Carolina Isle (24 page)

“You mean he's gay?”

Ariel smiled. “As pink tea roses.”

“Maybe I could change him.”

“Believe me, a lot of women have tried. You should talk to Britney. She's tried for years, but …”

“Failed?”

“Completely.” David is going to kill me, Ariel thought, but she was smiling. However, without the promise of David's “services,” so to speak, she'd had to think up something else to get Phyllis
Vancurren to help them. Ariel had made one promise after another.

“So you'll call them?” Ariel asked as she was applying a heated curling iron to Phyllis's overpermed, overdyed hair.

“No telephones,” Phyllis said, holding up a hand mirror and examining the makeup Ariel had applied. “Cable cut, remember?”

“I forgot for a moment. But you do have a way to get information around town, don't you?”

“You're trying to get me to tell you things, aren't you?”

“I'm trying to earn enough money to feed David and me,” Ariel said, her lips clenched. “He won't say so, but he's scared out of his mind, and
I
have to do something. I can't tell you how glad I'll be to turn him over to his mother as soon as we get back to Arundel. That woman pampers him to no end. She never lets him do anything at all.” Forgive me, she thought, making a silent apology to David. If there was any person who wasn't pampered, it was David. All her life, Ariel had seen David doing things for his mother that only grown-ups did. He paid the household bills and she'd often seen him in the bank talking to
the manager about his mother's great masses of money.

“Did you hear me?” Phyllis asked.

“No, sorry. I was lost in thought. There, that looks good.” She had taken about four inches of height from Phyllis's hair.

“You don't think this makes me look older?”

Ariel almost said, You
are
older, but she didn't. “I think it makes you look more intelligent. Looking like this will attract a better class of man than you would have before.” It was an honest statement and Phyllis heard it that way.

“So can you set it up?” Ariel asked, trying not to sound desperate. “I really do need to try to earn some money for David and me.”

“What about R.J. and that girl? What was her name?”

“Sara. They went off somewhere else.”

Phyllis turned quickly to look at Ariel. “They'd better not leave the island!”

“How can they?” Ariel asked calmly, but her heart was beating fast. What if R.J. and Sara found a way off the island? “What would happen to them if they did leave?”

“Nothing good,” Phyllis said, turning back and
seeming to decide that she'd said too much. “I can help you get information out. The kids around town can take messages.”

“Can they put a flyer in the mailboxes? I mean, if I can persuade the shops in town to participate, that is.”

“You don't have to worry about that. Business around here is so bad that most people will do anything to make a buck.”

“They should find treasure like Mr. Nezbit did,” Ariel said, then waited to see what Phyllis would say.

“Fenny's gold,” Phyllis said, smiling into the mirror. “It's what everybody here talks about after they've had a couple of beers.”

“But no one's found it?”

“Not even close. Except …”

“Except what?”

“I think Gideon knows more than he's telling. Even I couldn't get it out of him.”

“And you've tried?”

Phyllis laughed. “Honey, that boy and I have rocked that old bed of mine so many times…. Let's just say that he keeps what he knows to himself.”

“Who is Gideon?”

“Fenny's son. Or maybe he is. Gideon says he isn't. But Fenny and Eula say he is. I never saw her pregnant, but she said she didn't show all that much and she had a home birth.” This made Phyllis laugh hard, but Ariel couldn't tell what the joke was.

“So David can use your computer, print out flyers, and someone will deliver them around town?”

“Sure,” Phyllis said, patting her hair.

“But won't they get angry?”

“Who?”

“Whoever is in charge of this town?”

Phyllis looked in the mirror at Ariel. “Don't worry about the hearing on Monday. Brompton can afford what he'll be charged.”

“I'm sure he can,” Ariel said softly as she backed away. “I'd better go tell David that … about this.” Tell him he's gay, she thought, and she couldn't help smiling.

“Let me do this,” Ariel said. “Please.”

David narrowed his eyes at her. “And what are you going to tell them? That I'll be your wash girl?”

“Maybe you could help find matching accessories.”

“You keep on laughing and I'll tell them you live in a trailer out on seventeen.”

“Next door to Britney?”

“With Brit. As her lover.”

Ariel laughed. “I had no idea you had a cruel streak in you.”

“That's because you don't know anything about me. I think I'll go over to the hardware store and see if the men know about something other than chain saws.”

“I bet they'd love to hear you pontificate on saving the wetlands.”

David gave a reluctant smile. “Maybe I'll wait on that. So what am I supposed to do to help you make these women into beauty queens?”

“Not beautiful, just to be the best they can be, remember?”

“Yeah, I wrote the flyer.”

“You really think I can do this?” Ariel whispered.

He smiled at her. “Yes, you can. No more doubts now.”

It wasn't easy for him to stand behind Ariel as she gently knocked on the door of the house of the woman who owned the only dress shop on King's Isle. The dress store was next door to the beauty shop, which was owned by her sister, and both shops didn't open until 10:00
A.M.
It wasn't even eight o'clock yet.

When no one answered, Ariel stepped back. “Maybe they're not up yet. Maybe we should come back later.”

David reached over her head and knocked on the door loud enough to wake the neighbors. Minutes later, a middle-aged woman wearing an old bathrobe opened the door and squinted against the daylight. “Yeah?” she said.

David started to speak, but then closed his mouth and gave Ariel a little shove forward. She didn't have much experience talking to people she hadn't known all her life. Or been introduced to properly.

“I'd like to talk to you about a business arrangement,” Ariel said cautiously.

“We can't help you,” the woman said, and started to shut the door.

Ariel put her foot in the doorway, then looked
at the woman. “I just redid Phyllis Vancurren's face and hair. She looks her age now and elegant enough to find herself a husband off the island.”

The woman blinked at her a few times. “You're either a magician or a liar.”

“No,” Ariel said, “I just have my clothes made in New York and I've had enough makeup sessions I could work at the Estée Lauder counter. We need money and I'd like to offer makeovers to the women of this town. Clothes, shoes, cosmetics, and hair. I'd get twenty percent of everything they buy.”

Behind her, David smiled—and was impressed.

“I'll get in trouble for this, but come in.”

“If we aren't put in jail for life I'm going to kill you,” David said so just Ariel could hear. “Do you have any idea what these women are doing to me?”

Ariel knew, since the women had delighted in telling her everything. “If he can stand
that,”
they said, “then he
is
gay.” Ariel was split between laughing and leaving the dye on too long. As it was, she was too busy to do much of anything other than try to keep up.

There were double doors between the beauty salon and the dress shop and they'd been thrown open so the women could go from one room to the next. Ariel had been in the middle of them, for the most part saying no. “That's not for you. Try the blue one. No, no, no! Not that belt!” At first she'd been almost timid, and she'd worked hard to be diplomatic. But by eleven o'clock, she'd stopped being polite. The women weren't being courteous, so why should she be? They were shoving and grabbing and pushing ahead of one another in the queue, and in general acting like what they were: starving for fashion and beauty.

To accommodate so many, Ariel stopped doing things herself. She'd started applying the cosmetics herself, and had even done the foil highlights on one woman's hair, but after an hour, she began directing and the women hurried to obey. Cosmetics, hair, clothes were all being done at once, while Ariel barked orders. “She doesn't need more blonde! Her hair's been bleached white as it is. And look at her eyebrows! Somebody get me a weed whacker!” Instead of being insulted, the women laughed and pushed harder
to get closer to Ariel. “I brought all sixty-one of my handbags and I thought you could tell me which ones I should keep.” Ariel looked into a black plastic bag full of purses that were stiff with age and gray with mildew, but she recognized gems from the forties and fifties. “Get some saddle soap and some colorless shoe polish,” Ariel said, “then sit in that corner and clean those bags up. When you're done, put them on that table and I'll sell them for you. I get twenty-five percent.” The woman blinked a couple of times, then ran out the door to go to the hardware store to get the supplies.

David had helped her for a while, but the women got to be too much for him. They were fascinated by his good looks and by what Phyllis Vancurren had conspiratorially told them.

At about one o'clock, she overhead a woman who had severely sun-damaged skin say the word “Gideon.” Ariel went to the girl who was slapping on bright blue eye shadow and took away the brush from her. “I'll handle this one,” Ariel said and the girl looked at her gratefully.

“You need laser treatments on your skin,” Ariel said flatly.

“Don't I know it. All those years on Fenny's boat.”

Ariel had to pause to keep her hand from shaking. Fenny Nezbit. The dead man in the bathtub. The man who was suing them.

“It's okay,” the woman said softly. “I won't let Fenny hurt you on Monday. It's just a game he plays. He don't mean no harm in it. He knew that man was rich.”

“R.J.”

“Yeah, the older one. He sure is in love with that girl, ain't he?”

Again, Ariel paused. “With Sara? She works for him, but I don't think they're in love.”

“Hmph!” the woman said. “You should have seen them this mornin'. I was comin' here and I guess he thought I was gonna run him over with my truck because he threw her in a ditch and covered her up. If anybody was gonna get hurt, it was him. I can tell you that Fenny ain't never done that with me.” She leaned toward Ariel. “I bet that young man of yours would do that for you.”

Ariel glanced at David. Some woman was asking him if the blouse she had on was too low cut. “David is—”

“Don't tell me that lie. I know a lie when I hear one. I live with Fenny and that's all the lyin' I can take. That boy ain't no homosexual.”

“I wonder if I could talk to Mr. Nezbit,” Ariel said. “Maybe tonight I could see him.”

“He's gone and I don't know when he'll be back. Probably not till Monday when he sees the judge.”

“Did he leave the island?” Ariel was putting shadow on the woman's lids, but the wrinkles were making it difficult not to cake it.

“Naw. He's just gone up to sleep with his gold.”

“Sleep with his gold,” Ariel said.

“Surely you've heard about Fenny's gold.”

“Phyllis—”

“Don't say that woman's name to me! Her and Gideon—”

“Who is Gideon?”

“The devil's spawn, if you ask me. Evil little bastard.”

“He's your son, isn't he?”

She looked at Ariel in the mirror and her eyes began to sparkle. “If you say so.”

Ariel was trying to calm her rapidly beating heart. “When you saw R.J. and Sara, where were they going?”

“To my house. I told 'em to take care of my kids.”

Ariel started to smile at the idea of R.J. being stuck baby-sitting, but then she thought of the kid Gideon and of her cousin Sara. “Tell me more about Gideon.”

“The meanest, most underhanded devil on this island. I'm Eula, by the way. You have kids?”

“No,” Ariel said.

“Good thing. Now my girls are just lovely, but Gideon is and always has been out for what he can get. I just hope those friends of yours don't meet him. They might be taken in by his good looks. He gets that from my side of the family.”

Ariel couldn't help pausing at that, and Eula cackled. “You wouldn't believe it now, but I used to be a real looker. Too much of bein' on this god-forsaken island and my beauty is gone.”

“If your husband has gold, then why don't you leave here?”

“You think he'd give me any of it? He doles it out by the penny. He gets it from somewhere on the island, then takes it to the mainland and sells it for cash.”

She's lying, Ariel thought, watching the way the woman moved her eyes to the side when she spoke. But what was she lying about?

Ariel didn't get the time to find out. The door opened and in came a woman who was as round as she was tall, and from the hush that spread, she was someone important. Ariel quickly learned she was the wife of the mayor of King's Isle and Ariel had to leave Eula Nezbit to tend to her.

It wasn't until 5:00 that evening that Ariel was able to speak to David. “Where have you been?” she hissed at him. The sisters who owned the stores were locking the doors. There wasn't much merchandise left in the dress shop and the beauty shop was out of hair dye and most everything else. Everyone except Ariel looked exhausted.

“Could we get something to eat?” David asked, cutting his eyes at the two women.