Carolina Isle (15 page)

“A liar and a loser,” R.J. said quietly. “Are
you slipping on me that you didn't remember that?”

“I remembered. Maybe it was something else that made me think he was a thief.”

“Could it have been the twenty-thousand-dollar watch he was wearing?”

“I didn't notice that.”

“I did and I think you did subliminally. Phyllis said he was rich.”

Sara stopped walking. “You want to find out how he got rich, don't you? Maybe he was blackmailing someone and his victim got fed up and murdered him.”

“And we happened along and they tried to pin it on us,” R.J. added.

“What's going to happen when there is no body found?”

He started walking again. “I thought about that. How can we be accused with no body? That freezer was plugged in but the food in it was old. I don't think it's been opened in a long time, certainly not on a daily basis. It could be a while before they find the body in there.”

“But then the killer will be looking for it over the side of the cliff.”

“And wherever the kids tossed their dummy.”

“Why do you keep calling them ‘kids'? Ariel is the same age as I am.”

“I've heard that great emotion is what makes you grow up. If that's true,
are
you and Ariel the same age?”

“I think that with my dad I may be about a hundred and fifty.”

“And I'm a thousand.”

“You?” she asked. “Since when do
you
have any emotion? I've seen you dump women without a backward glance.”

“Their tears were over losing my bank account.”

“Not all of them. What about Tiffany?”

“She ran up accounts at Bergdorf's and Barney's in the six figures, all on the prospect that I was going to marry her. After I got rid of her, Harry Winston's called me and asked if I wanted to continue holding the ten-carat pink diamond ring.”

“Ah,” Sara said. They had reached the Vancurren house and she felt R.J. take a step backward. She turned to him, her eyes pleading. “You're not going in, are you?”

“No, and you can't go with me. This is something I need to do alone. I don't need a committee meeting every time I want to get something done.”

Sara looked up at the top floor of the old Victorian mansion and saw a light behind the curtain, then a shadow. David and Ariel were back. Sara knew that what R.J. was saying was correct. It had taken as much time to get David and Ariel calmed down about the body as it had to try to deal with it. Part of her wanted to go back to them. This would be her chance to get to know David better. She'd show him that she was calm under stress, that she could handle things. R.J. was the natural leader of the four because he was the oldest and more experienced, but with R.J. out of the picture, maybe Sara could take over.

Yes, she thought, she'd take over and David would hate her for it. Ariel would swoon in his manly arms and David would sweep her up and carry her to the altar. And Sara would be left behind. Strong, capable Sara would be left behind.

“I'm going with you,” she said more firmly, bracing herself for the coming argument with R.J.

“You'd miss your chance with Mr. Politician.”

“What makes you think he wants a political career?”

“I listen and I watch people. You thought you might be in love with him, didn't you?”

“Yes. No. I don't know. It's complicated. He belongs to my mother's family and I'd like to be a part of them.” She glanced up at the window. “But I think I inherited all my genes from my father's sharecropper family.”

R.J. looked around. They were on the edge of the town, hidden under some trees, and Sara could feel that he had something to say, but he didn't say it. “Are you sure you want to go with me?” he asked. “I could use your help.”

She waited, her breath held. It seemed that she'd never wanted anything as much as she wanted to stay with R.J. If there was any way for them to get out of this mess, he would find it.

“Okay,” he said at last and started walking rapidly. “But you do what I tell you.”

“I always do.”

“Actually, you don't,” he said softly. “In fact, you've never taken me up on any offer I've ever made you.”

Sara didn't want to talk about them. She was having trouble following him in the dark at the rocky edge of the road. Ariel's expensive Italian sandals weren't made for actual walking. “How can you plan something with Nezbit's wife when you haven't even met her? Maybe she's as much beneath your standards as the beautiful Phyllis Vancurren.”

“You twist everything around, don't you? If I like a woman, that proves I'm a leacher. If I don't like her, that makes me a snob.”

“Just so we understand each other,” Sara said.

R.J. laughed. “Come on, let's get some sleep.”

“Where?”

“How about a front porch? I've seen a lot of those what-do-you-call-'ems with cushions on them.”

“Chaises. Daybeds. Lounges. I guess we better not try to break into a house.”

“No, I think not,” R.J. said. “You up for a night of mosquitoes?”

“Sure. Mosquitoes aren't as bad as bullets. Do you know anything about Nezbit's widow?”

“I know that if she knows she's a widow, then she's in on it. My plan is not, as you seem to
think it is, to seduce her. I mean to seduce her six children.”

“What?! You can't—”

“You always believe the worst of me, don't you?” he said, putting his hand on her elbow and steering her toward a dark house with a huge porch. There were half a dozen pieces of furniture on the porch. “When you were a kid, was there anything that your father did that you didn't know about?”

“No,” Sara said slowly, walking up the stairs of the porch. She smiled as she thought about what R.J. was saying. To get information out of an adult would take a long time, but they had only days. But what child didn't blab everything they knew to anyone who asked?

Still smiling, she sat down on one of the two cushioned daybeds on the porch. The cushions were musty and she could feel torn places in them. If she saw them in daylight she'd probably be horrified. Were there mouse nests in them? Bugs? What about snakes?

“Come on, Johnson,” R.J. said softly, reaching across the distance until he felt her hand. “The worst is over. If the police knew about the death,
by now they would have arrested all four of us. My guess is that, at the most, two people know about Nezbit's death.”

“One is Phyllis Vancurren.”

“I'm not so sure of that. Whoever put the body in the bathtub may know she drinks herself to sleep every night. And the creaking stairs are marked.”

She was quiet a moment, looking up at the stars and trying to relax. It wasn't easy since she feared that at any moment police cars would arrive, sirens blaring, and arrest them. “Ariel will be frightened if I'm not there.”

“Don't kid yourself,” R.J. said, his voice sleepy. “That girl is made of steel. She may be stronger than you and me put together.”

“You're wrong. Her mother—”

“Her mother!
That's
where I saw her before. In New York. I was at a party with Tiffany. It was just before we broke up and she knew it was coming, so she was putting on a great show of jealousy. There was a pretty girl there and she kept staring at me. But every time I took a step toward her, she ran away. It was an interesting game but I got tired of it fast. Then, out of the blue, this
woman comes up to me and tells me that if I so much as touch her virginal daughter she'll have me arrested. The whole thing was too much. Tiffany was on the verge of making a scene, some girl was flirting with me then running away, then some woman nearly accuses me of being a rapist. I left the party.”

In spite of her fear, Sara could feel herself relaxing. “How many of your hundreds did you leave them?” she murmured.

“What hundreds?”

Sara was too tired to argue. “The ones in your shoes. Each pair you own has a hundred-dollar bill folded under the insole. Two shoes, two one hundreds.”

“Both of them,” R.J. said sleepily. “Do you mind?”

“No. They need them.”

“They have each other. I'll bet you fifty grand that by Monday your little cousin will no longer be a virgin.”

“You touch her and—”

“Keep your knickers on. Mr. President is going to do it, not me.”

“How did you know about him, about
his … wanting …” She was more asleep than awake.

“To be president? You told me. You're no good at keeping secrets.”

“Secrets about the man I love,” Sara whispered, then fell asleep.

R.J. lay awake for a few minutes, looking at the stars over his head. There was a hole in the porch roof. Yeah, he thought, Charley better get here soon before the old houses rot into a pile. He glanced at Sara, looking at her profile in the dim light. I know who you love, but
you
don't know, he whispered. Smiling, he went to sleep.

In the bushes, their every movement was watched.

“I
HEAR FISHING BOATS,”
R.J.
SAID, HIS
face close to hers. “I want you on one of them. I want you off this island.”

Sara opened an eye enough to see that it wasn't quite daylight, which meant that they'd had maybe two hours' sleep.

She was tired, hungry, and dirty—but she still knew a trick when she heard one. R.J. was trying to get rid of her. “And let you have all the glory of solving the mystery?” She hadn't quite opened her eyes, but she heard him chuckle as he stood up.

“Today I'll talk to some of the fishermen and make arrangements for the lot of you to return to the mainland. Are you going to lie there all day?”

“Maybe,” she said, stretching, her eyes still closed. It was cool and pleasant in the early morning on the porch and she didn't want to face reality.

“Sara,” R.J. said in a tone she'd never heard before, “if you don't get up, I'm going to join you on that couch. Think we'll put on a show for the neighbors?”

She refused to let him bully her. “Naw,” she said lazily, “they only look out the windows to see dead dogs.”

When she heard him chuckle again, she opened her eyes. He was looking down at her in the way she'd seen him look at several women, but she didn't react as they did. She knew what happened to women who fell for that come-tome look. Sighing, she sat up and looked out at King's Isle. There was no one in sight, just a lot of empty-looking old houses.

As she remembered Fenny Nezbit's dead body and all that the four of them had done to conceal it, Sara had to fight down the fear that rose in her
throat. She ran her hand through her slightly greasy hair, and her tongue over teeth that felt as though they had green stuff growing on them. “Does prison have a bathroom?” she asked. “I need a bath, some deodorant, and clean clothes.”

R.J. didn't seem to have heard her as he looked out at what they could see of the town. For all their ordeal, he didn't seem to have changed much. How was it that men could sleep in their clothes and wake up with them unwrinkled? And why did the stubble on his cheeks only make him look more rugged? If he stepped onto a fishing boat right now, he'd look like one of them.

Reluctantly, she got up. Minutes later, she was following him along the same road they'd been down the night before. Each step took them farther away from Phyllis Vancurren's house, farther away from Ariel and David. “Think they'll be all right?” Sara asked.

“I think they'll be ecstatic. They have enough money to live on for a few days, so they can do what people like them are so good at doing: nothing.”

“You don't like them much, do you?”

“Who was it who came up with that idiot scheme of trying to make me think the two of you were each other?”

“It wasn't about you,” Sara said, but then thought better of it. As far as she could piece together, Ariel had seen R.J. at a party in New York, thought she was in love with him, and so had asked Sara to change places with her. And because Ariel thought she needed Sara with her, she'd arranged for the four of them to go to King's Isle together.

“If it wasn't about me, then who was it about?” R.J. persisted. “You and the prez? You wanted to be part of his snobby little set so much that you tried to make a fool of me?”

Sara was too tired to put up with his accusations—and she wasn't about to try to defend herself. “Did you forget to take your arthritis medicine this morning, old man? Is that why you're so cranky?”

“No,” he said slowly. “I'm trying to be unpleasant enough that you'll go back to your friends.”

“Won't work,” she said, giving a huge yawn. “I'm used to your bad temper. Besides, who said
they
can
go back? If anyone is going to get us out of this mess it's you, so I'll stick with the winner.”

“I'd think that was a compliment, but that would mean the world is ending, so I know it can't be.”

“Where are you taking us?”

“To breakfast. That sound good?”

“And how do you plan to pay for it? Washing dishes?”

R.J. held up a folded hundred-dollar bill.

“Does that mean you gave Ariel and David only one bill?”

“Nope,” he said. He was walking so fast she was having trouble keeping up with him.

“You lied to me, didn't you?”

“Nope.”

“When we get out of this I'm going to quit working for you.”

Turning back, R.J. smiled. “Belt.”

“What?”

“You think you know all about me because you snooped in my closet and found out that I keep emergency money inside my shoes. But you didn't find out that all my belts are custom made and they have money in them too.”

“I have
never
snooped in your closet! If you remember, you told me—” She cut herself off. What did it matter now? “How much do you have?”