Late at Night (3 page)

So Lynn, who could have used some money but got acres of rock and trees and pounding surf instead, found herself stuck with an island nobody wanted. She organized a group to go out for the weekend, as Everson had suggested, and when a time convenient for everyone finally arrived, she let the lawyer make all the arrangements.
So here we are,
she thought grimly. Actually, the fact that the island was notable in some circles as being a center of supernatural forces was about the only thing that kept her from not bothering with it. How could she ignore a piece of landscape that had such an incredible reputation?

“What do you think, Andrea?” she asked. “Is it as fantastic as Cynthia seems to think?” Andrea pulled her long, blond hair away from her eyes and gave her friend a hesitant smile. “I—I’m not sure. I keep getting these odd feelings.”

Anton Suffron, a homely but personable concert pianist from Rumania, rolled his eyes, but kept his mouth shut. He looked at the tall, mustachioed man standing next to him, but the fellow was too busy wiping his sunglasses to have any reaction to Andrea’s unstated premonitions of disaster. Anton made no secret of the fact that he found such hocus-pocus trying. “Let’s not queer the whole weekend already, Andrea dear,” he finally said in the droll monotone he kept in reserve for idiots. “I’m here to have fun, not to listen to you go on about ‘the spirits.’ ”

Andrea gave him a weary look. She’d heard it all before. “I was just answering Lynn’s question, Anton.” She looked at their hostess. “I’m sure it’s a lovely place, Lynn. I can’t help picking up vibrations, but that doesn’t mean it won’t be a wonderful weekend.” She glared at Anton. “In spite of the presence of some people.” The caravan continued on its way. Anton again tried to start a conversation with the strapping young man beside him. The shades were back in place, giving him that distant, dispassionate appearance affected unconsciously by everyone who wore sunglasses. “What do you think of all this psychic stuff, Mr. Theiser?”

“Thesinger,”
the man corrected. Anton shrugged.

Before the other could answer, Suffron said, “When we were introduced earlier I missed some information, probably due to Gloria’s babbling. Are you Lynn’s friend? Or Mr. Everson’s? I haven’t met you before, have I?”

Thesinger knew that Anton had once been romantically involved with Lynn Overman, and that he was still carrying the torch. The fact that Lynn was now involved with her lawyer didn’t prevent Anton from getting jealous over other males in the vicinity. To assure the pianist that he was no rival, he said quickly, “I’m an acquaintance of John Everson’s. He’s my cousin, actually. We’ve only met a few times before this. But I once mentioned to him that I’d love to do a piece on Lammerty Island.”

“A ‘piece’? Oh, you mean you’re a writer.”

Thesinger laughed. “That’s okay, isn’t it?”

“Indubitably, my good fellow,” Anton smiled. “A fellow artist.” He looked wary for a second. “Just what it is you write?”

“Articles mostly. For geographical and historical magazines. I’m on assignment for
American Archives
now. John told me about this trip to the island and invited me along, suggested I do a write-up on its history. Actually
being
here in the flesh is really going to add something to the article.”

“I can imagine.”

There was a shout and those in the front of the procession turned around to see what the commotion was. Margaret Proust Plushing, the cook, was on her knees, making awful grunts and wearing a stricken expression. Hans Swenson dropped the suitcases and went to the woman’s aid. “She’s all right,” he yelled to the others up front. “Just tripped on a stone.”

“God in Heaven,” the woman swore as she was helped to her feet. “Just off the boat and already I’m breaking my ankle.”

“Is she okay?” Lynn called.

“I’m all right, dear,” Margaret yelled back. She balanced on one foot while she examined the other. “Nothing broken, thank goodness.” She was a plump woman in her sixties: apple cheeks, a fleshy, dimpled chin, short brown hair. Her expression was stern, but underneath she was warm and hearty.

“Come on, girls,” she said jauntily. “Forward march.” The two young ladies with her were Emily Seaver, a freckle-faced lass of twenty-two with blue eyes and braces, and Joanne Nobele, a nineteen-year-old of French descent with too much baby fat, but a lovely face beneath carefully coiffed blond tresses. They were the housekeepers. Margaret, the two girls, and Hans were all employees of John Everson’s, and usually worked at his enormous estate in New Bedford. When offered the chance to spend a weekend by the ocean, they’d all readily consented. Eric Thomas, a brooding, dark-haired man of thirty-eight with sullen eyes and sunken cheeks, was also along for the weekend. Eric was Everson’s chauffeur, and Hans was the handyman and gardener, but for the next two days they’d be doing whatever assorted tasks were required of them. Eric was not crazy about being stuck on an island, but he could use the extra money to pay assorted bar bills and gambling debts.

The group of fourteen trudged over hill and dale, their assorted bundles making the relatively short trip from deck to guest house seem like a month in the New York subway. The housekeepers groaned under the weight of the boxes Mrs. Plushing had ordered them to carry, boxes full of canned goods, liquor bottles, pots and pans, plates, glasses, and cutlery. Gloria waddled along in her sensible sneakers, her body fat tucked into ridiculously tight designer jeans, dangling her sunglasses in her hand and commenting on the freshness of the air and the beauty of the view.

Finally they stood in front of the guest house.

“Well, it isn’t the Hilton,” Gloria quipped, “but it will do.”

The guest house was rather spacious. Everyone would be quite comfortable, and the separate rooms would even afford a certain amount of privacy. The house had three floors, a gracious living room and dining area, a fairly large kitchen, and several small but attractive bedrooms. John Everson, Hans, and some other hired men had come out some days before to make sure that the lights were working, the water running, and everything else in order so the guests would have no nasty surprises. John had resisted taking a good look around the island at the time, figuring he’d save the main event for when everyone else was there. He and Hans were the only two of the party who had already seen the entire guest house.

John had already picked out bedrooms for everyone. The large room on the top floor with the big double bed was for him and Lynn, seeing as how she owned the island and he was sleeping with her … although the way their relationship had been going lately, he wasn’t sure he wouldn’t wind up bunking down somewhere in the living room. As far as he knew, none of the others were romantically involved—besides Gloria and Jerry, of course—so he had to team up roommates, when necessary, with an eye to personality and not existing partnerships. Andrea Peters, the psychic, and Cynthia Marcovicci already seemed to know one another pretty well, and looked just a few years older than your typical college roommates; he put the two of them together in a bedroom on the second floor. Gloria Bordette and Jerry Hardington he placed in the room next to the one he was sharing with Lynn, hoping to limit the sound of creaking bedsprings to one floor.

There were two smaller bedrooms on the second floor, in which he placed Betty Sanders and Anton Suffron respectively. They would have to share a bathroom (each of the bedrooms on the third floor, and the larger bedroom on the second floor, had its own private bath), but he thought Betty would prefer that minor inconvenience to sleeping in the quarters he’d chosen for his writer-relative, Ernest Thesinger. John had put him in a small storage room on the first floor, in which Hans had placed a cot, a desk, and a typewriter.

He figured Ernie might want to stay up late typing, working on his article about the island, and this way he would have privacy and not keep everyone else awake. It was the least glamorous “boudoir” in the guest house, barring the servants’, but he suspected Ernie would think it was just perfect.

There were cramped, but functional, quarters for the servants past the kitchen and dining area. One large room that had a bed against one wall and a bunkbed against the other would be shared by Mrs. Plushing and the girls. Hans and Eric would share the room next door, one in the bed, the other in a sleeping bag. There was a separate bedroom back there, too.

After giving out the room assignments—during which Gloria “oohed” and ”ahhed“ and kept asking to be excused to the bathroom, would someone tell her where it was?—John escorted Lynn to the third floor, up the large, carpeted staircase, motioning Gloria and her handsome young companion to follow. Cynthia, Andrea, Anton, and Betty took up the rear. The others stayed behind on the first floor—the employees venturing forth into the kitchen and the environs beyond, and Ernie going in the opposite direction towards the storage room next to the lounge.

No one said it out loud. None could have said just
why.
But they were all thinking the same thing.

This place gives me the creeps.

Chapter 2

“What do you think of the room, Jerry?” Gloria asked as she ran over to the window and took some more of her deep breaths. ”Ahhh, the air is so clean and fresh. Not at all like the city.”

Jerry plopped down on the bed and bounced upon the mattress. It was soft and lumpy, the way he liked it. He knew Gloria would complain (she was always complaining) because she preferred hard mattresses, and would psych herself into a “simply wretched” backache even before she had slept in the bed. He watched his lover fly about the room, fussing here and there, touching the lace curtains on the window, picking up dusty bric-a-brac on the ancient wooden bureau, and poking furtively into the closet. “Hello, anybody in there?” She smiled and turned to Jerry, to see if he were smiling. He was.

“I think it’s nice,” he said. “Real nice.”

“How’s the bed? Hard like I like it?” She came racing over towards him, and he grimaced involuntarily. He hoped she wouldn’t make waves because the bed wasn’t hard, ask for another room, make a nuisance of herself, and embarrass the both of them. She surprised him. She reached out, bent over the bed, pressed down with one hand, said nothing. Then she sat on the bed, the weight of her body causing the springs to creak and leaving an indentation of no small size in the mattress when she arose. “Soft, isn’t it?” she said. “Well, that’s too bad. Can’t have everything, can we, dearie?” She grabbed his chin with her fingers, and shook his head affectionately. “Everything else is so nice, we can’t complain.”

He exhaled with relief when her back was turned. One crisis averted.

“Of course, I’ll get a simply wretched backache from it, but I’ll make an appointment with that lovely masseur in the health club on Tuesday, and I’ll be right as rain in no time. Come now, boy, we must unpack. What time did Mr. Everson say they’ll be serving dinner?” She rummaged through her suitcases, choosing one item, then another, throwing both back and settling on a third.

“He didn’t. He just said that that lady, the cook, would have something ready in an hour or so. Jesus, we just had lunch on the mainland before we took the boat over.”

“You know me,” she giggled. “Can’t go too long without sustenance. I’ll take the top two drawers in the dresser, all you’ll need is the bottom one. Come now, let’s get unpacked. Perhaps we can see some of the island before it’s nighttime.” She gave up trying to be orderly, simply took great handfuls of lingerie and accessories into her arms and threw them into the top drawer. She was a big woman, overweight, but still had a figure; large breasts, big hips, a round, protruding stomach that she squeezed into girdles. She was always moving, never stopping: hyperactive, talkative, cheery, and demanding. People who didn’t know her, judging her from her profession, figured she had to be a bitch. She was really very sweet, Jerry told them. Too sweet. Maybe that was her problem. Who had ever heard of a gossip columnist with a good heart?

Her face was heart-shaped, her eyes blue and bright, her mouth small and dainty. She wore her hair short and wavy; still dyed it her original, zesty brown, although friends told her: “You’re getting older now. You’d look more natural if you’d just let it go gray.” Old. Getting old. Older. Not she. She still had far too much to do.

Jerry helped her put some of her things away, then handed her her makeup kit and let her fix her face at the vanity while he unpacked the few things he’d brought with him in his knapsack. Books. Comb. Hairbrush. Toothbrush. Bare essentials. He traveled light. “I can’t understand how people can go away for an entire weekend with barely the clothes on their back,” Gloria said as she savagely brushed her hair (100 strokes a day). “I packed two whole suitcases and I’m already positive I must have left some—some essential
something—
behind. Oh, well. That’s men for you.”

Jerry put the last of his stuff in the bottom drawer, and threw his empty knapsack in the bottom of the walk-in closet. He closed the door, sat back down on the bed in the same spot as before, and waited for Gloria to finish. She did a little something to her lips and eyes, studied herself appraisingly in the mirror, frowned, and swiveled on the satin-covered seat of the vanity. “This is a nice place, isn’t it?” she said cheerily.

Jerry nodded. “We’ll see.”

“It won’t be so bad, dear.” She got up, patted his head on the way to the closet, and searched among the hangers for something suitable to change into. “I
know
Mr. Everson mentioned something about cocktails in the living room in half an hour. Cocktails. Cocktails.” She patted her lower lip with her finger. “What goes with cocktails?”

As she tried on various outfits, she explained again why she had wanted to come on this trip to Lammerty Island. “I have an interest in things supernatural, did I ever tell you that? Oh, I’m not a fanatic about it, but I have a definite interest. When my niece, Lynn—did I mention she was my niece?”