No Virgin Island (4 page)

Henry looked around Bar None to see if Sabrina was there. He’d spotted her jeep in the parish priest’s parking spot outside the church across the street, even though there was a sign posted, “Thou shalt not park here.” Sometimes he worried that Sabrina was a little self-destructive. Then again, she seemed to think she was predestined for disaster.

Henry wasn’t much of a drinker, but tonight was an exception. The sight of Carter Johnson flopped on the sagging hammock, bloody and lifeless, made him sick and weary. Life was not supposed to be so complicated here.

Henry sidled up to the bar, which was nearly full, and ordered a mojito and a plate of coconut shrimp as an afterthought. He hadn’t eaten since dinner at Asolare.

He looked around him and knew why Sabrina liked Bar None. The music was too loud to have any kind of a real conversation. She could sip her drink here, look out at Cruz Bay, and be left alone. How someone who had gone
to such extremes to be left alone managed to keep walking into other people’s disasters, he didn’t know.

The bartender slid a drink in front of him, telling him his shrimp order would be right up. He heard the loud voice of a man he could not see about eight stools down from him. It could only be one guy.

“Someone turn down that blasted music and turn on the six o’clock news so we can find out what the hell is going on here, will you?”

Henry leaned forward and looked down the bar, past the platter of shrimp the bartender had just slid in front of him, at Rory Eagan, who nodded at him. Henry noticed that Rory, dressed in Madras Bermuda shorts and a blue button-down collar shirt with the sleeves rolled up far enough to show tanned arms donning a Rolex, looked more like a gay man than most gay men did.

“Hey, Villa Mascarpone is one of your villas, isn’t it?” Rory asked. “What happened there? The cops won’t tell me even though I practically live next door.”

Rory Eagan typified the kind of jerk Henry no longer had to cater to as he had when he’d worked as a flight attendant for twelve years in first class.

Now he only had to meet them at the dock and take them to their villas. Short and sweet.

“No clue,” Henry said, stuffing a hot coconut shrimp into his mouth so he wouldn’t have to talk to Rory. He looked up at the oversized flat screen and feigned interest in the weather forecast. It was always eighty-six degrees with
a 30 percent chance of an occasional shower in St. John this time of year. Channel 8 was interviewing some politician about an upcoming festival in St. Thomas. Nothing about a murder.

Henry was relieved to see Rory Eagan was now preoccupied with two young female tourists not much older than his twins. He felt sorry for the kids, having such a jerk for a father. He thought about his own father, an airline pilot ’til he retired. Hank Whitman wasn’t an easy man to be the son of, particularly the gay son, but he had been a decent man and would never have been found pawing young women in a bar, knowing his kids could easily wander by and see him in all his glory.

Why Mara Bennett, the island’s most successful (and only female) builder, had married such a miscreant had escaped Henry until he became close friends with her.

They’d had coffee a dozen or more times before Mara admitted to Henry just how aware she was of Rory’s “whoring,” as she called it. It turned out she didn’t care. Rory had turned up on St. John as a down-on-his-luck widower with a young set of boy-girl twins. Their drunken mother had driven straight into a tree, handing Rory a sad story that Mara knew played well with the single women on St. John. She never believed that Rory loved her. She knew he’d married her for her money, and she’d married him for his beautiful young children, with whom she had immediately fallen in love. Mara told Henry she got the better end of the deal.

The bartender reached up to grab a bottle of Stoli Citros, a couple of glasses, and a bowl filled with sliced lemons and carried them over to Neil’s office. The bamboo shades were pulled down so Henry couldn’t see who was inside, but he guessed it must be Sabrina. She needed more than a bottle of Stoli to get through this one. Neil must have been interviewing her for hours.

The other bartender had turned up the volume of the television, which hushed most of the people at the bar. A woman with a snarl on her face and a stiff blonde hairstyle that resembled a helmet began to speak in a blistering tirade.

“Breaking news tonight. Reports that Sabrina Salter has yet another body at her feet. Unconfirmed reports tonight are that on a remote Caribbean Island where she fled, another murder victim has been discovered. Not just discovered, ladies and gentlemen, but discovered by
her
. We also understand that even though Sabrina Salter has not been charged as of this moment, that even though she has not been named as a party of interest, she has lawyered up, folks. We’re working on talking to her lawyer and getting more information for you. How history does repeat itself. I wonder how that Nantucket jury will feel hearing this news.”

The bar crowd went silent as former prosecutor now investigative journalist Faith Chase showed video clips of a different Sabrina, a more professionally dressed woman, first on air, reporting snowfall amounts in various Massachusetts
communities after a blizzard. “Worcester takes the prize with over twenty-eight inches,” Sabrina told the camera. Next, a Sabrina coming out of a courthouse, head ducked down, flanked by several lawyers after her arraignment for first-degree murder, followed by some tender shots of Sabrina’s dead husband’s children at his funeral. Finally, a clip of Sabrina emerging once again from the same courthouse after her acquittal, repeating the mantra, “No comment, no comment, no comment.”

“Will she get away with it again, folks? Will Sabrina Salter just wander from island to island, killing off the men in her life? Stay tuned. We are on this story and will provide you, our wonderful fans, with the same determined, dogged reporting you have come to trust.”

Henry watched the jaw-jutting, hissing Faith Chase sign off with, “Good night and God bless each and every one of you for caring about the victims of crime.”

The bartender flipped off the television and answered a phone before turning the familiar sound of Bob Marley back on. Henry felt sick, the coconut shrimp and mojito definitely not liking what they’d just heard. Sabrina had shared with him the horrors of being demonized by the goddess of trash TV, confiding that her most frightening dreams were not about the shooting or the trial but about Faith Chase vilifying her every act each night before a national audience. If she wore a plain navy-blue skirt with a white blouse and a pair of pearls to court, she was trying to look like a parochial school sophomore. If she wore a
black suit, she was shooting for the “don’t blame me, I’m the widow” appeal.

Henry had come to St. John because of Sabrina. She had convinced him the island was a perfect place to start over, leave behind the heartbreak and sorrow, the disappointment and damage. But her demons wouldn’t be banished; they just kept following her wherever she went. Henry couldn’t help but wonder if his demons would be any kinder. He doubted it and ordered another drink. This time, his father’s favorite, a double Scotch on the rocks, while he tried not to think about what David, his ex, was doing at this moment.

He looked over at Rory Eagan, a horrible excuse for a father, husband, and man, and realized David had been no better. His promises to leave his wife, acknowledge his love for Henry, and start a family were all lies. And even on the perfect island in paradise, there was no escape from betrayal.

Then Henry wondered for the first time where Rory Eagan had been that morning.

Neil poked his head around the bamboo shade that separated his office from the other booths at Bar None.

“Hey, Mitch,” he hollered, “bring me a bottle of Stoli Citros, a couple of glasses, and some ice.” He had such a sexy voice, a little on the hoarse side, Sabrina noticed again—not that she wanted to.

“And lemons,” Sabrina said. She loved lemons. Lemons with butter, lemon frosting, lemon poppy seed muffins, and most of all, lemons with her booze.

“Oh, yeah, and some lemons, a lot of lemons,” Neil said, sitting back on the bench. “Okay, Salty, you’ll have your Stoli and your lemons. I think I even see Henry sitting out there at the bar, ready to drive you home when we’re done. So, the Nantucket story. Shoot.”

Neil winced before the double entendre even occurred to Sabrina and apologized, grabbing the bottle, ice bucket, and glasses from the bartender.

“I’ll be right back with the lemons,” Mitch said, looking at her with that funny expression she remembered seeing on faces ever since Nantucket. People never looked at you the same once they knew you’d been connected with a murder. You were forever distinguished from the rest of the population, who got their murder thrills on television and from novels. You became a story, a legend of sorts, and you could never shake it.

Neil poured a tumbler full of vodka and slipped three ice cubes on the top.

“Here, Salty, you look like you could use this,” he said, sliding the drink over to her. Then he poured an identical drink for himself.

“I could have used it a couple of hours ago,” Sabrina said, taking the bowl of lemon wedges directly from Mitch, squeezing three over her drink, and gulping about a third of it in one sip.

Neil watched her with those smoky blue eyes of his, blue like the Atlantic Ocean in New England. Sabrina didn’t want to look into his blues while she told him her very old, very sad story. She hated talking about Nantucket, almost as much as she detested talking about Allerton, the lonely long peninsula south of Boston where she’d grown up.

“We owned a house on Nantucket. We used it mostly in the summer together, always inviting lots of people over. But I liked it better in the off season, after the throngs of beautiful people were gone.” She added more ice to her drink so she didn’t pass out before she was done talking.
She hadn’t eaten recently, since she’d skipped breakfast before heading up to clean Villa Mascarpone.

Sabrina took a deep breath and decided to just spit it out. Better to rip a bandage off quickly. Then the pain would be fast and short.

“Okay, here’s what happened. I met my husband while I was working at Channel Three as a meteorologist. Ben was the sports anchor for Channel Three. He was funny, handsome, a local celebrity.
Boston Magazine
always named him as the best sports anchor in Boston. We were at work one evening when Ben was served with divorce papers. He was married to Cyndi Cashman, a consumer reporter over at Channel Eight. They were in the news all of the time and when they had kids, the media were all over them. He thought they were the perfect family. Until that night,” Sabrina said, finishing her drink and handing Neil the empty glass.

Neil put up his right index finger, signaling her to hit the pause button for a moment.

“Hey, Mitch, bring another bucket of ice. And a couple of orders of onion rings and conch fritters, will you?” Neil turned back to her. Had he heard her stomach growling? Or did Neil Perry have a sense about her, one Sabrina remembered vaguely from the night on the beach when they’d flopped on the still warm sand and had almost gotten a little too familiar?

“This was his second marriage. He’d left wife number one for Cyndi, and when Cyndi left him, Ben was devastated. I don’t think he’d ever been rejected before. He turned
to me for consolation and I was flattered. He told me I had more depth, was more of a woman than anyone he’d ever met before. When he came on to me, I wasn’t smart enough to say no. I mean, at the time, I bought the story. I had been so much more supportive and caring than Cyndi ever had been. He told me he loved me as he had never loved before,” Sabrina said, embarrassed at how cliché her story was.

“And you believed you understood him the way no other woman had ever been able to in the past,” Neil said, handing her another drink.

“Of course. I was an idiot. In my defense, I was about fifteen years younger than Ben, but still, I should have seen it. He was on the rebound. I was ten years younger than Cyndi and he knew that would bother her.” She couldn’t admit to Neil that she had met Cyndi on a number of occasions and thought she seemed okay, not the demonic woman Ben had described her to be. But Ben had been so convincing, and she’d wanted to believe him so much that she figured Cyndi was just a phony. After all, Ben had captured her heart. He was the only person who had ever told her that he loved her. The only person. Ever.

She had never told anyone this. Not Justine Mercy, who had saved her from a murder conviction. Not Henry, the only person on the planet she now trusted. And she was not going to share this with Neil Perry.

“So he married you on the rebound?” Neil asked.

“Yes. My ratings were pretty high at the time and I was getting good press. He liked being with someone who
drew him additional publicity. I worshipped him and doted on his kids,” Sabrina said, eyeing the huge platter Mitch was handing them under the office shade, the salty smell of grease wafting through the Caribbean breeze.

“I thought we were doing okay. We’d take his kids to the Red Sox, Patriots, and Bruins games and we were always being photographed by the press,” Sabrina said, taking an onion ring and salting it before she popped it in her mouth. She hadn’t minded the photographs, but she’d wondered, sometimes, how Ben’s kids felt about being thrust into photos with their stepmother. She knew nothing about raising children, but she knew they were smarter than people gave them credit for. She had grown up motherless and knew it had been smart not to have children of her own. She was not mother material.

“And then?” Neil asked as he dipped a conch fritter into green habanera hot sauce.

“And then he did it again. Only this time, it was with an attorney who specialized in sports law.”

“Sports law? What kind of woman specializes in jock wars?” Neil asked.

“An even younger than me, very confident, superbuff lawyer, that’s who. I got an anonymous e-mail from someone telling me that Ben was at the Oak Bar at the Copley Plaza with her holding hands one night when I was working late at the station. I decided it was from a crank, but hey, I had to drive to our Beacon Hill townhouse, so why not stop by the Copley, even though it’s
not exactly on the way, and treat myself to a nightcap? I’d worked hard all night.”

Sabrina remembered the night more vividly than yesterday, probably because she visited it every night in her sleep. She had been so sure it was a mistake. She’d sauntered into the Copley as if she had the key to the penthouse in her purse, planning to feign surprise at finding Ben and whatever sports contact he was having a business drink with and joining them. There were so many women in sports broadcasting these days. She was certain her tipster had simply misunderstood the nature of the meeting.

But it was Sabrina who had misunderstood. Poised and confident, she’d entered the bar, pausing behind a massive ornate oak pillar to catch her breath, when she saw him. He’d caught the hand of the woman he was seated across from in the midst of what appeared to be a very feminine gesture. He took her fingertips and placed them on his lips, just as he did with Sabrina when he would stop her midsentence and capture her expressive hand and softly kiss her fingertips. Sabrina would forget what she was talking about and could only think about how Ben’s mouth might feel on other parts of her body. Neil didn’t need to know about this part. He seemed pretty attentive to Sabrina’s story, but lawyers, even retired beach bum lawyers, didn’t really care about the sad stuff. They just wanted enough facts to get you off.

“I could tell it was a romantic rendezvous. I knew in one split second he was done with me, had moved on, and that our marriage was over. I felt like someone had
split my sternum down the middle with a meat cleaver,” Sabrina said, reaching for a lemon wedge and giving it a vicious squeeze over the conch fritter. Hot sauce, no matter what color, was highly overrated.

“So you ran away to Nantucket? Why not just boot the bastard when he tried to come home and pretend he was late at a meeting? Why did you have to run away?”

Sabrina could hear the television blaring from the bar and ice cubes tinkling over the laugher and chatter and wanted to end the conversation. She didn’t want to have to be talking to a lawyer again. She’d only found the body.

“Because I was devastated, that’s why. I really didn’t believe he would do to me what he’d done to his first wife, especially after Cyndi had done it to him. I truly thought we had something different, that I was so special to him that he wouldn’t consider straying.”
I thought that he really loved me,
she didn’t say.

Sabrina grabbed a napkin and dabbed at her mouth, not wanting to meet Neil’s eyes and see what Sabrina expected might be pity or disdain at the sight of a smart woman who had been just as dumb as the legions before her. Just another dumped broad. A first-class chump.

“And so, what happened on Nantucket?” Neil asked, making her wonder if he was uncomfortable with the tiny speck of emotion she had shown.

“I grabbed a late flight out of Boston to Nantucket, took a cab to the house. It was freezing inside, so I put up the heat. I made myself a double martini, threw on Ben’s
sweatshirt and sweatpants, and drank alone in the kitchen. We’d done a spread in the
Globe
the summer before about cooking in our Nantucket cottage kitchen for a local charity. The kids helped us serve, and I was beginning to enjoy being a stepmom,” Sabrina said.

“Did you shoot him coming into the kitchen from outside?” Neil asked, looking at the bottom of his empty glass before splashing a touch of vodka into it. He raised the bottle to her. She nodded and let him get her just a little more drunk, just enough so she could finish telling the story but not enough to get her maudlin and blathering.

“No, no, I made a second drink and found some extra blankets, went upstairs, and crawled into bed. I just couldn’t get warm, and I couldn’t seem to get drunk, try as I did. I was semicomatose finally when I heard someone coming up the old rickety staircase to the second floor. The house belonged to one of the original whaling captains. Everything in the house creaks. I thought I heard voices, but I couldn’t really tell if it was the wind howling outside the window. I sat up and reached into the drawer of the nightstand where Ben always kept a gun. ‘Just in case,’ he always would say. I was terrified. I heard the sound of the bedroom doorknob being turned, and I raised and pointed the gun toward it. When it opened, I just pulled the trigger. It never occurred to me that Ben would bring a woman to our vacation home, although I learned differently later at the trial,” Sabrina said, suddenly so tired she could have put her head on the table and slept the remainder of the night.

“When did you figure out it was your husband?” Neil asked. He had started to jot down notes on the place mats, making her wonder what he found relevant to the dead man in the hammock.

When had she figured out it was her husband? Sabrina would take the answer with her to her grave. On her better days, she was certain it had only been after she had turned on the light and realized the intruder was her husband and his jock lawyer. But in the thinnest hours of the night when she tossed and turned, Sabrina wondered if she had seen Ben’s face and then fired or pulled the trigger in a moment of rage. She would never know. All she knew was that a jury had decided to believe her and not the jock lawyer, who had testified for the prosecution.

“When I heard shrieking from a woman and turned on the lamp to find Ben bleeding from the gut, still holding the hand of the screaming blonde as he slipped to the floor.” Sabrina still marveled at how the sight of Ben entering the bedroom he’d shared with her with another woman stood out in her mind more than the bloody scene that ensued. This was a memory she was very clear about. She really didn’t want to talk about Ben anymore.

“Hey, Boss, you got a phone call,” Mitch said as he approached Neil with a cordless phone.

“Tell them I’m busy,” Neil said in a tone that told Sabrina she was going to have to finish her story.

“Even if it’s Faith Chase?” Mitch asked, eyebrows raised.

Neil placed his hands together as if in prayer. “Especially if it’s Faith Chase.”