Island Intrigue (10 page)

“What, you don't know my dress size?”

“Give us time.” She laughed. “My partner Katie and I own this store.”

Music instruments of every description hung on the walls, as well as books, wind chimes and beautiful sun catchers. Near the back, a colorful selection of Halloween costumes hung on a rack. The sounds of a tortured trumpet bugled from the back room.

Sondra grimaced. “Katie's busy giving music lessons right now, or she'd come say hello. Are you on the island to stay or just to visit?”

“To visit.” Sabrina realized that a little part of her wished she never had to leave.

“The natives been giving you the run around? For an island that relies on tourism, some of our people can be rather standoffish.”

“Really? I hadn't noticed.”

“That bad?” Sondra laughed. “Sometimes it takes a while for them to warm up to visitors. Katie and I don't bite, though, don't worry. We've lived here for about five years, and we thank the Lord every day we made the decision to come here. I used to be an advertising agent, made tons of money, and lived in a beautiful house. I was absolutely miserable! Stressed out all the time, fighting traffic, the whole bit. Now I make about the quarter of the money, but I'm happy every day. That's what counts to us.”

“It sounds wonderful.” Sabrina fished in her purse for two quarters.

The two women said their good-byes and Sabrina went out into the lane. She wasn't surprised to hear the familial shrieks coming from the post office and she smiled as she climbed the steps of Tubb's Community Store to sit beside Lima. Bicycle Bob was nodding off on the bottom step.

“Hullo, Miss Sabrina,” Lima said. “Me and Bicycle were just talking about the state of the world today. What's your opinion?”

Chapter Ten

“I can't say I've been paying attention to the state of the world, Lima,” Sabrina said. “What do you think?” Which of course is what the old rascal wanted her to ask.

“Well, the way I see it, the rich get richer, the middle class gets more self righteous, and the poor stay at home and watch that talk show host, what's his name, Jerry Springer. That's what I think.” Lima huffed with amusement, slapping his knee.

“If it wasn't for the Jerry Springer Show, we wouldn't have anyone to whom we could feel superior.” She paused, and then plunged ahead. “Speaking of class division, I was wondering why there's so much conflict between the Wavers and Towners? I mean, you've all been here the same amount of time, you've all grown up together, go to the same school and church, why hate each other?”

“We do have more than one church,” Lima said in an injured voice.

“Do you?”

“The High Tide Church over in Waver Town is for the Baptists. The other one is over near the ocean, the Higher Tide Church, and it's for those fundamentalists folks, the ones who are so busy worrying about the rest of our souls that they don't notice they're beating their children and cheating on their spouses. Me, I'm not into any of that religion stuff. I'm half tempted to join Nettie's religion, whatever it is today.”

“What about the feuds?” Sabrina was determined not to be sidetracked.

“Just always been like that, I guess. It was a lot worse when we didn't see them all the time, before the bridge across Down the Middle Creek. From early days, we've been different types of people. The Wavers were the fishermen, and the Towners, were, well, the Towners. Now that we see them all the time, I guess some of them aren't so bad. Some's worse than others, of course.”

“So,” Sabrina persisted, “what about the feuds? You said there were feuds between some of the Towners and Wavers.”

“Well, let's see.” Lima leaned back in his chair. “That's surely true. Back in the fifties, I remember Seimo McCall towed Ken Tubbs' boat out into the inlet and hit it with a shot gun, sent it right to the bottom. He said Ken was badmouthing him around town. Well, then Ken Tubbs refused to sell Seimo anything from the store until Seimo paid him back for his boat and Seimo's poor wife had to take the mail boat to the mainland to go shopping. It was uglier than a devil's blow, and everybody was on one side or the other.”

“Goodness. And the Wrightlys and Tittletotts also have a feud going on?”

Lima nodded, and chewed on his toothpick for a bit. “Yup. That's been going on since the seventeen hundreds, of course.”

“Since Lord Tittletott exposed Wrightly as a pirate,” Sabrina supplied.

“Yup,” Lima said, shooting her a dirty look. He didn't like his story being preempted. “But it just got dirtier and dirtier over the years. About a hundred years ago, a Wrightly daughter disappeared, just never came home one day, and the last person she was seen with was a Tittletott. The Wrightlys get together, there was a big clan of them in those days, and they march over to the Tittletott House and go all through the house looking for the girl, and of course they weren't gentle about it neither. Pretty much trashed the place. Well, the girl showed up a year later, turns out she ran off with a gypsy fellow. Those two families been at each other's throats for as long as anybody can remember. And then there's what happened to Rolo Wrightly and Bradford Tittletott, not fifteen years ago.” Lima stopped and Bicycle Bob said “Yep” in his sleep.

“Who's Rolo Wrightly?” Sabrina had a tingling feeling that she was getting close to something.

“He's the oldest Wrightly son, Roland Thierry Wrightly. He's Thierry's older brother, but he left oh, nearly fifteen years ago, because he attacked a woman, and she lost her baby, and then he set her house on fire. His best friend, Bradford Tittletott, turned him in. It was a bad affair, and Rolo took off in his papa's boat and we've never seen him again. Good riddance, I say.” Lima looked at Sabrina sideways. “Broke Ms. Lora's heart when he left. He was her favorite, you know. She had her stroke right after she heard he left.”

“Yep,” Bicycle said again, sitting up and automatically reaching for his bottle.

“Lima.” Stacey Tubbs pushed open the screen door. “Could you go down to the house and tell Daddy that I'm going to need more beer than usual? The Regatta really wiped us out. He's making the order today, and he must already be doing it, because the phone's busy.”

“All right.” Lima stood up and made his way down the stairs, prodding Bicycle with his foot as he passed. “Bicycle!” he yelled. “I'll be back in a while.”

“Nope,” Bicycle said, and his head flopped forward on his chest.

“Lima,” Sabrina called. “Where would I find a locksmith on the island? Lora's cottage needs some locks on the doors.”

Lima paused, looked back at her and then snorted with laughter. “You're looking at him.” He pointed at Bicycle Bob who was snoring peacefully again, his bottle clutched in both hands. “Bicycle Bob's the island's locksmith and jack of all trades. Buy him a bottle of whiskey and he'll do anything you want.”

***

Later that afternoon she was digesting her excellent crabcake lunch, if she did say so herself, and putting away the fire extinguisher when there was a knock on the door. She opened the door to find Nettie Wrightly standing on her porch.

“The lunch rush at the cookie shop is over.” Today Nettie's robes were white, plain cotton with no symbols. Though she still wore the flashing tiara on her head, it looked more subdued, as if maybe the batteries were running out.

“Come on in,” Sabrina invited.

Calvin caught hold of Nettie's robes and swept along with her as she walked into the living room. Nettie looked up at the dark smudges on the ceiling, and shook her head. “I meant to get Bicycle in here to repaint the ceiling. But he went on a real bad binge, and then you were on the way and I didn't have time. I hope it's not bothering you. We're lucky the fire didn't burn the whole place down.”

“Fire?”

“Yes. The night poor Lora fell and hit her head, she knocked over the candle burning on the coffee table. It set some magazines on fire, but it burnt itself out by the next morning when I came to bring Lora her new coffee cups.”

“And you found her…deceased?”

Nettie nodded. “She was partly paralyzed on her right side, you see. It was hard for her to get around. She must have just…fallen, and it was bad luck she hit her head so hard it killed her.”

“You hadn't thought about putting her in a nursing home? For her own safety?”

“Nursing home?” Nettie frowned, and adjusted her robe so Calvin could climb up to her knee. “We don't have any nursing homes on the island. I tried to get her to come and stay with us, but really, she was just down the road. Every time I brought it up she got upset. She was happy here, where she'd been living all her adult life.” Nettie stroked Calvin and he whirred with pleasure.

Sabrina leaned forward and picked up the crayon pictures lying on the coffee table. Nettie accepted them and thumbed through them with a growing expression of horror on her face. “The poor, poor child,” she whispered. “Such hate, such jealousy…” She pressed a hand to her forehead and closed her eyes. She stayed like that for a few moments and then she opened her eyes and flipped through the pictures again. “If Rolo or Thierry drew them, I don't remember seeing them before.” She placed them back on the coffee table, her nose wrinkling with distaste.

“Lima said about twenty years ago the island had a bout of arsonist activity. Do you remember that?”

Nettie frowned. “Seems like someone was setting trashcans on fire, but no one thought too much about it. Childish pranks, and it stopped after a while.” She started to say something and then stopped. She shook her head, as if refuting whatever was going on in her head.

“Do you have any idea why Lora decided to look though her old school folders? Was she looking for these pictures in particular, do you know?”

“I have no idea. Lora's always kept in contact with her old students. They came and visited with her, showed off their kids and she painted them coffee cups. Lora was a memorable woman.” Nettie's voice was sad. “She could be ornery and impatient, especially when she got frustrated with her bad side, but she truly had a great heart. I say that, even though she was my mother-in-law. I loved that woman as if she was my own mama.”

“Painting coffee cups?” Sabrina asked in puzzlement.

Nettie laughed, and pointed at the various coffee cups painted with simple, pretty designs sitting on tables and shelves all over the room. “That's how she kept herself occupied. She painted pictures on coffee cups with her left hand, and Sondra and Kate sold them down at Sweet Island Music.”

Sabrina gazed at the pretty mugs, and felt an intense connection with Lora Wrightly. Would her own students come visit her when they were all grown up?

“She didn't explain why she wanted to look at those old school folders?”

Nettie shrugged. “She was impulsive. That's one of the reasons she got irritated with people, when she had to explain something that seemed obvious to her.” Nettie stared at the crayon pictures on the coffee table with troubled eyes. “I don't know why they bother me so much,” she said, almost to herself. “Whoever drew them is twenty-five years older now, an adult. But something about them…”

Sabrina nodded, feeling the same. She wondered if someone had helped this child when he or she was younger, like she tried to help Tommy. No one had listened to her, and Tommy ended up trying to smother his little sister. Sabrina knew in her heart that Lora at least tried to help the child who drew those pictures. But why was she thinking about it twenty-five years later? Why was she looking at the pictures?

“Why were they under the hurricane hatch?”

Nettie stood and dragged the rug back from the hatch in the floor. She stooped and traced the uneven stain on the door. “I cut her some roses that day. She was always complaining that I didn't trim her ‘ladies' right. I tried, but she would sit inside and yell at me out the window that I was taking too much off here, not enough there…” Nettie smiled in remembrance. “It got to be almost a joke with us, though I know it saddened her that no one was taking proper care of her roses. She was working on a coffee cup set that day, but she was fidgety and impatient. She had me take the file crate back upstairs and told me to make sure I cleaned the living room good because she was expecting company. This was before I opened the shop, so I got her situated and then went to work. I came back after the store closed and gave her her medicine and made sure she had her dinner. She was fussing that night, more so than usual I think, now that I look back at it. She complained that my clam chowder was too runny and she told me my new hairdo was crazy-looking.” Nettie touched her tiara, a sad smile twitching her lips. “You get the picture. She was just fussy. I think she knew her death was near. I kissed her good-bye and left, and that was the last time I saw her alive. We think that sometime during the night she got up and overbalanced and fell. Why she lit a candle instead of just turning on the lights I have no idea, but Lora was never comfortable with anything high tech. When I found her the next morning she was lying on the floor. The magazines on the table and part of the coffee table were burnt, and there was soot all over the room, but everything else looked perfectly normal.”

Nettie shook her head, and used the toe of her shoe to nudge at the rug. “The blood had seeped clear down to the floor, right through her favorite carpet. I had to throw it away and get another one, ”

Sabrina looked at the stain on the hurricane hatch door. “When you found her, she was lying on top of the hurricane hatch, but the rug was over it.”

Nettie nodded.

“But why,” Sabrina asked, “were the pictures under the hurricane hatch?”

Nettie shrugged, and stood up. “She had me open the hatch that afternoon. She said she heard noises and thought maybe a cat crawled under there to have kittens. I looked and didn't see anything, so I know the pictures weren't there the day she died. She must have put them there that last night, for some reason. I'm wondering…I'm wondering if maybe that's why she had me open the hatch. So she could hide the pictures there once I left. The hatch hadn't been opened for years, you see, and it took all my strength to break through the layers of paint and varnish to get it open. She couldn't have done it by herself.”

Nettie and Sabrina were silent, each thinking about the crippled old woman and what she had done the last night of her life. What had been going though her head as she gazed at those horrible crayon pictures? Why had she put them under the hatch?

“I guess we'll never know,” Nettie said sadly. “If only I had stayed with her that night. I knew she was feeling restless, maybe she wasn't feeling well. If I had been here, I could have gotten her whatever she needed, and she never would have fallen.” Nettie sighed and then glanced at her watch. “I've got to get back to the store.” She stood and Calvin squawked in protest.

After seeing Nettie to the door, Sabrina came back into the living room and flipped the rug back over the hatch. Then, after moment, she threw a magazine over the pictures so she wouldn't have to look at them.

***

An hour later, she stretched and looked around. She had been so involved taking notes on Romeo and Juliet that she hadn't noticed that her neck was aching and her hand was cramped. If she didn't watch out, she'd end up with carpal tunnel syndrome. She had brought a wrist brace—and a knee and neck brace, it was best to be prepared—in case she needed it.

She went outside onto the porch into the sheer, bright sunlight. She was a little lightheaded from standing up so fast and she clung to the porch rail for a moment.