Our Island Inn (Quirky Tales from the Caribbean) (16 page)

“Yes,
good girl.” I murmured, distancing myself from both the dog and the search crew as the inspector directed his team toward the pavilion’s outer stairs.

I was concerned about Millicent’s disappearance. She seemed like a nice old lady – a little eccentric, perhaps, but sweet enough.

However, at this point, I would rather have gone anywhere in the world other than the clearing below the deck, much less into the jungle.

Pickering
saw me edging away from the group. “Sir, if you don’t mind. Please come along with us.”

Despite the polite phrasing, the inspector’s tone indicated
that compliance was not optional.

~
~ ~

OLIVER FELL INTO step behind me as
Pickering led the way down the exterior stairs, Clarice panting at his knee. Elsie marched a few feet behind the inspector, fulfilling her role as junior deputy.

With the
sun dropping toward the distant horizon, the area surrounding the pavilion’s foundation had already fallen into shadow. While the scene from the pool deck sparkled with beauty, the clearing below evoked a spooky aura. The dense jungle loomed beyond, a macabre theater of unspeakable terrors.

Pickering paused at the landing outside the restrooms, as if summoning his courage before tackling the last flight of steps to the
bottom. Many of the volunteer searchers shuffled nervously in place. They looked like they expected a fire-breathing demon to burst out of the woods. Even Clarice appeared hesitant to tackle the task that lay ahead.

But
I felt certain the spirit the locals feared had long since made her way up the stairs and into the inn.

She’d taken up residence inside my partner.

I couldn’t bring myself to look Oliver in the eye, afraid of the monster I might see reflected back.

~
~ ~

PICKERING REACHED THE edge of the clearing and crouched to the ground, studying the grass and the surrounding bushes.
Clarice dropped her head to the dirt, loudly sniffing as she rummaged back and forth through the weeds.

You didn’t need enhanced nasal faculties to detect the stale scent in the air. The stench I’d noticed during my earlier visit to the clearing had
intensified, and the source was now unmistakable.

It was
a rank odor that could only come from death.

Returning to full height,
the inspector unsheathed the machete and held it up in front of his body. The sharp blade glinted in the dimming sunlight.

“Reverend
, do you have any sense of where the opening to that trail might have been?”

S
tepping gingerly forward, the minister waved a broad-beamed flashlight over the rough ground. Then he bent near a spot where Clarice had focused her sniffing.

He tucked the flashlight under his arm and
pushed aside a heap of dried brush, revealing an opening in the dense vegetation.

The trail had obviously been in recent use.

Pickering slid the machete into its case and shifted his hand to the gun holstered on his hip.

Flabbergasted, I risked a glance at Oliver.

He didn’t appear the least bit surprised.

SIX
MONTHS AGO, if someone would have told me that I’d be walking into the dense jungle beneath Parrot Ridge surrounded by a small army of restless West Indians armed with cutlasses and guns – men who were opposed, if not openly hostile, to my sexual orientation – and my main safety concern would be Oliver and the spirit that had possessed him, I would have laughed out loud and pronounced the statement ludicrous.

Despite the bizarre nature of the situation, that was indeed the case.

The path was no more than a foot wide, so we proceeded single file. The biggest men had to push through the encroaching branches, causing a constant creaking and snapping of wood. I jumped every time I felt a twig poke my shoulders, certain that a ghostly arm had reached out to drag me from the trail, strangle me with a rope-like vine, and mummify me in mulch.

It’s simple enough to
say that supernatural beings don’t exist – from the safety of a warm brightly lit room – but down in that jungle, the spirit’s presence was very real.

A dense canopy covered the path, blocking any
rays that might have been provided by the fading sun. There were just a few flashlights shared among the group, and I hadn’t thought to grab one from the pavilion before we left. I pulled my cell phone from my pocket and tried to use its display to light the ground at my feet.

Tree roots and fallen trunks crossed the trail.
As I stepped over yet another obstruction, I couldn’t help but think that whoever had been traveling this route was slender and in good physical condition.

I glanced over my shoulder
at Oliver, hoping to find him terrified and unsure of his footing.

H
is face was masked in shadow, blocking his expression, but while I stumbled at every step, his feet tread across the uneven terrain with casual ease.

He walked as comfortably
on the path as he did across the pool deck.

~
~ ~

THE
TRAIL WOUND through the jungle, a dizzying maze of switchbacks and sharp curves, but the trend was always downward and toward the sea.

I lost all sense of distance. We could have been miles away fro
m Parrot Ridge or directly beneath, it was impossible to tell which.

As we traversed farther down the
hill, the track began to branch into a series of unmarked forks. There were several long pauses, and I sensed that the reverend, who was in the lead, was just as confused and uncertain as me.

In the end,
the birds led us to the body. We heard their harsh calls right before the path opened up onto the beach. A squawking blood thirst filled the air.

The bloated corpse
lay on the sand at the water’s edge, illuminated by the sun’s last orange glow – and covered by a flapping frenzy of pecking beaks. The winged carnivores were engaged in a fierce battle, fighting for the plumpest pieces of remaining skin.

We
gathered silently on the shore, a shocked and somber assembly. Brandishing the machete, the inspector stepped forward and shooed the birds away. The reverend joined him and, with a grimace, shone a flashlight onto the victim’s head.

Pickering’s deep voice echoed through the silence.

“Elsie, run back up the hill to my truck. We’re going to need the supplies in the back.”

Holding my breath
to block the awful stench, I staggered forward. I was determined to see the injuries for myself.

Despite the
extensive avian damage, the victim’s identity was still discernable.

It wasn’t
Millicent.

Or Daisy Jones.

The body was that of a male.

It wasn’t
Mr. Hamilton.

Not
Jesús.

It was Romeo
– or rather, what was left of him.

I looked at Oliver and
I knew now with certainty.

The evidence overwhelmed me. I thought of t
he scratches on my partner’s face, the out of control screech down the driveway after Romeo fled with the restaurant’s cash, and the dent in our jeep’s bumper. I had no idea how Oli managed to transport Romeo’s body to the beach, but there was no doubt in my mind that he was responsible.

This time there was no ice bucket
for which to aim.

Wrapping my arms around my waist, I retched onto the sand.

THE GOLDEN GIRLS stood anxiously on the pool deck, praying for their friend’s safe return. It was an excruciating wait. Every so often, they spotted a flashlight bobbing in the distance, but for the most part, the clearing remained dark.

After thirty tortured
minutes, Maude pointed out an approaching light.

“There! Someone’s coming!”

Moments later, Elsie jogged out of the woods and up the pavilion’s outer stairs.

She was a
lone.

The women exchanged puzzled glances as t
he police trainee ran through the pavilion and up to the parking lot. Then they scurried across the deck to see what she was doing.

Elsie
grabbed a tarp, some rope, and a sheet of folded plastic from the police inspector’s truck. Her arms fully loaded, she reversed course.

Without a word,
she trotted past the Golden Girls, down the stairs, and back through the narrow opening in the woods.

~
~ ~

THE
SOLEMN TRIO resumed their vigil at the deck railing, holding hands as they stared at the clearing below.

They suffered through another
forty-five minutes of uninformative darkness before lights once more bounced through the trees. This time, the disturbance in the greenery moved more slowly. A far more substantial glow approached the inn, signaling the return of a larger group.

The women had s
teeled themselves for the worst, but they still gasped in dismay when they saw the improvised body bag carried by the search team.

Mary clasped her hand over her mouth as
the men tromped through the clearing and hefted their burden up the stairs.

Oliver was the first to reach
the Golden Girls. “It’s not Millicent,” he said reassuringly. “It’s a…well, it was…a man.”

Maude let out a
cry of relief. “Well, I never!”

Kate’s brow furrowed.
“But then, where’s Millicent?”

~
~ ~

INSIDE THE RESTAURANT’S kitchen, behind the swinging wooden doors,
Maya showed little interest in the commotion on the pool deck. She knew who and what the rescue team had retrieved from the beach.

Some
forms of discarded produce weren’t worth the effort of preserving.

S
he picked up a cardboard box filled with the dry jars she’d recently cleaned and rested it on her hip. With a last glance at her empty workspace, she slipped out the rear door behind the pantry and disappeared into the dimly lit parking lot.

Over the years, she’d learned to recognize
the signs that a location had started to attract too much attention. The old lady in the cowboy hat hiding behind the bougainvillea bush had been a clear indication that too many spying eyes were focused on Our Island Inn.

I
t was time for her to move on.

Maya’s
next canning session would take place in a different kitchen.

IT WAS PAST midnight when Inspector Orlando Pickering steered
his pickup off the curving inland road and into the gravel drive leading up to his house. Riding in the cab beside the inspector, Clarice stretched her mouth into a drooling yawn.

The inspector sighed as he
parked the truck outside a three-room concrete block structure. “Long day, huh?”

Clarice
shook her head, slinging slobber against the dashboard. Then she leapt through the passenger side window and onto the gravel drive.

The
long day had been followed by an even longer night.

After several hours and more phone calls than
Pickering cared to remember, he had finally finished the initial processing and intake of the decomposed body. There would be another pile of paperwork and procedures to deal with at the station tomorrow.

He
was exhausted, but he had one more task to complete before he could crawl into bed with any hope of sleep.

A tattered packet of manila file folders lay on the truck’s bench seat.

Wiping dog spittle from the cover, the inspector grabbed the packet and followed the canine inside.

~
~ ~

THE ABODE OF a lifelong bachelor, Pickering’s ho
me was small and sparsely furnished.

The few
pictures hanging on the dingy walls featured either law enforcement awards or canine tributes. The mementos to beloved but now deceased dogs far outnumbered those related to his department commendations.

In the center of the main living space, a
black and white television set perched on a rusted metal stand. It picked up only three stations. Depending on the weather, the reception often wasn’t much more than snowy static. A tattered DVD player slotted into the stand’s lower shelf offered somewhat more reliable entertainment.

A recliner provided the only
television-optimized seating. Within arm’s length of the chair stood a short shelving unit that displayed a worn family Bible and a faded photo of Pickering’s parents.