said, smiling. “So enlighten me.”

“It's a weird place.”

“Everyone in Arundel knows that. But what makes it strange to you?” She was trying to sound as though she knew everything but wanted to hear more.

“Nothing important, but I think it might have great money-making potential.”

“The most important thing.”

“Have to feed the bottom line, but, touristwise, that island does have an interesting history. Apparently, the inhabitants refused to take part in either the Revolutionary or the Civil War. When the patriots won, they refused to change the name of their island to what the new government suggested, Freedom Island. And when soldiers in the War Between the States landed, no matter what side they were on, the King's Isle people burned their war boats, then put the soldiers in rowboats and sent them back to the mainland. When President Lincoln heard of it, he said that if all the states did that there wouldn't be a war. He didn't allow his troops to waste ammunition blowing up the island, as many people wanted to do.”

“Too bad everybody didn't do that,” Sara said.

“Yeah, too bad. By the early 1890s King's Isle was poverty-stricken, with just a few hundred people living there. Then natural hot springs were discovered bubbling up from the rocky center of the island and a year later, King's Isle was
the
place to be. The rich went there to play and to lounge in the waters. They built big summer houses, put in roads, and almost overnight, King's Isle became rich.”

“It isn't rich now, so what happened? The spring dry up?”

“Sort of. Around the turn of the century there was an explosion—nobody knows what caused it—and in an instant, the springs were gone. Since then, the island has declined and now there are only about two hundred and fifty inhabitants on its five square miles. The big old houses are still there, but the Internet sites said they're rotting into the ground, and the current residents have become squatters. The kid who delivers groceries might be living in two rooms of a ten-thousand-square-foot house that has crumbling marble floors. A lot of the residents pay no rent.”

Sara could see the possibilities. If there was anything that newly rich people liked, it was making people think they'd been rich for a long time. Old mansions would do that. “Why hasn't someone fixed up the old buildings and made the island into a resort before now?”

“From what I could find out, quite a few people
have tried, but every businessman has been sent away. It seems that the current residents are just as inhospitable as their ancestors.”

“You'll do it,” Sara said before she thought.

“Think so?” R.J. said.

“Sara's told me that you're very persuasive.”

“Did she?” R.J. asked, smiling. “I hope she's right. I'd like to get that island for Charley. I was thinking that with modern mining methods, maybe the springs could be uncovered. Charley was right that most people like the caché of going to a tropical island, but a place off the coast of the U.S. with hot springs? That has enormous possibilities. Maybe an ad campaign could make people believe the waters had healing powers.”

Sara liked everything that R.J. had told her—except, of course, for the lie about advertising the waters as having healing powers. Maybe she could persuade him to let
her
work on the project. She could live in Arundel and work on King's Isle. Doing what? she wondered.

“There it is,” R.J. said and she looked ahead. In front of them was the water, a huge dock jutting out from it, and in the distance was the island. There was no ferry. R.J. pulled the car to
the side of the road and cut the engine. “Anyone hungry?” he asked.

“Heavens no!” Ariel-as-Sara said from the back. “After the breakfast at the inn, I may never eat again. You should have seen it! Thick slices of bread stuffed with cream cheese and soaked in syrup. I think I gained three pounds.”

“I had a big breakfast too,” David said.

Sara didn't turn to look at R.J., but she doubted if he'd eaten that big breakfast at the B and B. About two months ago, he had been on his fourth Danish one morning and she couldn't resist saying, “I see you're turning in your six-pack for a keg.” As far as she knew, he hadn't eaten a doughnut or a Danish since. “I'm hungry,” she said.

“Thanks,” he murmured, but she wouldn't look at him.

He started the car, turned it around, and drove back to a little mom-and-pop restaurant about a mile down the road.

“So, Mr. Brompton,” David said as soon as they'd ordered, “what's your purpose for going to King's Isle? Other than to exploit the people, that is.” David was smiling as though he was making a
joke, but it fell flat. “That's what you do for a living, isn't it?”

R.J. leveled his eyes at David. “Of course it is. That's what all of us working-class stiffs do. We use up the world's resources. So, tell me—what was your name again, sonny?—what have
you
done in the world?”

“Studied how to save it.”

When Sara saw the two men looking at each other like clashing elks, she wanted to walk out and never return. What were they so angry at each other about? She looked at Ariel to see if she had any answers, but then saw that Ariel was leaning toward R.J. in a way Sara had seen many times. He seemed to fascinate some women. R.J. was ruggedly handsome, with that brash, aggressive, pulled-himself-up-by-his-bootstraps look, while David had a clean-cut, never-had-to-work look about him.

This has to stop, Sara thought.

“My money's on the old one,” she said loudly. “He's older, but he has a ruthlessness that young one has never had. It's my guess that this man would stop at nothing to get what he wanted, while the kid has a conscience and scruples.
Those are great ideals, but they aren't needed in the business world. And if these two take their juvenile whose-is-bigger fight into the alley, I believe the old one will win. What about you?” she asked Ariel.

“The younger one, definitely,” Ariel said. “He can be quite persevering when he wants something. He doesn't quit. Nothing makes him stop. When your old man is worn out, the kid'll still be fighting. He might have broken bones and missing teeth, but he'll keep on fighting. David doesn't give up.”

Sara glanced at R.J. and saw that he was thoroughly enjoying every word of what the lovely young women were saying, but David was red to his ears. Whatever the men were thinking, Sara had successfully shut them up.

After they finished their lunch, they went back to the car, where R.J. smiled at Sara in a conspiratorial way, as though he were a prizefighter and she'd just bet on him to win over a kid half his age.

By the time they got back to the dock, the ferry was there. It was a fairly modern thing, able to carry four cars. R.J. mumbled that he'd expected
a man with a raft and a pole. Sara nudged Ariel to pay the five-dollar charge—that's what the assistant does, after all—and R.J. drove the car onto the steel surface. Theirs was the only car on the ferry; they were the only people going to King's Isle.

Once the ferry was underway, they all got out of the car and walked to the end of the rail to look out across the water toward the little island in the distance. After a while, Ariel and David moved away, talking in low voices about something urgent.

“Think Sara will marry him?” R.J. asked quietly.

“I beg your pardon,” Sara said.

“Him. The jock. Think she'll marry him?”

Sara had no idea what to say, but she knew that R.J. was up to something, so she let him talk. “I guess Sara's told you that she's always saying she wants to quit her job. I should let her. I should give her a big severance bonus, then let her go do whatever it is that she wants to with her life. From the way she was looking at that jock at lunch, I think they're already half-engaged. She could live in a big, old Victorian monstrosity in Arundel and grow prize-winning roses. Why she
wants that kind of life, I'll never know. I guess you know that she trained to be an actress.”

“Not a very good one,” Sara said.

“Are you kidding? She was on Broadway in a play and she was really good.”

“How do you know this about her?” Sara asked softly. She wouldn't have thought that R.J. could shock her, but this did.

He shrugged. “I typed her name on the Internet one day and it came up that she had a bit part in a Broadway play. I went to see it three nights in a row. She only had a walk-on part and three lines of dialogue, but I thought she was great. She was the heroine's daughter's best friend, and she wore one of those thin, white dresses that always makes you wonder what's underneath.”

Sara was so stunned she could hardly speak. When had he taken time out of his a-woman-every-night schedule to see her in a play? She started to say something, but he moved away to the far end of the ferry to look back at the mainland. He left Sara frowning in puzzlement over what he'd said.

Finally, they reached the island. It was a perfect vision of yesteryear, and Sara knew that R.J.
wouldn't be disappointed. King's Isle was rundown in a way that some people would think was romantic, but a businessman would know was anything but. Every house in view, every waterfront building, needed repair, and if they didn't get it soon, they were going to fall down. R.J. was right, Sara thought. There's no money here. And, worse, there was an air about the place that spoke of a failure to preserve what the place had once been. She didn't think he was going to have much trouble buying the entire island.

When she turned around, she saw that R.J. was staring at her, and she wondered what he was thinking. David and Ariel were standing by the rail, shoulder to shoulder, and they looked as though they were half-afraid of the island, half-hypnotized by it.

When the ferry stopped, they got into the car and drove onto the island. Everyone was silent. Sara saw R.J. look in the rearview mirror several times. When she glanced back, Ariel and David were staring out the car windows with wide eyes. Sara was sitting straight up, looking ahead.

There were no people around. No one at all. R.J. drove slowly down the street, looking at the
run-down buildings. There was absolutely no one in sight.

“Where are all the people?” Sara whispered.

“Maybe it's an island holiday,” David said. “St. Somebody's birthday or something and they're having a picnic.”

No one said anything to that. Sara glanced at R.J. and thought that even he looked a bit unsettled. What could bother
him?

“I thought I'd drive around the island, have a good look at it, then we could go back,” R.J. said. “When's the next ferry run?” He looked in the rearview mirror at Ariel, but Sara knew that she hadn't looked at the schedule. But then, neither had Sara. Talking to R.J. as a person and not being ordered about by him had so unsettled her that she hadn't thought of things that usually would be second nature to her.

R.J. drove past two residential streets before coming to what was obviously the heart of the town, then he took a right and drove down the main street. It was deserted, completely empty of people. There were no traffic lights and no stop signs. Leaning forward, R.J. looked at the buildings.

“What do you think?” Sara asked quietly.

“This town is dead,” he said. “I think they'd welcome some money.”

“Where are the people?” Ariel asked from the back.

No one had a reply.

R.J. glanced at the car clock. It was 1:30. “How soon do you think we can leave this place and get back to the mainland? Didn't anyone see when the next ferry ran?”

“I don't like this place,” Sara whispered.