No Virgin Island (11 page)

Deirdre paused at the top of the driveway leading to the villa, noticing for the first time the sign on the stone house. “Cairn Suantrai” was carved in gold against a mahogany slab. Deirdre knew it was Gaelic, having been raised in Boston in a very Irish Catholic family. She’d taught plenty of Yeats and Joyce but she wasn’t sure what “Suantrai” meant. A cairn was a mound of stones, and, certainly, that’s what this house was.

She felt an urgency draw her toward the front door, but she knew she had to have a reason for coming to the house. She’d prepared for the situation by reading the thick “house book” provided by Ten Villas, which was a three-ring binder stuffed with information about the house, the island, and, most importantly, contact information for neighbors if there was an emergency. Mara Bennett was that person, listed on the front cover of the house book. There was no mention of her husband, Rory Eagan.

Deirdre took a deep breath and knocked on the door with confidence. She knew exactly what to say. She could
hear movement but couldn’t see into the house through the stained glass panes on either side of the heavy mahogany door. She thought she could hear wailing in the background. Or was it just her imagination? Feeling a little calmer than she had when the car with the hysterical girl inside had whizzed by, Deirdre decided that if something terrible had happened, Mara would probably be crying too. No, this seemed to be about Kelly. Deirdre expected that Rory wasn’t home, although she couldn’t be certain because the driveway led down into the garage on a lower level and was opened remotely, as she had observed. But the report had indicated that Rory was almost never home in the evening and could most often be found on a particular stool he seemed to favor at Bar None.

The door opened and Deirdre immediately heard the sound of crying—not hysterical but steady and weary. Mara Bennett stared up at her with curious, warm brown eyes. She wasn’t a pretty woman, but in bare feet and khaki shorts and a white T-shirt, she had a certain island appeal, looking very healthy and natural. While not heavy, Mara was solid and looked strong.

“May I help you?” Mara asked, as Deirdre wondered if she looked as crazy as she felt. She had waited years for this moment and now it was reduced to a game of charades.

“I’m, we’re, my husband and I are staying across the road at Villa Mascarpone and the power keeps flickering on and off. The house book Sabrina and Henry left said we should check with you to see if you were having the
same problem, so they’d know whether it was a problem limited to our villa or perhaps a power company issue.”

The soft crying in the background escalated to a full howl, followed by a staccato of sobbing.

“Is everything all right?” Deirdre asked, not able to help herself.

Mara opened the door for Deirdre to come in. Once inside the large circular hall with a terra cotta tiled floor and exquisite stonewalls dotted with shells and old wine bottles, Mara extended her hand.

“I’m Mara Bennett and that sound is my stepdaughter crying because two men adore her, so please, don’t be worried. We should all have that problem, right?”

“I guess,” Deirdre said, feeling stupid for not realizing that hardly anyone would tell a complete stranger about an intimate family discord. She could see she had overreacted, just as Sam had tried to suggest before she went off on a lark, threatening to ruin all their plans.

“I’ve only been home a few minutes, but I haven’t noticed the power flickering. Let me peek at the clock on the stove. That’s how I can always tell if the power’s been off. What did you say your name was?” Mara didn’t wait for an answer as she slipped through an arched doorway in the hall and disappeared, returning thirty seconds later.

“No, looks like we haven’t lost power lately. But, you know, on an island, surges happen all the time and can be really spotty, affecting one house but not the one next door. You may want to give Sabrina or Henry a call. It could have
to do with the investigation. You know about that, don’t you?” Mara asked, giving Deirdre a tentative glance.

“Yes, we do. You’re thinking maybe the police flipped some switches or did something to cause the circuits to flutter?”

“Well, it makes sense, if any of what happened over there makes sense. Are you okay staying there? I mean, if you’re trying to get some relaxation during your vacation . . .”

Deirdre wasn’t expecting to like Mara Bennett, but she did. There was a genuine kindness in her concern for her and Sam, even though she had her hands full with a bawling teenager. Deirdre felt a rush of feelings she hated having, her heart heading north and south all at once.

“We’re fine, really. Sabrina and Henry offered us the villa we were in last night for our entire trip. We just had our heart set on this location. Thank you. I’m sorry to—”

Deirdre felt her heart begin to pound at the sight of the lanky and lovely young woman who appeared through the kitchen door, wearing the shortest of shorts, her long strawberry locks spilling down her back. Deirdre could see Kelly had dancer’s legs with shapely calves running into tapered ankles.

“Where do you think you are going?” Mara asked, seeming to forget Deirdre’s presence. No, this was about more than boyfriend trouble, Deirdre could see.

“I refuse to deal with that poor excuse for a father when he gets home. I won’t put up with his BS,” Kelly said, no longer crying and filled with resolve.

“What? Are you crazy? There’s a murderer on this island, for God’s sake. You can’t go out at dusk the day after someone’s been murdered two hundred feet away from your house,” Deirdre said, surprised by her own outburst.

Kelly pivoted and turned away from Mara and seemed to notice Deirdre for the first time.

Before either could say a word, Deirdre said, “I’m sorry. I don’t know where that came from. Probably thinking about what I’d say to my own daughter back home. I’ll give you two some privacy. Thanks for the help, Mara. It was nice to meet you.” Deirdre drew back through the hall and fled through the door. She’d risked too much with this insane interlude.

When Sabrina was a child, she’d dreamed about “normal.” She wanted to be normal, to come from a normal family with siblings and a drooling dog, and to grow up to live a normal adult life. She wanted to get married, have some kids of her own, buy a raised ranch, and complain about taxes. Ruth used to tell her normal wasn’t all it was cracked up to be, but Sabrina had been willing to give it a shot.

Tonight, Sabrina wanted her version of normal back. She wanted to return to her cottage and have a normal night’s sleep in her normal bed with her dog curled up against her. She wanted the island she now called home to return to normal, the television crews and cameras to leave, and, most of all, she wanted Faith Chase to leave her and everyone else on St. John alone.

“Please take me home,” she said to Neil when they got in the car.

“What?” Neil asked, as if Sabrina had said she wanted to go to Dubai to go shopping. “You can’t do that.”

“I need to go home. I need to find normal,” Sabrina said.

“Look, Salty, I know it’s been a rough couple of days and you’re probably feeling it more than we are, but if you go up to that cottage of yours, Faith Chase and her vipers will be crawling all over you and your house,” Neil said.

“I don’t care. I want to things to be normal again,” Sabrina said, whining like a child. “I just want my lousy little life back. I didn’t ask for any of this.”

She saw Neil’s face wrinkle around the eyebrows with worry, worry that she was losing it.

“Look, you want normal, Salty? Let’s take your dog for a swim. You swim every night with her, don’t you?” Neil asked.

“What are you, crazy? A reporter will probably see us, and how normal will that make me feel?” Sabrina parked at Hawksnest Beach every night to take a swim with her dog because it was so accessible and had a little light in the parking lot. They would swim the short distance over to Gibney Beach and back. It was great exercise for them both, but especially for a dog on an island where it was often just too hot to take a decent walk. Sabrina loved their nightly swim, the routine of it, going home and showering in the outdoor shower with Girlfriend, and then sitting on the porch while her hair dried.

Neil took his cell phone out of his pocket and tapped a few numbers on the screen.

“Hey, Mitch, is Fred Sinkhole at the bar tonight? Good, let me talk to him.” Neil said, pulling over to the side of the
road, which seemed like a good idea to Sabrina since the road ran along a steep cliff. Sabrina listened, a little amazed at Neil and how easily he took command and shifted with circumstances, something she was not very good at.

“All set. Got a suit, Salty? I assume the dog doesn’t need one,” Neil said, tucking his phone back into his pocket.

“Of course, I’ve always got a suit in my backpack. But how are you going to make sure no one sees us?” she asked, not confident about Neil’s plan, whatever it was.

“You can throw it on when we get there. Let’s go. Timing is of the essence, like the lawyers like to say.” Sabrina noticed he didn’t include himself as one of them. She checked her backpack to be certain the drab one-piece black bathing suit was there. She was a little excited about getting her swim in. She loved looking up at the clouds and the stars at night. The constellations looked like the pictures in her school textbooks when she’d learned all about the world of weather. She felt safe in the water, swimming at night, away from the chaos human beings invoke upon each other.

They headed off with Girlfriend in the backseat sticking her nose out the window, clearly very excited about going somewhere with a much happier Sabrina.

“How long have you done this, Salty? Since you got the dog?” Neil asked as they descended the curvy steep hills through Fish Bay and Chocolate Hole and made their way through Cruz Bay, which was awash with nightlife: people walking around, couples arm in arm, normal, just
like Sabrina wanted to be but had never been—and would never be, she now knew.

“Longer than that. Ruth, the woman who raised me, told me when I started kindergarten that you have to check out the weather in order to know how to dress. Early one morning, before I’d started school for the day, she caught me crossing the street in my nightie to go over to the beach. ‘What in the blazes are you doing, honey?’ she’d asked. I told her I was just checking out the weather like she had told me to. She roared laughing over that, but we had to negotiate my early morning trips to the beach. By the time I was in fourth grade, I was swimming every morning at six o’clock from mid-April to mid-October,” Sabrina said, knowing she was babbling, something she tended to do on the rare occasions when she shared her personal life.

“So that’s how you got to be a weather girl,” Neil said.

“Meteorologist, Neil, not weather girl.”

They passed the parking lot to Hawksnest, which confused her, but she stayed silent. As they approached Gibney, with its imposing gate, Neil slowed down.

“Fred Sinkhole told me it’s open. There’s a senior party down at the clubhouse in the morning, so they left it closed but unlocked,” Neil said, looking over at her with a little smile that said, “How clever am I?” Fred Sinkhole worked for the park department when he wasn’t on a stool at Bar None. His real name was Fred Cincola, and he was from Florida, but nicknames just seemed to stick on an island.

Neil opened the gate and drove down the short steep hill to the beach. Sabrina could smell rotting vegetation and hear tree frogs, but it was so dark that she couldn’t see anything. At the bottom of the hill, Neil looked over at her and then back at Girlfriend.

“Throw on your suit, Salty. I won’t look. Then you two can go on in and have your swim over to Hawksnest and back. It’ll do you some good to change up your routine, get out of a rut, and do it in reverse. I’m going to jump in and float ’til you’re back. Wake me if I fall asleep.”

Girlfriend and Sabrina were in the water in seconds. It was still silky and warm from a day filled with sunshine and was lit by the moon peeking from behind a few clouds. Girlfriend paddled next to Sabrina as she stretched her arms in front of her, cutting through the water. She got lost in the moment as she moved her legs and arms, breathed, and then rolled her face into the water. Everything was erased but the sound and sensation of water all around her, and she was free. They reached the empty shore at Hawksnest and got out of the water for just a few seconds, long enough for Sabrina to take a few gulps of air and feel the pounding of her heart. She called for Girlfriend and they jumped back into the ocean, beginning their lap back over to Gibney where Neil was waiting.

Neil understood how much she needed to have at least a small piece of her life back tonight. He was lying on his back, floating, as he’d promised, his eyes closed, not a wrinkle near his brows. His long feet and toes had a white glow under the moonlight.

“Hey, we’re back,” Sabrina said. He turned, smiled, and reached over for her hand.

“Well, good. I’ve got towels I found in your backpack waiting for both of you up on the sand.”

They began walking out of the water, still holding hands—Sabrina wasn’t sure why, although she knew she liked it—when they were flooded by headlights nearby. Once she could focus, Sabrina saw the camera, the Faith Chase wannabe standing on the beach with a microphone in her hand, and a man to her left holding a light, which was shining on her. The INN van was parked next to their car. Girlfriend began barking and charging, while Neil resorted to his usual lawyerly eloquence.

“Hey, you assholes,” he shouted as he blocked the camera with one of the beach towels he had picked up. He pulled Sabrina along as he called Girlfriend, tucking them into the car in seconds. Neil jumped into the driver’s seat, gunned the engine, and zoomed up to the top of the hill before the reporter and crew could even get their equipment back into the van.

At the gate, he jumped out and swung it shut, taking the padlock Fred had left unlocked for the seniors and slamming it closed. An engine down the hill roared, headlights beginning to shine upon the hill.

“Come on, Salty. Let me take you and Girlfriend home. Looks like it’s going to be safe there for the rest of the night after all.”