The Men of Thorne Island (3 page)

Dexter grunted his agreement and sat in the chair Sara had vacated. “What’s going on here, Nick? Who is this Crawford woman?”

“I told you, Dex. She’s our new landlady and Millicent Thorne’s great-niece. Millie died last week and left the island to her. She showed me the deed, and it looks like everything’s in order.”

“What does that mean for all of us?”

“Actually, Dex, now that I’ve had a few minutes to think about it, Millie did us a favor.”

“But Miss Thorne was the best landlady we could ever have had.”

“True, but we knew she wouldn’t live forever, and when you think about all the possible outcomes for Thorne Island, having Millie’s niece as the owner
seems like the best one. Sara Crawford will probably hang around for a couple of days, flex her landlady muscles a bit and then take off. You saw what she was like—nice clothes, educated manners, soft hands.” His mind wandered to Sara’s other obvious attributes, but he refrained from listing them. “She won’t have any interest in staying around here.”

Dexter nodded. “Yeah, why would a woman like that want to hang around a bunch of independent cusses like us?”

“Exactly. I give Miss Crawford three days tops, then she’ll be history.” He grinned at his own private thought. “Though I imagine she’ll make us send in our rent checks on time.”

Dexter’s answering grin curled into his cheeks. “She makes a darned pretty chapter of Thorne Island history, though, doesn’t she, Nick?”

Nick nodded slowly. “Yep. She’s not hard to look at.”

Dexter stood and headed for the door, but stopped before leaving the room. “By the way, Nick, did she see what you had on the computer screen?”

“No. She wasn’t the least interested. I use the name Nicolas Bass in the top margin, so she wouldn’t have suspected anything, anyway. She doesn’t seem like the type who’d be curious about the ramblings of a grumpy, thirty-eight-year-old hermit.”

J
UGGLING BED LINENS
and her suitcases, Sara chose a room at the opposite end of the hallway from Nick’s. She flicked the light switch beside the door. A single bulb hanging from the ceiling crackled and spit, finally casting a sickly yellow light on more furnishings covered with sheets. Cringing at the potential
cost of electrical repairs, Sara dropped her belongings onto the floor.

She snapped open one neatly folded sheet and fluttered it over a gray mattress. A fresh scent—familiar from Sara’s childhood—filled the room. She hadn’t smelled that clean aroma since the days her mother had folded the family’s laundry from the backyard clothesline. Bass must dry his laundry in the open air, she thought. Probably because the inn didn’t have a working electric dryer.

She doubted the island had many modern conveniences. In fact, considering the condition of the Cozy Cove, she’d been dumbfounded to see a computer in Nick Bass’s room. She’d tried to read the screen, and once she’d recognized standard manuscript format, she’d been doubly curious. But she hadn’t gotten close enough to actually read the words.

Strange, she thought now as she tucked a corner of the top sheet between the mattress and box spring, she wouldn’t have been a bit surprised to see a racing form or even a video game on Mr. Bass’s monitor. But a scholarly-looking bit of text—somehow that didn’t fit the picture she’d formed of the man so far.

There’s an old saying, Sara,
she said to herself.
You can never tell a person by his dopey-looking golf shirt.
She was glad she had a full week to devote to this island project. It might take that long to understand her bizarre tenants, especially the aggravating—but oddly appealing—Mr. Bass.

T
HE ROOM
Sara had selected turned out to be almost cheerful. She removed the sheet that had been thrown over a cedar wardrobe and found dainty floral stenciling on the doors. When she uncovered a pair of colonial arrow-back chairs flanking a fireplace, she discovered bright chintz cushions on the seats. She gave the shutters at the windows a thorough dusting, which gave new life to the well-polished slats.

Yes, she would be quite comfortable in this room, once she solved the immediate problem of food. Since the Cozy Cove obviously wasn’t a working hotel, it probably didn’t have a restaurant or the personnel to run it. A snack breakfast on the airplane and a nonfat yogurt cone in Put-in-Bay wasn’t nearly enough to sustain Sara. Surely the inn had a kitchen. She went downstairs to raid the refrigerator.

Behind the registration counter and opposite the parlor, she located a spacious dining room with sheets hiding what appeared to be a long table and eight chairs. In the near darkness of dusk, she felt her way through that room to a kitchen beyond. She flipped the light switch by the entrance, and another single overhead bulb glared down on a red brick floor.

Sara made a quick inspection of the appliances and decided they had once been used to prepare meals for a large number of people. But they hadn’t been op
erated in some time. She ran her hand across the porcelain top of a six-burner stove, and years of smeared grease stuck to her fingers. Hardened boil-over remains coated the sides of the oven. When she opened the door of an ancient refrigerator, she grimaced at the streaks of mildew.

The rest of the kitchen was in much the same condition. Pitted kettles hung from brass hooks in the ceiling or lay any which way on the rough wood of the countertop. An old oak worktable surrounded by four simple ladder-back chairs had an assortment of alien substances embedded in its scratched surface. Sara’s stomach, which just moments before had growled to be fed, nearly revolted at the conditions under which its next meal would have to be prepared.

That was until Sara saw a little corner of the kitchen that made her heart—and stomach—rejoice. Sparkling under the unforgiving light, next to a modern apartment-size refrigerator, was a scrupulously clean area of counter. A gleaming-white two-burner stovetop and a microwave oven sat side by side on the varnished pine surface. A cabinet above this miraculously neat oasis held two spotless pans, a pair of matching skillets and assorted clean tableware. If these items existed in this chaos of dirt and grease, could decent food be far away?

She began a search for cans, bottles and jars, checking cabinets in the tidy corner of the kitchen.

“Can I help you, Miss Crawford?”

Like a child caught with her hand in the cookie jar, Sara slammed a lower cabinet door and stood up. “Mr. Bass, you don’t have to sneak up on me.”

Another of those smug grins tugged at his lips. “Now we’re even, eh?”

He crossed the threshold into the kitchen and came toward her. A pair of brown chinos accentuated his long, lean legs and matched the sand traps on his shirt. Sara detected a slight limp in his gait, though it might have been caused by the uneven old brick flooring. She pulled her gaze away from him and continued her search for food. “I wasn’t aware we were keeping score.”

She sensed his amusement even though she couldn’t see his face and hated the flush of embarrassment it brought to her face. “Oh, yes you were, Sara,” he said. “You’re just miffed because it’s a tie.”

“What nonsense,” she responded, acutely aware that he’d called her by her first name. A chuckle rumbled from his throat and seemed to reverberate down her spine.

“What are you doing in my kitchen—oh, pardon me,
your
kitchen—going through
my
things?” he asked.

She banged another cupboard door closed. This one contained various cleaning supplies, and she tucked the information away for later use. “I’m looking for food. And while we’re on the subject, may I say that under
your
supervision,
my
kitchen has fallen into a state that isn’t fit for pigs.”

“Then it’s fortunate we don’t have any pigs, or I don’t know where they’d eat.”

She scowled at him, though judging from his teasing grin, her glare had lost its effectiveness. She crossed her arms over her chest. “Mr. Bass, I need something to eat. You’re not going to let me starve, are you?”

“You can buy food on the island.”

“Thank goodness. Where?”

“At Brody’s cottage. He’s an ex-marine and he calls our supply store the commissary. He orders the groceries and we buy them from him. But he’s not there now. He fishes every day at dusk. But no, I won’t let you starve. In fact, you can even use my part of the kitchen, which I maintain for my own use.”

She uncrossed her arms and managed a tight smile. “Thanks.”

“What kind of soup do you like?”

Soup. She could almost feel a steaming mug of delicious broth between her hands, almost taste the savory herbs and spices. “That sounds wonderful,” she said. “I like all kinds—broccoli and cheese, roasted chicken and wild rice, any of the new low-fat soups are delicious….”

“That’s fine, but I meant, do you like Chicken Noodle or Tomato?”

“Those are my choices?”

“Brody volunteered to keep us supplied, but he isn’t particularly imaginative.”

“I see. Tomato, then.”

Nick went to a tall pantry cabinet near the back door and produced the trademark red-and-white can, which he set on his clean counter. Then he went to his small refrigerator. “Now, what kind of meat for your sandwich?”

“Do we really need to go through this again?”

“No. We have salami.”

He took bread and meat slices from the refrigerator. “And to drink?”

“You tell me.”

“Actually I have six different brands of beer—”

She wasn’t surprised.

“—and one Mountain Dew.”

“Shall I fight you for the Mountain Dew?”

He took the can from the refrigerator and tossed it to her. “No. I’ll let you win this one.” He pointed to a stool next to the counter. “Have a seat. I’ll even cook.”

The entire meal process took less than thirty minutes from preparation to cleanup. And during that time the few sentences Sara and Nick spoke to each other involved passing the condiments and a smattering of comments about Millicent Thorne. Sara admitted that she hadn’t known her great-aunt very well and even expressed her guilt about that situation.

“It’s too bad,” he said. “You would have liked her. In fact, I see similarities between the two of you.”

Since he didn’t elaborate, Sara decided to accept his statement as a compliment.

Once the dishes were put away, Nick went out the back door and stood on the stoop. “Will you be needing anything else from the refrigerator tonight?” he asked through the screen door.

“No, I don’t think so. Why?”

“I always turn off the generator before I go to bed. Can’t see wasting fuel. The food stays cold all night if the refrigerator door’s not opened, and I’m an early riser.”

He was turning off the generator? Sara’s stomach did a somersault of alarm. “But does that mean the lights won’t work?”

“Sure does. Take one of the lanterns from the parlor. They’re not just decoration. There should be
plenty of oil in the well. You’ll find a flashlight in the pantry, too.”

Resigned to the conventions of Thorne Island, she got the flashlight and watched Bass step down from the back porch. His limp was more obvious now. In fact, a tightening of his facial muscles indicated that he was in pain. Since they’d just shared a few companionable moments, Sara felt comfortable enough to ask, “Are you all right, Mr. Bass?”

He looked up at her from the yard. “What do you mean?”

“Your limp. I couldn’t help noticing.”

“And you want to know why I have it?”

“I don’t mean to pry, but if you’d like to tell me…”

“A few years ago I was shot. The bullet entered at the base of my spine and pretty well screwed things up.”

The flashlight clattered to the floor. “You were shot?”

“Yep. So when I told you earlier that if you meant to kill me, you’d better use a gun, I really wasn’t relishing the idea all that much. Good night, Sara.”

That was obviously all the information she was going to get. She picked up the flashlight and spoke to his dark form as it blended with the angular shadows of the inn. “Good night, Nick.”

T
HE NEXT MORNING
Sara awoke to the sound of voices filtering through her second-story window. She got out of bed and opened the slats of her shutter just enough to peek outside. A cool breeze washed over her, and she breathed in the fresh, heady scent of the flowers in the porch baskets.

Four men stood in the overgrown front yard of the inn just beyond the edge of the porch eaves. Sara could see three of them clearly and just an arm and a foot of the fourth. She recognized Dexter Sweet, his huge arms bulging from the short sleeves of an athletic T-shirt. She heard the low timbre of Nick Bass’s voice coming from under the porch. She didn’t know the other two men, but assumed they were the pair Dexter had mentioned the day before—Brody and Ryan.

One man was short, thin, with brown, shoulder-length hair bound in a leather strap at his nape. The other was medium height, with a middle-aged paunch and slumping shoulders. “Ol’ Brody,” Sara concluded. He wore a canvas fishing hat with an ageless collection of rusty lures pinned to every square inch. Definitely the island’s unimaginative grocer.

Sara tuned in to the conversation when Brody was speaking or, more appropriately, complaining. “Hell-fire! How long is she going to stay?”

Nick answered in a harsh whisper, but Sara couldn’t make out the words.

The small man with the ponytail spoke next. He glanced up several times at the second story. Ducking out of sight, Sara was able to interpret his opinion from the tone of his voice. He didn’t seem any more pleased about her arrival than Brody had.

When she risked a peek through the shutters again, she saw Brody nodding his head, causing the lures to bob up and down. “I agree with Ryan. I don’t cotton to having a woman snooping around our island. Millie Thorne left us alone.”

Dexter raised his hands as if to quiet the complaints of his friends. “Now don’t go borrowing trouble,”
he said. “Like Nickie told me last night, she probably—”

Nick stopped Dexter’s words with a sharp warning and stepped away from the porch. He looked up at Sara’s window. She jerked back again. Then the men moved down the crumbling walkway of the inn toward the path to the harbor.

Sara opened the door to her wardrobe, took out underwear, a pair of jeans and a San Francisco T-shirt and tossed them onto her bed. Then she slipped her arms through the sleeves of her terry cloth robe and tied it in front. Walking down the hall to the bathroom, she mumbled to herself, “Thanks for the welcoming committee, boys, and have a nice day!”

T
HE
C
OZY
C
OVE
I
NN
was an interesting blend of two centuries. While the decorative moldings and wooden ceiling planks in every room were clearly from the 1890s, the bath fixtures probably dated from the 1950s. Small black-and-white tiles lined the lavatory walls and the small circular shower, and provided a nice backdrop for white porcelain fixtures. The toilet with its oddly squat shape worked sufficiently well, but the night before, Sara had carefully checked the oak seat for splinters before using it.

The inn had an adequate hot-water heater, though insufficient pressure. It took Sara longer than normal to rinse shampoo from her hair.

It was eight-thirty by the time she’d dressed, dried her hair and secured it in a clip at her nape. Obviously morning activities started early on Thorne Island. With Nick gone, she’d have to scrounge around his kitchen again in search of coffee. A trip to Brody’s grocery store and a thorough cleaning of her own area
of the big kitchen were first on her list after she had a jolt of caffeine. She didn’t intend to “borrow” from Nick any more than she had to.

With sunlight streaming in the windows, the clean section of kitchen gleamed even more brightly than it had the night before. Unfortunately the grimy section looked even worse. But Sara’s resolve was bolstered by the sight of the automatic drip coffeemaker on Nick’s counter. Dark brew steamed from the glass pot, and a clean crockery mug and sugar packets sat next to it. Nick had obviously left the supplies where she would find them. Sara smiled to herself. If he didn’t work so hard at being annoying, Sara could almost tolerate Nick for this one friendly gesture.

After her second cup, she took cleaning supplies from the cupboard and set to work on the stove. Layers of grime slowly dissolved under the onslaught of bleach and pine-scented solvent. An hour later she decided to tackle the brick floor and set about finding a mop and a bucket. She spied a wood-paneled door in the middle of an interior kitchen wall and thought it might be a cleaning closet. She grabbed the knob, but Nick’s voice stopped her from turning it.

“I don’t think you should go into the cellar,” he warned through the back screen door. The hinges squeaked as he opened it and came inside. He wore a pair of cargo shorts that showed off muscular, tanned calves. A T-shirt with the faded logo of a Cleveland tavern on the front clung to his broad chest and disappeared into the waistband of the shorts. A Cleveland Indians ball cap sat low on his forehead, but she still had an all-too-intimate look at his silver-flecked eyes and freshly shaven face.

For a brief moment Sara found it difficult to
breathe. She covered the dysfunction with a hard swallow. Nick Bass had a certain indefinable appeal in the bright light of day, even if he was telling her she couldn’t do something. “Why not?” she said. “What’s down there?”

He settled onto the bar stool and shoved the hat back. “Spiders. Cobwebs. Some old barrels and a few dusty bottles of wine.”

“I’m not too excited about the spiders, but I’d still like to go down.”

“You can’t see anything because the lightbulb burned out years ago.”