Our Island Inn (Quirky Tales from the Caribbean) (10 page)

I thought per
haps the last step was overkill – until I heard the women’s shouts coming from a rental jeep struggling up the drive.

I rushed to the
edge of the parking lot and looked down the hill, fearful our senior citizens were having trouble navigating the steep slope.

I needn’t have worried. They weren’t the least bit intimidated by the
incline. To the contrary, they were having the time of their lives.

The
white-haired driver had wrapped her hands around the steering wheel in a vice-like grip. Her wrinkled face bore the maniacal grin of a person on an amusement park ride. The two passengers in the rear whooped and hollered encouragement, while the woman in the front passenger seat waved her cowboy hat out the jeep’s roof as if she was leading a cattle drive.

“Oh, dear,” was
all I could muster.

I
stepped onto the curb as the jeep pulled into the parking lot – for my own safety, not because they needed more room.

The jeep made a celebratory circle
on the flat portion of the tarmac. As soon as the vehicle came to a stop, the driver snagged the cowboy hat from her copilot, jumped spryly from her seat, and planted it on my head.

~
~ ~

OLIVER POPPED OUT
of the reception carrying the punch tray.

He had dressed the wound on the side of his face and taped a small bandage over it.
The injury was far less noticeable now.

He nod
ded approvingly at my headgear and almost managed to give me a smile. It was one of Oli’s endearing qualities; he rarely stayed angry for long.

I grinned
in relief – because I desperately wanted his forgiveness and because there was no way I could have handled the Golden Girls’ arrival on my own.

Maude, Mary, Millicent
and Kate were widows of varying heights and bone density, lovely gals off on the greatest adventure of their sunset years.

They swarmed
around Oliver, gushing over his rum punch presentation. I couldn’t help but notice that despite the tragedy of the missing palm tree glass and its matching straw, there appeared to be more than an ample supply.

R
eturning the cowboy hat to its owner, I began carrying the ladies’ luggage up to their suite.

~
~ ~

WITH THE
SUITCASES safely delivered, I retreated to the entertainment pavilion.

Maya met me
on the short flight of steps leading down to the pool. As she pushed her hair back from her face, I could see she was distraught.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, fearing the sum Romeo had stole
n from the cash register was greater than my initial estimate.

“It’s
Jesús,” she whispered, her husky voice strangely fragile.

Instinctively, I took a step back. I wasn’t ready to face her husband
, much less discuss his role in the events from the previous evening.

But then
, for the first time, I realized Jesús might have been drugged too. My thoughts suddenly shifted from aversion to concern.

“Is he sick?”

Maya shook her head. “I don’t know. I haven’t been able to find him. He didn’t come back to our room last night.”

Several
possible scenarios ran through my mind, but none of them matched Maya’s fearful conclusion.

“
Mr. Glenn, that spirit from the ravine must have taken him.” She glanced over her shoulder at the pool deck. “Just like she did with all the others.”

THE FOUR ELDERLY women hiked up the stairs to their top floor suite at Our Island Inn.

Oliver had warned them about the steps, but they
’d assured him they wanted the unit with the best view. They weren’t disappointed. The ladies gathered on the balcony to catch their breaths and gaze out at the sea. From their sky-high perch, they could see for miles – blue sky met blue water and, creeping up from below, a dense jungle green.

While ardent supp
orters of their home state, the women couldn’t help but murmur in agreement when Millicent touched the brim of her hat and summed up the scene.

“You just don’t
see that in Kansas.”

~
~ ~

ONCE INSIDE THE suite, the women began the ritual of unpacking and freshening up.
There were coos of appreciation for the gift basket on the kitchen counter and the individually wrapped lilac-scented soaps in the shared bathroom. Showering and sunscreen application soon followed, accompanied, of course, by the chatter that ensued among lifelong friends.

Mary
shook out a floral print dress and slipped it onto a closet hangar.

“What did you think of
our innkeepers? It was nice to finally meet Oliver in person after all of our emails back and forth.”

Kate
emerged from the restroom with a towel wrapped around her head. “The gentlemen were both so kind and courteous. I feel that we’re in good hands.”

From the couch in the suite’s small living room,
Maude added a saucy comment. “That Glenn sure is cute!”

As always,
Millicent was the bearer of harsh truths. “He’s too young for you.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that…”
The group’s eternal optimist, Maude took a sip from the rum punch glass she’d carried up from the reception.

Millicent poked her head through the doorway
to deliver the knockout blow. “And he’s gay.”

“Oh, my,
” Mary gasped. She looked up from her suitcase. “Are you sure? Should we change hotels?”

Kate
rolled her eyes and began combing her wet hair. Maude laughed, nearly choking on her drink.

Millicent
delivered the rebuke.

“Why
in the world would you say a thing like that?”

~
~ ~

THE
CARIBBEAN VACATION was off to a fabulous start.

The
Golden Girls had flown down from Miami the day before, landing on one of the larger islands to the north. They’d spent their first night at a hotel near the airport, getting their feet wet, so to speak.

After
a restful night’s sleep, they’d set off that morning for the ferry. Despite their advanced age, the women were in good physical shape and easily steered their roll-around suitcases down the pier to the boat dock.

Each item
of luggage reflected its owner’s personality. Kate’s piece was covered with colorful bumper stickers. Mary’s powder blue case was un-scuffed and impeccably neat. Maude’s worn unit had been reinforced with twine and duck tape, measures that seemed unlikely to last the entire trip. Lastly, Millicent had affixed plastic bull horns to the top end of her roll-around, the décor designed to match her cowboy hat.

After a thrilling half-hour
ferry ride that included numerous references to the Titanic – with Maude posing on the side railing in an attempt to emulate a scene from the famous movie and Millicent grimly opining on the vessel’s chances of sinking – they arrived at their intended destination.

The rental car
was their next big challenge.

Maude
won the coveted spot as the designated driver. In the weeks before the trip, she had practiced driving on the left hand side of the road using her son’s tractor and a series of orange construction cones laid out across an unused cornfield.

Mil
licent had lobbied hard for the driving position, but without the tractor experience on her resume, she’d come in a distant second. She took up the front passenger seat, where she could at least provide navigational guidance and other helpful, if unsolicited, advice.

As the jeep turned onto the drive leading up to the inn and began the ascent,
Millicent cautioned, “Don’t let off the gas or this thing will slide backward.”

H
er next comment inspired the whoops and hollers that had startled Glenn in the parking lot above.

“Oh, for
Heaven’s sake, put the pedal to the metal or we’ll never get up this hill!”

GIVEN THE EXCITEMENT of their recent travels
, the Golden Girls decided to spend their first afternoon on the island resting up and recuperating at the inn. After a pleasant lunch in the shade of the pavilion, the ladies retired to their suite to take leisurely and distinguished naps.

E
xcept for Millicent.

She
had downed several glasses of iced tea with her meal and felt far too invigorated for sleep. As a rule, she preferred not to nap. There were too many things she wanted to do with her limited time left on earth. She couldn’t waste precious hours lazing about.

Millicent
slapped on her cowboy hat and sunglasses, slung her binoculars around her neck, and bid goodbye to her fellow travelers. As she set off to explore Parrot Ridge, she muttered her oft-cited mantra.

“I can sleep when I’m dead!”

~ ~ ~

MILLICENT HAD NO particular plans for her
wanderings, other than an intention to limit her geographic range to the top of the hill. She felt certain her knees wouldn’t make it down – much less back up – the inn’s driveway.

S
he circled the main building, taking stock of the overall layout. The square concrete block that housed the rental units and the owner’s apartment occupied almost all of the level land, and she had to scramble over the rear retaining wall to make it around the structure.

Finding nothing of interest at the back of the building,
Millicent returned to the front. The slope had been terraced down to the entertainment pavilion and, consequently, was much easier to navigate.

She spent several minutes admiring the landscaping, noting with approval the variety of tropical flowers that had been planted in the
raised beds. Then she tucked her sunglasses into her shirt pocket and brought the binoculars to her face.

Looking up at the main building, she trained
the magnifying lenses on the balconies attached to the west-facing wall. She panned over a pair of poodles asleep in the shade outside the owner’s apartment and a young West Indian woman shaking out a throw rug on the porch adjacent to the building’s lowest corner. Otherwise, most of the rental units appeared vacant. That was what she had expected. Oliver had indicated that the inn was typically quiet during the week and then tended to fill up on the weekends.

Pivoting in place,
Millicent shifted her focus down to the ravine. She marveled at the marked difference between the recent landscaping surrounding the inn and the dense vegetation that started just below the manicured summit. Moving over the jungle to the water’s edge, she picked up a swarm of seagulls circling above a tiny beach.

“
The birds are probably hunting the fish swimming in that coral,” she mused. “I wonder if there’s any way to get down there.”

She was about to zoom in closer, but a
drop of sweat ran across her nose, disrupting her view. She pulled her face away from the rubber nosepiece, reached into her pocket for a handkerchief – and in the process spied a scene of far greater interest in her near periphery.

T
he innkeepers had converged under the pavilion, between the bar’s counter and the foot of the pool. The fact that the two men were meeting was unremarkable. They probably touched base several times a day to discuss various operational matters.

What caught
Millicent’s eye was the tension in the pair’s body language. They appeared to be having some sort of disagreement.

Oliver’s exasperated voice floated up the hill, confirming
her suspicions.

“What do you mean, we’re shorthanded in the kitchen? What happened to
Jesús? He can’t simply have vanished overnight!”

Instantly intrigued, Millicent
crept toward the property’s lower level, hoping to listen in on the conversation.

MILLICENT WAS
A practical woman.

That was her motto
.

She
didn’t eat foods that were spicy, salty or deep-fried. She preferred meals where the individual components could be easily identified. Gelatinous, minced or ground up items were off the menu, sausage being allowed by exception, but only with good references and after close inspection.

She had no use for late night comedians.
She went to bed early and was the first one up the next morning. She rested her head on a single pillow, never two, and slept six and a half hours, no more, no less.

She came from a long line of practical ancestors
. Practicality was in her genes – she would be the first to tell you.