Our Island Inn (Quirky Tales from the Caribbean) (14 page)

I think he was only half-joking.

The silence stretched out until I felt compelled to speak.

“Oh, well,
Mr. Hamilton…he just…disappeared.” I finished the sentence with a shrug. I could tell from Pickering’s vexed expression that I had only made matters worse.

Oliver
jumped in – to keep us both out of jail or to protect himself – I wasn’t sure which.

“
That was a strange situation, Detective Pickering. You see, Mr. Hamilton and his wife had dinner on the deck by the pool. Sometime after the dessert course, he left for the restrooms beneath the kitchen. He went down the stairs attached to the pavilion’s outer wall, but no one saw him come back up.”

Pickering sputtered in disbelief.
He was so shocked by the comment that he didn’t even correct the erroneous title Oliver had given him. “Why didn’t you mention this the last time I was here? That’s where Daisy Jones was last seen, wasn’t it? In your restaurant? Did she visit your restrooms too?”

“
Mrs. Hamilton wasn’t at all concerned about her husband,” Oliver protested, avoiding the Daisy Jones question.

“I think she was relieved,” I
chimed in – again unhelpfully.

The inspector was unimpressed.

“He was an unpleasant man,” Oliver explained, cringing at the memory. “Going on and on about his little blue pills.”

Pickering
thunked his notepad against his palm. His eyes narrowed at the two of us.

“
You can’t just have people vanishing into thin air around here.” He put his hands on his hips. “Is there anyone else I should know about?”

Oliver and I
looked at each other, a rare direct exchange. He broke away first.

“Well, there’s
Jesús, the sous-chef. Apparently, he took off to go see a sick relative, but his departure was rather sudden.”

I
gulped, listening to my lie being retold.

A
t that moment, a squawk screeched across the parking lot. It sounded as if someone had accidentally stepped on Charlie or one of his or her feathered associates. Likely, a dinner patron had committed the offense while trying to navigate the darkened portion of the lot.

But
I saw it as a signal from the depths below the deck.

My misdeeds were catching up to me
– in a series of unforeseeable consequences that were rapidly spiraling out of control.

To put it bluntly,
my chickens were coming home to roost.

MILLICENT
TROTTED UP the pavilion steps and peered out at the parking lot. She studied the layout, plotting how best to maneuver toward the innkeepers and the man she’d heard identified inside the pavilion as Inspector Pickering.

The
rectangular lot was about half full with a couple of jeeps interspersed among the safari trucks that were waiting to transport dinner guests back to the resort. Most of the artificial lighting was concentrated around the pavilion entrance and the reception building. The far end of the lot, connected to the top of the driveway, was almost pitch dark.

The challenge, Millicent soon realized, was to pick a path that
would avoid her being exposed in the gaps created by unoccupied parking spots. In order to make her approach unseen, she would have to walk to the dark end of the lot and loop around the other side.

She pulled up her knee
high socks, adjusted the waistband on her loose-fitting shorts, and got ready to move. She was as nimble as anyone could be after two knee surgeries and one hip replacement.

She tugged on the brim of her cowboy hat, securing it to her head.

“Let’s see what this old lady can do.”

~
~ ~

TRYING TO LOOK casual, Millicent strolled
toward the driveway drop-off. She soon reached the parking lot’s dark region. Slipping into the shadows, she began sneaking up the east side.

Bent over at the waist, she
crept along the back bumpers of the safari trucks until she reached the outer glow of the lamppost near the reception building.

She was getting close now. She could hear the low rumble of the men’s voices. Another couple of yards, and she should be able to pick up the
ir conversation.

But t
his last bit would be the trickiest.

Here, t
he light from the lamppost was much stronger. She would have to be more creative in how she conducted the next crossing.

Millicent
studied the four-foot gap to the cover of the rental jeep that she and her fellow Golden Girls had driven up to the inn earlier that day.

Swinging her arms for extra momentum, she jumped across the
swath of light – and nearly face-planted into the asphalt.

“That was a close one,” she muttered, brushing herself off.

Then she glanced down at her tennis shoes, which were brightly lit by the light streaming beneath the vehicle. Fearing the inspector and the innkeepers would see her feet, she grabbed the rear door’s upper metal trim and climbed onto the jeep’s back bumper.

She scooted along the
bumper, straddling the spare tire, until she could peek around the jeep’s opposite corner. Then she tilted her good ear toward the lamppost.

“
Bingo,” she whispered triumphantly.

Pickering’s deep voice was as intimidating as his physique.
She could hear him clearly now – and she could hardly believe the exchange that was occurring between him and the innkeepers.

“
Who’s Romeo?” she thought curiously. “Now we have a thief?”

The eavesdropping yielded still more stunning details.
She quickly added new names to her list of missing persons.

“Mr. Hamilton?
Daisy Jones? Good grief, how many people have been abducted from this place?”

Millicent was so transfixed
by this flood of information that she didn’t notice the sweat building up on her hands. As the conversation turned to the missing sous-chef, her arthritic fingers began to lose their grip on the jeep’s metal trim.

Just then, a breeze caught
her hat. Instinctively, she reached up to catch it. The sudden motion was all it took to disrupt her balance. Her feet slipped on the bumper, her hand released from the trim, and she fell to the ground in the bushes behind the jeep’s parking spot – landing on a disgruntled chicken.

The subsequent squawk startled
the trio standing next to the lamppost.

As the indignant bird glared up at her,
Millicent muttered a self-rebuke.

“
Good thing Matlock wasn’t here to see that.”

ELSIE
MONITORED THE meeting between Pickering and the innkeepers the best she could from the kitchen’s rear window, but she couldn’t spare more than a few minutes to stare out at the parking lot.

The dinner service wasn’t
yet finished, and she was needed in the restaurant. Pickering’s latest visit to the inn would be a hot topic at the police station. She would find out soon enough what had brought him there that evening.

Returning to the kitchen, Elsie p
icked up an order of finished dessert plates, expertly balancing them across her arms.

Maya
remained focused on her workstation. Pie and cake related dishes were spread across the counter in various stages of completion. She seemed oddly detached from the events going on around her.

Despite her
husband’s disappearance, she didn’t appear to be the least bit interested in what Pickering and the innkeepers were discussing outside. As Elsie had observed on several occasions, the woman had a strange way of compartmentalizing her emotions.

The chef
simply smiled her thanks and continued cooking.

~
~ ~

HER ARMS FULLY
loaded, Elsie backed through the swinging doors and pivoted toward the dining area. It was a task she’d performed hundreds of times before, a route she’d navigated so frequently she could have walked it blindfolded.

Winding through the tables, she made her way to the prim
e spot on the far northwest end where three white-haired women were enjoying the warm tropical night.

The fourth seat was empty.

Elsie distributed the dishes. As she set down the fourth plate, she nodded at Millicent’s vacant chair.

“Is your friend okay?”

The question elicited bitter groans from two of the Golden Girls, a wry chuckle from the third.

“
Millicent’s gone off on a sleuthing expedition in the parking lot,” Maude replied with an eye-roll. “She’s got it into her head that your missing sous-chef has been murdered.”

Elsie’s
eyes widened in surprise – for the sleuthing aspect of the remark, not the conclusion that had been drawn about Jesús.

“Don’t worry.”
Maude slid Millicent’s plate toward her place setting. “We’ll take care of her key lime pie.”

~
~ ~

STEPPING AWAY FROM the table,
Elsie left the women to their desserts, but she didn’t immediately return to the kitchen.

Contemplating
the potential problems associated with a nosy guest, she wandered toward the deck railing. She wrapped her hands over the top bar, leaned out over the open space, and looked down into the jungle.

This was a dangerous place to be snooping about.

It always had been.

She
thought back to the infamous night fifteen years ago. She’d been seated with her parents at one of the restaurant’s poolside tables. She only remembered bits and pieces of the actual event, but she’d heard the story repeated endlessly over the years in her father’s blustery sermons.

The tale evolved
with each retelling, but one aspect remained constant: the tortured fate of the wife, “condemned to an eternity stuck in limbo, haunting the steep ravine below the property.”

L
eaves rustled in the dense greenery at the edge of the clearing, thousands of individual movements converging into a unified force. It was as if the beast had sensed her presence – and responded.

A silent whisper
brushed against her cheek.

Soon, the spirit
promised, the secrets of Parrot Ridge would be revealed.

BY THE TIM
E Millicent and the militant chicken settled their differences, Inspector Pickering had wrapped up his discussion with the innkeepers. Oliver and Glenn beat a hasty retreat as Pickering guided his pickup to the end of the parking lot and, with a warning honk to anyone who might be blocking the road below, dropped off the edge.

Reluctantly,
Millicent retraced her steps to the pavilion. She returned to the table as the last of her dessert was consumed.

“It was a
frozen
key lime pie,” Maude said, holding up her empty fork. “We couldn’t let it melt.”

Millicent
was too wrapped up in her latest sleuthing endeavor to be distracted by the pilfered dessert.

“
We’re up to at least three people who’ve gone missing from this inn. Keep a close eye out, ladies. You’re lucky we’re not tripping over dead bodies left and right.”

Mary
stood from the table, sighing with disgust. “Really, Millicent, don’t be so morbid.”

~
~ ~

TRUE TO FORM, Millicent rose at the crack of dawn the next morning.
Her compatriots, however, were frustratingly slow to start their day. By the time the rest of the women arrived at the pavilion to eat, Millicent had already finished her breakfast.

“Y
ou’ll have to manage without me,” she said as the others sat down at her table.

The
announcement met with immediate protest.

“Come on,
Milli, you’ll miss out on all the fun.”

“Give t
he sleuthing a break. You’re on vacation!”

Maude
pondered for a moment. Then she threw out her most tempting offer. “We’ll let you drive.”

Mary shot Maude a
n admonishing look. “We might have to vote on that…”

Millicent paused, considering.

“Maybe tomorrow.”

~
~ ~

AFTER A LEISURELY breakfast
– far too leisurely in Millicent’s view – and an inordinate amount of dilly-dallying around, Mary, Kate and Maude set off on the day’s island excursion.

Millicent waved goodbye
to her friends from the top of the driveway, watching with relief as the rental jeep rolled down the hill.