tj jensen 01 - barkleys treasure (7 page)

In contrast to Gracie’s tears, Ashley actually seemed to be in a good mood. She reported that she’d also had fun at camp and had made some new friends. She definitely wanted to go back the next day and was looking forward to the movie the following evening. For the first time since we’d been on the island I was beginning to feel that Ashley might settle in and enjoy the summer after all.

Both Grandpa and Kyle arrived back at the house shortly after I finished tucking Ashley into bed. Kyle seemed relaxed and casual, as if his dinner with Willow really was nothing more than a meal between new friends. Grandpa, on the other hand, had a glow about him that I hadn’t seen for quite some time.

“So we’re saying Deputy Savage is for some reason lying about the fact that Buck Barnes was murdered?” Kyle clarified after we’d all settled onto the deck overlooking the ocean with glasses of wine. It was a beautiful night with a warm breeze that felt like a giant hug as it caressed my skin. The sound of nocturnal creatures rustling through the nearby shrubs competed with the soft crashing of the gentle waves, lulling me into a state of deep contentment.

“That’s the way it seems,” I answered as I tried to let the stress of the day evaporate into the night.

“But why?”

I shrugged. “I have no idea.”

“Do you think Savage might be being bribed to close the murder investigation before it even begins?” Kyle asked.

“I hate to say it, but not all cops are good cops,” Doc said. “I don’t know Deputy Savage, nor have I heard anything about his reputation one way or the other, but I’d be willing to stake my own reputation as a coroner that Buck Barnes died as the result of being hit on the left temple. I did some checking while I was waiting for you and Ben to come home and I was able to ascertain that Barnes listed a man named Colin Walton as his power of attorney. It was Walton who signed off on the paperwork to have Barnes cremated.”

“Who is this Colin Walton?” I wondered.

“He runs a nursing home on the island. It isn’t uncommon for older folks with no next of kin to assign people like Mr. Walton the authority to make end-of-life decisions for them. From what I can gather based on the limited information I was able to obtain, Mr. Walton is very highly regarded in the community. It appears he used his own money to open the home and he makes it a point never to turn anyone away based on the inability to pay.”

“Was Buck living there?” I asked.

“No, but he did odd jobs for the home, and in exchange Mr. Walton allowed Barnes to live in a small rental he owned. I think we might want to pay Mr. Walton a visit tomorrow to see if we can gain any additional insights, although, as I’ve already said, we’ll need to tread lightly.”

We fell into silence as we tried to make sense of a series of events that, when considered in their entirety, really didn’t make sense. Buck Barnes seemed to be a popular fixture in the community. Everyone we’d spoken to seemed to care about the man the residents of the island seemed to have adopted. The fact that Colin Walton would agree to have him cremated without a thorough investigation seemed to indicate that he trusted Savage’s conclusion regarding the cause of Barnes’s death.

“I still can’t believe the deputy is lying.” Kyle shook his head.

“What if Deputy Savage saw something when he was in the attic that led him to the identity of the killer?” I asserted. “And what if the killer, as it turned out, was someone the deputy had a strong reason to protect?”

“Like who?” Ben asked.

“Like a sibling or parent, perhaps even a child,” I answered.

“I guess that would make sense,” Ben agreed. “The deputy finds a clue in the attic that points to a specific person. After the body is removed Savage comes back to clean up. Then Savage returns the next day to say he died of natural causes, thereby eliminating the need for a thorough investigation.”

“The man from the mortuary must realize Savage was lying,” I pointed out. “He sees a lot of dead bodies. You’d think he would be able to discriminate between those who die of natural causes and those who don’t. Maybe the deputy and the man from the funeral parlor are friends. It’s reasonable they would be, and I also suppose it’s reasonable that one would cover for the other.”

“If that’s true I don’t see how we’re ever going to prove it,” Kyle stated. “We really have nothing except our recollection of what we saw. It would be easy enough for a trained professional to turn around everything we think we remember so that our testimony won’t hold water in court.”

“Are you saying we should drop the whole thing?” I asked.

“Not at all. But I am saying that if we decide to pursue this we’re going to need to stay mindful of our limitations. We won’t be helping Buck Barnes or ourselves if we end up making everyone mad.”

“Sounds like we need a plan,” Ben suggested.

“The girls want to go to kids’ camp tomorrow and I have the contractor coming in the morning,” I reminded everyone.

“And I need to return the rental truck. Doc can follow me in the car and Ben can stay with Tj to help out with the contractor. We should all meet back here at around lunchtime to come up with a strategy.”

We ironed out the details and then both Ben and Doc headed into the house, while Kyle and I decided to enjoy the evening on the deck.

“Blackbeard asked about you today. I think he might have a little birdie crush,” I teased Kyle.

“He asked about me?”

“When I went in to feed him he repeatedly asked for Captain Kyle.”

“I know parrots are supposed to simply mimic what they hear, but I swear that bird has a mind of its own, although the Captain Kyle thing came from Gracie.”

I laughed. “Were you playing pirate again?”

Kyle blushed. “When we got home from camp I decided to take the dogs for a walk. Gracie wanted to go and she asked if we could bring Blackbeard. I found a tether that goes around his leg so you can take him outdoors and not worry about him flying away, so I agreed to take him. When I opened the door to the cage he said, ‘Play with pretty boy,’ and Gracie told him my name was Captain Kyle. He called me Captain Kyle for the entire walk. I’m not sure he has a crush on me, though. He told me to walk the plank several times during the twenty minutes we were on the beach.”

“That’s funny. I bet Garrett must watch pirate movies. Either that or he plays pirate with Blackbeard as well. It’s really amazing the way he seems to really be talking to us and not just repeating random words. He actually has a pretty large vocabulary. Earlier today I heard him saying, ‘Charlie bad, Charlie bad,’ and every time he sees Cuervo he says ‘Kill the cat, kill the cat.’”

“I know why he wants us to kill the cat who’s made a hobby of taunting him, but I wonder who Charlie is,” Kyle said.

“I have no idea, but I can ask Garrett the next time I talk to him.”

Kyle leaned back and looked up at the stars. “This is really nice. I love Paradise Lake, but there’s no way we’d be sitting outside after dark without both a jacket and a fire if we were at home.”

“I do like the warm nights, but I think that after a while I’d get sick of the heat. Most years by the time fall rolls around I’m ready for some snow.”

“Yeah, it is nice to have the seasons.”

“I spoke to Jenna today.” Jenna Elston was my oldest friend.

“How is she doing with Helen being away?”

Jenna’s mother, Helen, and her famous novelist boyfriend, R. L. Hellerman, more commonly known as Bookman, had married in May. Helen and Bookman had been an item for quite a while, so I don’t think anyone was too surprised to see them wed, but shortly after they were married they announced their intention to give up their homes and their businesses in order to head to Europe for a year or more to sample the lives they’d only imagined. The announcement that Helen was going to give Jenna her half of the Antiquery, the restaurant she owned with Jenna, came on the heels of the announcement by Jenna’s assistant, Kallie, that she was going to get married and would be moving away.

“I think she’s dealing, but to lose the two people she depended on the most to help out at the restaurant at the same time has been tough. She seemed a little down, so I tried to convince her to close the restaurant for a couple of weeks and come out here for a visit.”

“Do you think she will?”

Echo put his head in my lap. I adjusted my position so he would be comfortable before answering.

“I think she might. I don’t think money is an issue with Dennis’s promotion, and I know he’s been working a lot of extra hours.” Jenna’s husband, Dennis, was a firefighter who’d just made captain. “It sounds like her girls miss our girls and have been giving Jenna their own sort of grief.”

“Our girls?”

I smiled. “You know what I mean.”

“I do. And I see why they’re upset. It has to be hard when your best friend is so far away. It seems you would miss not only the friendship but the support you’d come to depend on.”

“Like calling your best friend to come over and kill the spider that’s crawled under your bed,” I teased.

“It was a big spider.”

“It was harmless. You just pretended to be scared so I’d come over and take care of you when you were sick.”

Kyle winked. “Maybe.”

“Is that why you gave up everything to follow me across the country?” I asked. “Because you were afraid you’d get sick and there’d be no one around to make you soup or fluff your pillows?”

Kyle turned and looked at me with a serious expression, very much unlike the teasing I was expecting. “I came with you because three months without you seemed intolerable.”

Kyle leaned toward me just a tiny bit. I was sure he was going to kiss me just as Gracie’s scream pierced the silence of the night. Kyle and I both jumped up and ran into the house.

Someone must have left Blackbeard’s cage open because he was chasing Cuervo around the room, screeching, “Kill the cat, kill the cat.” Cuervo was darting across furniture to avoid the sharp talons that were threatening to pierce his back, knocking everything that got in his way onto the floor.

Grandpa came running toward the sound of the chaos. “What’s going on?”

“It looks like Blackbeard was actually trying to kill the cat,” I responded.

He chuckled as he began picking up pieces of broken glass from a vase that had crashed onto the tile floor. “Maybe we should be protecting the cat from the bird rather than the other way around.”

Chapter 5

Wednesday, June 15

When Jack Long arrived the next morning in his faded blue jeans, tight blue T-shirt, smoky gray eyes, and dark blond hair, I knew for certain that Kyle’s almost kiss had affected me more than I wanted to admit. Jack was exactly my type, yet I found I felt nothing when he smiled at me.

“Ms. Jensen?”

“You can call me Tj. I assume you’ve spoken to Garrett about what needs to be done?”

“We had a dialogue about the project in general terms, but I wanted to get a look at the place before I made my recommendations. Do you happen to know if the cabins are locked?”

“They are. Just let me get the keys and I’ll show you around.”

“That’d be mighty nice of you,” he said with a drawl. “Are you enjoying island life so far?”

All three dogs wandered over to check out the visitor. Echo stayed by my side, but Trooper and Pumpkin went in for the scratch behind the ears, which Jack seemed to happily provide.

“In spite of the body we discovered in the attic on the day we arrived, I’ve enjoyed my time here very much.”

“I heard you stumbled on old Buck. It’s a shame what happened to him. He was an odd sort, but a nicer guy you wouldn’t find.”

“Odd?” I asked as I opened the side door and let myself into the kitchen, where the keys were located in a cabinet.

“Maybe odd isn’t the right word. The guy was friendlier than most, but at times he appeared to be a bit too friendly, if you know what I mean.”

“Too friendly?” I found the keys we would need and headed back out into the warm sunshine.

I suppose I must have looked as confused as I felt because Jack elaborated. “For example, we had a big scare last summer when Buck struck up a conversation with a four-year-old he came across while he was walking down the street. The carnival was in town and the child was crying because his mom said she was too busy to take him. Buck felt bad for the kid, so he offered to accompany him and even pay for the rides. The problem was that he didn’t think to inform the child’s mother of his intention. When she went outside to look for her son and couldn’t find him, she thought he’d been kidnapped. Luckily, he was found safe and sound at the carnival with Buck, but only after half the island had dropped everything to look for him.”

“Yikes.”

“Yikes is right. The woman was a visitor and wanted to charge Buck with kidnapping, but Deputy Savage managed to talk her out of it. He also had a long talk with Buck, who seemed to understand what he’d done wrong. At least he hadn’t taken off with any more kids that I know of since.”

I would die if Ashley or Gracie disappeared, but I could see where a simple man would think he was doing a nice thing by taking the child to the carnival when his mother couldn’t.

“It seems the locals have all pitched in to take care of Buck.”

“That’s a true statement. We like to take care of our own around here, and Buck was one of us, no matter his limitations. Garrett too. That’s why I want to be sure we come up with a plan that will help ensure that Garrett’s needs concerning the resort are met to the best of our abilities.”

I was liking this guy more and more. It turned out that not only was Jack Long very good-looking but he was knowledgeable about the renovation processes, and funny and friendly to boot.

“The main problem I see is to make the necessary repairs that will attract a buyer who’ll be interested in maintaining the integrity of the resort without spending so much on the project that any interested party would never be able to afford the price Garrett would need to charge to recover his investment.”

“Do you have any idea why Garrett let the property slide into such a state of disrepair?” I asked.