Island Blues (22 page)

Chapter Forty-three

Everyone turned to stare at Lance. Most of them had no idea why they were doing so.

Lance did, however. He stood and left the room without a word.

“Oh no, you don't.” Sabrina was up in an instant, hurrying after the man. By the time she got to the door, he was halfway down the hall. He wasn't running, but he wasn't walking slowly, either. “Lance, was that Gilbert Kane's duffel bag you were carrying?” she called after his retreating back.

Behind her there was an interested murmur and then people began pouring out of the room as Sabrina set off after Lance.

“Sabrina, why would Lance be sneaking around with Gilbert's bag?” asked Sophie in a high, excited voice.

“And if Gilbert was dead, how did Lance get his bag? Do we know for sure it
was
Gilbert's bag?” This from Patti. “Lance, you better stop and answer some of these questions.”

Lance sent a harried look over his hunched shoulder and kept walking.

“Wait for me, wait for me!” screeched Guy, who was bringing up the very rear as he struggled with his cart. Dennis Parker went back, picked up the little man, put him in the cart with his tank and sprinted him down the hall. “Wheee!”

“Please, people, can we try to be more quiet?” Matt pleaded as several guests opened their doors to see what all the commotion was about. “Sabrina, I hold you responsible for this!”

Sabrina was not far behind Lance as he turned the corner at the end of the hall.

“Lance,” she said in clear, ringing tones. “What do you know about Gilbert's murder? Why did you have his bag?” She rushed to follow Lance out the glass doors onto the pool deck.

Dawn was just arriving, cool, foggy and pearlescent as it slid across the hushed sky.

Lance stopped and turned around at the edge of the pool. People kept piling out through the door and then came to a shoving, whispering halt when they saw him. No one knew what to do.

“It would be easier if you told us what you were doing, Lance.” Sabrina stood closest to him, and she could see the dew drops of sweat beading his brow.

“I don't want to be like the man in her story,” he said at last, and his words were so quiet that it was almost necessary to stop breathing to hear him.

“What man?” Sabrina had no idea what he was talking about.

“Speak up, buster, I'm in the balcony back here,” Guy called.

“Her great-grandfather,” Lance said, “the one who lived his whole life consumed by guilt. It's
already
eating away at me, and I don't think I can stand it. But if I tell you, I might lose my kids.” His gray eyes were wild with indecision.

“What kind of father will you be with something like this on your conscience?” Sabrina had no idea what
this
was, but it seemed to work. Lance groaned and turned away. For a moment, she thought he was going to walk away again, but then he turned back around.

“I went after Gilbert that afternoon. I overheard him,” Lance nodded at Matt, “telling the dock guy to take Gilbert over to Goat Island and leave him for a while. I looked at the big map of all the islands in the bar, and I saw where Goat Island was. I waited until I saw them leave on the motorboat, and then I took one of the kayaks. I got really lost, so it took me a while, but then I saw Gilbert lying on the beach. Just…lying there. I pulled the kayak up on the beach and went over to him, but it was too late. He was already dead. There was a bottle of wine overturned next to him, and a corkscrew covered with blood lying beside him. There was nothing I could do.” He looked around as if someone had disputed this statement.

“How did you come by his duffel bag?”

“It was there, beside him. I thought it might have…things in it, so I took it. It was sitting right next to Gilbert, so it was covered with blood, and it got the kayak all bloody as well. I looked through it when I got back to my room, and that night, when the girl saw me, I was on my way to get rid of it. I took another kayak and dropped it overboard. I knew what the police would think if they found me with it.”

“Did you search Gilbert's room that night?” Sabrina asked the question in as non-threatening a tone as possible. Behind her, it sounded as if the group had its collective breath held.

“Yes. I did. It turned out it didn't matter, but I didn't know that then.” Lance's voice was bitter. “At the time I thought I was free, but I wanted to make sure Gilbert didn't have anything else hidden away in his room.”

“What kind of things were you looking for?”

Lance looked up and seemed to notice the group for the first time in several minutes. “I was trying to save all of us Hummers, you know,” he said to them. “Not just myself. But I guess you don't even know what I mean, do you? You're being blackmailed, every one of you, and you don't even know it.”

Chapter Forty-four

There was a moment of stunned silence, and then everyone started talking at once. Sabrina raised a hand for quiet.

“Please continue,” she said.

Lance nodded, and then swallowed hard. There was a long pause before he started speaking again. When he did, he addressed his fellow Hummers directly. “They photograph us at our sessions.”

“Fred Young,” Sabrina said. “The big, bald man in the leather jacket. That explains what he was doing on Rainbow Island with a camera.”

Horrified expressions crossed the Hummers' faces.

“Normally you wouldn't find out until later,” Lance continued. “When you left the retreat, the Hum would be gone, but there would be an envelope full of pictures waiting for you when you got home. Pictures of you. Doing what they made us do in our sessions.” He paused meaningfully, and Sabrina glanced around to see shock and panic.

“What did they make you do?” Guy called out. “Did I miss something?”

Lance waved away the question, and Sabrina could see the relief on the faces of the Hummers. “It's not important. Suffice it to say we were desperate, and truly thought these…rituals would help.”

“I suppose they want money to keep quiet about these pictures?” Here was the money, Sabrina thought, it had been there all along.

But Lance surprised her.

“No, they don't ask for a dime. There's always a request, but it's seldom for money. You see, it's more complicated than that. We're not picked randomly. Someone in our life has nominated us for this torture. In my case, it was my ex-wife. She heard about this…service through a friend. Word of mouth is the only advertising for this type of thing, but it can be very effective. My ex-wife paid a lot of money to Hummers International to set me up.” He took a deep breath and looked around at his fellow victims. “They come in the middle of the night and knock us out. Then they use a hypodermic needle to insert two miniature electrodes into our backs. The electrodes are so small that they are almost undetectable by most medical diagnostic procedures. Gilbert stole the plans for the electrodes from a biomedical research firm where he worked before coming to Hummers International, and then paid someone to adapt them for his purposes.

“These electrodes feed sound waves through our skin, which to us sound like a refrigerator running, or a diesel motor idling. No one else can hear it. It gets louder and louder as time goes on, and we get more and more desperate. Doctors are useless, because the electrodes don't show up on their tests.”

“They insert the electrodes in your
back
? I would suspect most doctors would be concentrating on your head and ears. But how do they work?” Sabrina involuntarily put her hand to her back, and noticed that many of the Hummers were doing the same.

“The technology is based on a recent invention that helps deaf people hear through their skin, instead of through their ears. The noise sounds like it is coming from inside your head.” Lance grimaced. “We become willing to do almost anything to get rid of it. Most of us turn to the Internet, and most of us discover Hummers International. When we contact them for help, they set us up on these retreats. Once we're here, they make us believe that we have to do these…things to get rid of the Hum. And they're waiting there with the camera. They deliberately do this outside, you know, just to make it more humiliating, and the photos more shocking.”

“But surely this doesn't work on everyone? What if a person refused to perform at these sessions? Or what if they never find Hummers International in the first place, or sign up for the retreat?” Sabrina was trying to grasp the enormity of this blackmail scheme.

“Of course there are failures. The blackmailer pays a hefty fee even if the victim doesn't cooperate, though they would get the bulk of their money back.”

“But this doesn't account for the thousands of people around the world who suffer from this Hum. That's been going on for years. The government even funded an investigation into it.”

Lance shrugged. “Michael and Gilbert have been doing this for a couple of years. I don't know about all those other people, the ones who aren't hearing the Hum through the electrodes. I suppose they're hearing something, though I don't know what.”

“Master Joseph hears it for real, I know that,” Sophie said, her voice firm with certainty.

Sabrina nodded. Whatever shenanigans Hummers International Incorporated had going on, she did not doubt that Joseph Siderius' Hum was genuine.

“How did you find out all this?” Patti asked, her voice hard with anger.

“The second day we were here, I went by Gilbert's room to clear up a question he had about my payment for the retreat. Isn't that nice, by the way? We have to pay for the privilege of being set up for blackmail. He wasn't there. The door was locked, but he hadn't pulled it all the way shut. When I knocked on it, the door swung open. I figured I would go in and wait for him. I saw pictures lying on his desk and others displayed on his laptop. They were…they were horrible. I was too stunned to think, at first. I just left.

“I went down for a drink and saw Gilbert in the bar. He looked like he was going to be there for a while. By this time, I had recovered my wits. I went back up and copied his hard drive onto my laptop. Then I went through it. All of it's in there. He must have been getting sloppy, to leave that laptop out of its locked briefcase.”

Sabrina remembered the first time she met Gilbert, and Michael Siderius saying:
You're getting sloppy, you know that? You've been acting like a chicken with its head cut off ever since we got here.
Something was weighing on Gilbert's mind, enough to make him careless when he should have been most on his guard.

“I found him that night in the restaurant and confronted him with what I knew. Gilbert laughed—he was quite drunk—and he said he'd make me a deal. He wouldn't give my session pictures to my ex-wife to use against me in our upcoming custody hearing, if I would keep my mouth shut. I didn't know what to say, I was so pissed. We were in public, and I left after a few heated words. When I heard he was going to be on the island by himself, it seemed like a perfect opportunity to talk to him in private. That's why I went, but when I saw he was dead, I took the duffel bag in case there were pictures in it. Good thing I did, because there was a bunch of them in there, plus a lot of other information about the blackmailing scheme. That night I broke into Gilbert's room, took his laptop, and searched for any other incriminating evidence. After that, I thought I was safe. I thought we were all safe from them.”

Lance shook his head. “Little did I know, Michael Siderius had another file with all the same information. Gilbert had told him that I knew about them, and after Gilbert died, Michael confronted me, accusing me of killing Gilbert. We had a little altercation and I punched him. But I kept my mouth shut, anyway, because I couldn't bear to lose my kids. I couldn't bear for them to ever see those pictures.” Lance's voice broke and he dropped his head into his hands.

Sabrina looked around to see that the Hummers had closed ranks. “Did any of you know this was going on?”

They all shook their heads.

“I know who's doing it to me, though,” Patti said. “I'm being sued by this woman who has hated me since we were in high school. She has tons of money ever since her husband died, but now she wants my coffee shop, too. She must've planned to use the pictures to put me out of business, and who knows what else.”

“It's Shane, I know it is,” Sophie murmured, and Dennis held her hands tightly. “He'll do anything to get me back.”

“I don't know who would do this to me,” Dennis said, looking around. “I can't think of anyone who hates me.”

It was Matt who answered. “It could be anyone,” he said. “You're a big basketball star. Any number of people would love to have something on you so they could control whether you win or lose your games.”

Dennis looked stricken. “Someone could use those pictures to make me blow a game whenever they wanted me to! I wouldn't do it, though, I'd quit first.”

“I, on the other hand, can think of about a dozen people right off hand who would pay lots of money to get me by the…ahem.” Walter laughed, but it was weak, wavering sound.

“My ex-wife won the lottery,” Lance said. “I wondered what she'd do with the money. Now I know.”

“I wondered where the money came into this,” Sabrina said. “Not all of you are rich, but all of you have rich enemies. Matt, you better call the police to come get Michael Siderius.” She felt incredibly tired all of a sudden.

“He was just here,” Sophie said. “I saw him come out of his room and follow us. He was listening to everything Lance said.”

They looked around, but Michael had disappeared.

Chapter Forty-five

Vicki Carroway was locking the front door of Paradise Vacations when she saw Sabrina Dunsweeney limping up the front steps. Vicki turned, putting a hand in her purse for her stun gun. She'd been attacked before by unhappy customers.

Sabrina stopped at the top of the stairs and regarded Vicki without speaking. Her blond curls were smashed flat on one side of her head, as if she just woke up and didn't think to run a comb through them before leaving the house, and her clothes looked as if she hadn't changed them in days.

Vicki smiled. This would be fun.

“I've got something I want to say to you.” Sabrina's voice was calm, and for the first time, Vicki noticed the bird sitting on her shoulder. Vicki tried to take a step back, but the door was behind her. She wondered if stun guns worked on birds.

“I know you're not here in an official capacity. I heard you got fired. So, what do you want?” The bird was looking at her. Just staring with those beady little eyes. Vicki wanted to wring its tiny neck. Her father used to make her spend the night in the chicken coop as punishment for everything from talking back to bringing ice cream cones to her convalescent mother. Ever since, she hadn't been able to stand their musty smells, their feathers, or those chirpy noises they made.

“No, I'm here as a private citizen. I wanted to tell you goodbye. You've caused enough havoc on this island, and I think it's time for you to leave.”

Oh, this was rich, rich, rich! Was the woman serious? “
You
think it's time for
me
to go? The last I heard, you were the one without a job or a home. I think it's time for
you
to leave.” Vicki went to step around the lunatic, but couldn't bring herself to come any closer to the bird, so she acted like she had put her leg out to inspect her hose for runs.

“The game's up, Vicki. No one wants you here. If you don't leave voluntarily, I'm going to personally make sure your life is miserable until you do.”

“Oh, yeah? I'm quivering in my boots.” Vicki smirked, but her hands were shaking just a little bit. Why was the woman freaking her out? She seemed different, somehow. Vicki reached for bravado. “I plan to be around for a long, long time, Sabrina, you mark my words.”

The battle lines had been drawn.

Sabrina's voice was soft. “It's time for you to leave.”

Vicki found she had nothing to say.

Sabrina turned and walked down the stairs into the gathering shadows.