No Virgin Island (12 page)

Henry welcomed the quiet after the rapid departure of Neil, Sabrina, and Girlfriend. He rinsed the plates Sabrina had left in his sink and placed them in the dishwasher. He was always amazed at how Sabrina could whip up a simple meal with just a few ingredients but also concoct a complicated gourmet recipe for their guests with ease. She always credited Ruth with her culinary skills, but Henry suspected Ruth never made crab and asparagus puff pillows or figs stuffed with almonds and Cabrales cheese.

The silence in the kitchen, with just the occasional humming of the refrigerator, was soothing to Henry after the blaring news on television. So much had happened in just two days. He felt he had little control over his newly created life. At least he could keep his own little world tidy, he thought as he grabbed the window cleaner and some paper towels and headed to the living room.

He sprayed window cleaner onto the glass table, wiping off the smudges from dinner.

The lone lamp cast a warm glow over the order Henry restored to his living room as he contemplated soaking in the hot tub or just calling it a night and flopping into bed. Before he could decide, he heard the sound of his doorbell. He found himself hoping it wasn’t Sabrina and Neil. Though he loved her dearly and hoped her visit with Lyla had gone well, what they both needed right now was a little space from each other. He walked to the door, remembering how uncomfortable it had been revealing his mistaken impression about Carter Johnson being interested in him and listening to Sabrina admit to delivering a propane tank to Villa Mascarpone. He didn’t think bringing a full propane tank to a guest was the big deal Sabrina made it out to be. Henry had a feeling Sabrina was holding back.

He peeked through the peephole in the front door to see a dark image with a gold emblem. Henry knew at once it was the police, probably with a search warrant. They must have come directly from the Banks’ home. He opened the door to see Detective Janquar standing with a smile and Lucy Detree by his side.

“Mr. Whitman, I’m Detective Janquar.”

“I know, Detective. We’ve met. Just yesterday. At Villa Mascarpone. What can I do for you?” Henry asked, wanting to appear cooperative and calm, neither of which he felt.

“You know we are investigating the murder of your guest, Carter Johnson. I have search warrant for your condo. I’ll ask you to cooperate and let us in now.” Janquar stepped over the threshold, not waiting for an invitation.
Henry accepted the document Janquar handed him. It looked official enough and was filled with more legal jargon than he had the energy to read, but he could see they were looking for evidence of any communication with the “victim.”

Henry sighed and stepped aside so Lucy Detree and two other officers he hadn’t seen behind her could enter. He so wanted to go to bed. The day had seemed endless. What did they want from him?

“Is there anything special you’re looking for? I’m happy to cooperate, Detective. I have nothing to hide,” Henry said as the officers donned purple gloves, which looked like they had been designed for Barney, and whipped plastic bags out of a larger black bag one of the officers had placed on the hall floor.

“I’ll need to see your computers, any electronic equipment you use for your business,” Janquar said, his voice and girth filling the hallway.

Henry knew that on the kitchen island, in plain view, sat both Sabrina’s and his laptops, charging away, while his iPhone sat in his pocket. He knew there was nothing on either that could hurt them. He and Sabrina lived pretty boring personal lives and there was nothing salacious about their business, other than this little murder at one of their villas. But if Janquar seized the phones and computers, they were out of business. They had opted to forego a desktop computer and were modernly mobile in their choice of devices.

“Can you look at them here? If you take them, we won’t be able to tell which guests are coming and going or be able to field inquiries about new business,” he said, leading Janquar into the kitchen, which still smelled of melted butter and window cleaner.

“Nope, the laptops have to come to the station where our expert can take a look at them. I’ll make sure he gets them back to you ASAP, but they’re coming with me,” Janquar said, as he unplugged Sabrina’s from the charger and began winding wires.

“Detective, this puts us out of business. I don’t suppose that would be the point, would it?” Henry asked, having had just about as much as he could swallow. If the cops really were this antagonistic toward Sabrina and wanted her to go away, whether off to prison or just off island, shutting down Ten Villas’ communications was a good way to accomplish it.

“Mr. Whitman, we’re investigating the death of a man who was a guest at one of your villas. Otherwise, we’re not interested in your business, as long as you run it clean and legal.” Janquar finished packing up Henry’s computer as Officer Detree entered the kitchen.

“We’re all set, sir. No files or paperwork. Nothing of interest. We didn’t find any cell phones,” she said.

“Mr. Whitman?”

“Sorry, I must have left it in the van,” Henry lied. They were not going to leave him without his cell phone. He didn’t care if that meant lying.

“Really? Isn’t it an important part of your business communications, Mr. Whitman?” Janquar said in a mocking tone.

“Yes, but everything is all screwed up since Mr. Johnson’s death. I’ll bring it to you when I get the van.”

“First thing tomorrow morning, Mr. Whitman. You can sit and wait for the laptops. And one more thing, Henry, if you don’t mind me calling you by your first name. Listen, if you know something that would be helpful to our investigation, you had better disclose it. I know Ms. Salter is your partner and friend, but protecting her will only come back to bite you.”

Henry gulped but didn’t reply.

They were gone as fast as they had come. Henry looked at the empty counter and was furious. They’d even taken the chargers. He wondered if he should call Neil but felt too weary to recount what had happened. He was thinking about making a drink to calm his nerves when his cell phone tucked in his shorts pocket vibrated. He looked at the number, didn’t recognize it, and wondered if Janquar was testing him to see if he really had the phone. His house phone began to ring. The caller ID showed the same number that had just come up on his cell phone. It didn’t start with 340, so Henry knew it wasn’t local. It looked like a cell phone number. Probably someone calling about a villa after having a few drinks and fantasizing with her boyfriend about a vacation in paradise. He and Sabrina had learned early on that some of their best customers were
people who drunk dialed Ten Villas pledging to come for a vacation. They always made sure to get credit card numbers during the call.

“Ten Villas. This is Henry. How may I help you?” Henry said into the receiver, willing it not to be the cops or anyone else who would complicate his already overly complicated life. He and Sabrina had worked hard to build Ten Villas, and he wasn’t going to let anyone dismantle it without a fight.

“Henry, I’m so glad I reached you. Whatever is going on down there? Are you all right?”

Henry collapsed onto his onyx leather couch, clutching the phone in his hand, not responding to the only man he knew he would ever really love.

Sabrina shivered as Neil raced up Jacob’s Ladder, heading for Fish Bay. He reached over and turned up the heat in the car, something she had never seen done on St. John. He had called Fred Sinkhole to tell him he should ignore any calls about some tourists being locked behind the gates at Gibney, which Fred, already fairly oblivious, was happy to do, especially when Neil told him his tab for the night was on the house.

Sabrina was thrilled about going home with her dog and, if she was honest, with this man she found endearing and adorable in an annoying kind of way. Neil was playful and funny, which she found very sexy, although she had seen he could have a serious, pensive side.

The vision of the unsightly container plopped in front of her cottage disarmed Sabrina, even in the dark under moonlight scattered through clouds. She got that it was a quick and brilliant improvisation that barricaded her from the carnivorous paparazzi, but it was still a little
scary knowing she warranted protection to this extreme. Neil surprised her when instead of going around the container, he took a sharp turn onto a ramp and into it. He slammed on the brakes, making Girlfriend lurch toward the front seat, stopping just before hitting a parked motorbike.

Sabrina knew it wasn’t Henry’s because his was bright canary yellow. This color was too dark to distinguish, but it definitely wasn’t yellow. Was some unflappable reporter hiding in the container, which was designed to protect her from the press? Girlfriend began barking, sounding as indignant as Sabrina felt.

“Stay here,” Neil said as he started to slip out of the driver’s seat.

“The hell I will,” Sabrina said, getting out of the passenger’s seat, Girlfriend right behind her. She realized she was barefoot, wet, and still in her bathing suit, but she didn’t care. She wanted to know who was invading her house, her little piece of the world; she was ready to throw any intruder out on his or her ass.

Sabrina saw Seth Larson standing in the dim light of her porch as they approached. He was tall and slender, a graceful-looking young man, leaning casually against a porch pillar. Someone, a female, judging by the long bare legs, was sitting in Sabrina’s wicker rocking chair.

Neil stepped in front of her, preempting any confrontation he probably thought was about to erupt, but Sabrina’s irritation had morphed into acute curiosity.

“Sabrina, Neil,” Seth said, extending his hand. Kelly remained seated behind him, looking a little sullen. Maybe Kelly still hadn’t gotten over that nasty exchange between her father and Seth that Henry had mentioned. Sabrina was shivering, a little more than weary of the invasion into her world.

“Excuse me,” Sabrina said, slipping past them through the front door, Girlfriend in tow. She passed quickly through the living area, noting nothing looked in obvious disarray, although the room didn’t look quite like she lived there. She entered the bedroom, half-expecting to see her bed linens tangled in knots after the police search, but it was properly made. The way the pillows were propped, she knew it was the work of Henry, who must have put order to her cottage after the police search.

She grabbed the soft jersey T-shirt and pants she reserved for the cooler season and changed in the stall of her outdoor shower, not feeling as if her bedroom was private anymore. She could hear Seth through the window telling Neil he was sorry to be on the porch without permission, but it had been kind of an emergency, with Rory Eagan being out of control and Kelly needing to get away from him. When Seth had heard about the container blockading the house, he figured it was the best place to take Kelly.

Seth told Neil he had learned about the container from Tanya when he ran into her at a bar. Tanya had complained about not being able to work at Sabrina’s cottage. Sabrina felt bad, knowing how meagerly Tanya lived in St. John,
camping on friends’ couches, sometimes even sleeping in her decrepit jeep, until she could afford a room of her own. Sabrina hoped Tanya understood. The trickle down from Carter Johnson’s death seemed endless.

Sabrina went back onto the porch, not even bothering to put a comb through her hair. Why should she? These weren’t guests. She wasn’t having a party, a little porch get-together, was she? Something she never had because, why would she? Although, recently, Lyla had suggested Sabrina might host the reading group.

Neil and Seth were now seated on two of the other wicker chairs, which were gathered around a glass coffee table with a potted hibiscus on it. Kelly remained perched on Sabrina’s rocking chair, her “spot,” and Sabrina resented it and her, even though she knew Kelly was just a kid with a son of a bitch of a father. She knew she should have a little more empathy for Kelly, and she probably would have any other day. But not tonight.

“All right, what’s going on here?” Sabrina asked, taking the last of the wicker chairs.

“It’s my fault. Blame me. I just didn’t know where to bring Kelly so she’d have a chance to regroup,” Seth said.

Sabrina nodded without responding and noticed Neil remained silent. Sabrina was leery of Seth, knowing he had snitched on poor Evan.

“Kelly’s dad is really angry and she needed to get out of her house for a while, so she walked Fish Bay Road to the—”

Sabrina turned to Kelly without thinking.

“You went out into the night alone in a neighborhood where there has been a murder? What, are you crazy?” she said, the words slipping out before she was aware they were coming.

“Great. Now I have a third mother,” Kelly said, leaning forward in the rocker.

“What are you talking about?” Sabrina asked, really not needing any more mystery in the evening.

“Some woman you rented Villa Mascarpone to. She was over at the house talking to Mara and flipped out when I said I was going out.”

Deirdre was over to see Mara? Why, Sabrina wondered and hoped something wasn’t wrong at Villa Mascarpone; she didn’t have the energy to cope with it and felt pretty certain Henry was just as spent.

“Look, honey, we know you must be pretty upset. After a falling out with your father in public, I can see why you needed space,” Neil said with a tenderness Sabrina found touching.

“It was so embarrassing,” Kelly said, her porcelain complexion becoming paler under the dim porch light.

“It’s all my fault. I shouldn’t have asked you to take an earlier ferry and meet me,” Seth said. He sounded so contrite, mature, and responsible, but something didn’t feel right to Sabrina.

“Does Mara know where you are?” Sabrina asked, realizing how frantic she must be if she didn’t. The silence Sabrina got in response to her question gave her the answer.

“Either you call her or I will.”

Kelly’s face softened.

“I feel bad, leaving Mara alone with my father—that is, if he bothered coming home. Liam is in St. Thomas for the night at a swim meet. He hates being home. But I couldn’t stand to listen to my father lecture me on why I can’t see Seth when everyone on this island knows what he . . .”

Neil and Sabrina exchanged glances. Yes, everyone knew what Rory Eagan did because he made no effort to spare anyone the knowledge—an added level of insult for his family to bear.

“But I don’t want to go back. Not tonight,” Kelly said.

Sabrina watched Kelly, trying to imagine what it was like for her to balance all of the broken pieces of her young life. Sabrina knew how hard it was to have a drunken father. Oh, maybe hers had been poor and had better reasons to drink, but still either way, a drunken father could rob your youth, especially if you didn’t have a mother. Oh, she’d had Ruth, and Kelly had Mara, but no one could ever fill the vast black empty hole where your mother was supposed to be. Although, Ruth had come close.

The September night was humid and the air was fragrant with the smell of the ocean. Ruth had come out the back door of the diner to dump some trash. When she looked up and spotted Sabrina, barefoot in her cotton nightie, perched on the mansard roof of the Victorian mansion converted into a boarding house where Sabrina lived with her father, Ruth slowed but didn’t startle.

“What are you doing way up there so high, honey?” she called softly.

Sabrina hadn’t answered, not wanting to get in trouble with her father or, worse, get him in trouble. Her father had made it a habit of sneaking out most nights to the Drunken Dory, a bar down the street, after he thought she had fallen asleep. Once he left, Sabrina would take a flashlight from under her pillow and slip out onto roof outside the bathroom window to watch the clouds and stars and to forget how scary it was to be alone at night.

Ruth, who owned the diner next door and six tiny motel cottages behind it, knew who Sabrina was. Once in a while, when he felt guilty and had a little money, her father would take her to the diner for macaroni and cheese or grilled cheese and tomato soup.

“Sabrina, honey, say this with me: ‘I, Sabrina, am not afraid. I, Sabrina, am fearless. I, Sabrina, am not afraid. I, Sabrina, am fearless.’”

Ruth kept repeating those words until Sabrina joined her. “I, Sabrina, am not afraid. I, Sabrina, am fearless.” Sabrina’s voice grew louder with Ruth’s and she began to say the word “fearless” with vigor. Ruth continued chanting the refrain with Sabrina as she slid out a ladder she kept leaning against the diner to the side of the house. She wiped her hands on her apron and started climbing up the rungs, all the while joining in: “I, Sabrina, am not afraid. I, Sabrina, am fearless.”

When she reached Sabrina, Ruth opened her arms. Sabrina leaned forward, trusting that Ruth would lead her
to safety, feeling Ruth’s heart pounding against her as she smelled the stale cigarette smoke on Ruth’s apron.

Once safely on the ground, Ruth let Sabrina down and took her hand.

“I think a brave little girl like you has earned herself some ice cream, don’t you?” Sabrina had nodded and followed her through the kitchen of the diner, which was closed, into the dining area, where Ruth placed her on a stool with a shiny red vinyl cover.

“Vanilla or chocolate? Or maybe strawberry?”

She chose strawberry and dug into the huge mound of ice cream Ruth placed on the counter in front of her.

Ruth picked up the receiver to the turquoise phone on the wall and dialed a number, speaking softly so Sabrina couldn’t hear her words. She wasn’t worried about who she was calling. She knew she was safe with Ruth. No harm would come to her now.

Sabrina had been right about Ruth. When her father had staggered into the diner twenty minutes later, Ruth marched him through the swinging doors into the kitchen and lambasted him. Sabrina never knew what Ruth said, but from that day until the day Sabrina left for college, she and her father lived in one of Ruth’s little motel cottages behind the diner.

“I, Sabrina, am not afraid. I, Sabrina, am fearless.” Sabrina had said those words so many times that she thought they were probably carved inside her forehead—before she took the entrance exam for the pricy private
high school her maternal grandmother had paid for in an effort to assuage her guilt for her mother’s abandonment of Sabrina, before she went out on her first date with a boy who had to pick her up at the diner so Ruth could check him out, before she interviewed after college for a position at WXYZ as weekend meteorologist, before going on air and trying to sound like she was as normal as any young woman who’d grown up on Main Street, USA, and before she went on trial for first-degree murder of her husband.

Kelly’s life may have been more privileged than Sabrina’s, but Sabrina suspected it had as many fears and demons in it.

“Stay with me tonight. I’ll call Mara and explain,” Sabrina was surprised to hear herself say.

Kelly, Seth, and Neil all looked at her as if she’d just landed from another planet.

“Really?” Kelly asked.

“Really.”

“Seth and I will take off and let you girls chat away,” said Neil. “Just as soon as Seth tells us a little about what happened at the police station earlier.” Sabrina was grateful Neil still had her back.

“Oh, you mean when they asked me to come in and give a statement?” Seth asked. His naiveté was both endearing and annoying.

“Yes. What did they ask and what did you tell them?” Neil asked, sounding like a lawyer again.

“Did you clean the pool at Villa Mascarpone that morning?” Sabrina asked, wanting the answer to that question first.

“I get to ask the questions, Salty, although that’s a good one,” Neil said. “Start with that one. Did you clean the pool?”

“Sure, first thing. Right before I did the Banks’, like always,” Seth said. Sabrina realized Seth worked much as Henry and she did. They had their own schedules and got their business done with little or no interaction with others.

Kelly sat back on the rocker, beginning to gently rock back and forth, appearing more relaxed when the conversation turned to murder than when it was focused on her father.

“Was Carter Johnson there? Did you see him?” Sabrina asked over Neil’s frown. She was desperate to understand what had happened for her own sanity and to get everyone else off her back.

“Yeah, he was inside and said hello when I called out, saying I was there to clean the pool,” Seth said. For the first time, he reached for the Sam Adams beer sitting next to his chair and took a chug.

“Did he say anything to you?” Neil asked.

“Just something like he’d taken his last dip and to go to it.”

“Could you see what he was doing inside? Did you ever go into the house?” Neil asked.

“No, I never go into houses. Not a good idea. I learned early when one of the female houseguests asked me to come in and help her turn on the dishwasher and decided what she wanted to do was turn me on instead,” Seth said, a mischievous smile across his face.

“We decided that it was best to have a policy that the pool person was prohibited from entering any of our villas after that, Neil. Too much exposure for Ten Villas, and Seth felt pretty uncomfortable,” Sabrina added. The truth was Henry and Sabrina were never sure about what had happened on that occasion. Seth was a devilishly delicious-looking young man, always arriving to clean the pools barefoot and in his bathing suit, which made sense, given his line of work. But he was young and they knew very little about him, other than he showed up on time and did his job.